Arranging Flowers

O and M LOVE to pick and arrange flowers at Guh-guh and Grandpa's house! This will keep them occupied for hours :)

Bird Puppet Kit

A friend gave O 2 Martha Stewart Puppet Kits for Christmas, and we put the bird puppet together today. This was a fun and very quick activity, and O really enjoyed herself. I bought several of these kits (holiday themed) after Halloween and Christmas (for 1 dollar each), so I'm glad she enjoyed herself so much! It was nice to do a project that required no preparation on my part :)



 

I'm glad I waited a little while to do this project. O is really into puppets right now, so this was the perfect time. I love how she talks to the puppets like they are real. So cute!

I've added a search widget!

Just in case you haven't noticed (or, like me, don't usually click over to blogs from google reader), I've added a search engine for my blog! Readers are often asking me where specific posts are on the blog, and this will make it easy to find whatever you need :)

Marbilizing Paper

This fun and easy art activity comes from A Bit of This and That. Thanks for the great idea, Jo!
For this activity we mixed about a tsp of cooking oil with several drops of food coloring.



We stirred it with a fork. It settled quickly, so we had to keep stirring as we made our art.



Then we dropped the mixture onto a cookie sheet using the dropper. We also flung the mixture onto the cookie sheet with forks.



O placed a sheet of paper on the drops of color, and we watched as the color appeared on the back of the paper as it was absorbed.



Ta-ta! (as O says anytime she has something to show you!) Here are our masterpieces!

Loving the Rice Pit

 
O was THRILLED to play in her rice pit today! She hasn't played in it in a while since we've had rainy weather lately. She took all of the tools from her lentil tray to the rice pit and played independently for a long time. If you have a screened porch, I highly recommend having a rice pit for hours and hours of fun! Just make sure to keep it covered when it rains because you do NOT want your rice to get wet...it turns into a mess of mildew and yuckiness!

Rainbow Blocks

O's grandparents gave her this set of Rainbow Blocks for Christmas, and we were very excited about all of the creative building opportunities they would provide. The set consist of 24 blocks- 8 sand blocks, 8 bead blocks, and 8 rainbow blocks.

When I opened the box, I immediately noticed that 2 of the rainbow blocks were cracked in the middle. Soon after this discovery, O was playing with the blocks when one of them dropped...it broke. I was VERY surprised since it didn't drop far. A couple of days later, another block broke (the wooden frame broke off of the plastic middle. I think it can easily be fixed with a little wood glue.) We told O not to include these blocks when she builds her tall towers as they will surely break when she knocks the towers over.

I emailed the company about the flaws in the blocks requesting a full refund or replacement blocks. I was surprised when they emailed me back within 2 hours promising a full refund. In the email the customer service representative stated that my blocks must have come from a faulty batch, and the blocks were usually more durable and without flaws. They sent the refund immediately after I emailed my address.

We've had a great time playing with these blocks, and they work well with O's traditional set of unit blocks. However, I doubt I would buy them again knowing what I know about their quality and durability. I guess I shouldn't complain since they sent us a full refund. They definitely have great customer service!

Miniature Clothes & Clothes Line

After seeing the miniature clothes lines and clothes here and here, I knew I HAD to make one for O! O was very excited about this activity. The mini clothes pins were a little heavy, so the clothes flipped when we clipped them to the line. O thought it was hilarious!






   

She LOVES Tape!

O is VERY interested in tape lately. She loves to pull out long strips of tape, cut them with her scissors, and then arrange them on her paper. I thought about buying tape in different colors, but she's so absorbed by the clear tape that I decided not to rock the boat :)

Spanish Language Programs???

I'm looking for recommendations for programs to teach Spanish to O (2 and a half years old). Elliott and I took several semesters of Spanish in college, but we remember very little of what we learned. O can count very well in Spanish, and she knows a few words. We read bilingual books, books in Spanish, and listen to bilingual music and Spanish music. I think that I need a curriculum or a dvd series to help us because I don't know how to progress from here. I've looked into ordering Muzzy, but it's very expensive, so I am hesitating to place the order (maybe I should put it on her birthday wish list for her grandparents and see what happens :). If anyone has any experience with Muzzy or other Spanish language programs, I'd LOVE to hear about it :) Thanks!

Melissa and Doug Playdough Tools

O LOVES to play with playdough, and until she received this Melissa and Doug playdough tools set, all of her playdough tools were plastic. Since we prefer to have wooden toys for O, I was very excited to find this set of wooden playdough tools. All of the pieces are well made and seem very sturdy. She loves the different rollers (there are 3), and I love the different texture stamps. We are using the chocolate playdough, and it smelled divine! I could have played with it all day! In fact, maybe I should start carrying a little bit of this playdough around with me to help me combat my nausea that is brought on by cooking odors (and the smell of my office. Yuck!).

Squeeze & Match

 
 






This is one of O's all time favorite activities! Probably because she had to wait so long to do it...I started putting this activity together in early January before I started getting so sick. It then sat on my kitchen counter waiting for me to finish it for 2 months. O asked about it frequently during those two months :) To make this activity, I filled 4 pairs of balloons (one red and one blue for each pair) with the same substance (rice, lentils, popcorn kernals, corn starch). To do the activity, O squeezes a red balloon and then squeezes the blue balloons one at a time until she finds a match. She doesn't look at the balloons while she squeezes. After she makes her matches, she checks them by looking at the balloons (you can tell if they match by looking at the textures of the balloons).

Easter Themed Activities

I LOVE Easter, and I was very excited to incorporate a couple of Easter themed activities into our daily work.
For this activity, O picks up an egg with the tongs and transfers it to the egg carton. Sadly, she doesn't really enjoy this activity. I'm hoping she'll grow to like it :)
















Since O has not been interested in the sound cylinders in months, I thought I'd spice things up a little by making sound eggs :) To do this activity, she picked up a blue egg, shook it, and then picked up a purple egg and shook it. She continued to pick up purple eggs until she found a match for the blue egg. She LOVED this activity, and she did a great job the 1st time she did it. She immediately wanted to do it again and proceeded to miss all but one. Lately, she thinks it's funny to get things wrong on purpose. She says she's "just teasing." I'm not sure what to do about this...