Postcard Book

The idea for making this postcard book has been bouncing around in my brain for months, so I'm so glad to finally have it made! I added a piece of cardstock to the left side of each of O's postcards and laminated them. Then I cut the cards out of the lamination, punched the holes, added the rings, and now she has a book of postcards! Yay! Most of the postcards are from her grandparents from their various vacations. I've also started getting postcards whenever we travel, and I write a few lines about what we did and what O liked about each place. It's an easy way to create a vacation memory book, and hopefully I can get Elliott to participate, too. Since I used ring binders, it will be very easy to add new postcards to the book.



O likes looking at her postcard book, and her favorite page is the postcard from Disneyland :) I'm not sure why she surrounded herself with the bowling game bottles when she sat down to read. Silly girl :)

Helping with the Laundry

One of O's favorite things to do is to "elp mama" load the washing machine. I sort the clothes from the hamper and put them in a pile in the hallway (outside the linen closet where the hamper is kept), and she takes them piece by piece to the washing machine. This keeps her busy for a LONG time (long enough for me to fold and put away a load of clothes), and she is very proud of herself. She kept sniffing the clothes while saying "dada's shirt dirty." Occasionally, she'd say "stinks" although none of the clothes actually stank :) O chose all of her clothes today, and she was very proud of herself. She was especially happy about her "tap-tap" shoes and socks!

Baking Bread and Making Butter

O and I made honey oatmeal whole wheat bread in our bread machine this morning. She loves helping to pour the ingredients into the machine. She also helped cut the butter. She tasted the honey again, and she really liked it this time. She kept sneaking bits of it while we worked.

After she woke up from her nap, O and I made butter! We had leftover cream from making ice-cream, so we decided to give it a try. To make butter you need a jar, a marble, and whole cream.
O put the marble in the jar and held the jar while I poured in the cream. I closed the lid tightly, and we took turns shaking it. O shook it 2 or 3 times then tried to open the jar. She REALLY wanted to see the marble, and she got upset when I wouldn't let her open the jar. She got over it when I turned on the music and started dancing while shaking the jar. She helped some, but I did the VAST majority of the shaking :) After about 10 minutes, I couldn't hear the marble anymore. I poured off the liquid, and we had butter!
Here's a piece of the bread with the butter. The marble is still in the butter :) The bread looks a little deformed, but it tasted good. The butter was delicious! O wanted to just lick it off her fingers, but I convinced her to have a little bread with it. We used the whole jar, so we had to make another jar to share with dada!

Grinding Cheerios and Walnuts

I bought this grinder a few weeks ago because I thought it would be the perfect way for O to grind her cheerios and walnuts to put on her applesauce. She loved it! She had a little trouble holding it still, so I had to help her by holding it down a little. She was very proud, and she liked pouring the cheerio and walnut mixture onto her applesauce for her afternoon snack.

Our Daily Schedule

Since a couple of people have asked about our daily schedule, I decided to write a post about in case anyone else is interested :) We are currently in a state of transition with our schedule, and it is changing daily. O and I used to sleep until around 9 am, and she went to sleep around 9:30, but we are waking up earlier (7:30), and she's going to sleep earlier (8:30) starting yesterday. Elliott's is on a new schedule at work, so we are all trying to go to bed earlier :)



So...we start our day with getting dressed, brushing teeth, doing a little light cleaning downstairs (the bedrooms and laundry room are downstairs, and the den and kitchen which is really just one big room are upstairs). Then we go upstairs for breakfast. Its amazing how long this all takes. This morning we finally finished breakfast around 9am. O plays with her toys while I fix breakfast. She primarily has wooden (puzzles and cutting food) and open ended toys (ex. bilibo, felt board, and rainbow stacker) and montessori type materials, but she does have a couple of plastic toys (Mr. Potato Head and dollhouses that a friend just gave her). I put her toys in a toy rotation because we realized early on that she plays better when she doesn't have "too much stuff" (whenever there's is clutter O always says "too much stuff. clean up!") The problem with the toy rotation is that once the toys are gone, I forget about them, and they often don't come out of the closet for months and months :)



After breakfast we either go play on the beach, read books, or play with her toys. Occasionally, we'll do a few montessori activities. It really just depends on what she wants to do. I was surprised that she hasn't wanted to go on the beach lately, but tomorrow I'm going to insist that we go out. I know she'll love it once we get out there. I like to take morning walks with her, but its usually too hot at this time of year. We eat lunch around 11:30 or 12:00, and then she naps for about an hour and a half to 2 hours. This is when I blog and clean the house. When she wakes up, we usually read books for about 45 minutes to an hour. Reading books is her absolute favorite thing to do, and I love to read to her. Then we do a little housework (washing and folding clothes, etc).


