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Month: April 2013

Earth Day Recycle Bin Craft

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This was a craft I was putting together for a playgroup, so I needed a bunch of little pieces and wanted to keep it Earth-friendly.  I cut up a few cereal boxes and egg cartons for the flower parts, cut some clouds from a newspaper, and cut some leaf shapes from bubble wrap.

We were looking for an

Earth Day Craft

and looked around in the recycle bin first!
The kids used the bubble wrap to press into green paint and stamp the leaves onto their flower.  The grass is a re-purposed plastic lei.
For the play date, all of the bits and pieces needed to be separated for ease with the kids.
I scooped up a few boxes and trays from the recycle bin and added a couple of my storage bins to keep it all organized.
This was a fun, free, and Earth-friendly project that lots of kids enjoyed!
Before your recycle bin goes out, look for any craft projects that might be right in front of you 🙂
There are so many recycled-material projects out there right now, being Earth Day month.  What have you and your kids done? Link up your posts in the comments, we would love to see them!

We’ve started a new Group Pinterest group board,

 Trash Turned Kids Crafts (kids crafts made from recycled materials)

There are a bunch of fabulous bloggers collaborating there now. If you have made fun, free, Earth-friendly kids crafts or projects, we would love for YOU to join us! Comment on one of our pins and we will happily add you.

Share It Saturday #15 and Our Week in Review

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It’s Saturday!!!

Here we are again, where did this week go???  I know we say that every week, but seriously this week went by at super speed.
We had some major fun on a preschool field trip at the Pittsburgh Children’s Museum.  The picture below was a fun light table covered with sand.  Little guy (almost 2) had so much fun playing with this.  They had toy trucks and shovels and who doesn’t love those?!?!
There is a great art room with tons of fun stuff to do…including paint!  And the best part is all the mess stays there.
Big sister (4) had a message to send to
daddy while I was working at home.  She insisted that I take a photo of
her note and text it to daddy 🙂  His response was “hungry!”

And this little guy is the BIGGEST helper!  He helped me spread mulch, carry rocks from the creek in his wagon, and carefully placed the rocks around the tree.  All with a big smile! Can’t get any better than that.
 Our most popular post this week was our Snowy Farm Sensory Bin
 Even thought the weather is changing here, this is still so much fun!!!
Now that we have shared some of our week with you, let’s take a peek at what all of you have been up to.
It’s time for Share It Saturday!

We join the gals at Teach Beside Me and Golden Grasses as co-hosts in our weekly link up party.

We are featuring a collection of creative and fun play ideas geared toward Toddlers this week.  Each of us sisters have an active, always learning, and AMAZING toddler.  That makes three crazy toddlers that would LOVE to do any of these activities.  Explore these blogs, friends.  They have so many ideas to share!

Wildflower Ramblings created a fun treasure bin to explore black and white animals.
Gift of Curiosity shares how she taught “hard” and “soft” to toddlers.
For the Love of Learning shows us a fun invitation to tong pom poms into an ice cream sundae.  My kids would LOVE this!
Princesses, Pies, and Preschool Pizzazz made these awesome color bottles. What a great sensory and learning experience for toddlers!
Howling at the Moon made a fun baby toy. But knowing toddlers, they would be into this way past the baby stage…throwing/catching/kicking/hiding it!
My Nearest and Dearest shares her magnet and tin can sculpture.  I LOVE this…what a fun play and learning activity for toddlers!
Thrive 360 Living made this super fun train to teach colors. Isn’t it the cutest play idea??

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Recycled Magazine Roses

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We made these fun roses this week.
Materials:
Colorful magazine page torn in half
glue
straw
glitter
tape
Tear the magazine page in half lengthwise.  Tearing paper is a great hand strengthening exercise.  Holding the paper with both hands encourages bilateral coordination and whole arm movements, and a tripod grasp to pinch the paper while tearing.
Glue along one edge of the paper.
Roll up into a rose-ish shape.
Pinch and twist the base of the flower into a point and push it into the straw.  Pushing the flower into the straw encourages a tripod grasp and use of the non-dominant hand to hold the straw in a coordinated manner.
We taped around the straw to keep the flower in place, and put into a glass of water. Fun and pretty!
Little Guy had to (obviously) blow the straw flower…
…and bang the flowers like a drum 🙂
Big Sister said we needed to put water in the glass. And sand.
Of course.

Beach Play Dough

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Invitation to Create a Beach

Brown and Blue Play Dough, sand, rocks, palm tree food picks, and a bowl of beachy manipulatives were put on a tray for Big Sister and Little Guy.  They played with this in our basement in a baby pool we have going on down there right now. 
I love how Little Guy put the dolphin in the blue play dough like it was leaping into the water 🙂
What are we learning through play?

