St. Patrick's Day Part 2 2012

Here are a few of the fun activities we did to go along with our St. Patrick's Day theme.

 I filled four green plastic eggs with these cool submersible LED lights. (Michaels for $7). 

 I turned off the lights and tossed them in the tub with the three amigos. :) They had so much fun!

 These egg-filled lights kept them busy for over an hour! They soon learned they could open the eggs and play with the lights, but they were so bright, I couldn't get a picture!

:Sensory:
 Rainbow Rice Texture tub. Contents- rice as a base. Gold coins, green eggs filled with LED lights, a rainbow wood piece, green shamrocks, and some scoops. I kept it simple at first, and we ended up making a boat for Kenna's Peg Einsteins to float around in.

 (cardboard boat with peg people is in Kenna's hand.) Quinn LOVED the texture of the rice.

 She's almost 9 months. She loved watching the rice run through her fingers. She loved squishing it around in the bin. She was completely enamored by this bin!  She also loved the glowing eggs.  She carried one around with her all morning!

 :Color Mixing:
The setup- coffee filters, eye droppers, and four colors of food coloring. I used about 5 drops of color, and then filled the rest of the way with water. This made a nice, watery color that ran beautifully on the cofee filter.

I also provided a misting bottle, which Kenna enjoyed immensely, to the point of soaking her filters into oblivion. Happiness is a squirty bottle!

 This was a different technique we tried- turn the filter over and let the color run down. It would have been pretty, but by this point, Kenna had mixed our colors to a murky brown. :)

 My attempt at a rainbow.

 Drying. We are a paperless household, so I used a dishrag to dry the filters- needless to say, some bleach will be in order if you do this to your towels.

 My rainbow shamrock!

They came out so pretty!! We are going to hang them in the window for the sunlight to stream through.

 :Cooking:
For our Social Studies connection, we have been studying Ireland. Kenna can now find Ireland on the map, identifies it as an island, and knows the colors of the flag! We baked some sugar cookies and used some almond glaze (Grammie's secret recipes) to decorate the flags.

 They really came out great, and tasty too! We also tried to make some freehand cookies in the shape of Ireland, but I'll spare you the gory result. :)

Lastly, we made some GREEN popcorn! (don't adjust your screen... I can't find the pic of our green popcorn, so I'll reshare our pic of pink popcorn from Valentine's day. LOL)

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

St. Patrick's Day

Brace yourself for Rainbows! And GREEN!  And fun! This poor post has been in draft for two weeks, while my family has been visiting.  I figured I'd better post it before March ends!

Kumon coloring page.  ROY.G.BIV, baby! And I have to say that explaining the difference between indigo and violet kind of tried Kenna's patience today. Especially since both are purple. :)

:Transferring:
Kenna is 37 mos.

Use tongs to move pom poms to the small sectioned tray.

:Toddler Transferring:

Little Man is 18 mos.

I set up larger pom poms and a mini-muffin pan (which he walked away with the moment I picked up the camera!) so that he can do the same work as Kenna. She is so excited that he is doing trays now, she can't stand it!

:Matching:

Felt Clover Puzzle.  (not my idea, sadly. It's so cute! **Need link**) I cut hearts out of felt to mimic the leaves of clovers.  I made 6 flashcards by taking pictures of different color combinations. Kenna has to build the clovers to match. She is seriously into anything puzzle right now, so I know she is going to love this.  I didn't get pics of the whole stack of cards, but here is one card example. She looks at the picture and recreates it with her felt pieces. I glued down the stem on the felt "paper" so she has a starting point.

:Science- Plants:

 Hunting for four leaf clovers! We took our magnifying glass and headed to the front yard, where there are patches of clover everywhere! We brought some inside to study. The laminated clover is an actual four leaf clover I found in 1997 on the lawn of my college Freshman dorm. 

 It has been pressed in a dictionary for years, and I got it out this week and laminated it, so that Kenna can study it and check it out without destroying it.

On the hunt!

