More Gardening Fun

O is learning a lot about gardening from Guh-guh and Grandpa! I'm hoping she'll plant our garden this summer since she has so much experience!

Yummy lettuce! We're planning on using earthboxes and having just a container garden this year. I guess we need to get started soon :)

Sound or No Sound

The idea for this activity came from The Wonder Years. It's a simple and fun activity which was easy to put together. I took 10 bells and removed the balls from the centers of 5 of them. Then I put them in a bowl together. O picks up one bell at a time, shakes it, and determines if it should go on the sound side or no sound side.

 







 

Black & White Art Activities

I bought Young at Art by Susan Striker months and months ago, and we've done a few of the activities in it. I'm trying to get into more of a routine of doing art activities now, and I'm using this book as a guide. Here is O's white sticker collage on black paper. I offered her small white dots, small white rectangles, and these big rectangles. When I first showed her the materials, she was not interested AT ALL. She was much too busy flying around the room in her new fairy costum and playing with her punch balls. I didn't push it, and she was eventually ready to try the activity the next day. I was surprised by how focused and intent she was once she got started. She was into minimalism on this day :)


 
Yesterday we tried a couple more white/black art activities. I offered her white chalk and black paper and a black crayon with white paper. She was only inerested in this activity for about 2 minutes. She tried the chalk on the white paper and was curious about why she couldn't see it.



Today O painted with water on her Buddha Board to go along with our black/white theme. Again, she was only minimally interested in this activity. I'm glad to be done with black and white. I hope she'll be more interested in next week's art activities!

Water Transfer & Color Mixing

I planned on doing a green water transfer for St. Patrick's Day, but then Shannon suggested mixing colors as well, and I realized what a great idea that was! Thanks, Shannon! I love that I am a mommy during this time of great blogs and email :) All of the ideas and support on my online mommy friends makes our lives so much easier and more fun!

First, O squeezed a few drops of food coloring into 3 different glasses. Then she poured water into the glasses. It was fun to watch the water change color as she poured it in, and she said "Ohhh. Beautiful!"

 
Then I showed her how to use the dropper to transfer a little bit of water to each bowl. I was surprised by how well she did with this because we have not done water transferring in a few months.

 
She then added blue water to the yellow water to make green! She was VERY impressed!

 
She kept adding colors until the water turned brown. Then we tried red and blue to make purple.

 
After she was finished experimenting with color mixing, we went outside and picked flowers to try our science experiment again. We put a white flower in each color, and we're hoping they'll change colors :)


     

Another Block House

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing
O and Guh-guh love building block houses on Thursdays! They used most of her sets of blocks to make this huge house, including her Unit Blocks, Twig blocks, and Rainbow Blocks.(I'm planning to review the rainbow blocks soon. DON'T buy these blocks until you read my review if you want to make an informed decision!) This fancy house has a library, a bed, and a telephone. O was VERY proud, and we left the house (in the middle of our den!) for several days before putting the blocks back in their containers.

Beleduc Girl Body Puzzle

O's grandparents gave her this puzzle for Christmas, and she loves it. The puzzle is wooden and very sturdy, and she has learned so much from it. In fact, I need to find some of my old biology and anatomy books, so I can expand on her learning by teaching her the names of the bones and muscles.

Rainbow Glockenspiel

I was recently tagged by Jo for a product review meme. Since I already had this post saved in draft, I thought it would be perfect :) I'm REALLY bad about participating in this kind of thing, but this one worked perfectly for me.

This is what you need to do. Write a review of any kids product, it can be a toy, a book or anything which you have personally used. Pass this meme to five other blogger friends





Guh-guh and Grandpa gave O this beautiful rainbow glockenspiel from Nova Natural Toys for Christmas. It's beautifully made of wood and metal, and I think it will last for years and years. O loves to make music with it, and she and Guh-guh have fun playing "name that tune." Guh-guh plays a song, and O guesses what it is. What fun!

Family Movie Night

For family movie night this week, I borrowed a dvd from the library that teaches dancing. O loves Baby Ballet and Tot Tap, and she danced on her yoga mat while watching. We've watched the dvd several times, and O is always enthralled. I can't wait to sign her up for dancing lessons in the fall.
She had to make an outfit change halfway through the dvd.


 

Styrofoam Sculpture

The idea to do a styrofoam sculpture came from Young at Art by Susan Striker. I was so glad that we finally received biodegradable styrofoam with a recently shipped purchase. We glued a few pieces of styrofoam to the cardboard, and then we just wet the styrofoam so it would stick to the other pieces to form the sculpture. This was a fun family art activity that we all enjoyed working on together.