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

box tunnels

We're in the midst of moving.  Luckily we have an extended closing because M gets as much satisfaction from unpacking boxes as I do from packing them.  It leaves us with a lot of boxes on our hands.  What's more fun for a one-year old than unpacking things Mommy has packed?  Crawling through box tunnels!  This is a really simple one - take an unconstructed box, open it up, and lean it against something so it doesn't collapse (we used the couch).  He had a ball crawling back and forth (and it gave us a name for our blog).

We also rolled the ball through and pushed the truck through and sometimes did both.

Why we loved box tunnels....
baby: novelty
mommy: exploration & creativity, lots and lots of crawling makes for a tired baby :-)

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

mother's day handprints

On Saturday morning M and I attempted handprint keepsakes for the grandmothers, great-grandmother, and Godmother for Mother's Day.  I found the idea on Imagination Tree.  M is not big on handprints (as seen here) so it took us a few tries.  The best thing about this project was that when our handprints came out sloppy or, more often the case, not deep enough into the dough, we could just roll the dough up and start over.
To make the dough we mixed 1 cup flour, 1 cup salt, and a little less than a 1/2 cup water.  I ended up adding more flour as the first round proved the be too sticky when we pushed M's hand in.  I used a wooden skewer to make holes that I put string through once they were done baking.  We baked them for a little over 2 hours at 200 degrees on parchment paper and I flipped them about halfway through.
After about 24 hours of air drying I painted them with acrylic paint and added an acrylic clear coat on top.  We wrote "Happy Mother's Day 2012" on the back as a finishing touch.

magnetic letter tray

M's new magnetic letter sets came in the mail this week and he's had fun playing with them on the fridge. One of the teachers I work with uses cookie sheets with letter tiles for phonics activities.  This morning we tried a few letters on a cookie sheet.

Why we loved the magnetic letter tray...

baby: pulling the letters off

mommy: exposure to the alphabet, fine motor skills (pulling the letters off the tray), developing pincer grasp, and it gave the letters that have been on the fridge for a few days a more novel appeal

M's age when we played: 10 months, 2 weeks

water bowl

This week was incredibly warm for our area so I was trying to think of some fun ways for M to cool off.  M loves water unless it comes in the form of a public pool (I have no explanation for that aversion) so I filled up our biggest bowl, added some toys, and plopped him down on a beach towel on our porch. 

There was a whole lot of splashing...

and by the end of 15 minutes, no water left in the bowl and a happy baby...

Why we loved the water bowl....

baby: lots of splashing and playing with toys

mommy: promoting fun in the water

M's age when we played: 9 months, 1 week