Ice Art

It doesn't feel much like winter now but last month we had a brief spell of ice and snow and the kids and I took advantage of the cold weather to make some ice art. It's such an easy, pretty project and the girls really enjoyed it. To make your own you will need:

*A small plastic container (we used the plastic containers that Chinese take out soup comes in)
*Water
*Natural materials such as berries, leaves and pine needles
*Glitter
*String
*A freezer or freezing temps outside

Have your kids collect natural items from outside and make a pile, then pour about half an inch of water in to your container. Arrange your natural materials in the water and add glitter. Loop your string so the end are submerged in water and freeze overnight. The next morning, hang your ice art in the sun. The girls also really enjoyed watching these melt and seeing the glittery puddles they left behind!

Home Made Model Magic

Oh goodness I have gotten behind on the blog! We've been on vacation and it takes us some time to recover plus We have lots of exciting new things starting up this Fall including a preschool(ish) program for Echo, connection with a fabulous homeschool group, me starting yoga, and a lot of doctors visits for me and Eric, so it's been a whirlwind.

I'll get back in the swing of things by sharing this short project (I'm dying to share my vacation photos but that will have to wait a little longer).

I recently tried a recipe from Pinterest (where else?) for home made Model Magic clay, which is a Crayola product. I have used Model Magic in the past while teaching art and loved it! The texture reminds me of marshmallow fondant, so fun to play with! It's super expensive though so I thought I'd give the home made stuff a try. All you have to do is mix 2 cups baking soda, one cup corn starch and one and a half cups cold water. Bring to a boil over medium heat while stirring constantly and continue to stir until it thickens to the consistency of mashed potatoes. Remove the pot from heat and allow the clay to cool (cover with a dish towel to keep it from drying out too much). If it is too wet and sticky like mine was you can kneed a little corn starch in to it. I also scented mine with a little lemon essential oil because it smells a little weird on it's own.

It was really fun to play with and Echo and I loved making things with it. It wasn't quite the same as Model Magic but it still had a great texture and was fun to use. Our sculptures all cracked and fell apart when we left them out to dry so I'm not sure what we did wrong there but if you just want to use it like play dough it works great.

Learning and Growing

As the kids are growing up we are really starting to get to the fun stuff! I love doing projects and activities with them, I feel like our homeschooling career is really starting to take off and it will only get better from here. Recently I bought some things from a teacher supply store and got a free lesson planning notebook. I'm not using it to plan lessons but I did start writing down what we do every day and categorizing it loosely. It's truly amazing how much we do each day, I really didn't realize until I wrote it down! 

A typical day looks something like this.

Art: Made pipe cleaner animal tails, painting with glitter glue

Science: water beads, magic growing sea animals, blowing bubbles

Language: Dictated a story, read Thumbelina, Beauty and the Beast and The Hat

Math: practiced counting with candy corns

Life Skills: Helped make lunch

Music: Listened to Disney Pandora Station

Physical Education: Dance party!

We don't plan our days very much but we sure manage to squeeze a lot in! It's exciting to watch the girls grow and learn all the time, they are so busy!

I've included a few photos of some of the activities we've been doing lately. It's impossible to document everything so this is just a little sample. Sorry for the poor quality, they were taken on my phone. 

The first two are the girls working on a collaborative painting together. Clover is doing really well in art making and is eating the art supplies less and less ;-). She seemed to really enjoy finger painting which is something Echo never really got in to. I was also happy that the girls worked so well together on this. The moments when they work on something together without fighting are brief but it is starting to happen more and more. In the top photo you can also see that they are enjoying some green beans picked fresh from my garden.

In the above photo you can see a letter Echo wrote to me. Her interest in writing has been steadily growing and her pretend letters are starting to look more like actual letters. She also dictated a story to me the other day, giving me a high hopes that she will be a writer just like her Uncle Logan some day. She told me this letter says "Dear Mommy, I love you".

 Last but not least, Aunt Jessie sent us an awesome stomp rocket! This thing is seriously fun and is great to shoot in our high ceilinged living room. Both the girls were fascinated with it. Jessie also sent us a book of science experiments from my Amazon wish list that looks really cool. We've only done one experiment so far but it was a lot of fun and the girls loved it!

We are doing so many fun and interesting things lately and planning so much more for the Fall. It's a very exciting time for us, watching the girls develop is such a joy!

Water and Ice Play

The Georgia heat this Summer has been pretty intense and to be honest it makes everyone in our family pretty grouchy. By late afternoon the kids are at each others throats and I am snapping at everyone. The heat just wipes us out and keeping our cool (literally and metaphorically) can be pretty difficult.

Basically the only way to survive is to get wet! My parents got Clover a water table as an early Birthday gift and it has been such a life saver! The girls play with it every day and it really seems to sooth frazzled nerves. My other recent discovery is the simplest thing in the world but is definitely a big hit with both girls and is something they can do together without fighting (mostly). Just giving them bowls of cold water with ice cubes has been a revelation! Clover loves to chase the ice around the bowl and eat it and Echo loves scooping and pouring in the ice cold water.

What a great hot weather play idea for those rough afternoons!

