Our girl at sleep and play

Last time was about my son so this time will be my daughter. This is her taking a nap with Daddy. This is her playing in her sensory table. It is still set up with snow for winter. The snow is instant potato flakes. I put in a bunch of her little people so she had a town to snow on. She is making it snow on her head in this picture. She has colors on her hands and tummy from her marker art she was doing just before this. I have found that not letting her wear clothes for marker art works best for us. Her washable markers sometimes stain her clothes. If someone knows of nontoxic markers that don't stain please share with me! I don't like turning up our heat for her do write with markers everyday and most of the time she will refuse a bib.

Look at all the snow in her hair!

I think some might wonder what does the floor look like after this. Yes we get flakes on the floor but they do sweep up easy. I did try powdered milk in the past and that didn't clean up as easy. It would leave a slippery film on my floor so I quit using that.

Football

Pictures of my boys playing football outside yesterday.

Our weather graph

More of our Groundhog Day plans...

Blogger isn't loading my picture so I will have to just explain it. You can try to click on the x above to see if it will show the picture. Every year (started when my son was around 2 years old) I make a 6 week weather graph for Groundhogs day. We get up before Phil comes out of his hole and we watch him on TV. We then go outside and look for our shadow. Funny part of this is we live in Pa (like groundhog Phil) and often we don't see the same thing Phil sees. We then track the outside temp. We do this the same time every day for 6 weeks to see if silly old Phil knows what he is talking about. My son will tell you that silly Phil isn't good at predicting our winter. LOL! The graph is very simple you could make one in just a few minutes or you could print out mine. My scanner isn't working the best so it isn't the best quality (sorry about that). I have 6 copies. I put our weather at the top. I left the top blank in case someone from another part of the US wanted to use my page. I figured having temp near zero deg. Isn't likely down south. The 2 links below "should" bring up a PDF copy of my weather graph. One graph goes across the other goes up and down. I am doing both because I feel that across is better for my youngest. I can block of the rows that are for other days with paper and let her color in across (Kind of working on reading direction this way). My sons will go up and down and he can show me how the temp goes upward (peaks) over 6 weeks when they are laying side by side. I am not feeling well so I hope you can understand what I am trying to say. I know they explain themselves if you see them..

This is the one my 6 year old will be using. I have 6 copies so he can track the next 6 weeks.

http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/1/21/672946/Feb2PDF.pdf


This one goes across I will be using this one with my youngest again I printed out 6 of them,
GD1PDF.pdf

If they don't work let me know. I am sorry that last time I posted a PDF file I had the link right then I messed up and changed it to the wrong one then when I tried to change it back I messed up again and deleted the entire post! I hope this time I get it right the first time. I will have to publish this to see if it is right or not! Fingers crossed!

Groundhog sock puppet

I made a sock puppet today for Groundhogs day. I don't think my hubby thinks it looks like a groundhog but my children like it so it is good enough for me.

This is a picture of him with my hand in it. Have you ever tried to take a picture with a puppet on your hand? It is hard to do!

This is him laying flat. The fuzzy looking spots are snow. I took him outside to get a better picture it is snowing a little.

This is him in his hole. All I did is fold up the sock from my wrist. It is a man's sock so I have plenty of room for him to hide in.

Tracking a trip.

Travis put a map together to follow his grandparents trip.







We printed the map from http://www.yourchildlearns.com/

OOPS! I forgot SNOW!!!

I forgot to write we got some SNOW! OK not much but it is SNOW! This picture is one of my son's snow angles.


Both of the children having fun.


LOL! I have NO idea what he is doing! My hubby was outside with them. I wanted to go out and play but I didn't feel up to it. With my luck by the time I feel better all our snow will be gone!


I think she looks so CUTE in this snowsuit! She looks as wide as she is tall. A friend gave me this suit. I think it is CUTE!






I did step outside long enough to take a couple pictures and a 30 second video clip of them on the sled. I didn't feel up to anything else.

My repair man!

