Share It Saturday #7 and Our Week In Review

Happy Weekend Everyone!
We are loving all of the links being shared by so many creative bloggers.  It is so much fun to scroll through the Share It Saturday post for an idea and put it to use in our home.  We love seeing the things you have been doing.
Each week has brought a record number of contributors and we are so excited to be part of this link up party that has grown week to week. 
Before we get to our favorite links from the week, we’ll share a little bit about our week… 
1. We had a super nice day this week and were able to get outside to enjoy the sunshine.  Little Guy had his first experience with finding shapes in the clouds.  He thought it was pretty cool to see a fire breathing dragon.  (It DOES look a lot like a dragon, right???)
2.  We had some fun playing in the dirt.  AWESOME fun for February!!
3./4. Big Sister has the most creative play ideas…she comes up with pretend play scenarios including everything from Lifeguard to Doctor-Police Girl (first she directs traffic in the living room, and when the “light” turns red, she has a critical patient with a fever, requiring an overnight stay in her baby doll hospital.
This week she’s been playing Taxes!  She watched my husband do our taxes and then once the table was cleared, sorted out piles of old bills and junk mail.  I loved hearing her talk on her play phone (“sorry, I can’t talk right now…I have to do my taxes”).  She had a ball with a sheet of label stickers.  She even found a real check that had been misfiled.  Woo Hoo, Found Money! Go Big Sister.
5. I set up this little invitation to read one evening while I was (attempting) to make dinner.  A blanket was spread out on the living room floor with piles of books and couch cushions.  The real draw though, was the oyster crackers in plastic goblets. Wow, that was an easy dinner prep 🙂
((Edited to add: Ok, I just realized it sounds like they had oyster crackers for dinner LOL! Although I think they would be in heaven with a dinner like that, they really did have a real dinner after the cracker snack 🙂 Totally recommend putting some crackers in a cup so Mom can defrost some chicken. HAHA!
And Now onto the Good Stuff…
 These are our favorites from last week.
Smile Like You Mean It Shares with us a Sticky Board Toddler Activity.  This looks like a ton of FUN!
Trillium Blog shows us quite a few early literacy/math/fine motor activities.  These could be adjusted to fit any theme or season.
Crayon Freckles presents 10 books on self-esteem.  Such an important concept to share with our kids.
Buggy and Buddy shares a fun and calming idea to create during a family walk.  How easy and wonderful!

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Pipe Cleaner Fun

Try this fine motor activity that uses a simple item you probably already have in the house right now: a plastic water bottle. Add a few pipe cleaners for a fun activity that boosts skills like fine motor skills, visual motor skills, bilateral coordination, and more. 


Fine Motor Skills and Learning Colors with Pipe Cleaners

Baby Girl has been LOVING this library book.
Her favorite word right now is “apple” so she turns to this page and points to the picture and says apple again and again 🙂
So cute! 


The babies had fun doing a little fine motor activity to go along with the Red page in the book.
 I cut some red pipe cleaners in half and put out an empty water bottle. 

This is great for a Toddler’s Fine Motor Skills, Eye-Hand Coordination, and Cause-Effect. 

They love to put little toys into openings to see what happens.  Putting the brightly colored pipe cleaners into the bottle is so much fun for them!

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We started with a bunch of colored pipe cleaners, but I put them away and just pulled out the red ones to go along with the page in the book.  We will definitely be coming back to this activity again, adding different colors…They loved it!

 Such Concentration!

Colleen