Welcome Summer!

Okay, so it's not summer, yet, but with 85 degree temps and the occasional spike up to 90, blue skies, and cloudy afternoons, it might as well be.

I love summer.  I love the laziness.  I love being in the sun.  I love playing in the water... at least I loved it when I was a kid.  Now, I mostly jump in to cool off if I've baked myself too long in the sun.  But I really love to watch my kids play in the water.

What is it about water play that just makes a kid so happy?  It's like, turn on a sprinkler or fill a wading pool and suddenly all is right with the world again.  Kids really are so easy to please.

We ushered in a new summer this week with our sprinkler.  My plan was twofold.  First, I wanted to water the grass.  Or the grass patches that cover my entire front lawn.  I'm really trying to get my lawn into shape this year, and so far, things are coming along.  Everything looks greener since I've been watering.  I have hope.

The other part of the plan was the let the kids have an amazing time.  Because although I want a green lawn, I also want a yard that they can play in.  So, after nap, we headed outside.

At first, they just ran around the edges of the water, playing on the sidewalk and only getting, well, sprinkled.

 
Natalie had a lot of fun making footprints on the porch.

Her masterpiece:

One of Daniel's favorite toys of all time is the almighty stick.  Go figure.

Then they had fun getting up close and personal with the water.

I love this picture.

All in all, it was a pretty good afternoon for us :)

What about you guys?  Warm enough for an afternoon of sprinkler play yet?

Thanks for reading!
Sarah

"Create an Animal" Painting Project

This project was a little bit of a whim for us.  I had a doctor's appointment midday and was planning on dropping the kiddos off with my dad and stepmother so that I wouldn't have to take them with me.  But we had an hour and a half or so to kill after getting ready and before leaving, and I know Natalie's been really wanting to paint, so...

I found this project in a craft book that we have.  It's pretty simple.  Basically, you draw a paw or a tongue or a tail shape, cut it out, and glue it to a piece of paper.  Then you give the paper to the child and let them finish the animal.  I told the kids that they could make a real animal or they could use their imagination and come up with a pretend animal.  

Natalie didn't really know where to begin.  I anticipated this, so I made an extra picture with a tongue shape and used mine to draw the rest of a dog.  Which seemed to give Natalie just the direction that she needed.  Daniel didn't want any direction at all.  I gave him the paper and he just went for it. 

First I let them draw out their animal with colored pencils.  I forgot to take pictures of this part, but these pictures that I took after they started painting show you what they came up with.  This is Natalie's:

And Daniel's (the rocks are for holding his paper down since it was windy this morning):

After they finished drawing, I let them use watercolors to paint the animals.  Watercolors, by the way, are my new favorite medium for kids.  Not only are they super easy as far as clean-up goes, but they also allow kids to put a lot of paint on the paper without it immediately turning into a brown muddy mess.  In fact, I'm often surprised by just how much I like the finished product.  Even Daniel, who just turned 2, does well with them.  Well...with some guidance.  At first, he was just spreading water around on his paper.  But by the end today, he seemed to get the idea.

 Daniel decided his was a kangaroo.  You might notice that he isn't wearing pants in this picture.  Here's another tip: don't let your toddler paint anything in white shorts.  It will inevitably go badly.

And here's Natalie's finished picture.  I actually really love the way hers turned out.  It's a fish, she says, and the paw is for hopping along the ocean floor.

This was a lot of fun and a super easy project!  It's a great one for filling up an hour here or there, especially since it doesn't take a lot of set up or clean up the mess.  And if you haven't bought a set of watercolors for your kids, do it!  They're awesome :)

Thanks for reading!
Sarah

Easter Weekend

Hello Friends!  I need to apologize for being a little absent over the last few days.  Not only have I had family in town, but I've been kind of a sickie as well.  Nothing too terrible, but enough so that all I really wanted to do was sit on the couch and let my kids watch "How to Train Your Dragon" for the 17th time.  I'm still a little bit down for the count, but I wanted to get these pictures up to show you guys what kind of Easter we had this year.

