Because Babies Grow Up

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Contact Paper Valentine’s Day Hearts

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We are already excitedly preparing for Valentine’s Day around here. The girls love making hearts and decorating them. I’ve been dying to hang up some contact paper for them to decorate. I finally remembered to buy some at the store. Yay for me! And we got to work.

heartcraftI cut out a heart frame from a piece of construction paper and taped that to the window first to be a guide. I taped the contact paper, sticky side out, over the heart. Then I dumped the tissue squares I bought years ago from Oriental Trading Company on a little table. Then it was the kids’ turn. And they jumped right to it.

Elli immediately began filling in he heart. She placed 5 squares on and then called it good. I encouraged her to cover all of the stickiness and make it a mosaic. I figured if she said she was done I’d leave it at that, but she accepted my request and completely covered everything inside the heart.

Contact Paper Valentine's Day Heart withTissue PaperScott had a lot of fun exploring the stickiness. He also thought the tissue squares were fun to drop and watch float to the ground. He eventually decided to stick some to the paper. He preferred to have me hand him the squares. I asked him if he wanted a green square or a purple square as a way to bring color word association into our activity. He calls everything pink (thanks to two older sisters!) but prefers the color green.

Contact Paper Valentine's Day Heart withTissue PaperWhen Sammi came home she really wanted to make one, too. I just moved Scott’s paper to a different window and put up a new piece of contact paper over the black heart frame. She had so much fun with creating a scene and incorporating texture into her project. She gave her heart a face with a winking eye and eyelashes. Her heart also has hair and legs and is standing in grass. It’s so fun to see her art become more complex as she gets older.

Contact Paper Valentine's Day Heart with Tissue Paper

When Elli’s heart was done, I glued the red heart frame to the front of the paper and we painted glue over it to secure down the overlapping tissue squares. It gave it a nice glossy look. Her plan is to cut it out and give it to Daddy for Valentine’s Day.

In hindsight, I would stick the heart frame to the sticky side. I think it would be easier to finish up if we didn’t have to place it again over the top of the tissue paper. But initially I didn’t want it to be covered with tissue paper. Another idea I thought of after the fact was covering Elli’s heart with another piece of contact paper so the heart was “laminated” to hold the unstuck tissue paper in place. But the modge podge was a fun and fine motor skill building step. Also, the texture Sammi added to her heart made it difficult to finish off. There are still sticky parts that I don’t know how to cover. Because of how she placed the hair I can’t move the heart frame to the front side like I did with Elli’s. For now it’s just displayed in our window while I continue to problem solve the situation. Any suggestions are welcome 🙂

 

 

 

Mixed Media: Where Are the Dragons

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Why Music?

Music is becoming an increasingly important part of our play. Music is great for dance parties and altering sour moods. But it’s great for so much more, too. Music is good for learning, bonding, communicating, and creating! As we have gotten to know various albums, specific songs have sparked art projects, gifts, and parties. With so many opportunities to review and share new music here on the blog, I’ve felt inspired to explore and elaborate on the connections we’re making between music and other “related arts” (as they are called at the girls’ school.)

Welcome to Week Two of Mixed Media!

In each Mixed Media post I’ll share a song and a creative project that was inspired by the song. My hope is that you will be inspired to share music with your little one in a way that gets you two (or three or four!) connected to each other and to your creative sides. This week’s song is Where Are the Dragons by Ben Rudnick and Friends. This song inspired a read-aloud and an art project!

Where Are The Dragons by Ben Rudnick and Friends


To start off, I read the book That’s Not My Dragon from Usborne Books. I love this book because it has the cutest dragons and highlights a different feature on each page with different textures. All the kids want to feel each page and invariably name the texture, e.g., knobbly, scaly, or scratchy. We also referenced the book when drawing our dragons which was most helpful for me since Scott and even Elli convinced me to draw their dragons. Sammi’s is all hers, though!

I wanted them all to use the letter D and create their dragon from that. But that was too teacher-centered for them today! Only Scott consented to use the D (he didn’t really get much choice and he loves getting his hands on the glue stick!) but he still spent a lot of time trying to pull it off the paper.

