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.

Playing Cars, For Real

My son is obsessed with anything with wheels. Thomas, Lightning McQueen, the backhoe from "I'm Dirty" and the garbage truck in "I Stink" (books by Kate and Jim McMullen), and any other thing that rolls, honks, or beeps. He even goes to bed each night with a garbage truck named Garbee. When he wakes up he carries it around all day wrapped in a baby blanket. He even feeds Garbee with a baby bottle.

I decided to feed off this obsession and take my kids to an overpass. Not far from us there is a big giant overpass over the freeway that connects the light rail station one one side to a parking lot on the other. Not only did we get to watch cars, trucks, buses, and even the occasional boat on a trailer, but we also go to watch the light rail trains come and go. I kind of expected this outing to last maybe twenty minute or so (I mean, how long can you watch cars go by really) but we ended up staying about an hour. I'm glad a brought a snack along!

Sweet Apples

It was Apple Week at our hour this last week. We did a lot of fun different apple activities. Here are a few of them.

My favorite thing we did all week was an apple tree collage. I cut out the apples and the leaves and my daughter cut up the bark. It was great cutting practice and very relaxing for both of us.

I took a piece of poster board with an outline of a tree and taped it to the window. My plan was to cover in with contact paper, but I was fresh out, so I just used a whole bunch of strips of packing tape layered up against each other. It made the perfect sticky surface and was only slightly more work than contact paper.  

My son was very excited about the apples (I used all sorts of paper, glitter paper, holographic paper, and other craft paper), but that's about where his interest ended. My daughter continued on sticking on leaves and bark, but lost interest when she got to this point:

I thought it looked pretty the way it was, but I decided to leave out the materials for several more days. I'm glad I did because after a week, this is what it looked like. I did end up helping with the trunk because my daughter asked me to, but the rest was mostly her doing, with a little help from her brother. She made me laugh because she was bothered by the apples and bark my son put on the side of the tree. She ripped them off and put them in a more 'appropriate' place.

 

For an outing we took a trip to the grocery store to pick out several different kinds of apples. My daughter washed them.

My son sorted them.

We all tasted them (and appreciated the stars in the middle). Unfortunately the one we liked the best had already lost its sticker, so I'm not sure what kind it was, but it was delicious!

Painting an apple tree was much more appealing to my son than the collage. That boy sure loves to paint!

 

I also found a bunch of apple printables on Pinterest. There are all sorts of wonderful packets if you search long enough. 

Splish Splash

My kids begged me to go out on the porch in the rain. I couldn't resist their sweet pleas. I figured that while they were out there, they might as well get really wet, so I sent them out with bowls and cups and bottles filled with water to pour, stir, and dump. To say the least, a good time was had by all.

Paint Date

I feel pretty lucky that I have a garage. For the last 5 1/2 years of my life I have resided in a two bedroom apartment/house/townhouse/apartment/townhouse, in that order. For some reason we just can't shake the two bedroom thing. I really can't complain too much because 1. I only have two kids. My sister has three kids in a two bedroom, so I do realize we could be much more cramped than we currently are. 2. We have a two car garage and only one garage door opener, which means my husband parks in the driveway and I use the other half of the garage for arts and crafts and toys. The other day we had a paint and playdough play date in our garage. It was so much fun. The kids painted and painted and painted. I opted for a group mural as opposed to individual painting, and I was really pleased with the outcome.

If you notice, I wrote "Please keep paint over here!" on the top of the paper, and then later remembered that everyone involved in the painted was under 5. Oh well. At least the moms knew where to keep the paint.

Marshmallow Dough

I found this recipe on mamapapabuba.com. It makes fluffy smooth play dough. It dries out pretty quickly, this is definitely a one time use dough, but it's fun while it lasts. By the way, do you want to know my favorite play dough tool? Scissors. Paper and scissors don't always mix with those chubby little two year old hands because it requires just a little too much coordination. Play dough, however, is easy to cut even when you hold your scissors by the thumbs of both hands.

Marshmallow Dough 

• 2 tablespoons of coconut oil (or other high temperature tolerant oil)
• 1 one pound bag of large marshmallows
• 3 – 4 cups of cornstarch
• food coloring

Over medium heat, melt coconut oil in a pot.  Once liquid, add the entire bag of marshmallows.  Stir frequently until marshmallows are completely melted.
Working quickly, divide the marshmallow mixture into four bowls (approximately 1 cup per bowl) and stir in 3 drops of liquid food colouring into each.  Add 3/4 of a cup of cornstarch to each bowl to start.  Using a spoon, stir vigorously until marshmallow goo and cornstarch begin to come together.  Use your hands to knead in the extra cornflour once the dough is cool enough to handle.  If needed, add an extra 1/4 of cornstarch to each bowl to firm up the dough, however, be careful not to add too much as the dough will become overly hard.

Sour Grapes

We've been exploring different tastes lately. When it was time to try something sour, I found a really fun recipe to try. Sour grapes. You may have already seen it on Pinterest (if you are as addicted to Pinterest as I am). They are also known as sour patch grapes. It's a super easy recipe, which means it's great for kids to make. All you need are grapes (obviously) and jello mix, we picked lime. All you do is dump out the jello mix in a bowl and then stir in some recently washed, slightly damp grapes. 

I made my kids do every step of this process, included pick the grapes off the stem. It's recommended to put the grapes in the fridge and let them sit for a bit, but there were some sneaky hands that just couldn't wait. I didn't snap any pictures of the cooking process, but I did get an after shot of the sour tongues. Can you tell which tongue ate more?