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!

Aprons

 This apron, and another just like it for Quinn, arrived on my doorstep a couple weeks ago, from Grammie!! I sent her a link to a cool Montessori inspired pattern for an apron.  She is an extraordinary seamstress, so of course she whipped out 5 of these in a week. (Three for my kids, and two Kenna's cousins.)

 What makes an apron "Montessori"? Well, basically kids can DO MYSELF.  (That's what I hear Kenna shouting at me about a million times a day.)  The neck doesn't tie- it's elastic that slips over the head. The waist doesn't tie either, you just velcro it around to the front! Kenna put it on entirely by herself, first try, and was so excited that she didn't need my help! My awesome Mom made it a little large so it will last Kenna a long time.

Quinn's will fit when she starts walking... in a year!

My Mom even made one for Little Man, out of denim. I'll have to post pics- it is so stinkin' cute! I hung hooks in the kitchen at Kenna's level so that she can access her apron whenever she wants. :) We have used it every single day, between crafting and cooking and just some generic dress up time.

I think I am going to take some pictures and list these on etsy...  I think they will sell great! Especially the boy version, made with denim. 
 
EDITED TO ADD: I was informed by my mom that Kenna had her apron on backwards in these photos- the velcro is supposed to show on the front, and the waist strap is supposed to come around thethe back and fasten in the front. oops.  Kenna made this harder on herself by having to velcro the strap on the inside of the apron. Sorry Grammie!

Salt Dough Ornaments

 Today was Kenna's first time using Acrylic Paint. I was feeling stupid brave, and the babies were sleeping, so we got to work painting our Salt Dough Ornaments. Could have sworn I took pictures of us baking them, but they are nowhere to be found. We made a big batch of dough, rolled it out ,and used cookie cutters to make festive shapes. I used a skewer to poke holes in the ornaments before we baked them, so we can string them and hang them.  We ended up with a TON of ornaments- like 30 or more. We are going to be gifting these well into the new year. Happy Easter- Have a Gingerbread Man. :)

 

 Needless to say, there were plenty for me to paint as well. I am not artisic, and can't paint, but I had fun with this.

 To say Kenna enjoyed painting is a bit of an understatement. The girl focused on this activity for almost an hour. And then after nap, painted some more. She LOVED having access to 6 colors at one time. She loved dipping her brush in the water, swirling it around, and wiping it on the towel. She loved this.  She also loved mixing the colors to come up with new ones.

 It wasn't as messy as I feared. She didn't paint herself (I explained the rules) and she didn't splatter paint everwhere. Phew. I hate it when a fun project turns into a nightmare!

 What really cracked me up about this was that she was alternating between just two ornaments, but they dried quickly, and then she would completly change their color! That circle was blue, then white, then purple, then red and green.

 Aren't they lovely? Oh, I have to point out that this Gingerbread man was rolled and cut by Kenna. Then she requested that the hole to string it be on his foot. She thinks," it's silly to hang by your head- he should hang by his foot." Wise child.

Here are a few that I did for the grandparents.  Quinn's little hand fit perfectly on the circle. Little Man's palm is so chunky it cracks me up. Daddy calls it "meaty." Kenna's big girl hand didn't fit at all, so I just did her fingers. I loved this idea I found on Pinterest to make each finger a little snowman.
*Note- I was being stubborn and wanted all the circles to be the same size. In retrospect, I should have just started with a bigger circle.

When the paint was dry, I hit the ornaments with a light coat of clear sealant. Now they will hopefully last for years to come!

December- What's on the Tray, week 2 and 3

Lots of fun on the trays this week, gearing up to Christmas!

 Same and Different tray- Kenna has been really interested in this concept. She is comparing things, and making amazing connections. I am stunned by some of the things she has been noticing. I found a winter themed same/diff game, and we have played a bunch. I added a control of error with an S or a D on the back of each card. Kenna knows she can flip her pile of "same" and make sure they all have S. 

