Meanwhile husby started his new job so now Im thinking moving will be a good thing if only to shorten his commute and get back some very important family time. I'm definitely still going to miss our current area though which is why we spent yesterday at a cool park called Grandpas Pond. Izzy was definitely excited to be outside again after such a long week cooped up inside.
This last week has been crazy and not filled with a while lot of parks or even activities for that matter. It all started last Monday when Izzy fell off a ladder at the playground and got one of the biggest goose eggs on his head I have ever seen. Then on Thursday he woke up with a nice stomach bug. And with all the rain we got last week we just stayed inside a lot and tried our best to take it easy... which is definitely not easy with a toddler. Meanwhile husby started his new job so now Im thinking moving will be a good thing if only to shorten his commute and get back some very important family time. I'm definitely still going to miss our current area though which is why we spent yesterday at a cool park called Grandpas Pond. Izzy was definitely excited to be outside again after such a long week cooped up inside. After our park adventure we had a whole other adventure in picking up boxes. My kids were boxed in the car with boxes and it reminded me a little bit of a game of Where's Waldo? They were surprisingly good on the ride home but that's probably because they were trying to figure out what in the world was going on. Hopefully we dont have to do that again anytime soon.
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This week we made a lot of progesss in the moving department and now have an apartment reserved and a move-in date. It is so good not to have to worry about it and spend hours upon hours combing through every rental website out there trying to find a potential new abode, but at the same time it makes everything much more real and our time here is really limited. 6 more weeks! But to take our mind off of it for a little bit everyday we crossed some more bucket list parks off our list and here are the pictures to prove it.
It has been a while since I have blogged an activity here. That is because drastic times call for drastic measures. You see, husby got a new job the other day somewhat out of the blue. While it is an amazing job offer and I think he will quite enjoy it, we now have to play the moving game and leave this place we both love more than can be put into words. So instead of wasting the little time we have left here staying inside and doing activities we could really do anywhere, we are taking a break to get outside and enjoy this place we have come to call home. It also feels like a good idea to go ahead and start on our summer bucket list which will be full of parks, splash pads, field trips, and of course, afternoon activities. So while it may be a while before I post another activity, grandparents should stay tuned for some cute pictures from our summer bucket list activities like these ones we took at Tuscany Park this evening...
Izzy loves stickers. Although he is over dot stickers, he loves all other kinds of stickers. So when we got some junk mail from Disney and there were some stickers in there, I decided to keep them just for S day. It was quite tricky to keep them safe from Izzy until our activity, but we made it and I simply had him outline an S with stickers on a piece of paper and he loved it! For our star lime activity, we made a batch of homemade slime using a recipe we found here. The slime turned out okay, but our star confetti kept falling out and when they say clear glue, that doesn't mean white glue that dries clear... it actually has to be clear. If anyone knows where you can find such clear glue, let me know because I couldn't find any. Anyways... Izzy was very intrigued with his slime for a few minutes. I don't think he had ever seen anything like it so he took his time squishing it into the bowl to make funny sounds and tearing it apart. Then about 5 minutes in to the activity, he very abruptly put everything back into the bowl and ran to the bathroom to wash his hands. I guess the slimy texture got to him and after that he refused to touch the slime again. Too funny. Even husby was grossed out by it and he is the one I make wash the super dirty dishes that I simply can't handle so maybe it was kind of gross. But still fun... always fun. Sticker Craft
Cost: Free Rating: 3 out of 4 stars Star Slime Cost: $5 Rating: 2 out of 4 stars Our road craft for R day was a whole lot like our car craft for C day you can see here. However, instead of our road being in the shape of a C, it was in the shape of an R and instead of paper cars we used stickers. This was one of Izzy's favorite crafts so far because it combined gluing with using stickers... two of his favorite crafty things. And I think it turned out quite well. For our R day activity we made magic rocks out of baking soda and water, plus a little food coloring. To make them, I poured my desired amount of baking soda into a bowl and added just a touch of water to get a good moldable consistency. These definitely don't require as much water as you might think and I added a little too much to begin with. In order to fix my water problems, I just added more baking soda until I got the consistency I was looking for. One my baking soda was moldable, I formed it into balls and added some food coloring to make them all pretty and such. Then I set them on a baking sheet and left them to dry overnight. The next morning, they looked like this... When I brought the 'rocks' out for Izzy to play with, he instantly called them rocks, so even though they may not look exactly like rocks, he got the idea. To play with these rocks properly, you need some vinegar. I decided to give Izzy an eyedropper to suck up the vinegar with and squirt on the rocks to make them fizz. Apparently, he wasn't too impressed and it didn't take him too long to figure out that he could just break them apart with his hands. I let him have at it for a few minutes and when all the rocks were broken up, we spent a few minutes just pouring vinegar on to all of the baking soda and watching it fizz. So although the whole rock concept didn't go as planned, we still had fun watching the classic baking soda/vinegar reaction. Road Craft