I also made a “teacher” choice by saying our only texture was sparkly because I was trying to minimize the mess. Fortunately glitter is always an exciting crafting resource and they didn’t complain. I thought of it because for a year between ages 4 and 5, Sammi’s favorite adjective was sparkly. It was even on our word wall when she first really started asking me to spell words for her to write down. She definitely loved having a sparkly dragon.

After they drew/colored their dragons, they decided what part would be sparkly. Scott absolutely loved squeezing on the glue and then sprinkling on the glitter. It took serious distraction skills to make sure Elli got her turn. When she was done he went back to his picture for round two of adding glitter. While he did that the girls wrote their names on their paper and Sammi wrote a whole sentence while Elli wrote sparkly. I really enjoy seeing them excited about writing and communicating an idea through their creativity.

We’re enjoying Ben Runick and Friends newest album, Love Is A Superpower, set to release 9/25. They’ve graciously offered to giveaway a copy of this album to a BBGU reader! Go to the review and giveaway post and leave a comment, then use Rafflecopter to manage your entries, doing as many or as few as you’d like. The giveaway is open through 9/19/2012.

Linking up at No Time For Flashcards Kids Craft Linky!

The Obsession with Writing

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I’ve written before about how Elli is different from Sammi. She hasn’t been as interested in hours spent at the craft table surrounded by art supplies. I’ve spent the last year getting to know Elli for Elli. We’ve tickled and wrestled, read and snuggled, role played and raced. It’s been a fun year and I really feel like I know who she is and what makes her tick.

As we homeschooled Sammi through Kindergarten, I also had preschool activities for Elli to do. Occasionally she would stay with us long enough to finish a worksheet or glue her pictures down. Often she would hop and skip around the table. Somewhere in all of that she mastered recognizing all her letters and their sounds, counting to 16, holding a pencil correctly and even learned the names of most of the continents. I’m amazed!

We’re approaching Elli’s birthday. She’ll be 4 and she’s very excited about it. She now consistently wants to put her own shoes on. She likes to get dressed and loves to pick our her own outfits. She dances and sings all the time. She’s still the very movement-oriented learner that she’s always been, but in the last couple of weeks she’s taken to writing. She makes lists all day long. No pad of paper is safe from Elli’s list making. Sometimes it’s just squiggles but often it’s letters. Lots and lots of letters.

She’s known how to write her name since last fall. E-L-L-I. Pretty easy and she loved that she could write it. But she wasn’t that interested in learning to write any other letters. She accidentally picked up F and H, O and C, and S for Sammi and Scott. When we did handwriting practice with different letters she usually entertained Scott instead of writing. But now she’s asking me to show her how to write different letters. She mastered R and K at church last week. She’s even asked me to spell out a few words for her to write down.

Development is all about timing. Children progress when they are ready for it. The best we can do is provide them with a rich environment that creates opportunities for and exposure to learning, then keep our eyes open for when they show us they are ready for the next stage. It’s been so fun to see Elli sit for 20+ minutes writing letters and drawing pictures. She tells the best stories to go along with her masterpieces, too.

What is unfolding for your child now?

A Family that Plays Together, Cleans Together

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Yesterday we experienced the joy of Oobleck. I spent the morning cleaning the kitchen while the kids played so it would be ready for the fun. As I finished, the kids came calling for something to do with me. Perfect timing!

We watched this video together that we found on Pinterest, then got to work. Elli poured the cornstarch (2 cups), I poured the water (1-1 1/2 cups), and Sammi stirred.

Then the fun began.

Scott was such a charmer. He loved handing it to me and watching it slip through his fingers and then mine to make designs all over his legs. Then he’s eat it off his hands. I loved that this was something I didn’t have to worry about him eating, unlike the play dough since I still haven’t made a gluten-free version yet.

Then mama made the unwise decision to make an important phone call while the kids were so engaged. The call took me out of the room in search of my computer. I ended the call to very loud arguing between Sammi and Elli. I went upstairs to see what was going on and found at least a gallon of water covering the table mixed with the remaining oobleck and a puddle of smoothie that Scott had spilled. Then there was at least another gallon of water on the floor tinted with cornstarch.

