Beads on a string

My sister told me about how well this activity works with her students but I thought my two year old was too young. Also I was concerned about the choking hazard- do watch out for that. But today, my two year old found the container full of beads and brought it to me thinking it was candy. I explained that they were beads and she was anxious to give this activity a try. So we did.

Sorry these pictures are terrible. We'll pretend I'm a decent photographer for now. Anyway, I took a shoelace and tied a knot at the end. Then I showed her how to put the beads on the shoelace. She loved it and insisted on doing it "all by ahh self!"

It's a great way to build fine motor skills. And keep your kid occupied for a bit.

Random thoughts

Wow! Things have been BUSY! I guess the holidays can do that to you. And my kids are still sick. My one year old just threw up again this week. Go figure.

As soon as life calms down I have a bunch of new things to try out and post about.

My sister who is a special education teacher gave me a new book about activities to do with toddlers. I'm so excited to try some new things out from it.

For Christmas, I got a cookbook about hiding vegetables in your kids food. You know, the one by Jerry Seinfeld's wife Jessica. As much as I (sort of) try, my kids really don't get enough vegetables. I'm really excited to try some of these recipes out. And of course blog about it.

And one day a week I will be babysitting some kids for a neighbor so I will have some new test subjects for some of these foods and activities. And rumor has it, one of these kids will not eat vegetables. We'll see what we can do about that.

As a final thought, I found this blog and laughed so hard I cried. So if you need a good laugh and you have a few minutes, give it a try. Also if you either like or dislike snuggies or wooden blocks with words on them, you may find this mildly amusing:

http://itjustgetsstranger.blogspot.com/2011/12/snuggie-texts.html

Rotating toys

We have too many toys at our house. With Christmas coming up, it's just going to get worse.

Awhile ago I got tired of picking up toys. All day. Everyday. All the time. So we packed them into totes and put them in our garage.

Lately I've been busy trying to make some homemade gifts for my family. And I've been working on things for my Etsy shop too. And as much as I have loved the non-stop showing of the Strawberry Shortcake movie at our house, it was time for something new.

So we pulled out one of the totes.

It's been fun to watch my girls re-discover their old toys again. And it's kept them busy.

When they get bored of these toys we'll rotate in another tote of toys. Or Christmas will come and it will be time to pack up more toys into the garage. Either way, it's been good "toy control" at our house.

And it's been fun for my girls.

Shapes

I'm so far behind. On everything I think.

Today my two year old and I worked on sorting, counting, and colors. I cut out a bunch of shapes in red and green paper.

She got so excited and named all the shapes and the colors. She even decided all on her own to make a snowman. They must be working on that at church with them because we haven't talked about snowmen at home.

They were talking on the radio this week about a study that said simple toys such a blocks are much better for kids than any electronic learning toy because it allows them to be creative. We got my two year old a Leapster 2 from Leapfrog and gave it to her a few weeks ago. Maybe we should have just stuck with blocks. Or shapes cut out of paper.

I just quit my job.

My kids are just too sick. My 1 year old woke up with a fever this morning. I can't keep finding subs for my shifts or people to take the kids until they get better. And I sure can't listen to my 1 year old scream while I'm at work because she doesn't feel well.

So... on to the next adventure. And more blogging about kid activities. Because now we're going to be spending a whole lot more time at home!

Winter colds

I think my girls picked up a combination of every cold and flu symptom there is.

I think it comes from working at a child care place and bringing my kids along. This morning I went into my kids' room and found a puddle of vomit in my one year old's bed from last night. That, along with her terrible coughing, fever, runny nose, and probably a series of other ailments she can't tell me about has made her really fussy and clingy. Sadly, my two year old just went through this same thing a few days ago.