Imagination Play

Pretend Play

 Fine Motor Dexterity

Tripod Grasp to pinch and sprinkle the sand

Index Isolation and Tripod Grasp to press the little items into the play dough

Enjoy Today!

Rockin’ Drum and Music Birthday Party details

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We spent an afternoon this weekend at my niece’s second birthday party, where drums, noise, and general kid awesomeness was going on.  I HAD to share all of the fun details that went into this party.  Picture overload here…

Drum Themed Food…

The cake was a Costco cake that my Sister-In-Law decorated into a drum. Pretzel rods made drumsticks and Animal from the Muppets made the cake!
Little drum details were everywhere…including in the veggie tray.

The Drum Themed Party Favors…

were little buckets, drumsticks, drum notepads, and candy.  The kids got to take home real drumsticks too.  Little Guy was (and still is) in Heaven beating those drum sticks around!!

Drum Party Activities…

The backyard was loaded with steel drums, garbage cans, tire rims, anything that would make NOISE.
And these kids had a BLAST!
The neighbors were warned 🙂
In the basement were drum sets made from 5 gallon buckets, tons and tons of recycled plastic bins, metal cans, plastic tubs, tins… This was a little drummer’s dream!
I LOVE the Mickey Mouse Gong!  And so did the kids 🙂

 Makin’ Music Party Activities…

The kids could make rain sticks with plastic bottles and toothpicks/chopsticks, rubber band guitars with recycled tissue boxes, fun noises with paper tubes, and a shaky noise with a bowl of plastic beads.
And what toddler does not love banging on pots and pans??
The washboard was an awesome touch!  My Baby Girl loved that one.  There was a CASE of drumsticks near by for all of the little drummers to go crazy with.
Kids could use plastic eggs (or fun shaped plastic bottles) to make shakers with corn.
I love the Animal detail on this set of drums!
This party was a BLAST for every age.  The Animal shirt the Birthday girl wore was perfect…and her baby sister was rocking along to the music theme in her cute little music note onesie 🙂
We had so much fun watching the kids go crazy with noise and energy…and some of us moms and dads got in on the music making, too 🙂
 What a great way to celebrate our little niece’s/cousin’s 2nd birthday.
Happy Birthday little J!

Faux Chalkboard Wall Art

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This DIY chalkboard sign

was super easy to do.  Did you see our Easter Egg Hunt party details post?  We showed a picture of this sign that I made for the party.

This chalkboard-esque sign cost less than a quarter to make and was a great touch for the Easter egg hunt.  You would never guess by looking at it, but there was no chalkboard paint involved in making this sign. 
Start with a smooth wood piece.  This is a piece from an old “fake wood” dresser.  The dresser broke and I kept the bottom of the drawer. 
I used black tempera paint bought on sale and with coupons from Joanne’s, and only needed about 1/4 of the jar to cover the entire board.  This paint goes on nicely and really covers the board, so it doesn’t take much.
Use hot glue to glue the ribbon strip on both sides of the back. I already had this ribbon.
After the egg hunt, I erased the Easter sign with a wet rag and wrote this

subway-style Fruit of the Spirit sign. 

I wouldn’t keep this sign outside where it would be exposed to rain…or plan on using it like a normal chalkboard (where you would wash and re-wash the chalk off).  When I washed the chalk off with a wet rag, the paint slightly turned the rag black.  But not very much and it seems like it helped with the chalkboard-ish look of the sign.
 It hangs in our dining room neat pictures of the kids.  I love seeing this sign hanging around the family pictures. 

But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things, there is no law. (Galatians 5:22-23)

Share It Saturday #14 and our Week-In-Review

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Wow, what happened to this week? I feel like it flew by.  Actually March flew by like a breeze.  I did in fact ask my husband the other day…”Is it April?” and actually not know for sure.  Wow. Momma brain right there!
Our week was filled with lots of play, crafts, getting outside for some semi-nice days.  50 degrees and windy  is beeeeautiful when it seems like it has been frigid and snowing for the past year and a half 🙂
We shared with our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram followers our latest favorite play activity…a baby pool in the basement with a tray of sand, a handful of rocks, and construction vehicles.
Big Sister has been loving the sand tray to tell stories (ala Nina from Sprout), make letters, and draw pictures.  My personal favorite is her pictures of angels and Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus.
 We had a little Tinkerbell themed play date (organized by Big Sister…including games {{Pin the Face on Tinkerbell}}, decorations, invite list, snacks, and parting gifts…Hmm, I wonder where she gets all of this from haha!!
This little group of cousins had fun watching some robins from the front window after the other kids left.
And of course, our week had lots of balloon dance parties.
The Share It Saturday link up brought us so many fun ideas this week.  We decided to feature a food related theme.  (Two of us sisters may have been a little hungry when we went through the links haha!!)
Our featured links this week shares

Toddler Friendly Snacks!

