L is for Leaves

In the spirit of all things Autumn, I am replanning my "L is for Ladybugs" unit and making a Leaves unit instead.  (Perfect timing that this letter falls between Halloween and Thanksgiving, I think. Gives me time to do some serious recognition of fall, without a holiday interfering.)
 I particuarly savor Fall weather, as I grew up in South Florida and didn't even know exactly why Autumn was called Fall... our Evergreen trees never lost their leaves! 

Here are a few of our L week activities.

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.

I'm the Map, I'm the Map, I'm the Map!

Finally! A break from the non-stop custom orders from the last month or so... and just in time to start working on some Christmas gifts!

I'm pretty sure you know "Map" from Dora the Explorer. If you don't, consider yourself very, very lucky.  If you do, I apologize for the stupid song now running continuously through your head.  My sweet Kenna is rather taken by Dora and friends. We watch very little television, so Dora DVD's are a real treat for her.  Recently, Kenna has taken to wadding up any paper she can find, calling it "her map" and stuffing it into her little backpack.  She sings the Dora songs, she pretends that Swiper is lurking around every corner, and calls Daddy Boots more often than not. ?

 So yeah, making her a Map is a no-brainer gift! I haven't seen anything like this around, so I just kinda winged it. I wanted the map to roll up and show his face, and when it was unrolled, I wanted the three destinations to be interchangeable. I grabbed some felt and got to work. I have to say I am in love with this project, and know Kenna will be, too!

 Here's the map. The only thing glued down is the road. You can see a small square of scratchy velcro I handstitched on so that the map will stay rolled up.

 Then I got to start making the "destinations". First, through the flower garden...

Then hike over Big Mountain!

 Go around the Red Barn!

Here are three destinations, laid out on the map- flower garden, wooden bridge, dark cave.  :)

 Forest, alligator lake, big mountain!

Park, pumpkin patch (in honor of our two recent trips there... I just knew Kenna would love this...) and red barn.

When I finished making the pieces for the inside, I quickly cut out Map's Face. Because he is a cartoon, his face is completely outlined in black. To mimic this, I simply cut two layers of felt. I think he came out pretty adorable!

Here's the whole set. I am sure that when Kenna gets ahold of it, she will ask me for some specific things to add, and I can't wait! I plan to make at least one more set for an upcoming 3 year old birthday girl who loves Dora, too!

Sensory- Pumpkin Gut Scooping

Felt "Build a Jack-o-Lantern"

AKA Halloween Tot Trays, Week 4.

I hear you now, complaining that after four weeks of Halloween activities, there has been NO FELT???
  My favorite medium is felt!! I sell felt items. I give felt items as gifts. Everyone is making felt "build a face" Jack-O-Lanterns.   What gives?
Well. Have no fear.  There was felt.  :)
 I just forgot to post about it, since I actually made this game for Kenna last year. 

 Such an easy project- one piece of felt to make a giant pumpkin, and glue or sew on a stem.  Then use a piece of black felt to get creative with different features.  There are a billion felt pieces to choose from, as I went a bit felt face crazy, but here are Kenna's favorite faces. Worried pumpkin at the top. Happy in this one!

 And the one that makes her explode into giggles- The "daddy face".  She insisted this guy needed a mustache, despite the fact that her Daddy has NEVER had a mustache.  Weird.

 I only put out a few options a day, and rotate them each day. Otherwise all the facial feautres would overwhelm Kenna.  (Did I mention that I have made waay too many??)  The strange little bits at the top right are eye brows.  They are silly!

 Aside from our felt pumpkin game, we had even more fun with our awesome spiders that I purchased a couple weeks ago. I set out the pole part of our Rainbow Stacker, and an assortment of spider rings.

Kenna's job was to lace all of the spiders onto the pole. I have to say, the fit was PERFECT!! A little tight, but not too tight. She had to really work to center the ring over the pole to get it on.  She LOVED doing this.

 Kenna crammed over 20 spiders onto the pole, and then pulled them off and did it again. What fun! Gret fine motor work, and also hand-eye coordination.

 Another activity I set out this week was a "small space" activity.  I put out a breastmilk storage container (Love these things!) and some spiders. Kenna had to really poke and prod them into the container, and then use an awesome finger grasp to get them back out. She enjoyed this as well.  I didn't have to give her any instructions- it was like that container was screaming for spiders- she saw the tray and started stuffing!

Since it is 41 degrees out today, Kenna washed our pumpkins in the laundry room. I gave her warm water, an ikea scrub brush, and two of our pumpkins.  She loved it and was very meticulous about scrubbing them, including their "bottoms".  She wanted soap in the water, so I squirted a few pumps of our foam dispenser, which has castille soap and water in it.  (Castille soap is totally green and foams really well. Plus it is uber-cheap to refill our soap dispensers, since a tiny squirt is all you need.  Oh, and if you haven't switched to foam with your toddler, consider this your wake-up- DO IT NOW!! Foam is a thousand times less messy than goopy, slimy, impossible to wash off hand soap.)

 I didn't get any other pictures of this activity, because right after I took this, I had to throw the camera down and pull Little Man out of the bowl of water. ( He had been sitting across from kenna with a pumpkin and his own scrub brush to amuse him, but alas, the water was too tempting.) Awesome.

Halloween is tomorrow!! Hooray for Trick or Treat!!