I suspected my 1 year old was starting to take a turn for the worst yesterday. I was working with the older kids (2 and over) and my poor little one year old just cried and cried from the baby room. I know my kid and knew that it was more than a separation anxiety for her that was making her upset. The people working in the room just kept telling me that it was fine and if I came and held her that it would just make it worse because she learns that crying will get her held by her mom. It's kinda frustrating when you know your child and you know that there is something wrong. Ugh. A few times I just ignored them and held her anyway. It's my child, after all. Today while I'm at work my girls are going to be with their grandma. I'm just hoping my 1 year old gets better by tomorrow (wishful thinking, right?)

Celebrating religion

We're not Jewish.

But you wouldn't know that from our decorations this month.

We have a Christmas tree up, but somehow we missed getting a nativity scene anywhere in our house. Or pictures of Christ.

My husband is concerned that we are not emphasizing Christianity enough in our home. I'm a huge proponent of teaching a variety of ideas and world ideas, but somehow I missed our own religion.

What Christ centered activities do you guys do with your young children?

Alphabet letters

We're back!

What a week it's been. We survived Thanksgiving and a birthday- my youngest girl turned 1! What a fun time we had with relatives and shopping and celebrating.

Our lives are back to normal now or until Christmas at least. With things calming down, my husband and I decided we needed to work more on teaching our two year old the alphabet. Today I cut out letters of the alphabet on red and green paper (for Christmas of course) and put them up in our dining room.

I didn't do a professional job by any means. I figure in about a week (or a day...) it will be covered in pen, crayon, or some other kid markings. We'll do another alphabet in a few weeks I'm sure. We had another alphabet up in our dining room a few months ago but took it down when the kids did their damage to it. With these alphabets, we ask my two year old several times a day what each letter is. A lot of times she goes through what she knows of the alphabet all on her own.


This wasn't too much of a project for kids, but my two year old liked pretending like she was gluing paper and really liked pointing out the letters. Depending on your child's age, they may want to help.

Holiday vacation from blogging

Hi Everyone!

If you haven't noticed, I'm taking a Thanksgiving holiday/I started a new job vacation from blogging. I will be back next week!

Jenn 

Edible paints

I've had my craft paints out for awhile while I'm working on some projects and my two year old has wanted to play with them so badly. So I thought a new painting activity would be fun for her today. I saw this idea for edible paints and I thought I'd give it a try!

I had originally planned on sitting my two year old up at the table and letting her paint different foods, but then I thought better of it. I could just see my carpet covered in colors in a matter of about 5 minutes. So if your kitchen table doesn't have carpet under it, this would be a great painting activity at your table. I decided for the sake of cleaning up, I'd try this one out in the bathtub.

Supplies:
Ice cube tray
Toothpicks to stir
Food coloring
Milk
Paintbrush
Food to paint on such as marshmallows (in our case, we just painted on the bathtub wall)

Put milk in each compartment of the ice cube tray.

Add food coloring to the milk.

Stir the colors into the milk with the toothpicks.

Now it's time to paint.

We turned these into finger paints and painted the bathroom walls. Ideally, however, these paints can be used to paint paper, foods, and whatever else you can come up with.

And if your child eats the paint, there's nothing to worry about.

Newspaper Hats

I was lying in bed last night and a thought came to me. When I was preschool age, I thought it was so fun to make newspaper hats. We could color them and add decorations. I wonder if my two year old would like to have a newspaper hat.


First, I had to remember how to fold them. I did a little research and here's what I came up with.

This is my 11 month old. My two year old refused to put the hat on at first, but she warmed up to the idea over time.

Here's how I folded the hat:

Take one piece of newspaper and have it lying flat.

Fold it in half.

Fold both top corners toward the center fold.

Fold the bottom edge up (only the top layer of newspaper) to hold the previous folds in place.

Flip the newspaper over to the other side.

Fold both bottom corners into the center. This can be adjusted to fit the size of your kid's head.

Fold the bottom edge up to hold the folds in place.

And there you go! One thing we learned is that you may want to tape the hat together. Our hats came apart pretty easily.

Here's my daughter coloring her hat. Other decorations can be added such as stickers, colored paper, etc.

A new job for me!

So... I just got a job!

It's going to be a huge change from the jobs I'm used to. But I'm excited.

