Crocheted Cords

So, somewhere I saw these great crocheted cords as part of a group of Waldorf-style toys. I am totally addicted to crocheting, and whipped a couple of these up for M. He LOVES them, and has had so much fun with them. A lot more fun than I imagined he would have!

We’ve played falling-over-laughing tug of war with these about a million times. He loves for me to make one into a ball or “butterfly” (see pic above) and he will throw it at targets. Sometimes we tie them onto things and he does this: That’s him in midair. :) Jumping over the rope is a lot of fun! He also tries to lasso me sometimes. Basically he just throws the whole rope at me and cracks himself up. :)

They’ve been a great addition to his play; I plan to make more! They are super-simple to make, if you crochet. Just take several strands of yarn – I used 4 strands of worsted weight – and, holding them together, crochet a chain to your desired length with a large hook (I used an M I think). Leave the strands on either end, no need to weave loose ends in!

Have a beautiful day! :)

The Art Box – Jan. 18, 2010

In the Art Box last week: tempera paints (in the pill box), scrapbook scissors (of course!), a jar of foam stickers, glue, regular stickers, a baggie of scrap paper, construction paper, newsprint, paint roller and brushes, also a little wooden crocodile and paints.

M has really enjoyed painting on new surfaces lately – foil, plaster, wood. I bought the wooden crocodile and paints at Michael’s for $1.00. This, of course, was the first thing he wanted to do when he saw his art box. He really concentrated on all the little parts. Then he painted its tummy red. :)

He has a few random pieces of wood (sanded smooth) from Daddy’s stash, and keeps them in with his building blocks. So he went and grabbed one and painted it. :)

Next, he complained because there “isn’t much stuff in here”… I put less in his box on purpose thinking it would spur his creativity a bit more. He did decide to make a collage, something he used to love doing but hasn’t been interested in lately.

Then he painted with the little paint roller – he loves to paint with red and then paint white over it and watch it turn pink: Doesn’t that look like a heart in the center?

We spent some time working on a sticker collage to go with a Bible story (more on that in another post), and had so much fun we brought our enormous jar of foam stickers and our living room looked like this for a while: He really enjoyed these stickers for some reason. Here’s one of many finished sticker collages (I know, it’s really flower-y, ha ha): Note the cow jumping over the moon. ;)

And of course he did some cutting. This kid LOVES to cut with scissors! He told me this was an alligator :)… I can kind of see it. ;)

Link your kids’ art up below! Have a beautiful day! :)

Tot School – January 17, 2010

M is 40 months old. 

Yay!  We’re back!  As nice as it was to not write up the TS posts for the past few weeks, it’s also very nice to be back in our groove. 

So, here’s what we’ve been up to…

Math Skills:

I put together a little *math box* (well, in our case a math coffee can) like the one here that my friend Natalie at Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns put together for her daughter.  It was full of craft sticks and various bottle lids.  I even threw in some little cards with shapes on them.  He was totally interested in this as it sat on his shelves, yet… he wasn’t sure what to do with it.  So, I showed him how to make shapes with them and suggested a few other things (patterns, letters).   And, I kid you not, the kid said to me, “But can’t I just paint them, Mommy??”   I’m thinking this says a lot about who he is. :) 

We also did some fun number stamping with a grid and a number cube:   I wrote the numbers 1 to 6 randomly on the grid (20 spaces – you can print one here), then using a variety of stamps (the pencil top kind) we rolled the die and then stamped out all of the 2’s or whatever number we got.  We took turns with this to make it more like a game, because M is all about games lately.  He had to help me find the right numbers quite a bit. ;)

We also did some snowflake counting with clothespins and a piece of yarn: I don’t know if you can see clearly in the photo, but we had 5 snowflakes with numerals on them which we clipped in sequence onto the yarn.  Then we had snowflakes with dots on them which we had to match to the correct number and also clip on.  M really, really enjoyed this.  Anything to do with clothespins or paper clips is sure to be a hit around here lately!  The snowflakes were found here.  I colored them with colored pencils to make them pretty. :)

We also practiced counting with some linking monkeys: This was a great introduction to addition!