We kicked things off on Saturday with an Easter egg hunt.  I really wanted to take my kids to a hunt this year because I figured they were both old enough to get it.  Last year, Natalie understood what was going on, but Daniel just sort of wandered around and Dave put some eggs in his basket.

The only problem was that Dave had to work a Saturday shift last weekend (he's required to work a Sat. every 4 to 5 weeks), so if I wanted to get those kids to the hunt, it was up to me.  Super Mom.

I had no idea how super I needed to be until I got there, though.  I was expecting a largish hunt with a couple of bounce houses, some face painting, and maybe 100 kids at the most.  As soon as I arrived and saw police directing traffic, I knew I was dealing with a different kind of animal.  There were hundreds of kids there.  Easily.  And even more adults.  And blaringly loud music being pumped out of speakers at the center of everything.  I soon wished I had leashes on my kids.  Not even kidding.

But I didn't.  And we were there.  And Natalie, at least, was so excited.  So, out of the car we went, and bravely marched toward the chaos.

It wasn't that bad.  There were times that I panicked a little bit because I lost sight of one of them; then a kid would run in another direction, and there they'd be.  Then there was the complete meltdown that Daniel had because I took his basket away.  Sounds like a terrible mom, I know, but I took his basket because he was just staring into it and shaking his eggs instead of paying attention and walking with Natalie and me.  He was falling behind, and no amount of pleading with him to keep up worked.  That boy is a daydreamer.  No idea what's going on around him sometimes.  So, we sat on a curb for about 10 minutes while he got the tantrum out of his system, and then moved on (basket in my hand).  I know the kids had fun.  I also know that I will not attempt this event by myself again.  Next year Dave must come with me.

Anyway, enough talking.  How about some pictures?  The first thing they saw when we walked into the event was a large playground.  Since this is one of their more favorite activities, we spent a considerable amount of time here.

I love the expression on Natalie's face, here.

So hard to get a still shot of this kid.

We didn't get too far up the rock wall.  She's asking for my help in this picture, but this particular wall was pretty high.

Then we wandered over to the egg hunt.  They had several hunts going on, divided by ages, so we were in the 3 and under group.  Needless to say, the only hunting they did was to scan to ground to find eggs sitting on the grass.  Each kid was allowed to find 10 eggs.  I think they had a lot of fun during this part.

The Easter egg love affair began mid hunt.  Daniel was almost too enamored with his first couple of eggs to hunt around for any more.

A kind volunteer offered to take a picture of all of us, which was nice.  Sometimes I feel like there will be no record of what I looked like during these years because I'm always the one behind the camera.

And taking a break.  This was right before I said to myself, "Enough!  We're heading to the car."  I wanted Natalie to get her face painted because she was excited about that, too, but I could tell that Daniel really would not be able to handle much more.

Easter morning was fun, too.  In fact, the whole day was pretty nice.  We went to church in the morning and then Dave and his brother grilled out and we had a yummy Easter dinner of grilled pork, grilled corn, and mashed potatoes.  Maybe not the most traditional dinner, but it was delicious.  And it was an easy, laid back day.

Anyway, I took a few shots of the kids coming out to their Easter baskets.

First, the scene.  This was the cleanest the playroom was all weekend.

Natalie's reaction...

Daniel's reaction...

You can't give a kid their Easter basket and then not let them eat anything.  Natalie and Daniel both consumed waaay more candy last weekend than normal.  But, I figure, that's part of being a kid.  Sometimes you get to eat a little more candy.

I wonder what she's looking at here?

Mouthful of jelly beans.

Dave's mom sent them both bunny ears.  Daniel wore his around the house for awhile and said, "hop, hop, hop," to himself, almost as if that was the sound that hopping made.  They actually fit his head a little better than Natalie's.  I think that boy is going to be bigger than his older sister before long.

