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!

December- What's on the Tray, week 1

Here are some Winter/Christmas activities we have on our shelves this week.  We are having a good time doing our themed tray work and also completing a special Christmas craft each day. (Kenna finds a note describing our daily craft in our advent calendar each morning! She thinks Santa is leaving the notes- so exciting!) I'll post some of our more exciting crafts later this week.

 Spooning glittery pom poms into an artist palette. I was encouraging a red/green pattern, or big/small, but my kid has a mind of her own.

 This tray has a sweet red box with a toggle lock on it- Kenna loves to open and close it!

 Tonging red and silver gift bows.  I provided a pair of tongs, the bows, and a two sided sorter. Kenna chose not to use the tongs the first couple days, but then she started using them avidly. She likes squishing the bows with the tongs before sorting them.

 Cute wintry box to store the bows. Thank you, Dollar Tree!

 Reaching in to grab some bows.

 Taking a break to build a fort and crawl around. We threw around a bean bag and used words "under, over, in, out and through." It was fun! The fort is actually Quinn's blanket, handmade by Grammie. I need to start a post documenting all of the amazing handmade quilts and blankets we have been given by my mom and Bill's mom. They are works of art!

 December Texture Tub- snowy cotton balls, reindeer, presents, christmas lights, candy canes and a tree.  The snowman suitcase has a nifty latch, and provides Kenna an outlet for her favorite activity- stuffing stuff in containers. 

 I also threw in some jingle bells, a santa figurine, and some glitter at Kenna's request. She likes playing with the cotton balls- stacking them, smooshing them, and pulling them apart. I may switch out the cotton balls for something else like polyfil beads or white pompoms in a week or so, when I get tired of picking fuzz from between the baby's fingers.

Stringing popcorn.  Yes, I let Kenna have a real needle and thread. (She's 34 months old.) We have done some "sewing" with a real needle before, and she can handle it. She is very careful, and I remain very alert to prevent her from losing focus and hurting herself. This round, she got about 10 pieces of popcorn strung before she lost interest.  She was really proud of herself and thoroughly enjoyed hanging that tiny strand on our tree.  (She also really liked cooking popcorn on the stove. We watched and waited for the first kernel to pop, poured in 1/2 cup, and listened while the kernels merrily clinked against the metal lid. It was fun and kind of magical for her to see the white fluffy popcorn pour out of a pan that started out full of yellow kernels! We read a picture book called Countdown to Christmas, and the girl in the story strings popcorn and cranberries- so now I have been instructed to find "cwanbewies" to string. 

 This tray is stolen inspired byThe Adventures of Bear.  By the way, all of her trays and activities are awesome. Her tray used pompoms, but I was using our pom poms somewhere else, so we tweezed jingle bells instead. These shapes come from a truck shape sorter that we have had for years.We used them to do some stamping a few months ago, so they look a bit icky now- but it's just white paint.  And I would have set out all red shapes, but I have NO clue where they are. I could swear I had every piece just last week...

 Christmas tree stamping with a giant ink pad. I provided about 8 small sheets of paper and we'll see how long that lasts Miss Stamps-a-Lot. (she's highly interested in stamping right now. She chooses stamping several times a day, and works on it for long periods of time. This is a great time to nurture her sensitive period and do more stamping! I have letter stamps, number stamps, coin and bill stamps, shape stamps, and more! Bring on the inkpads!)

Decorate a Christmas tree cone. This tray was linked up on LivingMontessoriNow, from Blissfully Domestic. Her trees are lovely. Can't guarantee ours will be as nice, but they will be as much fun!

I made a cone shape out of cardstock, and set out a tray which includes:
green cardstock
a 1 inch hole punch
a bowl with some already punched circles, in various shades of green.
Glue to afix the circles to the cone.

My hope is that Kenna will use the punch to cut circles, but also that she will take time to glue the circles. I'd like to see it completely covered so that we can use it on our Nature table. 
I will update at the end of next week and share a pic of our Christmas tree. I plan to leave the tray out for Kenna to do in spurts- she doesn't have the attention span to cover a whole tree in one sitting.
UPDATE 12/21/11:
Kenna loved this. She loved using the punch, and she loved gluing on the circles. We did just use one cone for two weeks. There are a lot more punched circles loose than glued on- she really liked the punch. Kenna discovered that she could make moons and half-circles with the punch- Exciting.

 Side with a "Moon" glued at the top.

 Can you see the little "light" she jammed into the top of the tree?  A little star, mommy. A red star.

 Hope you are having a merry start to the Christmas season!

Sound Wall

We finally moved our Sound Wall, or Banging Wall, to the deck.  Last year, we had it down by the playset and we played with it every day.  This summer, not so much, mostly because we haven't been down there very much. Our backyard has two flights of stairs to get down to the level part, and that is very hard on me... I have two non-walkers, and gettting everyone out to the yard and in a safe place is a bit tricky. (Kinda reminds me of that brain teaser where you have to get the fox and the sheep across the river in a boat...) 
Here's what's on our banging wall so far:

a handmade triangle
a Target "dollar spot" windchime
a frying pan
 metal collander
a sauce pan
a metal decorative tray

We had some other items on our wall down in the yard, but they looked kind of out of place on this wall. A huge white cookpot, a metal rack for the stove, and some wooden windchimes didn't make the cut.


