Shadow Matching Game

I found this shadow mathing game here, and I knew O would love it as soon as I saw it. I finally got everything cut out and laminated, so I introduced it to her this morning. She thorougly enjoyed it and asked for more after she finished. When she wakes up from her nap, I'll show her the shadow matching game that goes with Eric Carle's Very Busy Spider book. She's going to be so excited!

Drawing and Stickers Basket

I gathered a basket of drawing pads, a pencil, markers, and stickers for O last night and left it on the table for her to discover this morning. She was thrilled to see it, and she had lots of fun playing with the stickers (they were on her cheeks at one point before ending up on the floor and table) and drawing on the pads. This activity will stay at the table because I don't want her walking around with a pencil in her hand or drawing on the walls and floor. I realized what a packrat I am when I looked closely at the stickers and saw the date...1983! Yes, I saved them from when I was 6 years old probably with the intention of one day sharing them with my little girl :)

We're Going Camping!

Elliott and I are so excited to be planning O's 1st camping trip! We've been talking about one day taking our kids camping since long before O was born, so we can't wait. We've finally found a free weekend, and we hope the weather will cooperate. We're taking the easy way out by going to a campground where we can set up our tent right next to our car. Does anyone have any advice on camping with a toddler? I'm trying to figure out what kind of food to take, so any suggestions are appreciated! Thanks!

Homemade Mother's Day Gifts

O and I have spent the last 2 weekends making homemade Mother's Day gifts for her grandmothers, auntie, and me. We're trying to do only handmade gifts from now on, and we have really enjoyed ourselves!
O painted flower pots and then we planted basil seeds in them. She needed encouragement to keep painting, but she enjoyed the planting process. Unfortunately, I dropped and broke one of the pots. I guess the broken one will be mine :(
O and I really enjoyed making exfoliating sugar scrub. I love the fact that its all natural, and it smells great! We used Burts' Bees Apricot Oil since I didn't have any essential oils, and it smells good enough to eat (and I admit that I tasted it when O wasn't looking...not bad).
I was proud of how well O spooned the mixture from the bowl into each jar. She was really into this, and she did not want ANY help. This made it a little difficult and messy, but fun and a great learning experience for us both!

Entertaining Herself

I don't usually get on the computer while O is awake, but I decided to give O a chance to have some independent play while I blog. I thought she would fuss and want my attention, but that was not the case at all. She's been reading books and playing with her bear puzzle. I think she really likes having this time to herself. Looks like mommy might get a little more time for blogging :)

Going Fishing

While looking in our guest room closet for a wedding present (sorry EB but I didn't find the present), I found this cool fishing game that I bought 2nd hand about a year ago. O was THRILLED when she saw it, and she did her little excited expression/sound that we love so much. She had fun catching the fish, and then I put them back for her. She got a little frustrated at times because the fish fell off, and I had to remind her to move slowly so she wouldn't lose the fish.

Feeding the Frog

Here's my thrift store frog! O fed him a basketful of bugs (from the dollar section at Target). She loved this work and repeated it 3 times immediately. When she a little older, I'll let her feed the frog using tongs or tweezers. I think this may be a daily work!

Unplug Your Kids: Green

The unplugged theme this week is green, and we decided to share a few of our weekly "green activities.
O loves to drink from her green Kleen Kanteen just like mommy!

Helping sort the recycling.
Helping mommy put the plastics in the correct container
Helping mommy and daddy crush cardboard boxes
Helping daddy put the boxes in the correct container

We cheated a little since we didn't really do anything that we don't normally do. However, O doesn't usually go to drop off the recycling. We had to go to town on Thursday and in order to minimize wasteful spending of gas, we packed everything into one trip... dropped off the recycling and trash, dropped off the tiller at Kenny's house, went out to eat, and went grocery shopping. It was a long night, but we wanted to get our money's worth since it cost $7 to go to town and back (yes, I'm a dork, and I like calculating things like that).

