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 II

Last week's activities were such a hit!  Well, maybe it wasn't even the activities, but that he loves the Brown Bear book and he seriously played with all the little shapes and cards all week long.  They were constantly all over the house and some of them are still MIA.  So I thought I would come up with some more activities and make a Tot Book for him.

Pretty much all of the ideas shown are printables from 1+1+1=1 (except for the small red piece on the left--that just says My Name on the outside and Owen on the inside).  I had a lot of fun putting this together, and I guess I imagined I would take it out and we would sit down and look at the different parts of it together.  You know, in a civilized, adult manner.  Well, this is what happened immediately

Followed by this

And I have to admit, I was totally overwhelmed.  So I would imagine Owen was too.  Suddenly there was too much stuff.  It was everywhere.  I could hardly sort my thoughts (although I must admit that "stuff" easily overwhelms me).  So at first I gave up (haha.  typical).  I just let him do his thing.  Then I slowly rounded up the different elements and took them out of the mix and we looked at some of the different parts by themselves.

Surprisingly, he really likes the ABC sheet.  Its a fun accordian piece.  He has been carrying it all over the house.  Sometimes he wants to talk about the animals on it and sometimes he wants me to sing the song, which he tries to sing along to. I tried to take a pic of him running around with it but he moves too fast ;)

He also loves the Looking At Me mini-book and the Heads and Tails cards, although he doesn't really get that the cards are supposed to be put together, he just likes to look at the pieces and name them.

I had pulled out this shadow game knowing it would be too complicated.  Owen liked looking at the shadows and playing with the pieces, although not together ;) 

He actually came up with his own game when he saw this sorting sheet where the animals were in color, and made his own matching game.  He didn't get every one right, but he would lay down some of the cards on to the right pictures.  It was a much better game than the ones I came  up with.

So now I think I will keep most of this stuff out of sight and bring out one at a time to play with.  Mostly he just does free play with the different shapes which is fine by me, I interrupt every once in a while.  And if you didn't know (cause I didn't) there are several other related books, Panda Bear, Panda Bear what do you See? Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What do you Hear? and Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What do you See?  some of them seem a bit more advanced to me, but Owen loves them just the same and we have been reading them constantly.

Muffin Tin Monday

Christmas Theme!  I decided to go with stars, because Owen didn't know what a star was until we put up the tree and now he is always pointing at it and saying "star."  And then the rest of the food is orange, because.. well, it just is ;)

so we have carrots, peanut butter toast, cheese crackers, apple, orange slices and cheese.
And this is Owen. He took one look at the lunch and said "up! up!" lol, clearly not enthused. He still has not taken one bite, guess we will try again later...

Felt Food Friday!

Yay, welcome to Felt Food Friday!  Its going to be a new feature over here, figured I might as well make it a set thing since I plan on making a bunch of it...   Also I want to see what felt food YOU have made.  Share with me! Hopefully this will keep me inspired to keep creating;)  Hope you don't mind I am a total novice!

 Oh I have been in love with felt food since.. forever!  I kept thinking I should make some but put it off until a later date because I didn't have the materials or I didn't have the time or my sewing machine was broken (well now its in the shop, but the sewing machine repair man said he didn't know if it could be fixed!  sob, sob, this breaks my heart...)  Anyway, now I have piles of felt for that car mat I keep mentioning but seldom working on so I started making food this week.

I didn't really use patterns but I will share the websites I got inspiration from!  First up was a pancake, inspired by Homemade by Jill. I figured this would be such an easy start since its just a circle.  Don't tell anyone, but I've been doing some illegal stitches... whip-stitching really tightly because its easy and I don't have the stamina for more finished, complicated stitches...  Anyway, I stuffed this with one layer of fleece I had leftover from way back when I made Owen newborn diapers so I put that in.  It was so easy!  He was very excited..  "pancake?"  until he realized it was fake, lol.  But I showed him how to pretend eat it and he did a little fake chewing and "num numming" and was super adorable...

Since I was on a roll I made a fried egg.  I don't eat eggs, but I think they kind of look like this...  Making these foods is making me feel like a bad mama cause Owen doesn't know what all of them are either.  Anyway, I just free-hand cut two layers of eggwhite, again stuffing it with one layer of fleece, and sewed the yolk on top.  The pancake and eggs are awesomely simple intros to felt food, my friends! (oh, why didn't I make butter and syrup, you ask?  Because I am mean and Owen eats his pancakes plain.  So I figured he wouldn't know the difference.)

What better to have with your pancakes and eggs than a strawberry? Also so so easy, I used this free pattern and it took no time at all.  If you don't have stuffing, find something around the house--fabric scraps, cotton balls, etc.  I pillaged an old  couch pillow since my husband always complains we have too many of them. Oh, I am also digging this pattern, I love the leaves on it

This carrot was basically the same idea as making the strawberry--  I used this tutorial

Then onto more difficult tasks... The banana in the peel.  I took a peek at this tutorial and then made my own, except I didn't have cream felt and I didn't want to line the peel because, A) waste of felt (for me, since I never get out shopping and never spend money) b) too much work!  Well, my banana turned out mediocre... its overstuffed and doesn't really close properly, but you can totally tell what it is and I think its super cute!

Now I am working on orange slices and a peel... If I figure out how to get them right I will make a tutorial for next Friday..

Here are some sites that have free tutorials or pictures you can get ideas from... Seems like once you get the basic ideas down then you can basically make anything--Apples, oranges, tomatoes and such all seem like they are very easy if you aren't making them to open up and  have slices in them...  Anyway, here are the links
The Petite Cafe
Helping Little Hands
Craftster
The Olsen Family Journal

If you have done any felt food projects post a link and let me know--I would love to see them and maybe show them off in a future post!

Definitely Homemade!

If you are anything like me, you have tons and tons of ideas, but only some of them turn out cute.  This project was one of them...  But I'm ok with that.  It was intended to be just a quick project, kind of a treat for my son that I didn't have to spend my whole life making.  You see, we put up our Christmas tree this past weekend and I spent a whole afternoon feeling glum at how not cute our tree was without the breakable ornaments on it. I tried all sorts of fixes but none of them pleased me.  So we scrapped that idea and just made a blockade.

Then we put up a little tree and filled it with non-breakable ornaments we don't particularly like, as well as ornaments from our childhood.

Two of the ornaments really stood out to him; Bert & Ernie.  My grandma picked them up at a garage sale a long long time ago and they were some of my favorite ornaments as a child.  He loves Sesame Street characters, his Nana and PopPop have given him tons of Sesame Street books to read.  So I decided to make Owen some other Sesame Street ornaments.  While I was at it, I threw in Dora and Diego as well ;)

The inspiration:

Now, like I said, I wanted to do this quick and dirty--just get it done.  So there would be no sewing, no patterns, just me, some felt, and the glue gun.  I googled some pics of the characters and cut out basic shapes. And, if I must say, I am terrible with a glue gun.  I lack any finesse at all.  So this is how they turned out:

I wasn't even sure if I should give them to him because they were definitely homemade but he loves them, and knew who they all were right away.  Even big bird, who, in a stroke of luck, is lost, probably because Owen threw him away due to his supreme ugliness...  But really, for a child, I think it is the thought that counts.  He has been playing with them non-stop--I'm sure we will keep them out after the Christmas season. So I just set these on the tree, instead of hanging them, inviting him to touch and play with them, which I know he will want to do anyway.  Its a great way to get him involved in Christmas and loving the tree without ruining all my precious ornaments.

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!