Playing with Trash

What could be better than a swimming pool full of newspaper and colorful baggies?  Well a lot of things, my son thinks ;)

It took a while for him to really get into this... I had thought he would love it because of how much he liked to throw fall leaves but I was mistaken.  Still, we had our good moments, like when he realized that he could see through the bags and wanted to sing the peekaboo song.

I found the idea for this activity here.  Oh, and also only use the plastic bags if you are going to be supervising your child!  I just added them in because we don't get the paper so we had very little of it in the garage, but had tons of plastic bags that my inlaws always seem to give us.

I also made up a sensory box (in this case, I almost think its just another term for "junk...") I tossed tons of stuff in there, mostly game pieces--from Rummikub, Dominoes, Sequence, Mancala, Scrabble, plus shape beads, cotton and pompoms, clothesmpins and a couple shiny plastic ornaments for good measure.

I set it out with tons of containers, spoons, cups, etc. and let my son get to work.  He did a lot of stirring and scooping and in general, had a great time!  I am sure we will get it out again tomorrow.

He is currently into stars since we put up the tree, so we set about to do a star collage.  He has helped make these in the past but this time his helping equated to him continuously getting his hand stuck on the paper.

So I pretty much made the whole thing, but it was worth it later because he keeps picking it up and starting to dance, his signal that he wants me to sing twinkle twinkle little star.  so cute!

One final thing I did, in a fit of randomness, I decided to cut stars out of scrap paper and I taped them up all over the living room.  It took a while, but he eventually noticed them and has been having fun taking them down, looking at them, and then "pat, pat, pats" them back onto the wall (which is what we say when we make the collages).

Brown Bear Activites

So as I mentioned previously, we checked the book Brown, Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? out of the library the other day and my son was instantly enamored with it. He loves to read books, but the amount of times he has wanted to read it each day has surpassed previous records. So in light of that, I decided to find some brown bear activites to do around the house.

By far the easiest (and most entertaining for him) was making characters for the felt board. These are actually printables from 1+1+1=1, intended to be a puzzle, but I just cut them out, reinforced each side with clear packing tape, and taped velcro from a disposable diaper on the back. Instant felt board fun! What I like about these printables is that they actually are the same pictures used in the book, which makes it easier for my son to recognize. We have done several things with them today:

--he has just played with them on his own (calling them by name, making animal sounds, carrying them around the house)
--I went through the whole Brown Bear schpiel with them, reenacting the book
--I asked him "where is the green frog?" (etc.) and had him point at the right animal
--While we were reading the book I would stop at each animal and ask him to find the cutout that matched, again, "where is the blue horse?" and he would get it for me
--I tried to do a color activity with pompoms but he wasn't interested.

He seriously loves these cutouts, I have a feeling that they will get worn out even though I reinforced them!

Another fun activity was that I downloaded these tiny cutouts from Making Learning Fun  that were intended for use in an eye spy bottle (which I made later). First, though, I put the cutouts into our rice bin but I didn't do much hiding because I wasn't sure if he would find them.

Owen had a lot of fun pulling out all the different characters, naming them, making noises, etc. I enjoy having him do this activity while I clean the kitchen because it keeps him occupied and in sight and I don't feel like I am being neglectful even though I am not really participating. An unintentional bonus of this was that he did less throwing of the rice since he was so into the cutouts.

Next I made the eye spy bottle, and I think it is really cute, but I think that if you make it, you should print out two copies of the pictures because it was hard to see the animals when they were facing the wrong way.  I don't know if I am explaining that right, but I plan on printing out another copy so that there is a picture on the front and back of each piece so it will be easier to play with.  Otherwise I thought it was a great activity and a great idea!  I have tried a bunch of times today to find the page on the Making Learning Fun where the list of printables came from but all I have is the link to the eye spy bottle, so here it is for you.  

We also got started on a mini brown bear coloring book that will end up in our tot book at the end of this week

As well as played with these number cards.  Owen doesn't really count with me (although he counts with his daddy, I think) but I often hear him "counting"... Usually it goes "three, four, five, nine.."  and thats about it.  so cute ;)  Both the number cards and the coloring book can also be found on the 1+1+1=1 website here.  If you are wondering, the #9 card is too dirty from lunch to be displayed here ;)

All in all, I think it was a successful day--Owen was so happy to have so much brown bear stuff to play with!  I really enjoyed to have an easy theme to work with...  I liked working it around the book and hope I can come up with other book-themes in the future!

House Fun!

