Archive for the ‘Parenting’ Category

Happy 3rd Birthday Mikayla!

Saturday, April 28th, 2012

How is it that three years have passed since I was in the hospital holding my sweet baby girl for the first time?  It has gone by crazy fast, but we have loved every minute of it!  This last year has been filled with a lot of firsts for Mikayla (and us) and a lot of fun new experiences.  Here is a quick picture recap of Mikayla’s third year of life!

May

Chickens and Mammoth Cave 011

June

Early June and VBS guide 019Early June and VBS guide 039

July

camry and mikayla 008

somerset 056

swazi stories 003

August

Messy Eaters 061

September

Bush Walk 077

October

Letter D and Nisela 112

November

Letter F 005 - Copy

December

Kruger 085

January

Letter W, playing in rain and owl 086

Lady and Tramp, Letter P 014

February

St Lucia 2 010

March

Letter J 020

April

Third birthday celebration 012

Happy Birthday Mikayla!  I hope your fourth year of life is just as exciting as your third!

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Toddler School–Letter L

Saturday, April 21st, 2012

This past week we learned all about the Letter L.  After a few days of studying, I realized I completely skipped the Letter K!  Oops!  I guess we will make that one up next week!  Here are some of our L activities.

Blyde River Canyon 001

We collected leaves and then did some leave rubbings.  She had a hard time with this because she is still not pressing down very hard when she writes.

Blyde River Canyon 004

Then we painted with leaves!

Blyde River Canyon 005

She had some leftover paint, so we practiced writing the Letter L using our fingers.

Blyde River Canyon 006

Handprint lion!

Blyde River Canyon 008

Bead balancing – I made a mound of clay and stuck an uncooked spaghetti noodle in it and then she slid on the beans.  Great fine motor practice!

Blyde River Canyon 011

While she was working, I made a lady bug out of the leftover clay.

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A special lion lunch.  I served with a PB sandwich!

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Letter L lion

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Hand and footprint lobster.  I goofed and put her footprint upside down, but you get the idea!

More letter L, fire pit 005

Ladybug fun.  We made the paper plate lady bug and then rolled dice to see how many spots to put on him.  When we were finished we just glued the spots on.  This would be easy to adapt to addition by rolling a dice for each side, laying the spots on both sides and then counting them all together.  Then we made a Letter L ladybug by coloring an L red and then gluing on spots.

More letter L, fire pit 006

Since Mikayla’s middle name starts with an L, I decided to work on spelling it this week.  So, I made some letter cards and put them on binder clips upside down and had her put them in order.  We will continue to work on her middle name in weeks to come.

Next week we will move backwards to the letter K, although I am still struggling with activities for this one…

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DIY Felt Wallet

Monday, April 9th, 2012

Mikayla LOVES to get into her daddy’s wallet and play with his money and credit cards.  She takes them all out and scatters them all over the floor.  So, the other day when Ben suggested we make her a wallet of her own out of felt, I jumped on it.  After all, who doesn’t love a good felt creation!  It isn’t exactly like a real wallet, but she loves it.  Especially after daddy gave her a "credit card" (old Southwest Airline card) and a real US dollar.  She goes shopping all the time and when she uses the credit card she even likes to sign her "name". 

Felt wallet, cake and bread 003

Felt wallet, cake and bread 004

I simply hot glued down the sides, added some Velcro to the yellow strip so it would "snap" shut, embellished with the flower and Voila!  A DIY felt wallet in less than ten minutes!  Of course you could make it sturdier with the use of the sewing machine or larger with more pockets, but she didn’t seem to mind!

Felt wallet, cake and bread 005

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Toddler School–Easter Edition

Sunday, April 8th, 2012

We had a pretty rough week at Toddler school last week, so I decided to take it easy this week.  We finished up a couple of our J activities and through in some Easter activities for fun.  Here are a couple of highlights from our week.

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Painting an Easter bunny with a marshmallow.  She thought it was pretty silly to paint with a marshmallow!

Easter school 010

Matching jar lids to the correct jar and screwing them on.  She did amazing at this!  Her fine motor skills have definitely improved since we started this journey in September!

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Easter Egg Memory.  I made six matching Easter egg cards and she played memory trying to find the correct match.  When she found the right match she placed them in her bunny basket we made (sorry, didn’t get a good picture of that one).

Easter school 011

Then she decided that she wanted to use the eggs to go on an Easter egg hunt.  Sometimes her impromptu games end up better than my planned ones!  She hid the eggs herself and then found them all over and over again!

Easter school 013 

I taped some popsicle sticks in the shape of a cross on a piece of cardstock and then let her paint around them with sponges.  When we took the popsicle sticks off it revealed a special cross.  We spent some time during this craft talking about the Easter story and why it is so important!

We did some more activities this week, but can’t remember them at the moment!  Ben was home on Friday so we had another short week of school!

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Mikayla’s Funny Statements

Saturday, April 7th, 2012

Have I mentioned on here before how funny my child can be?  Seriously, sometimes she says things and I wonder where she gets them.  Here are some of her recent "funny" statements that she says regularly.