Instead of cleaning up after monkeys, rats, and other science projects, I'll be cleaning up after kids. I consider it a step up in the world. :)

I'll be working at a child care center. The best part is I can bring my kids with me. I'm looking forward to a new adventure in life and hopefully have some new ideas to post.

And we could use the money. Did I mention that my husband's car broke down last week? It was almost $800 to fix. His car isn't even worth that much. There's nothing like buying your own car back. Twice, essentially.

And I know I said I would post more kid activities this week. My sister is sending me a bunch of things she has done with her students and is still compiling that list for me so I can try them on my kids. It's been a busy week for her so new activities are coming soon! Hang in there!

Happy Veterans Day!

As the country celebrates and recognizes those who have served our country proudly, we are celebrating with my husband's day off of work. Yay!

Today we are taking our kids to Kangaroo Zoo if they ever stop throwing tantrums. I'll try to post pictures if the batteries in my camera don't die like they did when we went to the aquarium a few days ago.

Happy Veterans Day! Make sure to thank those in our military today and their families for all they give for the rest of us.

Glow sticks in balloons

This was a really easy activity/toy for my kids. And yes, it's another glow stick thing. I think I mentioned this activity in a previous post but didn't have pictures or get around to actually doing this for my kids.

I bought a ton of glow sticks on sale after Halloween at Walmart. I got them for 23 cents a package. The balloons I've had around for awhile.

All I did was activate the glow sticks and put them in balloons. Then I blew up the balloons.

This activity is probably best when it's dark outside. I had a hard time finding a dark room in our house.

The kids still loved it. It's great for an indoor/rainy/snowy day.

I need a day out!

Today I had planned to have my kids do some bath tub painting with food coloring filled ice cubes. But the last adventure with shaving cream finger paints left such a mess that I decided to not deal with a new bathroom mess today.

I think instead we are going to go to the Living Planet Aquarium (I guess both painting AND Living Planet Aquarium are possible in one day but the latter requires less clean up).

I'm in desperate need of a get-out-of-the-house day.

Shameless self promotion

One of the things I didn't want when I started this blog was to do paid promotions for things. Well... I'm not getting paid for this so I guess I'm still okay!

I joined the masses and started an etsy shop. I don't have too much in there yet but it will just be filled with my own projects and things I make when I get a spare second (this is why there isn't much in my shop yet). You can see my shop here. I do have a few more projects that are about half way done so hopefully they will be up by sometime next week.

Right now I have a few burlap Christmas wreaths listed. If any friends or family or anyone who reads my blog (the anyone category probably just goes back to the friends and family category) would like a Christmas wreath, I am offering a pretty good discount to those of you who ask (the amount of the discount depends on which wreath and the cost of materials for any customizations- but the discount will put the total to just over cost). Contact me if you are interested.

I'm also trying to get some practice with my Silhouette Cameo. I bought a bunch of womens shirts that are sizes XS-XL in creme color from DownEast Basics (I LOVE DownEast basics shirts. If you've never tried them you are missing out!). If you want a custom shirt I can make one for just the cost of the shirt- $3, plus shipping (unless you live close and then there's no shipping). I would love the practice with my machine.

Anyway, enough shameless self promotion. We'll get back to kid stuff now. Thanks for reading through all this. :)

Jenn

Bath tub finger paints

I saw this on the internet somewhere and it looked like so much fun!

All you need is an old muffin tin, shaving cream, and food coloring.

We have well used muffin tins at our house :)

I just added a little bit of shaving cream to each muffin tin and then mixed it with a few drops of food coloring. A little shaving cream can go a long way so you don't need to use too much.

Let your kids paint away in the bath.

One downside to this activity I found was that because it's shaving cream, it doesn't last that long before you have to refill the muffin tins. Also, my kids managed to turn the bathroom into one of the biggest messes I've ever seen. And my 11 month old ate more shaving cream than I care to admit. Oops.

Potty training continues

Life has been so busy for us and so crazy lately. I have about 30 projects in my head I want to write about but I have had so much going on lately I haven't gotten to it. Do you ever get to the point where you have so much to do you just feel like you don't get anything done because it's all so overwhelming? Ugh... I'm there.

Anyway, we are having more success with potty training. A few tricks we've learned that might help any future potty training parents:

Don't let your child tell you they don't want to go to the bathroom. It's not an option. Even if they don't go, they need to sit there. Eventually one of the times they sit there, they will go.

Stick with it. I called my husband after the first four hours or so wanting to quit. It's so much effort (especially with a younger one around who still needs lots of my energy). But keep going and don't quit. You will make progress. I think this is where we have gone wrong in the past. I made zero progress the first day. None. Day two was a little better and today was a little better than that. Hopefully we're getting somewhere.

One of my students (yes, I was attempting potty training with this same child even back then...) told me one time to not bother buying pull-ups. We have agreed with this advice for a few reasons. First, they are so much like a diaper that my kid just used them like a diaper. Second, for cost reasons, they are expensive as far as diapers go. Third, I wanted her to learn what it felt like to be wet and to not want to be wet anymore. Pull-ups are just so much like diapers that the few times we tried them she just didn't have a problem using them as diapers and as a result, they were just a waste of money.

We resorted to rewarding with candy (I never wanted to be one of those parents who rewarded their kid with food. I'm just imagining all the eating issues my kids are going to have in the future). The star sticker chart just wasn't that effective so we had to do something. And well... the candy is working.

Just as a parenting tip- make sure you have LOTS of clean underwear for your child to change into. You're going to need them.

I have heard you can potty train a baby as young as 18 months. My 11 month old is going to start this process early (not now... at 18 months)- especially since she has been walking since she was 9 months old. I'm hoping she will be far enough along developmentally at 18 months to learn the process early!

As far as cloth diapers on my eleven month old goes, it's working out great so far. I didn't mind them too much when I used them the first time around but I think I forgot why I liked them and had used them for so long. We use BumGenius and Fuzzi Bunz brand cloth diapers so they are very parent friendly. Both my kids wear a size 4 disposable diaper and they cost between 15-25 cents a diaper on Amazon (I haven't calculated out the price for them in a store for awhile). I'm realizing how much money we are saving by going back to our old cloth diapers.  Usually between 4-8 diapers per kid per day times 20 cents per diaper results in a few dollars a day in savings. That's a lot of money for us right now. We didn't even have to buy special detergent since we still had the stuff around from cloth diapering earlier.

Anyway, sorry for the long potty training posts. I've read a ton about potty training and when I was teaching I had talked to several of my students about how they potty trained their kids (I had lots of parents in my classes). I got some great advice from people and hopefully some of this advice along with my own crazy experience will help others who are venturing out into the world of potty training.

I promise to have some fun activity posts coming this week! I have some fun ones I am getting prepared.

The dreaded potty training

We have been trying to potty train my two year old since before she was 2. It's been an off and on again effort on our part. But I decided today is the day!

A few things we're going to try are:

*Pink underwear. She LOVES pink. I let her pick out which pair she has on. We have tried Pull-ups but she just uses them like a diaper. They didn't do any good at all.
*A new potty chart. She had an old one and I think it got less exciting for her because it had a lot of star stickers on it. We started over with a new one today. A pink one, of course.
*I'm setting the timer for every 15 minutes. When the timer goes off, she WILL sit on the potty whether she has to go or not.
*Lots of praise, no getting angry. We generally do this anyway, but an extra effort on the praising might make a difference.
*I'm making sure she is always wearing pants so she can feel the wetness. And this is also to protect my carpets. We do have Woolite pet urine eliminator just in case.
*Watching a potty video. We used to have Potty Power but she took the DVD and drug it across our tile floor. Now the DVD player won't play the DVD. Luckily we have a free potty training DVD we got from Pull ups.

In other news at our house on a diapers related note, we are switching our 11 month old to cloth diapers. We used to cloth diaper our two year old until she got horrible rashes we couldn't get rid of for months. We are hoping to have better luck with the 11 month old.

Any tips that have worked at your house for potty training? I'm starting to wonder if it's at all possible for my kid to potty train.

Bread machine bread

One thing most people don't know about me is that I can't get bread to rise. It's terrible! I tried different flour, yeast, etc. I had such high hopes for myself.

Then my mom gave me a bread machine. Now we hardly ever buy bread at the store. Homemade bread is cheaper and healthier. It doesn't have any artificial additives or preservatives.

Last night I made a recipe that came in the manual for the bread machine. Usually I make whole wheat bread but I had just used all the butter in our house on another recipe so I gave this one a try. It turned out so good! It's called Kimmy's French Countryside Bread.

11-12 oz water
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 Tbsp oil
4 cups bread flour
1 Tbsp sugar
2 tsp. active dry yeast

Add all the ingredients to the bread machine in order from the list. Select the French setting and the crust setting to medium. Push start. The only downside is that the French bread setting, on my bread machine at least, takes 3 hours and 50 minutes.

This bread would work great for garlic toast. We just ate it plain.

Yum.

Coffee Filter Art

Once again, my sister has some great ideas for kids.

This is an activity she did with her students and they loved it. Well... my two year old loved it too.

What you need:

Markers
Coffee filters
Spray bottle of water (not included in picture)

I put down some plastic on our table because the ink bleeds through the coffee filters.

I let her draw in all the colors she wanted for as long as she wanted. My two year old had a great time doing this.

When she was done, we sprayed the coffee filters with water and watched the colors run.

If you want to make this an art lesson, you can talk about what happens when the colors mix or why the colors change when they mix.

When you are done, you can punch a hole in them and hang these up for display. We have enough stuff displayed at our house so we didn't do that but it would be fun for a play room or a kid's room.

Reversible puzzle

I saw a tutorial on how to make the cutest Halloween puzzles on one of my favorite blogs, Made. This is the picture from that blog on how they turned out.

All you do is spray paint both sides of popsicle sticks and draw your design on them with permanent marker once they are dry.

I think this are ADORABLE. I would have made my own version except whenever my kids get popsicle sticks they shove them in the vents of our gas fireplace. Both my kids do that. They leave no popsicle stick behind- they make sure they are all in there.

Maybe in a few years we'll do our own version of these reversible puzzles.

Happy Halloween!

Halloween thoughts

Halloween is coming!

I think we are all aware of this. There are a few concerns about this holiday I have as a parent.

1) Too much candy

2) Safety during trick or treating. We will only be trick or treating to a few friend's houses and to church this year. And probably for as many years as we can get away with.

3) Suggestive costumes. Luckily my kids are a bit young to be concerned about this one just yet.

That leaves concern #1, too much candy.

I used to work for a lady who had a "Halloween fairy" for her daughter. After trick or treating, her daughter had to leave all her candy on the fireplace the night of Halloween and that night the Halloween fairy would come and take the candy in exchange for a doll or toy. The next day she brought all the candy to work for everyone to eat in the break room.

There are places that will also buy Halloween candy from kids. If you are in Salt Lake, this place buys Halloween candy from kids and sends it to the troops overseas. Check in your area to see if there is a place that will buy Halloween candy from your kids.

There's always the idea that happens at our house where the adults eat most of the candy. Although this is not preferred.

We will see what the tradition ends up being at our house in the next few years.


Does anyone have any good Halloween traditions to avoid candy overload?

Owl and the star

A few people have asked where the name for this blog came from.

Well... it's from my two year old's favorite youtube video.

It's made by a school in Japan that teaches English called Super Simple Learning. They have some other great videos that my two year old loves as well including 5 Little Monkeys, Hickory Dickory Dock, Row Row Row Your Boat, BINGO, The Alphabet Song, and several more.

Another great thing is that they have some really good free resources for teaching kids on their blog and website. They also sell some really great educational DVDs for teaching and they also sell tons of songs on CDs. My kids would love their CDs but since they ship out of Japan, they are expensive! You can download the CD for a little bit less so maybe someday we will do that (still expensive).

I would love to start a preschool someday (I probably won't get around to it until my kids are way past preschool age) but if/when I do, I would use their materials. They do a really great job with them.

So there you go. There's my endorsement of my children's favorite learning English company.

My new toy

I'm so excited. For my birthday, I got this:

(This picture is from the Silhouette Cameo website). 

It's pretty much a fancy paper cutter. I did a lot of research on it and it helps you make some really cool stuff. I got it on Saturday but today was my first chance to play with it. Here's what I made today:

This machine's software helped me design the picture and then the machine cut out a stencil for me. It took some trial and error but my friend Harmony watched my two year old for me today so I could get going. At the end of the day she was gifted the shirt because she won't let me pay her for babysitting.

Thanks Mom & Dad for this birthday gift. I'm having lots of fun with it already!

Butternut Squash Soup

I'm not a huge fan of fall recipes. That mostly comes down to the fact that I don't like pumpkin. So when all fall foods are pumpkin spice this and pumpkin squash blah blah yuck! I just don't like the taste of pumpkin.

Well I saw this recipe and thought I would give it a try. To be honest I have NEVER cooked with butternut squash before. In fact, before making this, I didn't even know what butternut squash tasted like. It was very unfortunate for me to learn that it in fact tastes like pumpkin.

I did have hope for this recipe though, because they make it at The Chef's Table. Where I went to college, if you dated someone with money, they took you to The Chef's Table. I never dated anyone with money so I've never been there. But for the sake of the monetarily elite, I thought I'd make this and pretend I have eaten at The Chef's Table.

2 Tbsp. Vegetable Oil <- I used canola oil
2 Medium Onions, Small Dice
1 Butternut Squash, Peeled
2 Parsnips, Peeled
¼ Cup Maple Syrup- I used fake maple syrup with spenda in order not to send my husband's blood sugar through the roof (he has juvenile diabetes)
1 Cup Chicken Stock or Vegetable Stock
½ Cup Heavy Whipping Cream- I substituted this with a mixture of milk and butter. I found online somewhere someone had said it works as a good substitute. I probably should have used the real stuff.
Salt and Pepper, to taste
Nutmeg to taste
fresh ground Mace, to taste <- I couldn't find Mace at my grocery store (I didn't look that hard but I did look for a good 5 or so minutes) so I didn't add any to my soup

Heat oven to 350 degrees
Mix Butternut Squash & Parsnips with 2 Tablespoons of Vegetable Oil and Maple Syrup Place on Baking Sheet
Roast until soft, About 30 Minutes
Remove from heat and set aside

Heat 3 Tablespoons oil in a large soup pot
Add Onions and Cook until translucent
Add Cooked squash and parsnips to onions
Add Chicken Stock
Bring to a Simmer and Allow to Simmer for 15 Minutes
Add Whipping Cream, season to taste
Blend to Desired Consistency in a Blender (I used a food processor). The Smoother the Better for this Soup
Adjust Seasoning with Salt and Pepper, Nutmeg and Mace

Ok, the first challenge was peeling that butternut squash. So it's easier than I had prepared myself for but it took some time. It's like peeling a huge, tough potato.  Then taking the seeds out of the middle reminded me of gutting a pumpkin.

Other than peeling the butternut squash, this recipe was not too complicated. It did take some time, though. And when my husband walked in from work he asked what we were having for dinner, I said "Butternut squash soup." He made this disgusted face and started looking through the mail. We had a few words after that, as both kids were at that time and had been for the last hour or two, standing at my ankles screaming.

The results. Well... it looked like orange mashed potatoes. In fact, I tried to get a good picture of it for this blog and I couldn't get it to look very appetizing. As far as the taste... well... if I liked pumpkins I'm sure this would have been a really good soup. Both my husband and I judged it as a "ehhhhh...." meal. Which means for all the effort it took to peel that butternut squash, I probably won't cook anything with a butternut squash again.