Well I was thinking of playing with color today but that kind of failed miserably so we moved onto bigger and better things! We made another contact paper craft; I cut out shapes of a house, trees, sun and had Owen help put them onto the contact paper. He loves to help "pat, pat, PAT!" (if that makes no sense to you, he helps "pat" the papers down.) I had put double sided tape onto the windows and doors to get them to stick. We had a lot of fun putting the cotton snow down.

I wanted to put this up on the wall next to the house from yesterday, but knew from our experience with the red collage that Owen was going to touch it and get his fingers stuck to the page and get dog hair on it and pull off the shapes and just make a big mess. soooo... I put saran wrap on it. Weird, I know. And probably there was a better solution but that was the one I tried. So here is our saran-wrapped finished product:

Since he enjoyed muffin tin monday so much I decided to make a house-themed lunch, which I thought was pretty cute.

But Owen pretty much made a mess of it and asked for cheese crackers. Isn't that just how it goes??

We also tried putting straws into a Parmesan cheese container because, well, all the other bloggers are doing it but that was only fun for about two seconds.

Things that were more fun:
--throwing the Parmesan container
--running with the Parmesan container
--chasing the dog with the Parmesan container
--getting tiny boy fingers stuck in the holes of the Parmesan container (several times, lol).
--leaving straws all over the house
Anyway, hope you are having fun getting ready for Thanksgiving tomorrow! If I am lucky maybe we will do another fun craft. OH, and I should definitely post my MIL's sangria cranberries recipe. YUM.

redredredredred

In general, Owen and I are repeating the activities we do during the week so I try not to post about those.  I wrote about some red activites we have done here.  These are a few other red activities we are doing.

Red Collage!  It takes less than 15 minutes to flip through your old magazines, tear out red pictures or pages and cut (or tear) them into shapes.  I found some contact paper (we bought it for the purpose of being a drawer liner) and cut a big rectangle out of it.  I helped Owen put the red items onto the sticky part of the contact paper to create a red collage.

We hung it up in his toy closet, where we will hang other color creations in the future. ok, I should have been more thoughtul... The placement of this picture made Owen very angry since he couldn't reach it.  I moved it to a lower position that he can see at eye level and he is loving looking at it now.

I also spent about five minutes drawing pictures of red items and made a small book.  I added a wagon, t-shirt, apple, car, elmo and a truck.  I did not write any words, mostly because I am lazy...  I read it to him in the style of the book "Brown Bear" (Red wagon, red wagon, what do you see?  I see a red shirt looking at me, etc.)  I was surprised that he really enjoyed the book because it seemed boring to me. 

We also did some cooking (Owen stirring up ingredients + food coloring), played with red (and not red) cars, read some red books, and.. thats about it.  Sometime this weekend I might freeze some red ice cubes and let him play with them in the tub or in the kitchen with bowls of water.  He did some water play yesterday for almost an hour, which is pretty incredible amount of time to keep a toddler interested.  Yes, everything got wet, but the cleanup was remarkably easier than anything else we do.

Intro to Red Overkill

I thought it would be fun to do a lot of red things today. Not just bringing out red stuff and talking about it but also just seeing a lot of red during the day.

First we made some red playdough. Owen was very interested in the food coloring.


After it was all mixed up, he was mad that we were done cooking so we went back to the old standby, oats, flour and water. Yum!


I then set him up in the den to play with the red playdough and commenced with washing dishes. I went in a few minutes later to check on him and he was playing with dog vomit. seriously. If I ever find out what makes dog vomit more interesting than playdough I will let you know.

He was then making vrooming noises all over the house so we played cars for a bit (lots of red firetrucks!) and then we worked on putting red chips from the game Sequence into his piggy bank. I've tried this activity with homemade jars but he finds the piggy bank more interesting. He does struggle sometimes to get the chips in though.


We read one of his favorites, Elmo's First Book of Colors, and a couple of times through I picked up objects near us to compare the colors, for example, this truck is red like Elmo, or this block is yellow like big bird.

A few days ago I put together a bunch of red items and then covered this box in red paper. I am just going to leave it out for him to find and explore this afternoon. Don't make fun of my duct tape job, I am super embarrassed about it, why don't we ever have tape like normal people??


The final piece to our red puzzle today is red lunch ;) Owen will have spaghettio's (not that he will eat them, I'm sure, but I'm going to let him practice with his spoon as well). Red cottage cheese, grapes, and jello! The jello is homemade; I didn't have any "normal" jello on hand, and recipes I found called for juice to flavor it but we don't have juice. I was thinking of using sugar and extracts but I just didn't feel good about making him sweets since he doesn't eat them very often at all, maybe a tidbit from mom and dad's dessert like once in a blue moon, so I reverted back to the babyfood days and blended up some apples and bananas, stirred in gelatin, cold water and food coloring and voila! Jello! Lunch looks a little gross, to be honest! Sure he won't mind, though.



oh! we are also going to fingerpaint with red this afternoon!