How was your Easter?  Did you have any stressful Easter egg hunt stories that you'd like to share?

Thanks for reading!
Sarah

Smush Painting

I've started reading this blog, Domesticated Nomad, recently after going back to look at her amazing tree trunk stepping stones.  She has this fabulous archive of simple art projects to do with your kiddos.  Since Natalie, especially, is really getting into art lately (and even Daniel enjoys making the messes and participating), I've been digging through her archives.

I found a project that she's titled Smush Painting.  This project looked awesome to me for a couple of reasons. #1. It involves paint.  Anything that involves paint immediately has Natalie hooked.  #2.  It doesn't involve messy fingers and the inevitable spilled cup of paint water.  In fact, it's one of the cleanest art projects I've found.  I'm in.

I won't go into all the details and how-to because she's already done a great job with that on her website.  If you'd like to do this with your little ones, I'd encourage you to go check it out.  But I would like to share with you what we came up with.  So what I've got for you are just the pictures that I took throughout the process:

I set everything up while the kids were taking a nap.  I kind of like waking them up to a project waiting for them on the table.

When I told Natalie I had paints waiting for her, she immediately jumped out of bed and ran to the table.  She usually wakes up slowly and takes a little while to look around the room (like her dad and me), but not when she's excited.

The first step was to add blobs of paint to the paper.  I let her do the first couple of pieces by herself, which turned out to be a mistake.  They took forever to dry.

After adding blobs, we closed the paper back up (I'd folded and creased the paper beforehand, so Natalie only made blobs on one side of the paper) and smushed it.  She needed a little help with this part.  She was really anxious to open the paper again before the paint got good and smushed.

Ta Da!  Looked kind of like a face to me...

Not sure what Natalie thought, of even if she understood the concept.  But she did have fun coloring with markers.

For the second picture, she chose to use green paint.  And she got a little creative with the smushing.

I used a hair dryer to help the paint dry quicker.  I found that when I put the paint on the paper for her, this went by a lot faster.

A butterfly!  I thought it was a butterfly, anyway.  Natalie said that it was Batman.

Daniel got in on the project when he finally came into the dining room.  He had been stubbornly lying in his bed crying up till this point.  His door was open, his nap was over, and I had gone into his room every 10 minutes or so and repeated the invitation to come join us.  He's been doing that a little bit lately -- saying he'd like to stay in bed after his nap is over, but then crying when you let him and leave the room yourself.  Not sure what to make of that, and my only counter tactic is to let him do it (and let him miss out on the fun stuff if he chooses not to join in).

At about this point in the project, he came stumbling into the room, tears rolling down his face, but when I asked if he'd like to have his milk and do the art project, he immediately dried his cheeks and got into his seat.

So...

 
Daniel chose orange, his favorite color lately.  And...

Not sure about his.  The face of an insect, maybe?

By the time we got to this point, it was getting kind of late and time to clean up, so Daniel didn't really get a chance to color his.  We did color the last two pictures the next day, and both of the kids ended up drawing circles around their shapes, which I thought was kind of interesting since they were incorporating the shapes into their pictures (rather than just scribbling over them).  But I didn't take pictures of those for you :(.  Sorry about that.

Anyway, that's what we did on Saturday.  How about you?

Thanks for reading!
Sarah

Baggie Books

So, this is not an original idea.  I saw this online a couple weeks ago, and I cannot remember where I found it.  It was a way cool blog, though, and if it was yours (or if you've got something similar to this project) let me know and I will definitely link back to you!

With that being said, yes, I found this idea and immediately fell in love.  It couldn't be simpler: take a few sandwich bags, some masking tape, and some fabric, and -- voila -- you've got an educational material with endless possibilities.  I read about this and then made one for our family in about 30 minutes.

The materials: masking tape and five sandwich bags.  You'll also need a pair of scissors, and down the line, some scrap fabric and a sewing machine.  You could also hand sew this project, but with a machine I was done with the sewing in under five minutes.  

