photo book

This is M's photo book...

I made it for him when he was about 4 months old.  M has a lot of family members and friends that he doesn't see on an everyday basis because they live too far away.  I thought this would be a good way to keep him familiar with faces.  Each page has a photo of him and the person and a label with their name on it.  M loves looking through this book.  In fact, about 2 months ago he started being able to point to the pages for my husband and I and say "mama" or "da," which is really great to see.  This was super fast and easy to make (cheap photo album from Walgreens and a pack of labels) and it's one of M's favorite things to pull out and look at.

If I was going to make a second one I would look for an album that has pages that are held in a little stronger than this one.  Our book is very "loved" and we've had a few pages pulled out (although they're just as easily taped back in).

felt board fun

This is a felt board I've been working on for a few weeks.

They sell them at places like Lakeshore Learning for around $50.  I made this one for under $5.  I took a piece of cardboard and glued large sheets of black wool felt to each side.  The wool felt allows the regular felt to stick to it easily.  Then I bought a package of mixed color felt and cut out a few play sets for M.  Making Learning Fun has templates for the Brown Bear, Brown Bear pieces.  I also tried a set of A Very Hungry Caterpillar pieces (because circular fruit is super easy to make).  M loves books and will go get them and bring to me to read.  He typically chooses the same three books so this gives us another way to read.

My intention for this was to have it to hang in our play area in the basement of the new house.  I figured we'd probably use it more in the years to come than now but M does like when I take it out to play with.  M's favorite use of this board right now is for me to put all the pieces on and for him to pull them off one by one.  He also likes to carry the pieces around (we've already lost white dog).  When we use it to read Brown Bear, Brown Bear I'll put each animal on as we read and then tell him to take it off before we put the next animal on.  He seems to be interested in pulling them off and seeing what comes next.  When I make another set of pieces I'll probably use tacky glue.  I used Elmer's for these and we're losing pieces off some.  

Why we love our felt board:

Baby: He loves books and Brown Bear is definitely his favorite.  I think he enjoys having the tactile pieces of the animals from the book.  As I said, he loves pulling them off.

Mommy: Makes reading Brown Bear for the thousandth time a little more interactive and fun!  I also love that we'll be able to use this for more than pulling pieces off as he grows up.  They're great for retelling and creating stories.

M's age when we played: 11 months, 2 weeks

diy drum set

Yesterday we had fun making our own drum set.  M loves music and making noise so he had a lot of fun with this activity and is still enjoying it this morning.  I took four cylindrical containers that have plastic tops.  The ones I used were breadcrumbs, an empty Crisco container, two different size Gerber snack containers.  I placed them together and then taped around them to keep them together.  I also taped around the top of the breadcrumbs container because it still had breadcrumbs in it and I could definitely see where that would lead.

Once they were together we got two wooden spoons and started playing.  One thing that would be neat to set up an older child to find out would be that the breadcrumbs container had a different sound because it was full.  You could even then empty it to test it.  M didn't really care, he was too busy....

This morning M got the drums on his own and started playing.  He tipped the whole thing over and started playing on the bottoms of the containers (3 out 4 are metal).  That was louder than the tops and he loved it.  He seemed surprised when he first figured it out, which was neat to see.

Why we loved the DIY Drum Set....

Baby: it made noise and he got to hit things with sticks

Mommy:  music appreciation :) I think this would be a good activity to do again when M is 3 or 4 when we can make the set together and then try different things to make different sounds.

M's age when we played: 11 months, 1 week

welcome

Last week I was working on making invitations and decorations for my son's first birthday in June.  I said to my husband, "this is a year's worth of unused first grade teacher creativity coming out."  That's basically what you'll find on this blog.  

I have worked as a first grade teacher for the last three years before taking this past year off after having my first child, M.  He's almost a year old and I'm loving that we're getting into some really fun and interesting activities now.  I've used a combination of the internet, ideas from teaching, and books to come up with some of the stuff we've tried over the past few months.  It was suggested that I share some of this stuff on a blog, which I thought was a great idea.  It's my hope that people will share their own ideas with us in the comments sections so we have more fun stuff to try.  

I've gone back through pictures I have and begun our blog with some of the things we've already done.  I've tried to explain them the best I can for those who might want to try them.  I mentioned if there were any things I would do differently a second time.  I also listed our favorite things about each activity (from M's perspective and from my own).  

I hope you enjoy reading and I hope we have lots more to add soon!

cornmeal beach

M's dad and I are thinking of buying him a sandbox for his first birthday in June.  We don't have many outdoor toys yet (with the exception of M's collection of at least 15 balls but those are in my living room). We also thought it would be a good addition for the new house.  I was a little unsure if he was too young for a sandbox and a little worried that he might eat the sand (because he still puts 90% of things in his mouth).  I decided I wanted to try something safer than a mouthful of sand first.
One of the math programs we use at school includes plans for a rice box for teaching measuring.  I suppose you could really use any rice-like food.  I don't know why I thought of cornmeal but I wanted something a little more sand-like than rice.
My original idea was to put the cornmeal in the foil roaster pan and then put it in the plastic kiddie pool but I couldn't find the pool so we used a plastic table cloth instead.  It worked fine but the pool would have been perfect.  I bought three small packages of cornmeal and only used two.  It filled the roaster pan pretty well.

I tossed in a few measuring cups, a spoon, an Easter egg, and some bath toys.  M didn't really know what to do at first but joined right in after I started.  FYI, I didn't take M's pants off until after we started.  He originally had jeans on and the cornmeal left a yellow dust on them that I'm sure will come right out in the washing machine but I wouldn't leave them on him the next time.  It didn't stain cotton at all and it brushed right off of skin (almost more easily than real sand).

Why we loved cornmeal beach...

baby: putting his feet in, having his feet buried then pulling them out, dumping it out of the pan onto his legs, learning to use the cups to dig

mommy: watching him try to figure out where the toys went when I buried them (he lifted the pan up the first time), sensory exploration, the fact that he didn't try to eat the cornmeal!

M's age when we played: 11 months

finger painting

I had tried getting Miles to "color" using crayons a few times in the past month.  He doesn't have a lot of interest yet and was happier to try to eat the crayons.  From a selfish mommy perspective I was really looking forward to some art on the fridge :)
I read about edible finger painting before and tried one recipe that was corn starch based.  I must have mixed it wrong because it came out more like a cross between jell-o and play-doh.  So then I decided to go simple and just use a small amount of food coloring to dye the vanilla yogurt he loves.  I was a little paranoid about his fingers being stained but that didn't happen.  I also used the moving tape we currently have in surplus to tape down the paper because I knew it would be tossed on the floor if I didn't.

To my surprise once he figured it out he was much more interested in "painting" than eating.  He also enjoyed watching me "write" his name in the paint.

Why we loved edible finger painting....

baby: he got to make a huge mess that tasted delicious

mommy: we finally made some art!  

M's age when we played: 10 months, 3 weeks