The mess wasn’t the bad part. It was the constant “She did it. I didn’t do anything!” from the oldest. I gave them towels and had them soak up the puddles of water. Then I sent the girls to their rooms for some peace to calm down and give me a chance to think about how to tackle the mess.

So it’s rare that I get the whole kitchen clean all at the same time. It’s never happened that I’ve done that twice on the same day. But it had to be done. We couldn’t live with cornstarch caking everything from the sink and mat to the table and chairs. Even I wasn’t going to cross that line! So after time out we cleaned together.

Since we were all calmed down, the cleaning was actually quite fun. We each had a washcloth and we wiped up all the cornstarch and water we could find. We wiped down the chairs and even the chair legs! I don’t think that’s happened since they were repainted last year. Every one was cheerful and helpful. It was a good end to a good activity.

It reminded me of a sign I saw at the children’s museum in Utah. It reads: Clean up is part of play. For someone who doesn’t like to clean, this message is my new mantra when it comes to messes. Just like I had to learn to schedule in diaper changes and packing snacks into the diaper bag so we could get places on time, I am working on making clean up a part of our playtime instead of something I grumpily force the kids to do after we are too tired to do anything well. I admire those who manage clean up so much better than I do!

What do you do to make clean up manageable for your family?

Spiders

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I have a huge aversion to spiders. Seriously. I literally cried when the park ranger walked by me with a tarantula at a show we went to. Then I turned around and carried the snake around for all the kids to see. It’s just spiders. They freak me out. So celebrating spiders on our Halloween Countdown took a lot of will power for me. In the end, it was one of the more fun days we had!

We made spider snacks:

Oreo Spider TreatThey are cute and I know you want to make them, too! Here’s the how-to on spider cookies.

Supplies for Spider Cookies

I made the frosting first following our gingerbread house frosting recipe. I was a little distracted and added almost two pounds instead of one pound of powdered sugar. I added some more milk to thin it down and smooth it out. I was worried it wouldn’t hold well with the, uh, alterations. But it did great.

Next we pulled apart the Twizzlers and cut them into little leg-length pieces. Then we twisted the top of the Oreo off. We pressed eight legs into the cream filling. Then added a little frosting to the backside of the Oreo and put it back on top to cover the legs. Then we dipped the chocolate chips in the frosting, generously, and put them on to of the Oreos for eyes. I love the look of a little extra frosting around the chocolate chip. Looks like real eyes to me.

This was great work for little fingers. Sammi (5) and Elli (3) both helped put legs on and dipped eyes in frosting and added them. Sammi also loves to twist off the Ores tops. Once she worked through the process on one cookie with me, she did all the rest of hers on her own without any assistance from me. I love how independent she is now!

Monster Pancakes

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We’ve been following The Home Teacher’s Countdown to Halloween. It’s been so much fun and the girls look forward each morning to picking the pumpkin off the wall and finding out our theme for the day (a picture on the back of the pumpkin). Today is Monster day and I have lots of fun things planned, but we started the day off with monster pancakes for breakfast.

Monster PancakesBrent made the pancakes and colored some green and some purple. Then we put decoration possibilities on the table. We had chocolate chips, bananas, whipped topping, bacon and sausage.

Sammi and her Monster PancakeEach person created their own monster.

Sammi and her Monster PancakeSuch creativity!

Scott eating his Monster PancakeEven Scott enjoyed his monster pancake.

Other things we are doing today:

Looking for monster ideas? Check out my Monster board on Pinterest!

Getting Dressed

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Elli has finally discovered the joy of dressing herself. This comes as a relief because now I can hand her her pajamas and she can put them on herself while I change the baby. I remember this being a huge burden lifted off my shoulders when Sammi transitioned into dressing herself for bed, and then for the day.

I say burden because by the time we’re getting ready for bed, I’m exhausted! It takes so much focus (which I seem to lack at the end of the day) to get all the kids in their pajamas with their teeth brushed and their bladders empty and finally settled in bed. To have Elli dress herself is a huge step toward simplifying this process.