Anyhow, Kenna has sorely missed her banging wall, and Daddy moved it upstairs to our deck today. Yay!!  Since we are about to put our home on the market, I didn't want fifteen nail holes in the decking. Instead, Handy Husband hung a board from the deck rail, and we banged holes in that.  Somehow, we have a lot more room up here in the new setip- so now a trip to Goodwill is in order for more stuff to bang on!
I'm on the lookout for some old wrenches, a couple metal cooking spoons, and possibly a metal picture frame or something.  I can't wait to be inspired!

Ice Texture Tub

 Ever have a leftover bag of ice from a long-gone party lurking in your freezer?

 Well, our bag was frozen into a giant iceberg, as most long-forgotten bags of ice are... so I set it on the deck, gave Kenna a hammer, and told her to break it apart for me. She gladly obliged. (no pics- you really do need both eyes trained on a toddler armed with a hammer.)

Showing me her very cold fingers!
After she banged the iceberg back into cubes, we scooped them up with a dustpan and put them in her water table. She played, scooped, threw, poured, and plunked the ice all afternoon.  The great thing about playing with ice in November is that it doesn't melt very fast!! Keep this fun and easy idea in mind next time you open your freezer to find a giant bag of leftover ice.  It was a ton of fun!

Movement Mat, Modified.

**I can't believe I am sharing this picture. The mirror is flat-out dirty. Yuck.
 I am too tired to retake them, and this is proof of my exhaustion. (Also, in my own defense, you really can't see the smudges in real life!)
Moving on.  This is Quinn, 4 months old, on her improvised movement mat. Montessori style "mats" are more like floor beds, but we seriously don't have room for a little crib mattress on the floor. Our house is TINY.  So, I have a permanent mirror mounted at floor level in the playroom, and when Quinn is ready to do some movement time, I lay a handmade quilt or sheepskin blanket down.
 She loves it, but in all honestly, she doesn't get to hang out there much. You see, in our house, lying on the floor can be a dangerous business. A curious 13 month old and a wild 2 year old makes Quinn a prime target for injury.  I have to choose my times to put her on the floor very carefully.  She enjoys it so much, though.  I try to find time each day for her to explore.

Kenna, in a rare moment of calm tenderness, joined Quinn in tummy time, and they made silly faces at each other in the mirror. Priceless. Mirrors are a great way for babies to start making conections- they watch themselves move their body parts, and gain knowledge about their bodies. And of course, free-time on the floor encourages grapsing, rolling and crawling practice. I try to give Quinn as much free movement time as I can each day, but sometimes it has to be up on the changing table, or in the pack-n-play, or when the big kids are napping. I hope that soon we overcome this little issue of "danger!!" and all three can happily, and safely play together. Right now, trying to convince a 13 month old not to poke people in the eye is about impossible.  And telling your two year old "be gentle" is like telling a grizzly bear to "be gentle."  She tries, she really does.

(In case you are thinking- four months old?? Yeah- Quinn's in 12 mos clothing and can already sit up. And she's in the 115th percentile in height and weight. She's a giant baby.)

*Shortly after this picture was taken,  Little Man butt-scooted over and aimed for Quinn's eyes with his chubby little fingers. And Kenna tried to roll on top of Quinn. And tummy time was over.

Sensory- Pumpkin Gut Scooping

Ocean sensory tub

 Ocean week deserved its very own sensory tub.  Yes, I brought all of these materials to the beach! If we hadn't actually been going to the ocean, my tub would likely have consisted of sand and sand toys.

Since sand and water were going to be readily available, I decided to bring a pack of these awesome blue water beads. They start off tiny, but when put in water...

They begin to grow!!

Here they are about thirty minutes after being put in some water. They've already gotten so big!

First I let the kids explore the water beads with just their hands. There was still about an inch of water in the tub, so that made the water beads slippery, fun to scoop up, and fun to plop.  The girls marveled at them, squishing them, shooting them through their fingers, and trying to grab big handfuls.  I think they could have done this forever.

Later, I added some sea creatures to the tub.

The next day I took out the sea creatures, put shells of all shapes and sizes in, and also emptied out all of the water. 

The fouth time we played with it, I provided little "nets" and scoops so they could do some fill/spill work. Each time I pulled it out, they sustained on it for sooo long! It was simply an awesome texture tub! I am so excited to buy and try more colors of the water beads. We're also going to play with them on the light table.  I only bought one pack of the blue- I should have gotten two- it would have been the perfect amount, I think. (though you seriously cannot have too many of these awesome beads!)

Sensory Shaky Bottles

This is an easy way to add some sensorial play to any baby's day.  (My Little Man is 12 months old).  I used some clear containers (breastmilk storage tubes, in this case) and added some things with visual interest, that would also make nice shaky toys. ( I added pony beads, glass "gems" and colored paperclips.) The content possibilities are endless, of course!  I meant to take a closeup picture of the bottles, but apparently I didn't.  Sorry! I think you get the idea!

Little Man loved them!  He studied the contents, rolled them around, and shook them like crazy.  And lucky me, the lids screw on really tightly- so try as she might, Kenna (32mos) couldn't break into them.  Whew! That means I don't have to glue the lids on, which means I can refill these containers and reuse them another day!

For older toddlers, you could add things that are quiet (like cotton balls) and ask them to compare the sounds. Ask them to find the loudest shaker, the quietest shaker, etc.  You could make this a matching game if your containers are opaque- make matching sets- two bottles with the same objects, and let them use their ears to match them up. :)