mix and pour

I loved this activity because the idea came from M.  Every year since I was little my mother and I have decorated a gingerbread house before Christmas.  This year was the first year M could participate.  We did a train instead of a house because he loves trains.  He got really into the decorating, which made it really fun.  However, during the course of the decorating he discovered that he could pour the little candies from one small dish to another (and then into the back of the train).  He ended up totally consumed with pouring the candy into different bowls.

And so we have this pouring and mixing activity....super easy to set up, one of M's favorites, and (maybe) the first independent activity we've had so far.

We started off like this with various bowls and measuring cups.  Some were filled with small snacks (we used Cheerios, banana puffs, and Goldfish).  Leave some empty.

Then M was let loose with them.  He poured and mixed and had lots of fun.  I started off playing with him but then I was able to clean the kitchen up a bit and load the dishwasher while he played quietly by himself.  He had a great time:

Here is my warning: If you don't want a mess of small snack foods on the floor, skip this one.  If my husband had been in the kitchen while we did this it wouldn't have lasted long.  However, we have a great clean up crew that ensured that no Cheerio or Goldfish stayed on the floor for longer than 2 seconds.

If When we do this one again I will give him a spoon to practice scooping.  If you have an older toddler you could get into mixing them together then sorting them back to the original bowls.  You could even use objects like buttons or pom poms or fruit loops if you want to stay edible, and get into sorting by color or size or shape, etc.  

toddler turkey

Back at Thanksgiving M and I made a few decorations to hang in our kitchen since we were hosting our first Thanksgiving.  M loves to use his paints so I gave him a piece of white construction paper and brush to paint with.  It came out looking like this:

Then I took it and cut it into feather-shaped pieces.  We created a turkey with his painted feathers:

We also did a handprint turkey that came out cute.  This was a Pinterest idea that I found.  When I saw it it was part of a handprint calendar that I'd love to try (each month is a handprint made into something different).  The hardest part was keeping him still while painting each finger a new color.  

My favorite part of these activities is a story I have to share because as much as this blog is for sharing ideas with others, it's also for me to be able to back at.  Before we started this activity I asked M if he wanted to paint.  He said, "paint, paint, paint."  I started getting everything out - his smock, his brush, the paint, etc. and setting it all up.  I lifted him into his seat (he was still saying, "paint, paint, paint") and he looked up at me and said, "happy."  Me too :)

baby autographed baseball

A quick post about the birthday gift M recently gave to his Papa. Papa is a big sports fan and has a number of autographed baseballs. M loves baseballs and likes seeing Papa's collection so for Papa's birthday M gave him a new ball to add to the collection.

The ball has his handprint on it in ink and his name and the year in ballpoint pen. Tip: do not try to use sharpie on a baseball. The ball came with a plastic case so it made a cute gift (and Papa loved it).

tape paint

It seems that with our new schedule Friday has become our activity day.  Today we tried tape painting. It was one of our most successful activities so far based on the amount of time we spent doing it and M's sadness at having to clean up.

To tape paint you need tape, paint, and paper.  When I first read about it they suggested using finger paint.  We used a brush and it still came out well.  To start make a tape design on the paper.  Letters are easy.  Things with straight lines are easiest.  We did an M.

We used painter's tape and construction paper which turned out to not be the best combination but more on that later.  Once the tape is on you can start painting.  M loved painting today.  He painted the paper...

And I realized this child has had his hand painted for handprints too many times...

We talked a lot about colors while we painted.  M knows the words blue, green, and purple but isn't always right on when matching the words to the colors.  We did one color at a time and I let M choose which ones he wanted to use.  We set up the bottles and he either said what he wanted or pointed.  He was really into it.  Here's what it looked like when he finished:

After a while I peeled off the tape.  This is where the combination of painter's tape and construction paper kind of messed us up.  The painter's tape kind of stuck too much and pulled off some paper with it (if that makes sense).  I think next time Id either use masking tape with the construction paper or a stronger paper with the painter's tape.  It did come out cute though:

I've mentioned these paints before and I have to say how much I love them once again.  They were fabulous for this and wiped right off of M, his socks, his booster seat, and the plastic table cloth on our table.  Love them.

fall art

This morning M and I got into the Halloween spirit with this ghost handprint.

We made two, one to hang up and one to bring to M's great-grandmother.  I don't have any pictures of the process because I had one hand on the paint and the other on M's painted hand.  It's fairly simple.  You need white paint (we used our favorite very washable Crayola paint), black construction paper, and a black marker.  We used googly eyes but you could draw the eyes on.  M is getting good at handprints but if I was doing this with an older child I would tell them to keep their thumb down so it's closer to the other fingers.

Last week we did another fall picture that M loved (I haven't had a chance to post it).  I made a brown tree on construction paper:

M filled in the autumn leaves.  We used what I call "paint dotters" (bingo daubers, poster paint, felt tip paints, etc).  M loved these.  They were super easy for him to hold and use...

The downside was that they weren't very easy to clean off of his hands.  We needed SOS but it did come off.  Finished product...

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:

rice bin

I don't know if it was this particular activity or the fact that M is getting older and more attentive but the rice bin was a huge hit.  I always leave the length of our activities up to M.  When he gets tired of something or decides to do something else we stop.  This was one of the first activities I had to drag him away from (literally).

Our rice bin was made up of a plastic bin, a 5 pound bag of rice, and miscellaneous plastic toys and containers.  We played on a trash bag cut so it would lay flat.

We had a little spill over onto the floor but it was easily cleaned up.  One of the things M liked doing the most was filling up a small tupperware cup and dumping it back into the bin.

The container I used has a snap on lid so I'm hoping we can reuse the rice bin multiple times.  In the future I might add something to it, like lentil beans or small pieces of pasta, to change the textures.  If our little plastic pool had still been out I think I would have put the rice bin in the pool, which would have made for super fast and easy clean up.  I'll also add different toys since M really enjoyed "digging them up."

Some things we used were plastic building blocks, plastic toy figures, small plastic cups, magnetic letters, and some old baby links that we haven't used in quite a while.  Other things that might be good- measuring cups, measuring spoons, little trucks to drive through the rice (M would love that), buttons, rocks, Easter eggs, cooking utensils, etc.  You can also use food coloring to change the color of the rice (be sure to let it dry) and I think you might even be able to buy colored rice at some places.  This was similar to our cornmeal beach and jello bowl activities that we tried months ago.  I love these types of hands on sensory activities because M loves exploring so much.  You can do this type of "sensory bin" with a variety of things - jello, cornmeal, rice, beans, shaving cream, soapy water, confetti, macaroni, ice (great for a hot day), etc.  It's fun and easy and toddlers love it!