 

Shapes and Colors:

M did great with this little activity.  I found this pattern block mat here; it has 4 hexagons in different colors.  In order to do this M had to figure out how to make the red hexagon with his trapezoid blocks, the orange one with triangles, and the blue one with diamonds...  a very interesting activity!

 

M also enjoyed his triangle collage page:

 

I bought these fun color paddles with a little leftover Christmas money.  They were from Oriental Trading. M had a lot of fun walking around and looking through them at various things.We also used them in a window to mix colors by placing one in front of another.  There has to be a ton of things we can do with these.  However, I’m really coming up with blanks.  If you have any ideas, share them!!

 

Literacy Skills:

M worked on his letter matching file folder game from here.  This matches upper and lower case letters.

 

We did a letter stamping game similar to the number stamping one mentioned above.  With this one we used a printout from here, and some upper and lower case cards (more on these cards in an upcoming post!) to turn over… we focused on just Tt, Ff, and Aa and stamped them out.

 

M did his Bob the Builder name puzzles with glass beads: He continues to love these!

 

Sorting:

Our theme for this month has been winter and snow (hence the snowflake activities), and we sorted our seasonal clip art onto colored paper.  M did great with this, he’s really got his seasons down. 

Fine Motor Skills:

I have to say, gross and fine motor skill work is what M enjoys most… I have to keep that in mind and incorporate it into other areas, like using fine motor skills to clip numbered snowflakes, etc. 

Another little thing I ordered from Oriental Trading was this awesome Shapes Hammering set.  M loves hammering the little nails into the corkboard and he’s made several pretty neat designs with the shapes.  Most often he pretends he is building a house. :)  He’s played with this every day since I put it out for him.

He laced together two foam mitten shapes:

 

He received this great fire truck puzzle for Christmas and did it 5 times the first day.  It has 46 pieces and has an emergency scene on the other side.  He LOVES this puzzle!

 

I put together a little push pin activity for him, which he also really loved!  We had some little letter cards left from our toothpick poke activity which has become a little boring for him, so he did those first, then I added in some little shapes and drawings for him to outline with the push pins. He really enjoyed this and it was a great workout for those little fingers!  I think I first saw this at The Shafer Family blog.

 

Geography:

We’ve only recently been talking about maps and the world, our country, state, etc.   M is very interested, and enjoyed doing this puzzle (Target Dollar Spot!) of the U.S. Ha – you can see this picture is from some time ago – our Christmas light patterns are in the background! ;)

 

Gross Motor Activities:

M and Daddy and I all ice skated on wax paper in our living room: This is so much fun!  We first did it at our Nature Center weekly class, and it never gets old!

We did our movement cards too; they are always fun.  I’ve found that if M is in a bad mood or whiny or whatever (sigh), if I can think of an activity that has a lot of gross motor movement it helps tremendously.  He turns back into himself.  I’m just not good with all this “boy stuff”, hee hee.  I was a sit quietly and play with my dolls kind of girl.  But, I’m learning!!

 

Music:

M inherited a small keyboard from an older cousin and has been playing it non-stop: It plays a couple of demo tunes by itself and has 5 different rhythms to choose from.  M loves to play these rhythms and make them faster or slower.  It comes close to driving me up a wall sometimes, but I’m glad he’s learning about rhythm somewhere, because he sure isn’t going to get it from me or his dad! ;)

 

Sensory:

We’ve been using some oatmeal (in the cupboard for over a year) in our sensory tub lately.  After seeing oatmeal in a sensory tub at April Flowers, I decided to do it too! M enjoyed playing with his farm animals in it:

And because he loves to play with my seashells I hid them in there one day – 20 of them.  I have him a grid with 20 spaces and he spent a long time looking for all of them.

 

Creative Play:

M also inherited this remote control Scrambler (a Bob the Builder truck) from the same cousin that gave him the “piano”.  Well, he has pretty much played non-stop with Scrambler since we brought it home.  Here he is with all of his puppets and some stuffed animals strung out on the floor… trying to get Scrambler to run over them all. :)  Yep, that’s my sweet boy running over animals with a 4 wheeler. ;)

For more Tot School posts, go here!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Books of the Week – Jan. 16, 2010

