miscellaneous fun

M's daddy was in Chicago this weekend for the Ryder Cup so we tried a few little quick activities over the course of the weekend.  Some were more successful/fun than others but I thought we'd post a bit about each.

Pipe Cleaner Strainer

I'd seen this idea on various blogs and websites I've visited.  You fill the holes of a strainer with pipe cleaners.  It's supposed to be fun to pull them out then try to put them back in.  I say "supposed to be fun" because M found the first part much more entertaining than the second.  He'd never used pipe cleaners before so he had a lot of fun taking them out and inspecting them.  He didn't have as much interest in trying to put them back in.  He found it much more fun to chase the dogs with them.

Sticker Collage

M's had a little experience with stickers in the past but I've never given him a whole sheet of them before.  Nonni brought us some pumpkin stickers so we used them to make a Happy Halloween sign.  At first M was mad when he stuck the stickers to the paper and couldn't get them back off but eventually he got the hang of it.  The trick at the beginning turned out to be providing him with a new sticker as soon as the first was on.  Here's our final product:

Color Sorting

This is my free version of this $30 activity.  M has started to recognize colors, especially when we color with crayons.  I set up three pieces of construction paper (yellow, blue, and red) and we used some of his magnetic letters of the same colors to sort.  M watched me do it then tried it:

To his credit he did do a few on his own.  However, the activity ended shortly after like this:

Card Books

This last one is another mom idea from Pinterest.  If you look for it you'll find a variety of ways to bind together greeting cards into keepsake books.  I am not one to hold on to cards.  I probably have less than 10 saved cards (for me) but I've kept every card M has gotten.  They've been in a box, which seems like a waste, so I took out his first birthday cards and the cards we received right after he was born and made two card books for him.  I found these small 3-ring binders at Staples, which worked great for the cards.  However, if there is such a thing as a small 3-hole punch, I don't have it.  So I ended use a single hole punch to put the cards into the binder.  It was a little more time consuming but it didn't take me more than an hour to make both books - and we had a lot of cards.

Before:

After: