Another concept I want to work on with Izzy this year is color mixing. He definitely has all of his colors down so color mixing seems like the next natural step and our first color mixing activity could not have been any easier! We filled 6 clear cups halfway with water and dyed each one one of the primary colors using simple food coloring. I then had Izzy pour one cup into another (for instance, yellow into blue) so that he could see the result (green). Any activity that involves food coloring is an instant hit with him so of course this activity was a winner. He also thought it was cool to pour the water and see the resulting new color. If you wanted to take this activity even farther, you could make a chart that kids could color in as you go along, but I didnt think of that until it was too late. For Sydney, the biggest thing we need to work on is gross motor skills. The first gross motor activity I set up for her was a pillow crawl. I just took all of the cushions off our couch and surrounded our coffee table with them so she was boxed in and let her go. At first, she wasn't too motivated to play on the cushions, but once I put some fruit snacks on top of them, that got her sweet tooth motivated and moving! Pretty soon she had crawled across all of those cushions and gathered all of the fruit snacks she could find. And I didn't feel too bad about the sugar aspect because all of that extra movement burned it right off :) Plus she could use a little more meat on her bones anyhow!
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I have been a slacker this summer. That is the only way to explain the serious lack of activities and blogs we have had going on. But now that summer is coming to a close, we have grand plans to change that. For my activity planning this year, I decided on some categories I wanted to work on with Izzy and some others to work on with sister then planned several activities in each category and scheduled them in. The first thing I wanted to work on with Izzy was name recognition. So our first activity of the 'school year' focused on just that... teaching him to recognize his name when it is written. For this activity, we used cardstock, colored water, a marker, a white crayon, and some paint brushes. Super easy right? I wrote down his name several times on a sheet of cardstock like what you see below: The blank areas are filled in with the appropriate letter, just in white crayon so that you cant see them initially. We went through each line singing a silly song about the letters in his name, but when we came to a blank spot we said "uh-oh!" which was his cue to use the colored water and paint over that area to see what letter appeared. He loved painting and seeing the letters magically appear. When we were all done, this is a bit of what it looked like: I was surprised that my completely non-artsy anti-craft little boy enjoyed this so much, but he definitely did and he did a great job. I mean, just look at that concetration... With sister I wanted to work on fine motor skills. I decided a fun way to do this would be with fridge magnets. I simply put up our alphabet magnets, sang through the ABC song once, and let her have at it. As she pulled the letters down, I told her what letter she had and what color it was thus giving her a brief intorduction to the concepts of letters and colors. She enjoyed playing with the magnets, but was interested in the camera even more :)
I have had a request from grandparents for more blog pictures so here is a catch up of some of our recent happenings... most of which dont have anything to do with afternoons or activities so please bear with me. This crazy kid and I have been taking mommy and me dance classes on Wednesday nights. He loves doing toe touches and somersaults. Sydney discovered Oreos. Well her and brother are in cahoots with each other... if I give Izzy an oreo he twists it apart and keeps the frosted side of the oreo for himself and gives the nonfrosted side to her. He also gives her chocolate cake... in cahoots I tell you! In cahoots. We took a trip to my hometown for a week and it wore the kids out! So much so that Izzy fell asleep on daddys lap one day during story time. We went on a family trip to Antelope Island and went on a super steep hot (but beautiful) hike. We have been checking out some parks in our area (we still miss Riverton!) Izzy is obsessed with hats and thinks everything can be worn as such (even watermelons) And he insists on sleeping under his bed but thats okay with us because he actually sleeps better under there. And here are a couple more pictures that are just so cute they dont need an explanation!
So along with our move I made a major life change and decided to start working on the side as an independent consultant for Usborne Books and More. My major full time job is still being a full time mommy but I have enjoyed learning more about childrens books and expanding my own kids libraries. As part of my job I have decided to design some activities around some of our favorite Usborne books. The first book we did an activity on was Panda in the Park. It is a really cute book of hide and seek and I love the brilliant cut outs. In the book a panda goes on a hunt to find his four friends - a giraffe, a tiger, an elephant, and a snake. So for our activity I got four plastic animals to match the four animals in the book. For Izzys activity I had him stay in his room while I hid the four animals around the apartment and then let him loose to start hunting. He had lots of fun finding the animals and got really proud of himself everytime he did. I modified the activity for Sydney and simply hid animals under blankets or behind books. It took her a while to catch on to the fact that there were animals hiding places but she finally did find a snake. And I think it was an excellent activity for her to practice the concept of object permanence.
Well we are officially moved and while we still have our fair share of unpacking to do I am just glad the hardest part is over! And I have to admit that our new place isnt so bad. In a lot of ways I actually like our new apartment better like the fact that we have lineoleum in our dining room where there used to be carpet... can you say disaster area? And although I miss our old area just because I felt so safe there, life goes on. There are still splash pads... ... and parks for breakfast picnics when its too hot to play at lunch time! Now that we are officially moved it is time to start working on our summer bucket list. My problem is that I have been so busy with the move I havent finished writing our bucket list yet. I do know that we plan on putting our moving boxes to good use, playing with some sand, and eating lots of good summer treats. We also look forward to sharing our adventures and activities in our new area with you so be sure to stay tuned!
When Izzy was a little over a year old I posted about our reading program called the 5 Books Program. You can read that initial post here. In the past 6 weeks or so, we have abandoned our normal activity routine in favor of spending our time outdoors enjoying the area we will be moving from this weekend. The one activity that we havent abandoned though is our reading. Since its been a year and a half since our first reading post and I have a new little one to read to, I thought I would write a follow up to that initial post especially since there arent too many parks and/or splash pads in our schedule this week since both my kids have pink eye and double ear infections.