We’ve become HUGE fans of Daniel Kirk’s books in the past few weeks.  I could go on and on about his books with music, but hopefully they will make it into a post of their own sometime soon.  For now, I’ll share two of his books that we’ve been reading this week.
First, Snow Family:This is such a sweet book!  A group of snow children are running around on their own, getting into trouble and making mischief.  Little Jacob (a real boy) has a very loving mom and dad.  When he meets the snow children and plays with them one afternoon he notices missing carrot noses, lost scarves, and that kind of thing and thinks the snow children need someone to care for them.  After his parents find him hiding in a tree because a sleepy bear was woken by the little snow stinkers (the mother has tears in her eyes as she snuggles him close – I could totally relate), Jacob decides to make snow parents for the little snow children.   What a good reminder that our little ones, even when they are a bit wild, need our comfort and care!

Next, Library Mouse:
This is a fun book to read and lets children know anyone can be an author.  The little library mouse loves to read and loves to write.  He begins writing books and leaving them on the library shelves for others to read.  When the librarians decide to have a “meet the author” day, the little mouse sets up a box for the children to look in to meet the author.  At the bottom of the box is a mirror. :)  Cute, no?  I really enjoyed this book and so did M!
For more book reviews, check out Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns!
Have a beautiful day! :)

Tot School Re-Organization

I’ve been taking a break from Tot School posts the last few weeks, and honestly it’s felt good.  So good in fact, that I’ve been wondering if I should start them up again.  And then, I wonder what would be the point of my blog if I didn’t write about what we do in Tot School?  And then I re-read a lot of comments from previous TS posts and, well, I have to say comment-love is a powerful drug. ;) 

Do your school re-cap posts each week take you forever  to write??  I’ve saved a tremendous amount of energy and time by not writing these posts… it’s really amazing actually.   Maybe it’s just me, but one TS post will take me an entire evening to write.  All the photo editing, photo organizing, linking to other sites, blah blah blah.  If you have any tips on making this simpler, I’m all ears!  Maybe it’s just that I’m a born talker, er rambler. :)

I am in the middle of assessing and re-thinking how we spend our TS time and how I have it organized.  This post will most likely be a lot of thinking out loud and more rambling.  So, bear with me.  :) 

During my pre-Christmas blog break I created a “master list” spreadsheet of all our school items – anything we have that we use for school.  I tagged each item with a subject or skill area (or two), added notes, and a check  box to indicate whether or not it is an activity that M can do independently.  (Whether or not it’s something he enjoys doing independently is another matter altogether!)

So, here’s our new plan…

I’m going to set out 5 to 7 independent or minimal-mama-involvement activities for him each week, changing a few of them up during the week as he finishes the original ones (ie. cut and paste sheets).   Many of these will be things like his Melissa and Doug toys, fine motor skill projects, etc. 

We also re-organized his space with the shelving.  The little cupboard on the lower right houses all our games now, and we are having many fun evenings as a family because of this easy access.  There are matching games, homemade games, card games, board games, dominoes, bingo, Barrel of Monkeys… just lots of fun stuff! :)  The top of the right side holds M’s ABC book, his ABC lapbooks, all our flannelboard sets, a file folder with activities related to our current theme, and our current sensory bin (not all of this is in the pic, sorry).

On the left side, on the top are all his musical instruments (guitar to the side) and our songs and poems binder.

Then, on the shelves below this are his current activities.  I will most likely keep the pipecleaner letters and sand tray on there all the time.  Other than that, the activities on the shelves will be featured on my weekly TS post.  However, because these are things that M will be doing on his own mostly, photos will pretty much be hit or miss.  I’ll try to take pictures of the actual activities, but catching him doing it is another matter.

While we are talking about taking photos I should mention that I’ve decided to always ask M’s permission to take a picture of him doing our school things.  I think the poor kid feels a little pressured sometimes, or less important than the blog, when I’m constantly snapping pictures.  I’ve thought about this and I have to say I would not want someone taking my picture all the time as I’m trying to learn something new.  It’s so easy to forget to respect the fact that kids are little people with feelings too.  So, I’m working hard on this, and you may end up seeing fewer pics of M in my posts.

I’m also going to bring back our one morning a week that we spend about 1/2 hour together “doing” school.  We both used to love this time together.  But M was asking to “do school” all the time!  Hence, the activity shelves.  Yet, it’s not fair to M to set things out on the shelves for us to do together and then not find the time (right now!) to do them; not to mention it’s creating stress for me, what with running around trying to get chores done so I can do these things with M.