My Little Artist

I'm so excited to say that Clover is starting to make her first scribbles! This is actually a  lot younger than Echo started making art, Clover is almost 9 months and Echo was just over 11 months when she started "coloring". I always assume that Clover will just put any art material I give her directly in her mouth but while at my parents house she drew with sidewalk chalk for a good long time before she tried tasting it. The above drawing is her first, the arching lines not the dinosaur ;-)

Maybe it's watching Echo constantly create things or maybe it's just that different kids start things at different ages but I'm really excited that we will all be doing art projects together soon! I know somebody that will be getting some art supplies for her 1st Birthday :-)

Play Dough Snowmen

We've had a lot going on around the house and so I have lots to blog about but to start I wanted to talk a little bit about Echo and her current projects.One of my new years resolutions was to start journaling about her interests and coming up with ideas on how we can expand on them.  My journal pages look something like this.

Picnics
       - pretend picnic indoors with play food
       - help plan and shop for a picnic
       - prepare food for picnics
       -read stories involving picnics

and so and so on. I list an interest first and then list ideas of projects we can do involving her interests. Well one of her interests lately is snow/winter. We have a book she got for Christmas about seasons in a town (In the Town All Year Round. It's truly fantastic!) and she is really interested in the winter season and winter activities such as snowball fights, sledding and building snowmen.

Unfortunately we have had a pretty warm winter so there is no snow to play in. I came up with the idea to make snowmen out of play dough and decorate them as an alternative though and it has turned out great!

hard at work

 She also got a massive play dough stash for Christmas so we have been making tiny snowmen and then decorating them with beads, paperclips, sticks, seashells, and other small items. It is a really great hands on activity and keeps her occupied for a good long while.

It's been really wonderful to see her unschooling in action. We follow her interests and let her set her own pace. We are starting to be amazed at the things she picks up without any formal instruction. She knows all the primary and secondary colors, can count to 10 and is beginning to express an interest in learning to write. We are having so much fun being her mentors on this unschooling journey.

Kid Updates

I feel like with the coming of the new year the kids have had some kind of transformation. Both of them seem to have had a huge developmental jump just in the last few weeks.  With Clover it has been mostly fine motor skills and hand eye coordination. Just last week she started intentionally grabbing for things and she is getting pretty good at it! She also recently discovered her feet which she finds fascinating. Besides all that she has suddenly become much more aware of her surroundings. She interacts with us more, she plays and giggles with us. It's like some magical switch has been flipped.

Echo has also been maturing greatly over the past few weeks. She is stringing together some pretty complex sentences these days. For example, "I want to take a toy from Baba's house back to my own home" and " I went to Target and got a coke and popcorn, that was fun".

She has also been showing a huge interest in fantasy and imaginative play. She informed Eric and I that she was getting married the other day. We were, needless to say, a little taken aback. We asked her who she was marrying and she said "mommy" so it's all good though :-) Apparently getting married in her mind means putting on a dress and dancing. Unfortunately I think that's all a lot of people care about when they get married but at this age it's pretty darn cute. I've "gotten married with her multiple times a week and I help her make elaborate dresses out of blankets and then we dance around the kitchen, pretty sweet if you ask me :-)

She also spends a lot of time "hiding from giants" which consists of the whole family hiding under a blanket until she tells us the giant is gone. After we poke our heads out she inevitably says "another giant's coming!" and we have to hide a again.  This kind of thing is a bit of a shift from the way she used to play pretend where she would mimic doing real things like cooking and cleaning. She still does these things too but the more fantastical play is fascinating to me, not to mention fun!

I'm also happy to report that after months of Echo showing no interest in doing art with me she has begun to explore different artistic mediums again. She loved painting when she was younger but around the time she turned two her interest waned and she pretty much stopped wanting to do any kind of art at all. To my credit I didn't force the issue even though I had always pictured spending hours upon hours painting and coloring with my daughter. I left the art supplies in an area she could access them but I pretty much stopped suggesting it as an activity since she didn't seem interested.

Just the other day she came to me with watercolors and paint brushes in hand and told me she wanted to paint. She then spent the next hour and a half painting peacefully at her little art table. It was amazing! When she finished that she wanted to use her new rubber stamps that she got for Christmas so she spent a good 45 minutes on that as well. Pretty cool! I don't know if her renewed interest in art will continue but I am happy to see her exploring different things and I am really impressed with her attention span. I've included some pictures of her work below.

 I feel like I am really entering a golden era with the kids. The terrible twos are already starting to ease up a bit with Echo and she is getting to be so much fun to talk to and play with. Clover is reaching an age where she can really interact with us and is coming close to being able to sit up which will make her much more self sufficient. These two girls fill my life with so much love and purpose, I am so lucky to be their mommy.

"Cooking" with Echo

Seasoning her creation

I've found the best way to get things done in the kitchen lately, it is basically an advanced version of the coffee play I mentioned before. I am so tired and uncomfortable from pregnancy that any little thing that can help me entertain Echo without too much fuss is a life saver! She always wants to help me cook and wants to be involved in everything i do in the kitchen but she is too young to do much since she can't chop and is still not great about understanding that hot things will burn. I usually let her put seasonings in but she always wants to add way too much so that can be a problem too.