"I’m sorry…I forgive you" – From the time she could start talking we encouraged her to apologize and ask for forgiveness when she had done something wrong.  Somehow it has turned into the above statement where she says she is sorry and then that she forgives you instead of asking for forgiveness!

"My Jie-Nuh" – We had a friend in Bowling Green who worked with sexual abuse victims and she always told us we should use the correct wording for private parts in case they were ever sexually abused it would hold up in court.  This is what Mikayla calls hers.

"Actually" – You have to hear her say this one because she enunciates it so well.  She will say this if she thinks we are wrong (Actually mommy…) or if she doesn’t want to do something (Actually we are going to…).  The word itself isn’t that funny, but the way she says it is!

"Oh Toodles and Super Cheers" – This has stemmed from her love of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (which is what we have decided to theme her third birthday party in case you were wondering).  She goes around saying them all the time.  Even at meal time sometimes she will have has clink our food together and say super cheers.

"Excused by the table" – She uses this one when she wants to get up from the table.  It is supposed to be "Excused from the table". 

"I-an-a-de-a" (idea) – This one is perhaps my favorite.  She gets so excited when she says this one.  This comes up when we ask her what we should do and she responds with "I’ve got an ianadea!".

"Humping" (hunting) – I am not sure how this one came about, but she says this often when we are outside and she wants to look for something.  I will ask her what she is doing and she will respond with "I am humping for leaves".

"Park and Play" – Ben says this is his favorite Mikayla statement.  If we are driving down the road and she sees a playground she will scream ‘There’s a park and play".  It seemed like an odd thing to call it until we realized we often asker her if she want to go to the park and play She now thinks that is what they are called!  Friends that ride into town with us comment on it every time she says it when we pass parks.  So funny.

"Boing-A-Hop" – I think she got this one from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, but when she wants to jump (particularly on our bed) she says, "Let’s go Boing-A-Hop".  So cute!

"Sometimes, but not two times" – If you ask Mikayla a question (i.e. Do you like this?) she will respond with "Sometimes, but not two times".  I think what she means is that she likes it sometimes, but not all of the time.  Still, her choice of wording is funny to me!

I really wanted to include a funny picture of Mikayla here but couldn’t find one I liked, so I am leaving it picture less!

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Toddler School–Letter I

Sunday, March 25th, 2012

Letter I was a tough one for me to come up with ideas for.  I managed to come up with a few that I think were fun (and somewhat creative).  So, without further ado:

Letter I 001

I made another puzzle from a coloring book page for the Letter I .  She had fun putting together her ice cream cone!

Letter I 002

My mom had sent some insect stickers so we used these to make the Letter I.

Letter I 005

She also sent some of those "Grow-A-Capsules" in the shapes of bugs, but we called them insects.  She enjoyed watching the capsules grow into different insects.

Letter I 006

Since she likes to stamp so much, I wrote out some "I" word and had her stamp the correct letters on top.

Letter I 007

Then we rolled the dice and counted out that many insects.

Letter I 008

She glued sprinkles on top of the numbers according to the number on each cone.

Letter I 009

 At the store last week I found some insect gummies so we sorted these by colors and then by insects.  Of course we ate some too!

Letter I 011

She has gotten really good at writing the letter I.  Although she will sometimes write an H instead.

Letter I 014

I made some colored ice cubes with food coloring and let her use them to paint with.  After painting the I, she then went on to paint 10 other pages!  This kid loves painting!

Letter I 015

I broke back out our Ice cream letter matching game this week.  It had been awhile since she played it.

Letter I 016

Then of course we made ice cream.  I chose to make the individual ice cream in a bag version.  She enjoyed it for the first minute and then got tired of shaking it and I had to finish.

Letter I 018

And of course she had to eat some as well!

Next week we will move on to the Letter J.  Stay tuned!

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Miscellaneous Seuss Activities

Thursday, March 15th, 2012

Have I mentioned before how much I love Dr. Seuss?  Well if not, I LOVE DR. SEUSS!  I think he is an extremely creative writer that engages his reader and his characters are super creative!  When I taught Kindergarten we always did a two week Dr. Seuss unit and read as many of his books as we could.  Mikayla has always enjoyed Dr. Seuss, which is why we have spent the last two weeks "studying" his books during our Toddler School time.  You can read about some of our past activities here, here, here and here.  These are just some of the activities that didn’t make it into any of the other posts because they weren’t geared towards any specific book, but just Dr. Seuss as a whole!

Green Eggs and Fox in Socks 002

I colored a Thing 1 picture, cut into strips, numbered the strips and she had a fun puzzle to work.  She really enjoyed this and it was easy, so I think we will be doing more of these in the future!

Green Eggs and Fox in Socks 006

I placed some Dr. Seuss stickers onto strips of paper and she cut in between the stickers for some fun cutting practice.

Green Eggs and Fox in Socks 008

Since she LOVES stickers so much I let her take the extra stickers and place on a quick drawing of the words Dr. Seuss and a Cat Hat.

random stuff 019

I made a color by number that revealed the Cat’s Hat.  She did a great job of coloring the numbers to correct color, but she struggled with coloring in the whole area.  Another easy project we can replicate for future activities!

