Monday, September 30, 2013

Pumpkin Picks

I paired some pumpkin picks with floral foam and had an instant fine motor skills activity. Princess LOVED this and put them in and out of the foam several times.

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Double Trouble

Do these two think they are slick playing with Daddy's video games?
 
Now the real question: Why do we still have an old school Nintendo?

Fishing (Sort Of)

We are still on F week and even though we are on a hiatus, we did an activity today. It is finally not so hot outside, so we were ready to get outdoors!!!!
 
We made a fish pond with a bin and some plastic fish and frogs. We added some plants and rocks from the yard just to make it more special. I also had a fish net that I got at Target on clearance...
 
 
 
And we went fishing:
 
 
Son helped! 
 
He is crawling now and can pull up to a stand. Its only a matter of time until the babies are running in two different directions. 
 
 
Something funny is going on here:
 
 
As always, The Princess finds something to wear as a hat:
 
 
She enjoyed takingthe water out of the "pond" and dumping it:
 
 
And then she went for a swim:
 
 
My handsome little guy (and a "dead" fish):
 

Friday, September 13, 2013

Chick-Fil-A Backstage Tour

Today we toured Chick-Fil-A. It was so fun and we learned a lot.

* All their food is fresh. None frozen.
* Been voted best drive thru in fast food for 7 years.
* They were the first restaurant in malls.

Princess made her own ice cream cone with the store owner. We went into the kitchen and got to see how it all works.

You can call Chick-Fil-A and request a backstage tour too!

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Quantity

Princess is learning quantity. We have a huge basket of penguins and we use them with quantity cards. The cards have big dots on them ranging from 1 to 10. By placing 1 penguin on 1 dot, Princess learns that numbers have value.

This will show her that when we count we are not just saying 1, 2, 3.... but that those numbers have meaning.

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Bath Mat Marbles

Transferring flat marbles onto a bath mat flipped upside down takes a steady hand and concentration!

Princess was more interested in how many she could squeeze into one hand than anything else...but this exercise was fun and held her attention for a few minutes, which is huge considering she didn't like any other activities I put out for her today.

Son just took my phone and typed this----- xiXot,  oy7.

Guess that means "hello".

Monday, September 9, 2013

Act of Kindness- Letter E

Last week we started this act of kindness, but couldn't finish it until today.

I thought of 3 things pertaining to the letter E:

Encouragement
Envelope
Elderly

So we decided to mail a small package to our 2 great-grandmothers. We always get mail from them and I know they must get lonely sometimes.

Since they don't use the internet, we printed out a bunch of photos from Humble Hearts blog and wrote a letter explaining what we do during the day. Then Princess colored each of them a picture and decorated the pictures with stickers.

After all that...we went to the Post Office.  I LOVE the post office! I love the way it smells and how old some of the buildings are. I adore the P.O. boxes too. I have seen some old P.O. box doors for sale on Ebay and I have contemplated buying one, but they are like 30 bucks and I keep changing my mind.

So here it is:

Thursday, September 5, 2013

Object Matching

I put out a basket of 15 different pairs of objects. Princess picks an object out of the basket and places it on the table. I ask her what the name of the object is and wait to see if she can tell me the name. If she doesn't know I tell her and ask her to say it back.

Sometimes she immediately goes in the basket to find a match and other times she just keeps putting items on the table until she sees a duplicate.

Gizmo likes this activity too....

Once this becomes too easy, there are lots of extension activities to go with the objects:

You could place objects in a bag and tell your child to pull out a certain item, like a feather or an animal.

You could make laminated cards with the names of the objects and match those.

You could alphabetize the objects.

You could make "go together" cards. If you have a little dog, you could have a card to match it with dog food or if you have a car, you could have a matching card with a photo of a garage.

There are a few items in this set that Princess has been carrying around the house. Her favorite are the $100 bill erasers.

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Serving Lunch

Today Princess prepared her own lunch (sort of). Here she is pouring a glass of juice:
 

 
 
 
 Enjoying her juice:
 
 
Now here she is slicing a hot dog with her hot dog slicer found here :
 
  Eating her hot dog after a shirt change. The enjoying of the juice was a bit messy.