What I've been doing lately has been working really well though and I thought those of you with toddlers might want to try it. I set up a little station for her at the kitchen counter and put out a number of small bowls and plates. I pull up our Ikea stool so she can stand at counter height and then I fill the little bowls with dried lentils, flour, dried beans, loose tea and seasonings. Then I give her a spoon and let her go to town mixing and combining ingredients. I probably only use about a tablespoon of each so there really isn't that much wasted and while it does require some clean up after (lots of spilled materials end up on the floor) it is totally worth it!

She loves working alongside me and she takes it so seriously, it's pretty adorable! It will keep her occupied for as long as 45 minutes which is a life saver when I am trying to make dinner. She gets to feel included in the cooking process and has fun and I get to have her close by and entertained. It's a win win and so easy to set up. I'll be adding this to my file of easy, cheap and effective toddler activities!

Echo's Recent Artwork

Echo continues to enjoy painting on a regular basis and I love seeing her skills with a brush improve! She recently started making dots with her paintbrush instead of just kind of scribbling with it and has noticed that the color green she uses is the same as the leaves on our houseplants. She loves comparing things right now so she will point to the green paint and then at the leaves and back and forth. We have also done some experimenting with stamping using home made shape stamps and she has been doing some collage and getting practice glueing. Here are some examples of her recent artwork that i am loving!

Experimenting with stamps

The above left picture was a collaborative effort, she really likes painting and drawing with me and I feel like it encourages her to stay interested in painting and drawing longer if we work on something together. She also loves to show people her paintings and can't wait to show her daddy what she has been making when he gets home from work. It's been really exciting to watch her as she continues to learn about different art techniques. She still hates finger painting but loves using a brush and is getting better all the time.

Showing me one of her paintings

My little artist with a cute paint smudge on her cheek!

I love that this is something we can enjoy together and it always makes for a great rainy day activity. I can't wait to see what she will paint next :-)

Toddler Activities- Blanket Fort

Now that mommyhood is my full time job, I spend a lot of time thinking of exciting activities to try with Echo. Not only is it fun to watch her explore new things, it is essential that I tire her out as much as possible every day. She has so much energy and this is the best way I've found to make sure she sleeps! If the weather is nice my job is easy, I just take Echo to the park and let her play for a as long as she wants. However as we have been having a few cold spells here and there I've had to try to get a little more creative. 

blanket fort from above

 One thing I had been looking forward to trying once I had kids (who am I kidding, things like this are the reason I wanted kids!) is building blanket forts with them. This is something I remember as being so much fun from my childhood and lately Echo has been in to crawling through things so I thought now would be a good time to start.

I mostly stuck to sheets for my raw materials as they are light and easy to work with. I made this fort pretty small scale as this was my first attempt. Echo thought it was super fun and loved crawling through the space. I brought in some pillows and books and she loved reading stories in there too, it made the day feel just a little more special and magical.

My cute little monkey

I imagine building blanket forts will be even more fun once the kids are old enough to help. I'll be honest that I'm not the worlds greatest blanket fort architect but Echo didn't seem to mind and it was a fun thing to do on a yucky day when we were stuck inside.

Other resources I've found for good toddler activities are pinterest and other moms. It's amazing all the cool things that are out there to try with your toddler if you start looking around.

Coffee Play

You guys, I found the best toddler activity ever, coffee! I saw this idea on pinterest originally, I've tried a few other toddler activities on there but this was by far the biggest hit. I had some really nasty tasting decaf coffee that I bought when trying to cut out caffeine after finding out I was pregnant (yeah, that didn't last long). I finally figured I was never going to drink it so decided to let Echo play with it instead. 

This has really saved me on afternoons when she is grouchy and I'm trying to get dinner made. I just scooped some grounds in to a cookie sheet and gave her a variety of spoons, bowls and measuring cups to dig in it with. We also added some little plastic animals but her favorite was scooping up the coffee and putting it in different containers. At one point she went to the cabinet and got out some muffin tins and loaf pans all by herself  and experimented with those too.

This is a great activity to try with your older baby or toddler, it will really save you on days when you are having a tough time! Just be forewarned that it can be really messy so if that is going to bother you you might want to skip it. I just keep a broom handy and let her go to town!

Echo's First Painting

Oh my goodness I am so behind on my blog! October has been a really busy month for us and we have had company this week plus we are about to go out of town on a family road trip so I may not have a chance to post much until we get back. In the mean time here is a picture of Echo painting for the first time.

I love introducing her to new art materials! She had a great time with her washable paints and was very careful about dipping the brush in the paint pot. She made a huge mess but that is why she's outside and not wearing clothes :-) For clean up I gave her a small bowl of water to dip her hands in (my dad's genius idea!). This works so much better for us than trying to wipe off her hands for her, which she hates. If we just give her a bowl of water she will dip her hands in it and get herself relatively clean. She also loves her nightly baths so anything that didn't get cleaned up with her small bowl came off later in the bath.

I'm beyond excited that she is starting to enjoy making art. I can't wait to do many more art projects together in the future, I have so many plans and ideas!