We're Going on a Color Hunt!

O and I went on a color hunt today! We had lots of fun! I bought these bags at Hobby Lobby (40% off!) and filled them with objects of the same color. O and I took turns hiding the objects. She covered her eyes while I hid the objects, and then she carried the bag around while she found the objects (we only did one color at a time). She was so excited when she found each object :) Then it was her turn to hide the objects. She put them all in the same place, and then immediately squealed in excitement and showed me where they were when I uncovered my eyes!
Finding her 1st purple item!

Blue

Today was our last color day. O was excited to take the "boo picture" since blue is her favorite color. Now I have to make the book!

Painting the Glass Doors

O and I made paint for the sliding glass door a few days ago, and we finally found time to use it today! The idea and recipe for this activity came from this blog. To make the paint you need dishwashing soap, cornstarch, and food coloring. I poured about a tablespoon (maybe 2, I didn't measure it) of soap into each dish. Then O put a tablespoon of cornstarch in each bowl and mixed it around. She then added a few drops of food coloring to each bowl.

Mixing was fun!
Time to paint!

Here's our masterpiece! I painted the shapes at the top, and O made some abstract art on the bottom :) Then we had fun washing it off with a water hose. I think her finger paint would have worked just as well, but part of the fun was making the paint :)

Digging for Treasures in the Ice

I've been seeing this activity on blogs for weeks, so we finally decided to try it! I put several small toys, rocks, and shells in a bowl of water and froze it. Then Elliott and O had a great time trying to get the toys out of the ice. They used a spray bottle, salt, a fork, etc. O was very determined to get the ladybug and butterflies out of the ice, and they had lots of fun!

Muffin Tin Monday

We were excited to participate in Muffin Tin Monday again! Today O had fresh pineapple, cottage cheese, yellow squash, grape tomatoes, diced avocado, and pasta salad. Please excuse the muffin tin. It looks dirty, but I promise that its clean!

Making Homemade Ice-Cream

I bought Elliott an ice-cream ball for his birthday last year, which has been unopened in the cabinet until yesterday. Shannon at Teaching Tiny Tots post about making ice cream in a bag reminded me of it, and we thought it would be a fun July 4th activity.
Helping daddy pour the ice and rock salt into the ball.
Pouring the mixture of cream, sugar, and vanilla into the ice cream chamber
Rolling the ball around. O had lots of fun for the 1st 5 minutes, then she was ready to EAT! Unfortunately, we had to shake it for 10 minutes, check it, and shake it for 10 more minutes.
Can you tell that she LOVED the ice cream? It was delicious!!! We added fresh peaches, and it was the best ice cream we've ever had!

Transferring Plastic Ice Cubes

Yesterday O wanted to "cook with ice," but when I opened the freezer to get the ice, I saw that we didn't have any :( Luckily, I remembered an activity that I saw on Montessori Mama's blog a few months ago, and I had all of the materials I needed to give it a try. For this activity, you need 2 bowls, water, plastic ice cubes, and a strainer or slotted spoon. I put all of the plastic ice cubes (we usually use them for a color sorting activity) in the bowl of water, and showed O how to scoop them using the mesh strainer and then drop them into the empty bowl. She LOVED this and was very focused. I gave her a slotted spoon, a mesh strainer, and another type of spoon, and she liked the mesh strainer the best. This was a great activity for a hot afternoon!

Shaking Lentils

The idea for this work came from this blog. For this activity you need an empty parmesan cheese shaker, a bag of lentils, a bowl, and a funnel. Pour the lentils (as much as you like) into the shaker, then present the work to your child. I showed O how to carefully and slowly shake the lentils into the bowl. She didn't quite get the "carefully and slowly" part of it! I learned on a lesson on the importance of being prepared...I forgot to take the funnel with me when I introduced the lesson, and while I went to get it, she had a great time shaking lentils everywhere!