Now that Izzy is older, we don't adhere to the 5 Books program like we did when he was 1. Instead we read to him at least twice a day (once at nap time and once at bed time) and whenever else he might bring us a book throughout the day. I am in charge of his nap time reading and we still try to do 5 books, just not necessarily the same 5 books everyday. Daddy does his bed time reading and I think they try to squeeze 3 books in then. I really like that husby and I take turns with the reading because I think it gives Izzy a fresh perspective on the story to have someone else read it to him and it also gives us both a chance to bond with him during the day. The biggest benefit I have noticed from reading to Izzy is that his stories have been his biggest learning resource. As much as I would like to give more credit to our fun activities in helping him learn, I'm pretty sure story time with mom and dad has helped him learn far more than any activity could ever teach him. Through story time he has learned numbers, shapes, colors, animal sounds, body parts, letters, counting, and so much more. With the help of regular story time he has also developed a love for books and reading that I know will help him when he gets to school. It has been a little trickier reading to Sydney than it was to read with Izzy, probably because we have to work her story time in around all of Izzy's activities but we do our best to get it in every day when she is rested and her tummy is full. Currently, I have her on the 5 book program I did with Izzy where we pick 5 books at the beginning of the week, read all 5 at least once a day, and then change them out for another 5 books the next week. By doing story time she has learned how to be content to snuggle with me long enough to read 5 consecutive books and she loves to look at the pictures and feel the pages. And when so much of my time is spent trying to keep Izzy out of trouble, its nice to have a few minutes of quiet time alone with her. As Izzy has gotten older and sister has come along, we have expanded our book selection quite a bit. If you need any recommendations for a good childrens book, here is a list of some of our favorites: 1. Click Clack Moo Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin 2. Little Blue Truck by Alice Shertle 3. Is Your Mama a Llama? by Deborah Guarino 4. Room on the Broom by Julia Donaldson 5. Colors, ABC, Numbers by Roger Priddy 6. Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr 7. Where is the Green Sheep by Mem Fox 8. No David by David Shannon 9. Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You? by Dr Seuss 10. LMNO Peas and 123 Peas by Ketih Baker Oh my goodness. I can't believe moving week is practically here! Sometimes I feel super stressed thinking about all we have left to do but then other times I feel like we've got this in the bag. Strange how that works. It still doesn't feel quite real that we are really leaving this area but we have been enjoying it before we go as much as we possibly can!
This week it finally felt a little bit like summer so we hit up our first splash pad of the year and Izzy loved it! I'm pretty sure that he is in his splash pad prime. Though it did make him really hungry and tired afterward and he tried to take a nap on the grass before we had even made it out of the park. Silly kid. And have I mentioned that we have 5 (soon to be 6) splash pads within a 10-15 minute drive of where we are now? That is reason #1,052 I am so sad we are leaving. But anyway, my kids were really adorable this week so here is our picture overload. As luck would have it, Izzy and I have been sick again this week. Luckily we only had colds though so we were still able to get out and play most days as long as we avoided parks with other people so we wouldnt have to breathe on anybody as my dad would say. So to answer a question, we do try to go to a new park everyday. There are about 35 parks within a 10 minute drive of where we are now and where we are going to be I have only found 7. So Im sure its easy to see part of the reason Im going to miss this area so much! Not to mention the crime rate here is significantly lower and I am a scaredy cat so it might take a while before I work up the courage to venture out to those 7 parks but we will do our best. In the mean time, please enjoy the cute pictures we got from our park adventures this week. And just because we dont have many park pictures this week, let me just throw out a goood suggestion for a family activity to try this summer if you live in Utah. It is called Swan Saturday and it is like one big scavenger hunt type thing. What happens is that people will hide a present somewhere, take a picture of it, then post it to a specific facebook page. Once it is posted, the present or 'swan' is up for grabs and whoever gets to it first gets to keep whatever was hidden. The first swan I found was a $25 panda gift card which was sweet! And this weekend we found a swan by a snowcone shack that, when we took it to the window, got us free snowcones. The only catch is that if you find a swan you are to hide a swan at a future date. So if you are interested go to facebook and type in Swan Saturday for more information and to see if there is a group in your area. If you aren't interested, then just enjoy our two swanning pictures form this weekend.
We are getting down to the wire here with moving! Izzy has spent this weekend with his grandma and grandpa Blackie so we could have time to clean and pack. It has been very helpful but we will be excited to get him back tomorrow to have some more park fun. That is as long as the weather cooperates. On the days the weather cooperated this last week we were out enjoying some more parks/mourning the fact that we are leaving this area way too soon. But anyway, here are some more cute pictures from our week at the park.
However grateful I was last week that the week was over has absolutely nothing on how grateful I will be in a few hours when daddy gets home for the weekend. This week has been torture! It started out pretty good... Izzy was over his stomach bug, we went to a few fun parks, and everyone was happy. Then hump day hit. And when I woke up Wednesday morning I was sick... really sick. So sick in fact that I called husby home from work to take care of the kids cuz I could barely get out of bed. Luckily he was able to get home just in time to get the kids lunch and put Izzy down for his nap. I was also very fortunate to have my mom come up and help me out on Thursday. But today I have been all alone and the kids just don't understand why mama is having a hard time getting her bum off the couch to do much of anything with them... although I suppose I feel sort of accomplished because I have had enough energy to help Izzy cement the concepts of 'small' and 'big' in his mind. Thats something right? But at least my kids are adorable which you can see in these few pictures I got the couple of times we were able to get out and play this week...
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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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