The downside to this new discovery is that it is just that, NEW. And every time I turn around, she’s changed her clothes, again. While I’m lamenting the extra laundry, I have to smile at the outfits she puts together.

Helping your little one learn to dress

  1. Be patient with the extra laundry!
  2. Provide clothes with give: elastic waistbands and shirts with loose sleeves and necks.
  3. Let them struggle a little with the clothing, but intervene before full-blown frustration.
  4. Sit back and let them be in charge. Sometimes I have to occupy myself with another task so she has the room to struggle with her clothes without me hovering over her.
  5. An older sibling’s clothes can be just right for learning to put on and take off clothes.
  6. Dress-ups are another great way to practice.
  7. Enjoy the crazy outfits that come your way!
How have you helped your little one learn to dress?

Coloring Rice for Play

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We had such a blast with our Spring sensory tub that I wanted to try a rice-based tub with Spring-colored rice. I used vinegar and food coloring following directions found here.

I love the colors. They are so vibrant and looked great next to each other. I was too impatient to wait for the orange to dry so I gave the tub to Elli with just the green, purple and pink.

She immediately mixed them. She then proceeded to play with just the rice for about 10 minutes. Such fun!

Elli helped me make the rice by pouring the vinegar into the jar, helping me squeeze the food coloring in, and shaking the jar one the lid was on tight. She loved being a part of the process. I was worried she would be more destructive than helpful, but she’s really figuring out the fun of following directions.

What have your little ones been playing with this Spring?

Sensory Tub: Spring

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I’ve seen the cutest Spring themed sensory tubs all over the blogosphere, so today I decided to put together one for Elli. Since this was a last minute deal, I just gathered spring colored items that I already had. Some she’s been playing with and some have been ignored for a while. I added in Sammi’s left-handed chopsticks, a purple spoon and a measuring cup for added fun.

Sifting through the corn, finding the little toys and even picking up the corn that falls out of the tub are all great activities for developing fine motor skills. She had the added challenge of using Sammi’s left-handed chopsticks. She was able to pick up several things for me and had a blast!

As I was coaxing her unsuccessfully into picking up the corn on the floor, I experienced a moment of parenting-inspiration and turned it into a game. Games work every time! I don’t know why it takes so long for me to remember that. This game was about counting. I picked up one or two kernels, showed them to Elli and asked her how many I had in my hand. We counted them together until she could identify one or two by herself. We never did get three mastered! But then I asked her how many she had. She’d pick up as many as she could and then show me. We counted them together (usually four or five) and she put them in the tub and did it again. She was cleaning up and practicing numbers without even knowing it! Love that kind game.

How have you turned chores into games? I’m always looking for inspiration!

Halloween Wreath

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This was a quick and fun craft project we did one afternoon. We just used Halloween supplies we had on hand. Last year after Halloween I bought a bunch of rings and other Halloween plastic goodies. We discovered this year that the ring part pops off easily and leaves the Halloween shape free to become something else (other than a ring!) So we used them to make a Halloween wreath.



Supplies
  • Paper plate
  • Paint
  • Halloween shapes, figurines, anything you have around the house
  • Ribbon, Halloween colored or not
  • Glue gun
Directions
  1. The paper plate is the base of the wreath. Cut a circle out of the center of the paper plate. Then trim around the outside of the plate so the wreath is the size you want to accommodate the decorations you have for it.


  2. Paint the paper plate. We used orange, yellow, purple and black. We also used the Bingo bottles to paint so that the pain wouldn’t be too thick and would dry faster. Let dry.


  3. After the painted plates were dry, we warmed up the glue gun. The girls chose which shapes they wanted on their wreath. We laid them out to see how full the wreath would be and what order they wanted their shapes in.


  4. I added glue to the back of the shapes and helped the girls put them where they wanted them. Then they pressed down and counted to five to let the glue dry before we did the next one.


  5. After all the decorations were on the front and the glue had cooled, we added the ribbon. I just cut the ribbon pieces all the same length. I doubled the ribbon and glue gunned the ends at the top of the wreath. After a minute to cool, they were ready to hang.


Wishing you Happy and Safe Halloween Celebrations this weekend!