 :Small Spaces:

Put the Leprechaun gold in the pot! I saw this great idea **needs link** to take a mason jar and replace the metal inset lid with cardboard. I drew a cute pot and cut a slit in the cardboard to fit the coins. I deliberately made the coin slot as small as possible- I wanted Kenna to have to really work at this one.

 :Fingerprint Clovers:

Use your fingers or the Q tips to make clovers. Use the green marker to add stems.  If Kenna allows, we may circle sets of two, since we are working on counting by two's.  (She's a little touchy about her artwork at the moment. If she draws even one line on a paper, I am not allowed anywhere near it.)

More fun to come! Gotta get some pictures off my camera!!

New Schoolroom/Playroom!

Well, we are finally getting settled in our NEW Playroom/schoolroom!! I am so excited. My husband and I decided that having a master bedroom the size of a basketball court was a bit wasteful, spacewise, and we traded our tiny playroom with the giant master bedroom! So far, I am so happy I keep quietly squealing. 

Since we are planning to put our house on the market in a couple months, the sage paint has to stay, but I am making myself comfortable and I plan to decorate with funky, modern artwork and colorful posters.

 Baby Tot Trays. The babies get 6 "trays" a week. (ah, I just noticed that Kenna added her ABC puzzle to the shelf and moved the ring stacker. *sigh* She's my personal redecorator.) This week they have stacking cups, bean bags(mama-made) some wooden animals from Etsy, and the Ring stacker (melissa and doug?) Bottom shelf has handmade wooden trucks, a discovery basket for Quinn, our favorite cloth barn with little animals, and a basket of soft blocks for stacking.

(Imagine some maps, some books and a few work trays on top of that bookshelf. I can't find the picture!)

The top of this shelving unit is where I am creating my Social Studies Area for Kenna.You can see our current study work (penguins and Antarctica) include books, a continent puzzle, and some "snow dough" for the penguins to live in. Still hoping for a globe and some other goodies to add to this area.

 Under our clock I hung a foam clock for Kenna and I to begin talking about time. I have been setting the foam clock for various times(like 11:30, lunch) so that she can try and figure out when the real clock matches the hands of the foam clock. She is really interested in time right now!

 Our awesome reading nook. Ikea chair and lamp, with a daddy-made bookcase next to it.

 Bookcase holds games, books and our musical instrument basket. The top is a great work area for Little Man(16mos) to do puzzles and drive his cars. It's just his height! (Yup! That's right! He's pulling to a stand and taking steps! His physical therapists are all abuzz over it! We are so proud of him.)

 Light box, with sensory bin full of water beads sitting on it.  The clear shoe organizer holds light box manipulatives.

 This corner has a large mirror and a basket full of dress up clothes.  The blue square on the door is our large mama-made felt board.

 Magnet Board from Ikea, with a bit of shoe organizer to hold four types of magnets. ABCs, Leap from Letters, numbers, and Melissa and Doug Animal magnets (most of which are on the board this morning).

 Okay, other side of the room- we FINALLY have room upstairs for our train table! Tracks and blocks are in the two drawers. Table can be pulled out when the kids want to play. To the right is a couch,  and to the left is our school room area!

 Couch, (please excuse the mess... blankets on the floor, computer and clip lights for taking pics!) train table, and on the wall is a little Ikea picture rail that I'm using as  book shelf.

 Above the couch I just hung this awesome "artwork display" area. Three Ikea picture frames with fabric inside. I plan to hot glue some cute clips to the glass so we can easily hang artwork.

For now, we are just taping it up. 

 And the school area!! A nice big space to do all of our "learning" as Kenna calls it. YAY for a dedicated space!To the left of the blue chair, nex to the clocks, is our shelving for tray work. 

 Daily Workboxes, and above it all of our art supplies. Everything is out for Kenna to use whenever she wants. (This is my Reggio-Emilia inspired art area attempt.)  She has full access to paint, glue, markers, scissors, beads, feathers, and so on. It works wonderfully for us.

And look, I finally printed out numbers for our workboxes, and made a sheet for Kenna to velcro her numbers to after the workbox is completed. Finally.