I am not feeling well today nothing very exciting happened. My youngest is not dressed in the pictures because she was coloring with markers just before I took the pictures. If you look you can see her marker art all over the front of her! LOL! I took the pictures of her because I thought her pretend play was cute! She put her horse and a tiny doll in the school bus and drove them around the house. When she was done driving them around the house she put the bus on the table and let her horse out the back of the bus. She then brushed its hair. After that she got her little doll out of the bus and put the tiny doll on the horse and the doll rode the horse across the table. I find this all amazing because my oldest never understood pretend play when he was little. The last 3 pictures are of my son fixing the vacuum. It needed a belt so I thought that it would be a good idea to let my son fix it. He LOVES doing stuff like that. He is growing up so fast!

I might be in over my head with this one.

An online friend wrote about having a snowball fight with her children. I remembered when we did that with my oldest. When he was little we had tons of indoor snowball fights with wrapping paper, tissue paper, and newspaper. I talked to my husband the other night about all the fun things we did like that when my oldest was prek age we all have great memories of all the fun stuff we did together. We have no idea why we quit doing lots of it. I think life got busy with 2 children one of the children is school age and I think that we all got so busy we ran out of time. I feel bad that we haven't done all the same fun things with our little girl. She should be able to have the same fun learning time her big brother had. I started to think about ways to make fun NEW memories with her. A few weeks ago we started learning about winter. I have waited, and waited and waited more for some snow. I got tired of wating so I decided to make my own stacking snowman. After a day of thinking up ways on how to make one I decided to try paper mache and let my son help me. I will share my pictures but I want you to know I am NOT good at paper mache so this might not turn out! My goal is for it to be good enough for my daughter who is 1 1/2 to build. If it does work it will not be done until the beginning of next week because it takes forever to dry between layers. I have a feeling we will all laugh at this project! I have been known to do some things that others think of as crazy in the past but this is Even crazy by my thinking!

This is our stack of paper strips.


My son mixing our paste.


This will be the bottom of our snowman. I did this one.


This is the smallest one for the head my son did this one. It looks just as nice as the one I did and he is only 6 years old.



This is the 3 snowman body parts and our huge mess!



For anyone who hasn't done paper mache with a young child yet I want to tell you that YES the mess looks BAD. It only took 2 minutes to wipe up! It takes me 2 weeks to get all the glitter off our floors after a glitter craft so for me I think this wasn't a messy craft at all.

We did put a some more paper on them today. We have added paper rings to make them stackable. I will get pictures of it up tomorrow. I hope once they are dry they will stack. If not I will have to add more paper to shape them into the right shape. I am afraid that this crazy project might take me until spring to finish! LOL!

Our floor map

I thought I should post an update on our map before I forget all about it. We are close to being done but I need to take new pictures. I am posting our pictures from a few days ago. We let my little one color ALL over it. We are all OK with this. I don't ever care if things are all perfect. The reason we did this was so we could go on a fun trip to the north pole. KWIM? I wanted my little on to have more of a part in it so I am having her tear blue tissue paper and glue it on for the oceans. I am using a glue stick with her to keep the mess down. My son wanted to glue some of the ocean and I just handed him the tissue paper and liquid Elmer's glue.



Picture above and below are both pictures of my youngest child's scribbles.



The 2 pictures below show our tissue paper ocean.



My children like the sound and the feel of walking barefoot on our crinkly Oceans.


I will have to post a picture of what it looks like now. My son did some of the ocean with no waves. It is a one of a kind world map! I think we only have 1 continent to color and then we need to label it.


The maps we printed out from http://www.yourchildlearns.com/owlmouse.htm I know I wrote that a week or two ago just in case someone didn't' see that message I wrote it again. It doesn't look like blogger is making this a click able link. You can go down to my post last week. I think it is the one that shows my hubby putting together our map. You will see a clickable link (I hope).

Hats teaching colors

I drew out some simple hat shapes on card stock. I only did blue, yellow, and red because I had paper in the 3 colors already. I did add a band on the hat with a marker. I have over a dozen of each. It didn't take much time I cut out several out at a time.



