Hammered Leaf Prints

O LOVED making hammered leaf prints this morning! (She loves anything involving a hammer. I guess all those hours spent with with Elliott fixing boats and cars have paid off!) To set this activity up, I found an old board in the garage (there's a never ending supply out there!), 2 tacks, and strips of an old sheet. I cut the sheet into small rectangles and tacked them to the board. O and I collected leaves and flowers this morning after our morning swim. To make the print, place the leaf or flower under the cloth strip (the leaves worked better when they were upside down), cover the leaf with the fabric, and hammer the leaf! It smells like freshly cut grass as you hammer :) We took turns hammering, and we were happy with the results!

Growing a Sunflower House

O's sunflowers are growing fast, too! We planted them in a square to make a sunflower house. We hope that we'll have flowers soon. O was excited that the sunflowers are already taller than she is! The Sweet Pea teepee and Sunflower House are right next to each other, and we decided to do both so O and her cousin, M, will each have a house and be neighbors :) Now we just have to get M to come visit!

O's Sweet Pea TeePee

O's sweet pea tee pee is growing and growing! She was thrilled to find tiny flowers inside her tee pee. To make the tee pee we bought bamboo poles (5) from Lowe's, stuck them in the dirt in a tee pee shape, and tied them at the top with a rope. We then planted several sweet pea plants around each bamboo pole. I am amazed by how quickly the sweet peas have grown!

A New Spin on Matching

Since matching pictures has gotten a little too easy for O, I decided to spice it up a little! I found a small butterfly calendar at Michael's and cut the pictures out and laminated them. I then cut the tiny pictures that were on the back of the calendar and laminated them. O had to look VERY carefully at the tiny pictures to find the matches. (Next time we may incorporate the use of a magnifying glass into this work.) This was a lot of fun, and she was very curious about how I cut out the tiny pictures. She's a little obsessed with cutting :)

Father's Day Interview

After O and I did the Mother's Day Interview, Elliott wanted me to do an interview with her about him. I told him he had to wait until Father's Day :) So here it is:


I really love it when my dada loves to write with me.

My dada likes to sing with me.

My dada always tells me, "to set my tinies out"

The best thing he does is write.

It makes him happy when he hugs me.

My dada loves me.

I like it when he plays cartoons with me.

The best thing he does is play with me.

When my dada loves to fish with me and he loves, loves me.

My dada’s favorite household chore is play car.

My dada’s favorite TV show is Obama.

If he could go on a trip, he would go to St.M.

I love my dada because he hugs me!

World Map Rug

O and I are both SO excited about our new world map rug! She was so excited that she was running around the house screaming. This is very uncharacteristic behavior, and I asked her why she was screaming. She said "Because I'm SO EXCITED about my rug!" Who knew that a rug would be so exciting for an almost 3 year old? :)

The rug just arrived today (Thursday), and we've already had so much fun with it. I found all of my old Beanie Babies (O was very excited about this, too!), and we put them on the correct continents. We also stepped from one continent to the next while singing the continent song. She loves marching around in circles on the rug while singing the continent song :) What a great buy!

Art for her Sister

O was very excited when I asked her to do a painting on canvas to hang in her sister's room. Here's her masterpiece! I'm planning on having O and M (my niece) do several paintings to hang in the baby's room. They both seem very honored by my request :)

Resist Painting Silhouette

After seeing this great idea, I knew we had to try it! Since I'd already made a silhouette of O for Elliott for Father's Day, I just traced around that silhouette on contact paper and cut it out. I then pressed the contact paper silhouette onto an 8 x 10 canvas, and O painted. Instead of watercolors, O painted with tempera paint. She really enjoyed herself, and I was surprised by how into it she was. She was kneeling down to get eye level with the canvas as she painted :)
I am so happy with the end result, and I think painting will make a great birthday present for O's Guh-guh! I am also looking forward to trying this same technique with handprints, which would make great Christmas gifts for grandparents!

O asked to do more sticky paper paintings, so I cut out another silhouette on Thurday. This time we used both pieces of the contact paper, and we are so happy with the results!

Here are the paintings before I pulled off the contact paper.

Here they are after removing the contact paper.
Elliott really likes this one...good thing since it's going to be his birthday present!



O wants to hang this one in her sister's room :)

I am also really excited about turning these paintings into scrabble tile pendants!

More Rock Activities

Here are the last of our rock activities.

