Skills learned: Imaginative play, gross motor skills
Age: 12m+
Rating (out of 4 stars): 2
For this activity, I used black crepe paper usually used to make streamers to create a toddler sized 'spider web' in the hall. I made sure to extend it all the way to Izzy's room so that when he got up from his nap and walked out his door, he would be immediately involved in the craziness. I was hoping that he would crawl underneath all the paper and try to figure out ways to get through the web without breaking the paper right off, but for the most part, he just busted straight through it. Although I will give him credit for starting out by trying to step over it and crawling underneath the remaining 3 streamers at the end. An added bonus to this activity is that I have enough crepe paper left over to set it up a couple of more times which is definitely good since black crepe paper seems to be in a shortage during Halloween season... wonder why. Cost: $2
Skills learned: Imaginative play, gross motor skills Age: 12m+ Rating (out of 4 stars): 2
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Ghost beans are a fun Halloween themed sensory material. All they are are lima beans with faces drawn on them to look like ghosts. I decided to draw different faces on my beans (happy, sad, angry, surprised) in order to add an extra dimension to the play, but you could just stick with one standard ghost face for each bean (although if you did different faces, you could practice the concepts of sorting and matching or even use them to talk about emotions). Another thing you could use these beans for would be counting. The main thing I wanted Izzy to get out of this activity was the skills of pouring and scooping, so in addition to his bowl full of ghost beans, I added a smaller bowl, a spoon, and a plastic cup. As soon as he saw the setup, he knew exactly what to do. He poured and scooped those beans in every way possible, and although all of the beans eventually did end up on the floor, he poured and scooped to his hearts content for a full 20 minutes. After all the beans were on the floor, it was a good fine motor exercise for him to try and pick them up off the floor and put them back in the bowls or cup. We did try using the different faces on the beans to match/sort them, but that concept is a little advanced for him and he just wanted to experiment and see if he could get the beans to stick to the fridge like magnets which, of course, he couldn't. Clean up of all the beans was fairly simple as we just swept them all up and put them all back in the red bowl to save for later. Which is one of our favorite parts about these beans... they are reusable! Definitely a plus. Cost: $2
Skills learned: Scooping, pouring, fine motor skills. You could also set it up to teach matching, sorting, and/or counting. Age: 18m+ Rating (out of 4 stars): 3 This month we have big plans for some fun Halloween themed activities. Our first Halloween activity just happened to be playing dress up! I used a roll of toilet paper to attempt to wrap Izzy up like a mummy. This was way easier said than done as he is a squirmer and doesn't know the definition of holding still and on top of that I am a terrible mummy wrapper in the first place. I think the biggest thing I personally took away from this is the hope that Izzy never really wants to be a mummy for Halloween because my current skill set may not be very accommodating for that. But in all seriousness, this was a fun activity, but maybe a little too fun because the next day Izzy tried to get some more of our regular use toilet paper and brought it to me to have me wrap him up (so a tip on this one might be to make sure your little one absolutely knows the proper use of toilet paper before hand). As I said... I'm not very good in the mummy wrapping department, but I promise that Izzy wasn't as angry as he looks... Cost: $1
Skills learned: Imaginative play Age: 18m+ Rating (out of 4 stars): 2 In case you haven't noticed, it has been a really long time since I have posted anything here. The reason being our new little blog star was born. For the first few weeks I just decided to take a sort of maternity leave from Izzy's activities so we could all get settled in and adjusted to each other. Now that things are calming down, I plan on returning to this blog first with some fun holiday themed activities for the next couple of months and then starting in 2015 I am going to have some great activities to post dealing with colors, shapes, letters, numbers, etc. I have been planning those activities for quite a while now and am super excited to get started! But first, I need to introduce our new little star... Sydney AKA Sydzers. She was born August 30th (3 days late... the exact same as her brother) at 9:41AM weighing 7lbs 15oz and measuring 21 inches long. For those of you who enjoy birth stories, here is hers... Friday August 29th was just like any other night for our family. We took Izzy out to a park and I did some rock climbing type stuff on the playground which was probably not pregnancy approved and then we got a nice big shake from Iceberg which was also probably not pregnancy approved but definitely should be! That night I woke up at 3:30AM to go to the bathroom and was kind of disappointed that another night went by without me going into labor. However, about an hour later I woke up feeling cramps that quickly started to feel more like contractions. I didn't really think it was anything but decided I should get up and time these contractions anyway. I got up and started pacing around our living room and sure enough, they were about 5 minutes apart. However, I still wasn't convinced that I was really in labor so I sat down on the couch where my water started to break. I decided at that point to go wake up husby and after I did, my water finished breaking. Once my water broke, my contractions really sped up and intensified so we worked to get ready for the hospital as fast as we could. We finally left the apartment around 6:30 to got to the hospital and we finally got there at about 7:00. When the nurse who checked us in checked me, I was dilated to a 5 with contractions (which were 2 minutes apart by that point). That was some of the worst pain I had ever felt in my life so when the epidural finally came I was in heaven! About the time the epidural kicked in my parents showed up to take Izzy for us (about 8:00). They visited us for a few minutes and then my step dad went to take Izzy home so he could sleep. My mom helped them all down to the car. When my mom got back to our room I was dilated to a 9 and by 9:15 I was ready to push. However, my epidural was just a little too good and I couldn't feel my contractions to know when I actually needed to push. Thus the nurse had to tell me when I was contracting so I could know when to push. After 25 minutes of good solid pushing Sydney was born. She was extremely healthy and caught on to nursing immediately (which is probably why she is such a chunker now)! We were both doing so good that we got to come home a little early on Sunday night rather than on Monday morning. It has been a definite adjustment, but we definitely adore our little Sydzers. Izzy also adores his little sister and although he has definitely had some jealousy issues (which I think we are finally getting over) he is excited to do some sibling activities with her that will hopefully show up here on the blog several months from now. So now that we are adjusted to being a family of 4, this blog will be getting a bit more love and we are definitely looking forward to getting back to our afternoon activity fun!
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AuthorHi! My name is Cassity and I am the mom to a little 2 year old boy named Izzy and a baby girl named Sydney. I am lucky enough to get to be a stay-at-home mom to them and we have fun thinking of new activities to do together in the afternoons. We created this blog as an opportunity to share those activities with you. Archives
March 2015
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