Decorating Pumpkins

At our Halloween party for MOPS the kids got to paint a pumpkin. They had so much fun and for 2 children it was there first time painting so it was extra special. Here is the way H's pumpkin came out. We used tempra paint I would not recommend that type of paint because the paint started to pile off as soon as it dried I think next year I will use craft paint, but it is about the process not the product and they all had a blast.

Magic Pumpkin Seeds

Yep it is still 100 degrees here in Arizona so we are still in shorts and totally jealous of everyone having nice weather and light jackets. My Mother-in-law did this with H when she was visiting earlier this year with a flower and H loved it so I recreated it for pumpkins. I just took pumpkin seeds and put them in a small ziploc bag and scrapbook paper and a stick and glued it on to make the bag. I thought about painting the seeds with some sparkly glitter to give them whimsey but decided to just go with the plain. Then I mailed it to her, and let her open her own mail. We then when outside and dug a hole and buried the seeds just like any other seed and watered them in a nice sunny place. We talked about all the things that a seed needed to grow and how long it would take to grow, ect. She said 100 days LOL. Then that evening when her daddy got home from work she went to help him pick out clothes to change into and I replaced the seeds with this little pumpkins. (I wanted the really little cute ones but they didn't have them at store so these would have to work) After dinner he asked her what she did that day and she grabbed a flashlight and told him to came see. She was so surprised to find little pumpkins there it was adorable she told her daddy, "Wow they really are magic seeds it only took one day to grow." over all it was really fun and magical experience. We are going to be decorating them with buttons, glitter, and of course googly eyes tomorrow.

Fishing for letters

For part of our ocean theme last week I found this cool idea from pinterest to use magnet ABC letters in the bath tub to go fishing for letters. I add some sea life things like fish, crab, shells, glass rocks, ect. to show the ocean part and to find out what was magnetic and what was not. I used her fishing pole and a magnet from an old name tag from work where I used to work(just tied it one and put a line of hot glue on string to keep it from coming off. She had so much fun, and keep doing it over and over for an hour! She even started to see how many she could catch at once. Her high score was four. Oh I used two drops of blue food coloring to make water blue

Homemade Menu

My daughter is always asking me, "Mommy, what do you want to eat." she wants to take my order like at a restaurant. Only problem is no matter what I order she is out of that. lol so I said to myself I'll fix that, I can get her to make a menu for her restaurant from grocery store ads. That way I have to pick something on the menu. So I got some old ads and let her cut out what she wanted on her menu. She did fantastic cutting them out but I did have to trim them up a little to make them all fit on the page. I wrote Menu on top and what each thing was under the picture so she could see the written for of the word as well. then put it in a clear protector page and taped the top with packing tape. She loved it and loved cutting and helping me glue. I let her put the glue on and I put it on the page just to make sure it would all fit. Then she used the leftover ads to make a food collage.

Oh and by the way my first order was pasta salad and they ran out she already served it to daddy and it was to late to make more I had to chose something else. Oh well I tried.

Lower case and Upper case puzzle

A while back I posted about these letters I found at Target in the $1 section. I decided to make a game out of it and put them in a big circle in the middle of the living room. I separated the lower case from the upper case letters, by leaving the upper case on the floor and the lower case in a bowl in the middle. I had H pick a lower case letter from the pile and then find the match in the upper case letters and put the puzzle back together. We talked about the sound each letter made and the things that started with that letter as she pulled them out of the bowl.

Bored Jar

So I have seen a bunch of people make "Bored Jars" and I thought that it was a really good idea. So here is what I have come up with for ours go my inspiration here http://mushkiloves.blogspot.com/2011/05/potty-prize-jar.html
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Jewelry Math

I found these really cool shapes the make jewelry at the the dollar tree by linking together. I dumped them out on the table and had H sort them into 3 piles stars, flowers, and hearts. then we counted them to see which ones had more shapes then the other shape. I continued with sorting by color, and then making patterns with the jewelry. we made an all heart bracelet and a color pattern necklace. she had so much fun she didn't even know she was learning.

Ice treasure hunt

I recently had a group of kids over for the evening and wanted to have something for them all to do. I used a medium size bowl and froze water in layers. each time I froze a layer I would add different things like shells, marbles, plastic bracelets, small sea life toys ect. (all from the dollar tree) it took the entire day to do layers. It took the kids at least 30 minutes to get all the treasures out. I gave the kids scoops, cups, spoons, warm water, and salt. They has fun experimenting with how to get it melt faster and everyone had there own idea it really got there little minds working.