So, everything is a work in progress, and there are little changes every single day. (Even since these pictures over the weekend, there is a Plan Toys tree house, Kenna's Rose Cottage tent-thing, and a baby floor mirror.  And a new little wood table for two by our giant white board. Okay- that's a LOT of changes!)

 Overall, I am so glad we made the room switchero, and I dread having to give it all up when we put the house on the market in a few months. (We have a feeling buyers would rather see a bed in here than an awesome playroom...)

Valentine's Trays!

I wanted to get some Valentine's Day work on the shelves for the next two weeks. I am leaving four of our Antartica trays out, along with four of our Money trays. This is officially the most work I've ever had out at one time. I am curious to see what happens when she has almost 18 trays to choose from. Is this too many? We'll see...

 :Cutting:
Cutting hearts. Kenna cut out one heart to show me how it's done. She loves the "reveal" of opening the heart once it's cut.

: Stickers, Letter matching:

I wrote a few simple words out in uppercase, and Kenna will find the matching stickers. These little heart stickers connect like a puzzle- they are so cute!

:Transferring Hearts:

Use the strawberry huller to place one conversation heart in each space.

 Here are the hearts, out of the box, moved into the tray. I have a feeling Kenna's favorite part will be the little candy box, with the tiny tab closure.

: Button snake:
Like our Fall leaf button snake, this simple Practical Life activity is two buttons sewn to the ends of a piece of ribbon. I cut some felt hearts and made a slit for buttoning work.  I think I will number these with puffy paint so that she can practice buttoning them in number order. (I will likely start with #11 and go to 20, since that is our focus right now.)
*Had a nostalgic moment while searching for ribbon- this brown and pink ribbon was used in my wedding decor!  I thought I had a closeup pic of the button snake- sorry. It's all contained in a red box with a cool toggle closure that Kenna loves.

:Letter V:
 Printable from COAH, we will use the pop blocks to make a V. We'll also use playdoh, candy Conversation hearts, and possibly even heart stickers before the week is over. It's in a sheet protector right now, but if we decide to decorate it with stickers, I'll just remove it.

 :Counting:
Great printable from COAH, count the white hearts and match to our number rocks. (I was going to make some cute red clothspins to do some clipping, but alas, a sick baby took precedent. The printable actually comes with number cards, but Kenna has gotten overwhelmed in the past with two sets of similar looking cards, so I am going to use them for another activity.)

 Did I confuse you? This is how we'll match them up.

 :Coin Identification:
We are doing money this month, and this heart-shaped mat from is perfect for laying out and talking about coins. That nickel is still sooo tricky!  (You could of course put magnets, conversation hearts, or even pink m&ms on the mat instead.)

 Our first Hundreds Board. Two colors, and a key at the top telling us what numbers to color pink, and red. I think this is going to take all week. I also think that if she makes it through, and sees the fun heart picture we create, she'll be willing to do another one. We haven't counted higher than 31 yet, so this will be fun! I will link to this printable in a minute... when I find it again!

 :Size Sort:
Three sticker designs, in large and small. From Oriental Trading, I think? Sort them into two piles. We can also do some pattern work with these.

 :Patterns:
I drew some simple patterns in hearts. These cute silver hearts, in two sizes, can be laid out to match and then continue the patterns. (Ack!  Another throw-back to my wedding! These were the "scatters" on the table!)

: Sequencing:
Size sequencing hearts from COAH. (Seriously, check out all her amazing free printables. It will make your life easier!)

 :Water Transfer:
Kenna is going to FLIP!! I finally ordered some droppers from Amazon (initially for our Antarctica Iceberg work, but they didn't come on time) so now we can do small water transfer work! I also plan to do color mixing with our droppers. They were less than $5.00-- just splurge!
Anyhow, there is a jar of red water and a cup to transfer into. I really, really hope the babies don't pull this one off the shelf, since our new playroom has CARPET!  (*Post coming soon all about our new play and workspace!)

:Pouring:

Pouring red and white pony beads between two creamers.

I am not a mushy, gushy kinda girl, but I do love hearts, the color pink, and any excuse for receiving chocolate... so BRING ON Valentine's Day!

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