The other days I’m going to focus our time together on reading, music, sensory activities, baking, free-playing, art, and our fun science experiments.  Many of these will most likely have their own post if I post about them, and I’m not sure I’ll include them in my TS posts.  It would just be one more thing to link up to. 

We continue to enjoy our calendar and Bible Story time together every morning as well as our quick “morning message”, and I want to make our Bible story activities  a priority over any other schoolwork each week.  So if I have a craft or game or whatever, planned to go along with a Bible story we’ve read, and we only have 20 minutes that week to do school together, then that’s what we’ll end up doing!

Whew.  Did I cover everything I want to do?  This is one of those posts that are mainly for me – so I can go back and read about exactly what I want to do and remember my priorities!  Thanks for hanging on to the end. :)  Any suggestions for making things simpler are always welcome!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Science Experiment #1

Our first experiment in our fun science kit was a basic introduction of acids and bases, called “Dancing Powders”.

We set up our cups and poured water into one of them. We scooped 2 ml of citric acid into the other cup, then added 2 ml of baking soda in and mixed the powders together. M ready to go, but patiently waiting for Mama to take a picture.

Then M used the scoop to add a small amount of water to the powders:

Sure enough, they danced! Everything got all bubbly and we talked about how we heard fizzy sounds and pop! pop!

I realized all over again how amazing simple things are when seen through a child’s eyes.

He continued scooping and pouring the water, and had the time of his life with this simple experiment. At 3, it doesn’t need to get any more complicated than this! :) He was intrigued for well over 45 minutes. We repeated this experiment no less than 6 times!! (“Again! Again!”) We even tasted the citric acid and talked about how it tastes like lemons. Yum for me, not so much for M.

Eventually it turned into this: M dumped everything into the tray (an old metal pan) and stuck both hands in. :) The bubbles formed around his fingers. We tasted this and it tasted salty. We talked about gases and how the bubbles were releasing the same kind of air that we make when we breathe out. M was fascinated with this idea and asked about a million questions. Whew.

The baking soda, citric acid, cups, and scoop were provided in the kit. It was a wonderful experiment and experience!

For more science activities, visit Adventures in Mommydom!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Science Experiments – ooh! ahh!

M received this great Christmas gift from an aunt and uncle: (Mind Blowing Science is one of many science kits made by Scientific Explorer, a division of Elmer)

This is an awesome science kit with everything you need included, except some basics like water, a tray, etc. It has a list of experiments with detailed instructions for each one. The neat thing about this is that the experiments build off of one another and go from pretty simple to super-cool! :) It’s best to go in order so what was learned in experiment #1 can be further explored in #2 and so on.

We are having so much fun with this, and M is really, really into it. In recent weeks I’ve been thinking about adding more science to our school time, so this came at the perfect time! I’ve decided to start posting each experiment, one per week. Stay tuned… :)

Have a beautiful day! :)

The Art Box – Jan. 11, 2010

 

 In the Art Box last week:  new truck stamps, glitter glue, fun scrapbook scissors (scallop and zig-zag), glitter snowflake stickers, sports stickers, construction paper and newsprint, watercolor paints, scrap paper and fun foam.

M was really into his stamps and stickers this time around and made me several stamp and sticker collages; here’s a couple: 

 

He painted with his watercolors a little bit…

Interestingly, he was not so much into painting last week.  Maybe he was still going through some sort of paint-with-water coloring book withdrawal??  I have a feeling any other kind of painting will not measure up to the paint-with-water book experience for a while.  Grrr…

 

Hands down, his favorite was cutting with my scrapbook scissors (I make sure they aren’t sharp, testing them on my own fingers!).  He cut piles upon piles of paper but was not interested in doing anything with it, except adding to the pile.  His favorite thing to cut?  Fun foam of course!  I have to admit I do enjoy cutting it too – scissors just glide through it, like butter! :)  So, does anyone need a box of teeny-tiny pieces of foam and various other papers?  Anyone?  Or a kid with a goofy smile? :)

Oh wait, I’m keeping him! 

Link up your kid’s self-directed artwork below - I love seeing them!

Have a beautiful day! :)