We broke open geodes with a hammer and marveled at the beauty inside.
O was actually a little disappointed after she opened the geodes. She thought they were going to have jewelry inside that she could put in her jewelry box :)
Since our book discussed pyramids, we decided to make a pyramid out of family reunion cups (we reuse these cups every year at our family reunion).
O also wanted to make a Sphinx, but I couldn't come up with a way to do that. Maybe we'll try to make a sand castle Sphinx on the beach tomorrow. In addition to these activities, O sorted her rock collection into an egg carton, we learned the sign for "rock," and we learned the Spanish word for "rock."

Making Hot Crayon Rocks

Since our weekly book is about rocks, I decided that making hot crayon rocks would be a good art project (after seeing them on The Artful Parent). O was SUPER excited and waited in her Kitchen Helper the entire time the rocks were in the oven.
We got off to a good start, but I eventually took O's gloves off (I had her wear gloves so she wouldn't burn herself) since it was hard for her to color with them on. Mistake! She accidentally touched a rock and burned her finger. I think it scared her more than anything since it didn't even leave a mark, but I felt awful. She didn't want to participate in the activity after that, but she didn't mind giving me directions on finishing the rest of the rocks :) She was ready to color more rocks after they had cooled off, and she was disappointed when it didn't work.
This is not a project I would recommend for 2 year olds! But we did have fun despite O's injury :)

To make the hot crayon rocks, heat your rocks on a foil lined cookie sheet at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. We then placed them on a cutting board, and colored them with crayons (with the papers peeled off). Oh, and don't let your kids remove their gloves or oven mitts!

Painting with Magnets

Painting with O's magnetic "rocks" was another fun extension of our book of the week, Let's Go Rock Collecting. To do this activity, she dropped a magnetic rock in a cup of paint and then dropped the magnet onto a sheet of cardstock that was on a tray. I held the tray while she moved another magnet underneath the tray to make art. This was a lot of fun, and it was a great way to combine art and science!
We quickly found that it worked better to just squeeze a blob of paint onto the paper and drag the magnet through it. O had fun mixing the colors of paint on her paper. Also, make sure your tray is not magnetic. We tried this activity with a cookie sheet, and it didn't work very well since the cookie sheet was magnetic and therefore held the rock still :)

A Sand Volcano

This week's book is Let's Go Rock Collecting. O LOVES this book, and there are so many fun rock activities to do that I'm sure we won't get to all of them.

Our first story stretcher was making a volcano on our beach. To make the volcano, we filled a plastic bottle with lukewarm water, 2 tablespoons of baking soda, and food coloring. We took the bottle down to the beach, and built the volcano around it. Elliott poured vinegar into the bottle, and we watched the volcano erupt!
We made the volcano erupt several times, and O stirred the mixture around with a stick to make it erupt again after we took a boat ride.
O and I were both excited to have Elliott involved in some of our story stretcher activities!

Stepping Stones for Father's Day

We made stepping stones for O's Daddy, Grandaddies, and Grandpa. This was an easy and fun project. To make the stepping stones, Elliott mixed mortar mix according to the instructions on the bag. He then put the mix into old cake tins that I had sprayed liberally with cooking oil. After smoothing the mix and letting it sit for a couple of minutes, O made either footprints or a handprint in the midddle of the mix. She then decorated around the footprints or handprints with stones, and I wrote the year with a pencil. We let the stepping stones dry for 24 hours before taking them out of the cake tins. They are a little crumbly around the edges, but hopefully they will harden completely within a few days.

O was very proud of her creations, and I am SO happy with how they turned out!

Visual Stimulation Blocks

I made this set of visual stimulation blocks for Little Kicker while I was making the color blocks for Caroline. I followed the same steps, except I didn't think about painting the first blocks, so they don't look at nice. Also, I decided to use 3 different sizes of blocks for added visual interest. I haven't finished these blocks because I plan to put black and white pictures of each of us (including Little Kicker) on them, so I'm waiting until after she's born (obviously!) to do that :) These blocks will be one of her handmade Christmas gifts.
I left the blocks on O's table after I took the pictures, and she was immediately drawn to them :)

Personalized Color Blocks

I think this is my favorite handmade gift yet! The blocks took forever to make, but I really enjoyed it :) Here's how to do it...

1) buy your blocks :) I ordered mine from Casey's Wood Products
2) sand the edges and corners of the blocks
3) paint the edges and corners of the blocks white
4) cut scrapbook paper, pictures, printed letters and numbers, etc. to fit the blocks
5) paint the blocks with a layer of mod podge and place a picture on the mod podge
6) wait a day or so until they are dry and paint a layer of mod podge over the top of the pictures

This was fun and easy, and I hope I can streamline the process so it doesn't take quite so long next time. I have a new appreciation as to why handmade gifts are often so expensive! Here are a few more pics :)