Shape of me, ABCs 016

Roll An Action Game.  First, I made a dice with six different actions (i.e. clap, hop, etc.)  Then, I laid out some Dr. Seuss number flash cards on the floor. She chose one, rolled the action dice and then completed the action the same number of times as her number card.  She is still not great with number recognition if anyone has any fun activities.

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Toddler School–Dr. Seuss Cats and Fish

Thursday, March 15th, 2012

For our final installment of Dr. Seuss fun we focused on a couple of my favorite books:  One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, Cat in the Hat, and Cat in the Hat Comes Back.

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

After reading the book I had Mikayla put the correct number for fish in each numbered fish bowl.  I had planned to have her paint or stamp them, but stickers were easier on this particular day.  If you look closely at the picture on the right you will see a glimpse of our Horton made from a toilet paper tube.

More Seussian fun 001

Cat in the Hat

We made the obligatory Thing 1 and Thing 2 craft by painting our hands.  I still want to play a balancing game with her where she tries to balance objects like Cat in the Hat, but we managed to run out of time again!

More Seussian fun 011

Cat in the Hat Comes Back

We made a Cat Hat with the letters of her name.  She liked it so much, we had to make hats for some of her princesses out of strips of paper and toilet paper tubes.  Pictures are terrible, but you get the idea!

More Seussian fun 006

More Seussian fun 007

 

I made some finger puppets today while she was napping, but they did not turn out as planned.  The cat is not black because I didn’t have black pipe cleaners.  And the noses on Thing 1 and Thing 2 are a little large, but oh well.  I still think Mikayla will have fun with them!

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I had also planned to do some stuff with The Foot Book, but haven’t gotten around to it yet.  If we do, I will post about it later.

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Toddler School–Horton and Hop on Pop

Thursday, March 15th, 2012

We have continued our Dr. Seuss study this week with a few more popular titles:  Horton Hears a Who, Horton Hatches An Egg, Hop On Pop and There’s a Wocket in My Pocket.  Here are our activities:

Horton Hears a Who

We began by reading the book and then making a clover with a speck.  She is still playing with the clover and is amazed the speck never falls off!  I didn’t have any glitter this year which I usually use for my speck, so I just put a drop of hot glue and it works great (even easier than the glitter).  Then we grabbed Horton and watched the movie.  Please note that my daughters choice of snacks for the movie watching were plain noodles.  Too funny!

Horton 001

Horton Hatches An Egg

She was a little disappointed after this reading, because there wasn’t a movie to watch.  She thought there should be!  We settled for making a Horton character out of a painted toilet paper tube and some foam.  I did not manage to get a picture of this, but I promise it was cute!

Hop On Pop

We read the book and then got out some bubble wrap for her to Hop on Pop(s).  She had a blast and kept popping for several minutes!

More Seussian fun 003

More Seussian fun 004

There’s a Wocket In My Pocket

This was a last minute addition to our study because we found it for pretty cheap in Jo-burg last weekend.  We read the book and then played a game.  To play I put six items on a cookie sheet.  Then I had her close her eyes and removed one object to put in my pocket.  When she opened her eyes she had to guess which object was missing.  She did great at this game and we played several times back and forth.  Eventually she even started adding more items while my eyes were closed…clever girl!

More Seussian fun 002

I have just a few more activities up my sleeves so stay tuned!

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Toodles Activity Board (From Mickey Mouse Clubhouse)

Saturday, March 10th, 2012

Now that we have satellite, Mikayla watches a couple of cartoons.  One of them that she loves is Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.  She actually has little Mickey and Friends characters that she plays with daily.  They are even regularly part of our bath time routine.  If you are unfamiliar with the show, there are couple of key phrases.  Like:  "Super Cheers", "If you’ve got ears, say cheers" and "Oh Toodles".  Mikayla will regularly repeat these and act out scenarios from the show.  She will also spend a lot of time during the day asking me what she should do.  So I decided to create her an activity choice board, and what better way than to incorporate Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.

In the show there is a machine that appears when the characters say "Oh Toodles".  And on Toodles are four objects that will help them in their journey or activity.  Once they choose one to use, they say "If you’ve got ears, say cheers"!  And then once they are all used they say, "Super Cheers". So I decided to make Mikayla a Toodles board with four choices of activities.  Next time when she asks me what she should do, I will call "Oh Toodles" and let her decide!

To create all I did was cut a piece of cardboard out in the shape of Mickey Mouse.  Then I took some scraps of felt I had on hand and hot glued them on.  I took the rest of my cardboard and cut into squares and then drew on pictures of activities she could do (I am not an artist, so no fair making fun of my drawings).  I then put Velcro on the back and voila you have a Toodles Activity Choice board!  (The extra activities were placed in a bag and stapled on the back of Toodles).

Shape of me, ABCs 022

The bag is filled with additional choices that we will rotate into the board.

Toodles Choice Board 001

Exploring Toodles for the first time.  I think she likes it and is excited about it!  She held onto him for the whole time she watched cartoons this morning!

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