We will use them to work on colors and counting right now. I am finishing up other activities to go with them I will try to post that when I finish up.

Cat in the hat style hat

I wanted to make a Cat in the hat style hat for my children. I thought for a few days on how I was going to make the pattern and what fabrics I have around to use. During this time I started to think that it would be more fun if my children could make them. My children are not able to use my sewing machine so I went off to the kitchen tonight to see what supplies I could find. This is what I came up with.

Materials:
1 large coffee can
1 paper plate
2 sheets of red tissue paper
1/4 sheet of white tissue paper
glue
tape
Pen
Scissors

Take the can and trace it on the plate. The plate I used was Styrofoam but any paper plate will work.


Cut out the circle



Cut strips of red tissue paper. I cut under 1/2 of a sheet of tissue paper. This step isn't needed if you want your hat to have the color rim your plate is. You could paint the plate if you want.



I used a tiny amount of glue and wrapped my strips of red tissue paper around the plate.



This shows other ways (more kid friendly). My son will most likely use squares because that is how he does things most of the time. For my 18 month old I will have her pinch squares and then push on the plate in my glue spots. I think this makes a nice flower look and it is a way that children as little as a year old can do crafts. I love doing flowers with tissue squares with my children when they are little.





Take a sheet of tissue paper folded in half and it fits exactly around the coffee can. Tape it shut.



Fold down the extra paper at the bottom of the can (top of the hat). I used tape to hold it down. Glue would have worked.



cut triangles in excess paper at the other end and glue it down flat.



Cut strips of white tissue paper and tape or glue them on.



If you don't drink coffee you could use paper to make the hat. I plan to make smaller ones with ALL kinds of food containers I have in the house. LOL! You could use paper, cardboard, paint, or card stock to cover the can. Wrapping paper would make some FUN hats! Have fun!

I will try to get pictures of how my children's hats turn out and pictures of them wearing them soon. My children (even the 18 month old) will be able to decorate them the way they want so it should be fun to see how they turn out! I think I will have my little one will decorate before I attach the 2 pieces. If I give it to her put together she will take it apart and find that more fun than decorating it!

Silly Girl!

This is how my daughter wanted to dress for the store today! She wanted this outfit and the shirt she said was her hat! LOL! I am going to stay calm and laugh at her fashion taste! I guess I am OK with her embarrassing me in public! Both my children have embarrassed me in public even when they are dressed nice so I will not let her fashion style upset me. When my son was 3 he wore an Uncle Sam costume (we had it from Halloween) he stood in the isle and sang (very loud) The Star Spangle Banner to one of my husbands co-workers. LOL!

BTW Rob did take off her "hat" before going to the car. I think he thought it could be a choking hazard for the trip. If Demi would have fussed about it after going to the car I know he would have came back inside to get it and let her take it with her. So if you are ever in a store and you see Mom with a girl wearing a shirt as a hat, stripes with polka dots and every color of the rainbow you can say Hi Amber! It will be me! I keep telling myself that when she is older it will be me embarrassing her. I can't wait to show her all her baby pictures when she gets older! I have decided NOT to correct any of this because I know that this is a phase that will pass very soon. I do find it very funny when we are at home. I am not laughing in public but someday my DD will be taking care of me when I am old and I don't have all my mind in working order. I know she will find me funny at home and embarrassing in public. I hope she doesn't correct me. KWIM?

SNOW??

Will we ever get enough snow to play in??? We are use to snowmen, snow forts, sled rides, snow angles, snowball fights in the winter. This is a picture of all the snow we have.



Not enough to do anything! I want enough snow to make ice cream with! It is Jan 19 and we have got a light dusting of snow a few times. I could make do with an inch or two of snow but we are so far away from that inch we could never build a snowman. I see other Moms posting pictures of snow fun on blogs. I also want to go play in the snow! I know winter in the North East ALWAYS has snow. I just have to wait a little longer. I want to let my youngest have all the fun her brother had in the snow when he was little. I will post lots of winter fun pictures when the snow comes.