First Look at Shapes

Nana and PopPop brought Owen's Christmas presents with them when they visited over the weekend. They were supposed to stay hidden until Christmas, but I had to play with this shapes puzzle because it seemed like such a great thing for us to work on at this stage.


We had lots of fun, but after a while I started focusing on just the circle and triangle to make it simpler. Here are some of the other things we did:

I spruced up our bean bin by dyeing rice red and blue, and also dyeing some pasta green. So many pretty colors! (Dyeing rice and pasta is easy-- put it in a plastic bag along with some rubbing alcohol and a few drops of food coloring and then squish it around to mix it. Lay it out on a paper towel to dry.) I added in wooden shapes that I got at the Target Dollar Spot yesterday (wooden lacing beads) and while scooping and pouring and making a huge mess we also played with the shapes. my newest help was laying out a leftover tablecloth underneath us for easier and quicker cleanup.


Later in the day I tried to get Owen to help me sort triangles and circles onto a paper where I had drawn a big circle and a big triangle, but he wasn't interested.


So I got out the markers to color the picture instead, but he wasn't interested in that either.


Finally I got out the muffin tin lunch and that seemed just about right. He's still got some sort of a cold so I think the rest of the day will be spent reading, snuggling and relaxing.


What do you like to do to have fun with shapes?

outdoor exploration

we have had an absolutely gorgeous fall day so we decided to take full advantage and go out exploring. First stop, the sandbox! Throwing sand is always fun;


Owen has gotten a lot better at scooping with the shovel as well.


Next I followed the little guy around as he explored the backyard, finally settling on a pile of leaves where the rest of our time would be spent. He threw them, snuggled them, crawled in them, tasted them... great fun.




finally "we" (I) gathered up some outdoor materials to play with inside.


I got out the playdough and added in the outside stuff. I had grand visions of him rolling the pinecones in dough and pressing the leaves in it and things like that, but that just didn't happen ;) It probably would have been enough to just explore the outside stuff on its own without the playdough. Or perhaps it would have been better if I was helping more, but I let him do his own thing while I worked on his daddy's birthday cake.


The playdough, however is awesome, and here is my recipe:
1-cup flour
1/2-cup salt
2-teaspoons cream of tarter
1-cup water
1-Tablespoon cooking oil
food coloring (optional)

Put everything in a pot and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon. You're looking for the dough to start separating from the sides of the pan (the time this takes depends on how big your batch is). The smoothest results come from stopping when it still seems like it’ll be a little too sticky. Remove and let cool for a bit on wax paper. Add color and knead to distribute color. Add a scent (e.g., mint, wintergreen, clove, strawberry, etc.) to keep it smelling fresh.

in which we make noise, eat finger paint, stack and explore color (or not)

at the library, Owen really seemed to enjoy playing with shakers while dancing around to music so I decided to implement this at home. We've danced, and we've shaked, but never at the same time. I rounded up some noisemakers-- a set of keys, bells, a homemade shaker bottle (beads, rice and found items in a waterbottle), round bead containers, a package of beads and a vitamin container with magnets inside.


I was searching for the Ting Tings, which I think is the essential toddler dance music (and should be marketed as such) but settled for Mates of State instead. It was a blast, well for about four songs, and then he suddenly found coloring more appealing, but that is exactly why I set up the color table so I was cool with that.


Fingerpainting with pudding was another activity of the day. I had mixed up and colored instant pudding last week so we used the leftovers. If I were making it fresh today I would have had Owen help stir in the food coloring. I laid out tinfoil (interesting to play with and easy cleanup) and set out some utensils and objects and let him do his thing with the pudding. He had lots of fun smearing and eventually eating, the pudding. And spoon practice!


I thought this stacking rings-type activity was going to be a hit, but it wasn't. As soon as Owen saw the paper towel holder, he started making car noises and was driving it around the room. lol. Well I had cut up some toilet paper rolls, and gathered up other round objects with holes in them like stacking rings, bracelets, duct tape, etc for him to place on and take off of the paper towel holder. I will definitely try this again because I still think its a great activity.


the final thing we did was introduce the color green, which I don't think he's really ready to embrace but we will keep looking at colors. Today I put a bunch of green things in a green bag and had him play with them and take them out while I named the items...Usually this sort of discovery is really fun but the bag must have been full of lame stuff because he was so over it in a few seconds... Maybe if I had said "these are my cherished treasures please do not touch them" he would have spent a lot of time on it, who knows. Anyway, I have some piles of red and blue objects put together in the closet, I am sure we will try this again soon.