Practing writin her name

Today was the first day we worked on writing and spelling her last name. She is doing really good she can already spell it by her self and this was her first attempt of writing it. I found this dry erase writing board at Target for $1. I don't do a lot of formal teaching, it is mostly learned in play or normal situations, but i couldn't resist. I think the most important thing when teaching kids at young ages keep it simple short and sweet. I never force of make her do sit down learning. I introduce the technique and go along her interest and mood. As she gets older it will be more structured. But fun for now, and she loves playing school.

Painting Fairy Maska

For some fun summer projects I got a couple of crafts at Micheal's. H had a lot of fun painting the fairy. At first she was really focusing on staying in the lines and then she started mixing colors and telling me about the new colors she was making on her fairy. All in all she had a ton of fun and it kept her busy for almost an hour

Tracing shapes

I recently made a tracing folder for H. I just used clear protector pages and but a dashed line picture of different shapes and the word of the shape under it for word recognition. I let her use a washable marker to trace the shapes and letters of the word that way I can reuse the page over and over. I just learned that tracing is a skill needed for kindergarten so I thought if would be fun to practice.

Practing with scissors

H can cut all day long but I am trying to work with her on control. I do not expect her to get it right. I encourage her to stay in the lines, however, I want to make it fun and just introduce the idea to her. I do not believe in forcing learning on children at a small age so this is just for fun.

Bird feeder from milk jug

In honor of earth day this week we reused a milk carton to make a bird feeder. I cut windows and a door out of the carton with a box cutter or razor and gave it a light coat of spray paint. Then I had H glue nature sequins on the jug to decorate it.
We hung it in the tree in the back yard. Excuse the yard color we just sprayed for weeds.

H looked at it and it was blowing in the wind and she asked me how the birds would hang on. So we had to come up with a better plan

so we tied it up on both sides and now it can't go anywhere. this made H feel much better about the birds eating the food.

Practicing writing letters

I used shaving cream on the table for finger paint to help H practice writing her letters. It is a great sensory project.

Rainbow french toast/ Rainbow Milk art

This morning for breakfast we made rainbow french toast. I did this with H last year and wanted to do it again but add something to it and make it a little more fun. First I took an ice cube tray and filled up 6 spots with milk. Then I let H put in a drop of the food coloring. when we only had red, yellow, green and blue she noticed we didn't have orange or purple. Perfect opportunity to talk about mixing colors to get new colors and made orange and purple. Then I gave her a spoon cause I didn't have any unused paint brushes and let her add the colored milk to her bread to make a rainbow. After she finished making her bread I started to make the batter for french toast and when I poured the milk into the pie dish she asked it she could add the colors to the milk. I couldn't resist a great opportunity, so I added food coloring to the milk and let her mix it up it turned out beautiful! In the end the french toast looked really weird but the experience was so much fun and H ate 2 pieces and 1/2 an egg which is a lot for her:)

What we did in February

I have not been posting activities lately so here is a the things I forgot to post in February.



We had fun with bean bags and practicing taking turns by throwing bean bags into different size boxes. We talked about who's turn it was, waiting and being patient and compared the boxes on difficultly of making them in the box.

simple Montessori activity of transferring small heart shaped jewels from the table to a heart shaped muffin tin using only tongs.

working on letters

I used garage sale stickers on a paper and a Ziploc bag and gave her fruit loops to match the circles to make the letter. She has been so interested in writing and letters so I have been trying to think of ways to foster that interest and make it fun too. what is not fun about playing with food lol.

Post office pretend play

I go to the post office a lot mailing orders for my tutu business and my daughter is fascinated with it. She always ask lots of questions and thought it would be fun to play that at home. So I set up a post office for her with a cash register, stamps, envelopes, a Mail box and lots to draw with. I also put her address, a list of family and friends names and common post office words on the wall.I also set up a couple more stations throughout the down stairs for her to deliver the mail, using her bike and a large reusable tote bag to carry the mail. she loved it and delivers things to daddy and her stuff animals and babies. I got the idea for the mail box here.

To make the MAIL box I used and old cereal box and cut a hole in it then spray painted it black cause I didn't have blue and cut out the letters and glued it on. another way to reuse

Valentine's candy hearts graph

I made a Valentine's candy hearts graph to introduce graphing. This also focus on sort and count the colors of hearts in the box of candy. I made this out on construction paper using a ruler and pen very simply made. I wrote all the colors in the bottom and then colored the box that color. When I was a kid there was white ones in the box to, H was surprise and very curious on why she didn't find them in the box.

Recognizing letters in name

My little one knows how to spell her name and recognizes the letters in her name but I wanted to see if she could find it in a letter search style. So, I got sticky notes and put all the letters in the ABC's on post its and stuck them on the wall. First I challenged her to find all the letters in her name. when she archived that I had her put all the letters in order. My husband was pretty impressed.