B-Inspired Mama shows us creative ways to present food.
Powerful Mothering shares a yummy looking Omelets in a muffin pan.
Preschool Powol Packets made frozen yogurt shapes.
B-Inspired Mama made cinnamon waffle snack mix. This looks so good!
Now, on to Share It Saturday this week!  Stop by and let us know what you are up to…we love seeing what our blogging friends have been doing 🙂

We join the gals at Golden Grasses and Teach Beside Me as co-hosts in our weekly link
up party…

Spring Play Dough Press

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The weather this week has been SO cold.  Sunny, yes.  But Freezing!
We went out to ride bikes for a little while, ran around the yard one day…but couldn’t stay out long.
This little play activity was perfect for warm, inside, table-top play.

Spring Play Dough: Exploring Imprints

We gathered up a few fun colors of play dough and some spring-y objects to explore the imprints they would make in the play dough.
Fun with textures, fine motor dexterity, and resistive play… (pressing little objects into the play dough is perfect for providing a little proprioceptive input to the little joints of the hand.)…this was a fun one for Big Sister, Little Guy, Baby Girl, and my niece and nephew.

Pre-Handwriting Exercise

An easy play activity like this would be great to do before something that requires the child to work their hands with fine motor dexterity and adjustments in pressure/manipulation (Handwriting!)
It’s a fun exercise like this one wakes up the hands before they have to get to work on forming letters and pencil control.
Little Guy liked the footprints that the chick made.  He really had fun guessing what made each one of the imprints after I took them out of the play dough.
Try this one with any little objects you have around the house…everyone will love it 🙂

Our Easter Egg Hunt

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Our Annual Family Easter Egg Hunt

Has been going strong for 5 years now.  It’s a fun celebration of family, blessings, and love.  The nieces and nephews keep on growing in number (we’re now up to 15 kids aged 7 and under!!)
 We host a family party with food, a craft for the kids, an egg hunt, and egg dying.  We didn’t go for the egg dying this year, but the rest of the traditions continued.
Here are the party details…
 (Counter-clockwise from top left)
~I made a batch of baby chick sugar cookies and stacked them on a last minute DIY cake stand.  Stack a couple of plates and bowls together…and Voila!
~These little bunny snack cups were the perfect size for little hands to hold and snack on Annie’s bunny snacks.  They are the same little ears that we blogged about HERE. Easy and Fun!
~The basket of “Bunny Tails” was Pirates Booty puffed snack.  A little stretch for bunny tails…but everyone got the idea 🙂  We also had a giant bowl of PEEP POPCORN that we’ve written about.  This stuff is seriously good, folks!  And addicting.  The carrot cake sat on another last minute-bowl-plate cake stand.  The cake was from Aldi’s and so yummy!
~Grandma and Big Sister made these fun cupcakes on one of their special days.  Cute little green sprinkles with m&ms and jelly beans.  Very Cute!
 More pictures 🙂
~The Easter Bunny’s Favorite Drink was just V8 splash in carrot/fruit flavors.
~Big Sister and Little Guy helped me one afternoon to hang these tissue paper puffs and hanging lanterns.  They loved arguing over directing where each color should hang 🙂
~Bottom Middle picture is Big Sister’s decoration contribution.  She taped a bunch of Easter-y things (ribbons and pieces of string included)…There is still a bead taped to our dining room wall 🙂
~The crepe paper backdrop was a last minute project while Pap took the Big Kids out to the park on party day.  We shared a photo on our Facebook Page showing mid-project.
((stop by and follow us there, if you’re not already…))
Cut Peeps from cardstock, tape to strips of crepe paper and hang.
~The Peep vase went along perfectly with the backdrop.  We blogged about it HERE.
And, More pictures…
~The Faux chalkboard sign was fun to make and a perfect touch to the front yard.  We will write a post about this soon.  I have since removed the Egg Hunt and arrow and made it into a fun subway-style art project that I LOVE.   Watch the blog for this post.  You don’t want to miss it 🙂
~Every Kid-Egg hunt needs party props.  Of course.
~ And, what is a room full of preschoolers and toddlers without a handful of balloons scattered around the floor???  You can’t help but join in a game of “keep the balloon off the floor”!!
Our Egg Hunt this year was so much fun…cousins running around and playing with each other, bikes in the driveway, family hanging out, and the first beautiful day of the year.  You can’t ask for much more 🙂
I LOVE this picture I caught of two cousins checking out the loot in their Easter Eggs!
Love.
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