First, cut a piece of masking tape, fold it in half lengthwise, and place it on the closed end of one of the sandwich bags.

Then carefully place another bag on top of the first one, adhering it to the tape.

Repeat these steps, adding on as many bags as you would like in your book.  I made a book with five bags. After this step, I also cut off all of the excess tape on the top and bottom ends of the book.

Time to take things to the sewing room (aka, my bedroom).  Step one, cut a length of scrap fabric long enough to "bind" your book and quickly hem the sides.

Step two, sew your fabric right onto the plastic bags and through the masking tape.  I wasn't sure how this step was going to go, but it was pretty quick and easy.

Here's a close-up of the binding.  I just left the ends raw, since I figured that this book wouldn't last terribly long.  We might use this several times and then one of the bags might tear and I'll have to make another, so I didn't want to put too much time into this.

Okay, so how does it work?

My first idea was to do a color finding activity since Daniel is learning to identify colors right now.  I tore off scraps of construction paper and put one color in each bag.  I ended up with blue, white, black, red, and orange (in no particular order).

Then I had the kids look around the playroom and their bedrooms for toys or other small objects that were the same color as the scraps of paper already in the book.

Daniel liked this activity for about two minutes.  But Natalie loved this and was all over it.  She was the one to find most of the toys.  I guess because she's older?  Almost two-year-olds probably don't have very long attention spans.

Anyway, here's what we came up with.  The book got very bulky after it was all filled up:

Blue and white:

And red and orange:

I didn't take a picture of the black bag, but Natalie put a toy truck in there -- because of the tires.

I'd say this was a successful project.  It didn't take long to complete, and Natalie totally enjoyed carrying it around and putting things in each bag.  I want to try it again with Daniel, maybe at a different time of day, and see if I can get him more interested, perhaps looking at shapes as well as colors.  And with Natalie, I might try this activity with letters or numbers.

What ideas have you guys come up with to teach readiness skills to your kiddos?

Thanks for reading!
Sarah

Our F-R-E-E Playground!

Don't you just love free things?  I sure do -- it makes having something (that you really wanted anyway) all the more satisfying.

A couple of weeks ago, a friend of ours mentioned wanting to get rid of this playset that was in the backyard of the house he and his wife just bought.  Dave and I had been talking recently about wanting to get just such a set for our kiddos, but they are so expensive.  We talked about the possibility of making one ourselves, but after adding up the cost of the wood and the purchase of things like the swings, we decided that it would be just as cost-effective to buy one.  So, when Dave heard that this friend of ours no longer wanted his, he offered to buy it from him.

A couple days after that, Dave got an email -- an offer to just have the playset, if Dave was willing to come, take it apart, and haul it away himself.  Hello!  Done.

So, last week, on Natalie's birthday in fact, Dave did just that.  And the next day, we put the thing together.

The kids were so excited.  They kept playing in the slide (you can see it in the background -- its green).  At one point, they were pretending that it was a boat and were rowing along.  And they really wanted to help.

Daniel started the helping game:

But Natalie quickly joined in.  Oh, and you'll notice that she's still wearing her Tangled costume.  Go Nat Nat for not being afraid to work with tools in a dress.

My dad came over to help set it up.  Dave said later that he would not have been able to put it together by himself.  Thank you Dad!

My amazing and handsome husband doing the dirty work:

After they set up most of it, we went inside for lunch.  Daniel does this cute thing where, when we announce that lunch is coming, he'll immediately go to sit in his chair, even if we haven't begun to prepare it.  I captured him as he waited for his food.

Sleepy boy!

One more:

It's been so nice to have this playground.  They've played on it every day since we've had it (except for a few rainy days here and there) and it never ceases to entertain them.  Such a huge blessing for us, because we probably couldn't have afforded to buy one any time soon.

I'll have to take some after pics of the completed playground (and the kiddos loving it!) and post them for you guys in a few days.

Thanks for reading!
Sarah