Thursday, January 27, 2011

Boxes

I don't know about you, but at our house the best presents have always been the boxes. Here are all three cousins at Christmas playing with one of their favorite toys. I remembered this yesterday when my daughter was tired of her toys. I went to the garage and pulled a box out of the recycle bin and we had fun for a long time.

Fact!


There's just nothing like a hallway fort, is there?

A Little Loopy

Working on those fine motor skills we did some Fruit Loop stringing today.

Putting Fruit Loops on to the pipe-cleaners was a little tricky for 16 month old hands, but taking them off was fun for her to do over and over again.




Aft
er taking the loops off over and over, we turned them into bracelets. It was about that point the my daughter figured out Fruit Loops are eatable. When I thought about it I realized she's never had them before. Boy oh boy did she love them!! She put a bracelet on each arm and started chowing down.

Play Dough

While we've been waiting for some sunnier days to go out and play, we've had a lot of fun inside. Today we made homemade play dough for the first time. This was the recipe we used (and we doubled it):
-2 cups plain flour
-1 cup salt
-2 cups water
-4 Tablespoons vegetable oil
-2 Tablespoons cream of tartar
-food coloring
-1 Teaspoon Vanilla extract
Mix together dry ingredients in a sauce pan. Add wet ingredients and cook on low until the dough thickens to play dough consistency.
Oh, we also added one last ingredient as we were playing: sprinkles.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

How Cool is This?

I want one of these at my house!!!!There is local Children's mini-museum/art studio near our house and I think this is the absolute best feature. It's a giant piece of plastic mounted on the wall with a rain-gutter underneath to hold pots of paint. Kids can paint to their hearts delight. When they're done, you simply wipe it off and start all over again. Genius, right?

Check One Off the List

I have a whole folder on my computer of crafts I would one day like to finished. Well, today I finally finished one! This idea came from Chez Beeper Bebe. I loved the way the letters formed a rainbow, so I tried to imitate that the best I could with my limited fabric supply. My daughter and I often get on starfall.com and look at the different letters. Her favorite is 'G'. In fact, she's started calling the computer 'guh guh' because she likes the 'guh'. I was so excited when she started playing with her beanbags, grabbed the yellow G and started saying 'guh guh!' It just melts a mother's heart, doesn't it?
For storage I use an empty plastic pretzel jar. The jar has become as much of a game as the beanbags. The little miss likes to see what types of things she can fit in the jar (her sippy cup, stuffed dog, her hand.......you get the idea). I'm glad this worked out. I almost lost interest around the letter 'n', but I didn't and I'm proud.