Thrifty Thursday

Donated: 15 magazines, 20 greeting/Christmas cards, 1 record, 5 cassette tapes, 1 teddy bear, 1 small Barbie, 1 small photo album, etc.

Purchased: 2 small glasses for O, a basket for Montessori work, a wide mouthed ceramic frog (I've got a few Montessori inspired ideas for this frog!), a small doll for O (I'm feeling some buyer's remorse for buying the doll since O REALLY does not need another doll, but it was cute and only cost 1 dollar) Total spent- $3.69

Open/Shut

I presented O with a basket of items to open and shut. She was very interested, and she liked the ring box the best. She said "ope, shut" the whole time she was doing this work. For some strange reason, she does not like to clean up after this work (she usually puts things back with no problem and actually enjoys putting things in their places). She'd rather leave the items scattered on her rug while she goes off to play with something else. Obviously, that's not acceptable. Hopefully, she'll do better with this tomorrow.

Unplug Your Kids: Birds

The unplugged project this week is birds. We do lots of bird watching around here, so this was the perfect theme for us.
O is counting with her bird wall cards.

On Friday we took the pedal boat over to check on Mother Goose and her eggs. We were hoping that she would stand up, so that we could see her eggs, but she didn't. You can see the goose in the top left hand corner of the picture. O is pointing at her.

It was a breezy, cool morning, but it was sunny and beautiful. Elliott found several bird calls (and deer calls) in the garage, so we sat on a blanket and tried to call birds to us. They didn't fall for it! We could see geese in the distance, and a mother duck and her 6 ducklings swam by, but they wouldn't come close. Although the mother duck did pause when I blew on one of the calls. I don't know which call is which, so she probably thought I was a deer :)

O crushed stale bread to spread around for the songbirds.
O kept calling "geese, geese, bread, bread," while throwing bread to them, but they weren't interested.

Pink

O and I are making a color book similar to the ones in this post, and today the color was pink. I'm going to try to take a few pictures a week, so hopefully we'll finish the book relatively soon. The cat in the photos showed up at our house almost 2 weeks ago, and she has decided that we are her family. She is the friendliest cat I have EVER seen. O had fun trying to get the cat to blow bubbles!

Our 1st Weekly Pizza Night

I really don't like to cook, and the thing I dislike most about it is figuring out what to cook (my mom always said this when I was a kid, and I thought it was just silly. Now I understand). I decided that a weekly pizza night would be a fun way to get O involved in cooking while providing me with a great idea for a healthy supper. Thanks for the idea, Mom and Kiddo from the blog, What do we do all day?
We used our bread machine to make the pizza dough yesterday. I've been feeling guilty about not using my bread machine lately, so I was thrilled to use it again. We used whole wheat flour along with all purpose flour to make the pizza a little healthier than usual. O loved pouring in the ingredients and mixing.

I struggled to roll out the dough for a LONG time. O was very patient, but she did leave for a little while to go cut her wooden food. I coaxed her back with the promise that she could paint the dough with olive oil. Obviously, I did something wrong (I really had no idea what I was doing)! The dough was crumbly and almost impossible to roll.
O stuffed more cheese into her mouth than made it onto the pizza.
She also stuffed lots of veggies in her mouth. I didn't mind :)
Here it is! We put onions, bell pepper, mushrooms, brocolli, and organic cheese on it. It looks a little crazy, but it tasted great. I think we'll make another pizza tomorrow because I have more of all of the ingredients that I need to use before they go bad.

O's 1st Painting on Canvas

O painted on a canvas for the 1st time today. Yay! I was much more excited than she was :) She started by making continuous circles while saying "o, o, o." Then she made some dots and put her hand in the paint and attempted to paint around it.

Crushing Cheerios

O used the mortar and pestle to crush Cheerios. Today was the 1st time, we've used it and she did a good job. She needed some help to crush the Cheerios, but she enjoyed trying to crush them:) I then poured them into her organic applesauce (the mortar and pestle is made of stone, and its too heavy for O to lift). She enjoyed mixing the Cheerios into her applesauce. She loves to mix and says "mix" all the time :)