After that we go back upstairs and have fun! Today she kept asking for "more activteees" and "more games!" She likes to toddler activity bags a lot, and I'm planning on making more soon. I am a little concerned that she's getting too dependent on me for entertainment, so I'm trying to make sure she has plenty of independent play time each day (and the Montessori work helps with this a lot, since most of it is independent work). She loves playing in her rice pit out on the screened porch, but its usually too hot to go out there in the afternoon. She really hasn't shown much interest in her Montessori work lately, and I think that is because its out on the shelf all of the time. I need to have a place where I can limit her access to it, so it will be more appealing to her. Elliott and I are planning on building a shelf (hopefully this weekend) that will be the Montessori shelf. It will have casters so I can turn it around during "school time," and then turn it to the wall when we are just hanging out and playing. I think our Montessori time will go MUCH better after we have this in place. I'll post pictures once I have it all set up. I'm VERY excited about this, and I can't wait to be more organized.



Back to the schedule...O has her afternoon snack around 4 or 5, and then we try to go outside and work in the garden and check the mail. If its not too hot, we'll play for a while. Yesterday, she had a great time chasing me and riding her tricycle around the yard. Once we have a fence, we'll spend a lot more time in the yard (it makes me nervous for her to be so close to the lake, and I can't take my eyes off of her for even a second).



We eat supper around 7ish, and then she plays or reads books with dada for a while. Then its time for a bath (or a quick shower with mommy) and bed.

I have a list of activities (baking, arts and crafts, etc) that I want to eventually do with O, and I loosely plan to do 1 or 2 things each day. I LOVE reading toddler/preschool activity books and searching for ideas on different blogs. Google reader makes it so easy to read blogs quickly and star the items that I want to go back to, so it has helped me get much more organized. Thanks for the comments, and let me know if anyone has any questions. I've got to go steam the kitchen floor now :)

1-to-1 Correspondence

I'm not sure what to call this, so I'll just call it 1-to-1 correspondence since that is the concept we're working on. O enjoyed putting the babies in each bowl. She said she was putting them night-night. She loves babies and everything tiny, so this was the perfect activity for her. The babies are cake decorations and the bowl is a paint palette (I think). Lately, she's been asking to wear a bathing suit after her nap :)

Peanut Butter Playdough

O and I made peanut butter playdough this afternoon. It was fun and very messy! There are lots of recipes on the internet, so I finally chose one and modified it a bit.

I used 1 cup of peanut butter (at the last minute I decided not to waste my yummy, organic peanut butter and used the cheap stuff that we used for the pine cone bird feeders a few months ago), 1 cup of dry milk, and a tablespoon of honey. Next time I will add more honey because our playdough was quite crumbly, and honey should help it to stick better.
O helped mix the peanut butter and honey. She tasted the honey and wasn't terribly impressed. We talked about the concepts of sweet and sour. She said the honey was sour, so we'll have to work on those concepts more :)
We mixed in the dry milk 1/4 of a cup at a time
She's having fun with the playdough! We had a bowl of cheerios and a bowl of raisins to use for decoration. She ate the raisins like they were candy (not that she ever eats candy!). I think I'll have to give her raisins more often! We also had a bowl of playdough accessories. I made a bear and a snake, and O just had fun mashing it all around and sneaking bites while saying "O tastes." I put the pb playdough in the refrigerator to use again soon, and we'll definitely add more honey before we play with it again.

More Color Mixing

Thanks to Jo at A Bit of This and That for this super fun activity!!! O loved it! I set out 5 glasses and put a few drops of food coloring in each one. I had O guess which color each would hold before she poured in the water. She did a great job pouring, but I did have to remind her to pour slowly and carefully and to support the measuring cup with her left hand. She did a good job guessing what the colors would be, except that she guessed that the blue would be white :)
She used her drum stick to make music briefly.
Then she was ready to mix! I couldn't find the dropper, so we tried a turkey baster which did not work well. Its a concept that she has not mastered yet. I quickly got out a bowl and let her pour the colored water into it. She LOVED doing this, and it made an icky greenish, brown color! Thanks again, Jo, for this wonderful activity!!!

Thanks for all the Nice Comments!

Thanks for all the nice comments lately. I really appreciate hearing from you and knowing that people actually read this blog :) I try to respond to most comments and all questions, and I usually just answer the questions in the comments section of my own blog. I don't know if people actually come back to see if their questions have been answered, but its a quick and efficient way to responds to that's what I do :) I really try to not use the computer when O is awake, so my computer time is limited and do everything as quickly as I can. So thanks again!

Making Homemade Birthday Invitations

I decided that it would be fun to make our own invitations for O's upcoming 2nd birthday party, and I involved O in the process as much as possible.
I bought a pack of cardstock, and O painted about 10 sheets (over several days) with her dot painters. She kept asking to "paint more intations." I added a few dots on several sheets because she said she was "done!" after putting only a few dots on a sheet :)
Then I cut each sheet in half and folded them. Notice her feet in the top right hand corner. She was VERY excited to see her feet in this picture!

Then I typed out the invite and printed it, glued it to blue construction paper (her favorite color), and glued the construction paper to the card. The next step is stapling the cards closed and addressing them. That's the hard part because we don't have a stapler, and I only have about half of the addresses that I need. We've had lots of fun with this project, and it was great to have O so involved in planning for her own birthday party!

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!