Yo Ho, Yo Ho, A Pirate Week For Us

My son has recently become obsessed with pirates. I think it all started when we went to Disney World (makes sense, right?). He asked if we could do a pirate week and I'm glad he did because it was a lot of fun. 

We turned the sensory bins into treasure chests by adding necklaces, beads, stones, and jewels.

Later, I hid the treasure chests and drew the kids treasure maps to find them. I was impressed that my kids could for the most part interpret my not-so-skilled depictions.

With glue and feathers we made pirate parrots. My daughter insisted on wearing a pirate scarf and making a pirate face in this picture. 

We turned our airplane into a pirate ship. I was really proud of this because the wheel actually spins.

We practiced making x's for X marks the spot.

I attempted making a wind tunnel so that we could pretend it was a cannon and the balloons would shoot out of it. I think if we had a big powerful box fan it would have been a lot more effective. Instead of the balloons shooting out, they kind of meandered. It was still fun. 

My son dressed up in his pirate costume almost every day. 

We counted syllables in our weekly words and marked them with jewels.

We also did a do-a-dot page with jewels.

We made a felt flag banner, but the kids used the skulls as masks for a while.

And finally, we made pirate t-shirts out of freezer paper and paint.

I think they turned out pretty cute!

It's a bird, No it's a Plane

I've decided I'll let the pictures do most of the talking, and add only a little bit of commentary.

For plane week, we had plane crafts including clothes pin/popsicle stick airplanes, tin foil airplanes, painted airplanes, and dry erase jet trails.

We talked about some aerodynamic vocabulary.

We found some cute flight books, including this one.

 We went to the local air and space museum.

I let the kids take pictures, and it was interesting what they found important.

Finally, my favorite project of the week was this cardboard airplane.

I Heart Valentine's Day

Soooo, I guess it's been quite a while since I've posted considering that the last post is a Thanksgiving post and now it's Valentine's Day. Time sure does fly. 

Unfortunately my daughter woke up sick this morning, so we haven't had a very thrilling day. However we have done quite a few Valentiney (is that a word?) things this week as preparation.

Early in the week we set up a Valentine station in the living room. My kids spent lots of time coloring with markers, decorating with stickers, and creating lovely cards.

Everyone had their own mailbox, and we kept leaving each other notes.

 I also printed off several Valentine games from Pinterest.

With our playgroup we went to visit a Retirement home. This was the most special thing we did this week. The activities coordinator got a group together for us and when we got there we sang them some songs, handed out Valentines, and talked to each person individually. I only snapped one picture the whole time (I was really enjoying talking with those we were visiting and got wrapped up in it), and this picture looks kind of goofy because the kids were singing "Once There Was a Snowman" and they had all just melted to the ground.

We went to a cookie painting party.

We graphed conversation hearts. 

 I forgot how disgusting those things are! How to people keep buying them? Yuck. My kids have major sweet tooths, and they were only interesting in eating three of four.

Finally, we put conversation hearts into different liquids to see what would dissolve them fastest. This is how they looked after about an hour. 

My the next morning, the only hearts that had totally dissolved were in the vinegar. We're still waiting on the others.

I hope you all have a wonderful Valentine's Day with those you love!!

Happy Thanksgiving: Free Printable!

Hi all!  This is Dagny's sister, Emmy, and I'm here to join the party!  I also happen to live and play in a two-bedroom apartment with my three kids.  Luckily we live in Southern California, so we get lots of great outdoor time.

Living and playing in two bedrooms (or fewer) means that storage options can be...limited.  Which means that ALL of my holiday decorations have to fit in two Rubbermaid bins.  So to keep things festive and flat-packed, I rely on lots of paper decorations!  It's lots of fun to create lots of these with my kids, but printables (in easy-to-change frames) are also great to dress the walls up a bit.

My goal over the next few weeks is to show off some of the paper decorations we've made, but in the meantime, Happy Thanksgiving!  (Go ahead and click on it to make it full size, then save or copy it into whatever program you like to print out for your own personal use.  Enjoy!)

Thomas Costume

I'm feeling super proud of this home made Thomas costume, so I thought I'd share. I bought a $4 zip up sweatshirt and sewed on some felt shapes and #1's. The smokestack is made of felt and cotton and it made my little boy so happy he almost exploded. I'm planning on sewing some wheels on his pants and calling it good. What do you think?

I Ain't Gonna Paint No More!

Have you ever read this book?

 

It is so cute. You should probably go check it out at the library right now. It is a favorite at our house. It's about a little boy who, after promising never to paint again, goes on to paint himself from head to toe. To make it even more fun you can sing the words in the book to the tune of 'It ain't gonna rain no more'. 

It was the feature book at a special story-time we have in our library where each child gets to take home a copy of the book. My kids often request to hear this book and today when they pulled it out of the bookshelf, I had an idea.

I took a picture of each of them standing in front of a white wall. I printed the picture out in black and white.

 

I taped the picture to the kids' easel, and let them paint themselves from head to toe. 

 

Leaf Magnets

My kids love collected things outside. They usually come home from the park with several rocks in their pockets and a whole bunch of sticks and pine-cones in my bag. I'm not sure how they sneak all of that nature in my bag, but somehow I'm constantly reaching in and discovering some kind of flora when all I really want to get is my wallet or a diaper. The other day I gave them the job of collecting leaves around our neighborhood. It's still a little early in the year for colorful leaves, but we did find a few that had already changed. We took them home, laminated them, and then hot-glued some magnets to the back. I stuck the leaves to our dishwasher (since our refrigerator is already full of letter magnets) and they were a hit right away. It's been a fun thing for the kids to play with while I make dinner.