My kids' favorite books

I found my ten month old playing with these books this morning and thought I would write a little bit about them. They are by far both my kids' favorite. I'm guessing the series is called Funny Faces but I could be wrong about that. The ones from the series that we have are Chirpy Chick, Alien Al, and Rusty Robot.

There are several books in this series but we just have a few of them. We got them at TJ Maxx or Ross, I can't remember exactly which one. Either way, we didn't pay full price for them.

I think the first thing they like is that the books are board books and that they are big. Each book also has the big eyes that move (see picture) and different textures. In the picture above, the diaper on the baby robot is a soft fabric. On the Chirpy Chick book, the fur is soft. Below, the spots on the aliens are textured.

The part of these books that my two year old loves the most is the very last page. When you turn the page to get to that last page, it lights up and makes a noise that relates to the story on that page.

On this page when you open it, the lights on the tractor light up and it makes a tractor noise.

On this page, the disco lights light up and disco music plays.

These books will be a favorite at our house for years to come.

Kids are great

I had to share this story from church last week. Hopefully there will be no repeats this upcoming Sunday.

My two year old is not potty training. I wish she was. We try... but I have a feeling she will be in diapers for the next 10 years of her life at the rate we are going.

Well last Sunday my two year old was happily sitting on her chair and she hopped off it and babbled something I didn't quite understand. Then she grabbed a wipe and started wiping down her chair. I nudged my husband and pointed out how cute it was that she was cleaning her chair.

Pretty soon we hear the word pee mixed up in a bunch of babble we didn't understand.

My husband leaned over and said, "I think she just peed on the chair."

I looked over and there was a huge puddle on the floor! Any pee she hadn't wiped up had rolled off the chair and was sitting in a nice puddle by her feet.

I don't know how she did it, but she had peed out the side of her diaper and (luckily) missed her dress entirely.

I'm just SO GLAD we didn't sit in the padded seats that week. What a mess that would have been.

Treasure bowl

This activity was made for my ten month old but works for older toddlers too.

I gathered a bunch of random things from around my house with different colors and textures and put them in a bowl. I tried to put some new things in the bowl that she hadn't seen before. However, my kids are into everything in our house so they've seen most of these things before. There were a few objects that were new, such as the duck and the shaped ice cube tray.

This is supposed to give the child time to learn about different things. According to my How To Raise An Amazing Child book, they may stay interested for up to a half an hour.

Well... I think if I would have put all new things in the bowl it would have worked for longer. But both my kids ended up liking this to some extent. The only downside was that the contents of the bowl ended up all over my living room floor in just a short period of time.

Next time I do this I will get all new things to go in the bowl. Although I'm not sure I have enough kid-safe things in my house that my kids haven't been into.

Bowls and a bell

I just got this new book from Amazon. It's called How To Raise An Amazing Child The Montessori Way by Tim Seldin. It got really high reviews so I thought I'd give it a try.

Well I can see why people liked it. It has a ton of ideas of things to do with your kids that are easy and that will help them learn. So... if you don't want to go get the book, my next several posts will be activities I found in the book. One thing I like is that it has activities for very young babies which is good for me because I struggle to find games and activity things for my ten month old.

Anyway, here was one idea for my two year old. The book suggests filling a bowl with kidney beans and giving them a spoon. We didn't have kidney beans so I used dice. I also gave her two cups to move the dice into.

This activity kept her busy and interested for quite awhile. She had so much fun moving the dice around between the bowl and the cups and listening to the noise the dice made against the bowl.

As an activity for my ten month old, the book suggests giving the child at that age a bell and letting them play with it. Well... that activity was less successful.

It lasted about 30 seconds, and the last 20 of those 30 seconds the bell spent in her mouth.

After she put it down, my two year old came over and had the thing in pieces. I didn't even know the bell came apart. Apparently it does.

Coloring on new surfaces

I saw this on another blog, I think it was here. Anyway, it was a success with my two year old.

This was to introduce new textures and coloring possibilities for her. I covered a box with foil and let her color on the foil. It's actually pretty interesting.

I thought it was fun, but I guess it wasn't really for me, was it...