 PreWriting skills- Dry erase marker and lots of fun Candy Cane prewriting pages. She is more interested in this than she has been in a while.

 She was circling the circle- she didn't understand she had to trace it ON the line!

 Roll the Dice, match the pictures, and decorate the tree.

 Extention- Last week our tray with bows focused on tweezing. This week, Kenna is encouraged to think of two different patterns (ABAB and AABB is what she came up with) and line up the bows. This was a huge hit.

 Count and Clip- This was not really fun for her at all. The snowflakes were too small and kind of mixed up, so she couldn't easily count them.  I deliberately only printed off 11-20 cards, because that is what she needs to work with, but they are really hard still.

 She does love the clipping though! ( I wanted to share that after this tray sat unused, I added a dry erase crayon. I modeled crossing off snowflakes as you count them, and BOOM! She was sucessful and really happy!)

 Skip Counting. Kenna is way beyond 1-10, so these cute ornament cards needed to be extended... I sorted them into two groups and we used our beloved "pointer" to count by twos. She really loved it. We used the terms "odd and even" and then we watched a couple funny youtube songs about even and odd. She totally grasps the concept and has all the even numbers memorized. I taught 3rd grade for 7 years, and this was so hard for those poor kids... I am excited to be starting early with skip counting!

This wasn't a tray, per se, but we did take time to bake sugar cookies for Santa. ( I am not a cook. I don't bake, I barely make edible toast.)  We used Grammie's secret recipe, and the cookies (Shockingly) came out so delicious! (This is despite the fact that we made them vegan and replaced the egg, butter and milk!)

 Quinn, wearing her new apron from Grammie. She helped by being underfoot and getting into the flour Kenna spilled.

 Little Man, watching the cookies bake, and wearing his apron from Grammie like a cape. (His apron is denim, made from recycled jeans, and I am in love with it! I'm going to beg my mom to make a few to sell on my etsy!)

 Kenna, helping wash dishes. This Practical Life activity is one of her favorites at the moment. She loves our scrub brush, she loves the running water, and she really likes squirting soap.  She's also wearing her apron from Grammie... and not much else!

 While the cookies were cooling, we stirred food coloring into the special almond icing.  (Another grammie reicpe)

Kenna iced all the cookies, and carefully cleaned up our spatulas and cups. She has become a great little helper. I love that she loves all aspects of the kitchen- even though I am terrible at cooking.

  We're getting close to the 25th! Please Christmas don't be late!

Rainbow Cake!

*Disclaimer: I don't cook. I don't bake. I really am only allowed to use spoons in the kitchen.

I decided to make a Rainbow cake with Kenna. We mixed up some boxed cake mix (with some egg replacer and applesauce experiment) and split it into 6 cups. We mixed in food coloring (wish we had some gel coloring, but alas- the liquid drops were our only option). ROYGBV. (Handy Husband was irrirated that I didn't make Indigo. Confession- I don't know the difference between blue, indigo and violet.) 

Kenna (the half-naked chef) did all the mixing of food coloring. She and I discussed "what makes purple? What makes orange? It was fun to see the batter transform into bright colors.

Then we recited the colors of the rainbow in order, and puddled each color into two 8 inch pans.  The batter slowly spread out to the edge of the pan. Awesome!

With no egg in our cake mix, Kenna happily licked all the cups clean. (that's me in the background- a rare Mommy sighting! I'm usually behind the lens.)

All the rainbow batter in the pans, ready to climb into the oven.  I was waay more excited than Kenna.

Cooking... (in our new Range!)

Cooling...

Iced and served!! Amazing! (Kenna requested pink sprinkles on top, and I happily obliged.  She calls them sparkles, and that makes my heart happy.

Every tiny cake crumble was a different rainbow color. I think it looks more tie dye than rainbow, but whatever you call it, it was beautiful and delicious!  I have a lot of ideas on how to make other kinds of cake- like different shades of pink. Or matching colors to themed decor. Or zebra stripes (could I??) 

I will never make a plain yellow cake again.  :) You've been warned.