Win a Bum Genius Starter Kit

I saw this and thought some of you might be interested. I don't have a baby in diapers (except at night), but we loved our bum genius and plan to use them with any future children!http://blog.thenatureschild.com/2008/06/beat-heat-summer-contest.html

Color Fishing

O and I went fishing today...color fishing! Thanks to Shannon at Teaching Tiny Tots for this great idea! To make this activity you need craft foam sheets, paper clips, a pen, a wooden dowel, yarn, and sticky magnets. This activity was especially easy and quick for me to make because I was able to use the fishing pole that came with a Melissa and Doug puzzle instead of making one. I cut about 10 fish out of craft foam and drew faces on them with a sharpie. I only had 4 paper clips, so I slid the paper clips onto the fish. I planned to use blue craft foam for the water, but then I decided to use blue felt. While I was looking for the felt, I saw O's blue playsilk and realized that it would be perfect for the water! We had a lot of fun with this activity, and there are so many ways to expand on it. I plan on eventually writing letters and numbers on the fish. I think it would be fun to have O catch her name. With the number fish, we could put the numbers in order and eventually add them together. Since the fish are made out of foam, you could even put them in a bowl of water (or the bathtub) to make the game more challenging! The possiblities are endless!

O was very excited that she caught 2 fish at once. She said she caught "both!"

Unplug Your Kids: Garden

I wasn't planning on doing the unplugged challenge this week since we've just returned from vacation (Tuesday night), and I'm still trying to get back into our routine. Then I saw that the theme is garden, and that's just so easy that I couldn't pass it up. We just did our normal thing, so I guess that's really cheating :)
Checking the garden this morning. Can you believe our squash plant? That's just 1 plant!
We picked 4 squash and one cucumber this morning. There are about 6 more squash that will be ready this afternoon or in the morning, and I forgot to check the bell pepper and banana pepper plants. We'll have to go work in the garden and check on the container garden on the deck when O wakes up from her nap.

Mixing Colors and a Making a Bowling Game

To make this bowling game you need 6 water bottles filled with water and food coloring. O squeezed the coloring into the bottles, and we watch the color spread through the water. Then she shook the bottles. I showed her how to mix red and blue to make purple and red and yellow to make orange. She was a little squeeze happy with the blue, so our purple bottle is very dark. After we were satisfied with the colors of our water in each bottle, I tightly screwed each lid on (I'll glue them on later).
Then it was time to bowl! O likes to get right next to the bottles, and she drops the ball right on them.
We labeled the colors of the bottles that she knocked over. This is also a good counting activity since we counted the bottles that fell.
We were impressed with how pretty our paper towel (that we used to clean up our mess) was, so we hung it on the sliding glass door.

Panning for Gems

We took panning for gems this afternoon, and she had a great time. She chose a blue shovel ("boo" is her favorite color), and she shoveled the sand and gems into the screens. Then she (with the help of daddy and grandaddy) shook the pan to loosen and wash away the dirt. She was excited to see the beautiful gems left on the screen. Her prettiest find is an amethyst geode.

Hiking in the Mountains

We hiked to a waterfall this morning, and it wasn't a very long hike, but it felt long since I had a 26 pound toddler in my sling! My sister borrowed my Beco for her California trip, since I was sure I wouldn't need it in the sweltering heat of the Bahamas :) Thank goodness, I had the sling! O loved touching the rock walls. We talked about whether they were rough or smooth and hard or soft. She was excited about seeing her first waterfall, but her favorite part of the day was exploring a cave. I recited several lines from one of our favorite books, We're Going on a Bear Hunt, while we searched the cave for bears. What fun!

Having Fun on the Road

Since our Bahamas vacation didn't work out, we decided to try again with a long weekend in the mountains with Elliott's parents. We were on the road for about 6 hours, and we stayed busy!
I was SO glad that I brought O's sewing block, so she could sew "ike mama." I'm making her a needlepoint "paper doll" that I bought for $1.50 on the clearance rack at WM. I'll post about it if I ever finish it :)
O loved playing with playdoh. She and dada made playdoh spaghetti.
O had the most fun playing the copycat game with dada. He spontaneously started copying everything she did, and she LOVED it. This went on for quite a while, and she kept asking for "more, more" whenever he stopped copying her.