Scissors!

Just let them CUT!

If you get those crafty scissors, the littles can't cut themselves. I have a set of 20, but if you just have a few its still a blast for them . Get a few pieces of paper out, and let them have at it, Riley spent 1 whole hour doing this. Its a little bit of a cleanup, but if you get them to help, its not that big of a deal

Ice Sculptures

This is the second activity of our rainy day. I saw it on PBS kids. Here's how ya do it:

1. Find a bunch of different containers
2. Fill them with water
3. Freeze them overnight or longer
4. Lay a towel on the table, get some tools from the kitchen
(I used a fork, a wood skewer, a spoon , a paint brush, & some bowls with food coloring)
5. Pop the ice out and let them at it! We stacked them, pushed them around the table like a hockey puck, painted them, poked and prodded them, and towards the end Riley was sucking on the ice cubes.

At first, she wasn't super fond of this, she only spent about 15 minutes on it. We left to the store and I left it on the table, when we got back, she went and played with it for about 45 minutes, I'd say that's some good time for Mom!

ValentinePurse

I found this little activity in Family Fun Magazine, although theirs was a lot better. Today is a very rainy day,(as you can tell, she's still in her jammies) so we will do another activity later. Now Riley has a place to put the Valentines she got from friends and Grandparents, then later use the purse for dress up.

the materials are:

Felt ( I think it was 27 cents a square at Michaels)
Scissors

Whole punch

Ribbon or Yarn

Simply poke holes in both hearts in the same spots, then loop your ribbon through. Use the excess ribbon to make a handle for the purse and tie in a knot at the top.

( Great activity for developing their fine motor skills)

Sand ....or sugar

I put some sugar in a pie tin, since sand is not readily available. We practiced writing her name, made shapes, and practiced letters and numbers, not to mention its great for their developing sensory skills. I think this is a good activity for any age. Riley loved playing with this and even got one of her polly pockets to join in the fun.

Animal Sort

Been a busy month!

Have your little one get all her stuffed animals out, then put them in a big pile

Sort the animals in all different ways, here are a few that we did:

Biggest to smallest

Animals that roar

Animals that live on a farm

Same animals (she had a bunch of dogs & bears)

Depending on your assortment of animals, you could do tons more. The goal of this is that hopefully one day, you could simply say "go get your animals and sort them" and now you get some time to maybe, JUST SIT!

Listening Center

Great Book!

When I used to teach , we always had a book listening center in my room, where the kids would put on head phones and listen to an audio version of a story and follow along in the book. The kids loved it! I thought I would try this with R. I checked them out at the library, and she enjoyed them, and asked to do it over and over again. She figured out quickly to turn the page when the bell rings. I think its nice when Riley can hear other people reading a story other than me too, try it out!

December Activities

My Mom gave me a cute choo choo train advent calender this year, where you open a box each day and there is an activity to do with your kids. So, this will take over for the month of December. Here are 2 of the activities we've done so far.

We made cards for all our Grandparents. I just got out some old die-cuts, we glued them on and she colored on them. Then we practiced writing her name inside...definitely a work in progress!

Today it said to make a star for the tree. Do you remember doing that tissue thing in school, where you wrapped a square of tissue around your pencil, dipped it in glue, and made a beautiful design on some construction paper? This was a 2 year old version, we just cut up some paper and she dipped it in glue and put it on the star. I also made sure to talk to her about what the star meant to Christmas.