Cost: $1 Rating: 4 out of 4 stars Magic Rocks Cost: $1 Rating: 2 out of 4 stars Saying that Q is for Quack may not make a lot of sense up front. But if you are a fan of the LeapFrog Letter Factory DVD then it should make perfect sense since the movie uses ducks to discuss the sound of the letter Q. It also makes much more sense than it probably sounds. Anyway, I found a nice coloring page for Izzy to color using this theme. However, he wasn't too interested in coloring that day and only ended up making a couple of marks on his paper before moving on. Our qtip activity was meant to be a rather creative one, so the fact that Izzy wasn't in to his coloring page of the day made me rather apprehensive for what our activity would be like. However, our activity apparently had just the right combination of factors to peak his interest and it was the best I have ever seen him do with a creative activity up to this point. All I did was get six small containers of water, add a fairly generous amount of food coloring to each, and put a qtip in each container for him to paint with. I let him paint on a large piece of cardstock for durability purposes and he had at it. He also insisted on wearing his apron for this activity... silly kid. My favorite part though was when I told him that I was proud of him and he spent the next little while walking around the house saying, "Proud of you." I'm glad he knows that mama thinks he did an amazing job because he really did. And if my noncreative little boy loved this painting activity, then I'm sure any little kid would too. Quack Coloring Page
Cost: Free Rating: 2 out of 4 stars QTip Art Cost: $2 Rating: 4 out of 4 stars Our P day craft was pretty simple and not much of a craft, but since it did require some creativty we are counting it as such. All we did was take some play-doh and shape out the letter P. Well, I made a P while Izzy squished his play-doh around and tore it into pieces. But he did acknowledge my P once I was finished. For our popcorn activity we attempted to do a cool science experiment but it kind of failed. I think the root of our problem was that we didn't have the right kind of popcorn. You should probably use just plain, bottled popcorn kernels. We attempted to get our popcorn kernels from a bag of movie theater butter popcorn that we cut open and let me just say that was one of the grossest things ever! It might take quite some time for me to want to eat popcorn again. Anyway, the idea for our experiment came from One Time Through and I would recommend looking up the activity there since hers actually worked. However, the gist of the activity was to put some popcorn kernels in some water, add some baking soda and vinegar, and the reaction between the two was supposed to make the popcorn kernels hop up and down. But as I have mentioned, buttery popcorn was probably not the best option for this. However, Izzy still had a lot of fun mixing all the ingredients together and stiring them up to see whatever reaction he could get out of it. Play-Doh Craft
Cost: $1 Rating: 3 out of 4 stars Popcorn Activity Cost: Free Rating: 3 out of 4 stars This was a great first sensory bin for Sydney. It was a simple water sensory bin and then I just added some of her toys to the mix. We did two versions of this activity... one with her sitting, and one with some tummy time. We did it first with her sitting and once she had grabbed all of her toys out of the water, I threw them back in and laid her down on her tummy. Unlike her brother, sister hasn't shown too much desire to go mobile yet, but I saw a serious desire to crawl in her eyes as the toys would float out of her reach. I actually saw her get frustrated for one of the first times in her life when she couldn't quite crawl to get the toys she wanted and it was so good for her! But even with the bit of frustration, she thoroughly enjoyed playing in the water and eating her toys. Cost: Free
Rating: 3 out of 4 stars While I call this activity baby Picasso, it should really just be paint in a bag... but baby Picasso sounds so much better. This was Sydney's first artistic activity and it was really easy to put together with great results. All I did was get a piece of cardstock, cut it in to the shape of a heart, drop some dollops of paint on to it, and carefully place it into a gallon sized ziploc baggie. I didn't quite put the heart and paint in my baggie carefully enough as some of the paint smeared, but the activity still worked just fine. Once my paint was all secure in my baggie, I set it in front of sister and let her have some tummy time while squishing and smearing the paint around the paper. She had fun banging, squishing, and attempting to eat, and I absolutely love the end result! Great first (and clean) art project for a baby. Oh, and pretty exhausting as you can see below... Cost: Free if you are a paint hoarder like me or about $2 if not
Rating: 3 out of 4 stars Last week we took a break from our alphabet activities to celebrate Easter with some super fun Easter activities. Although we are a bit late now, we would still like to share our favorites with you. First up is our Easter grass sensory basket/egg hunt. Last year one of Isaach's favorite Easter themed activities was simply playing with Easter grass, so I wanted to do that again this year but shake it up a little bit so I decided to fill an old diaper box with Easter grass and then hide a bunch of eggs in there filled with various treats. Izzy obediently dug through the grass to find his first couple of eggs, but I guess that started taking too long because then he just ended up dumping out all of the grass and going for the eggs. Once he had found all the treats and only eaten the sweettarts (he handed me all the cereal pieces and fruit snacks) he put the grass back in the box and climbed right on in. We spent the rest of our activity time spinning him around in the box, doing some box sledding, and playing footsies with each other. Another one of our favorite Easter activities was a toddler friendly egg dying session. I wanted Izzy to have an opportunity to dye Easter eggs, but I was wary of doing it the traditional way with real eggs and all that. So I found a fun alternative and bought some dyeable Easter eggs... I don't know what that means exactly, but we found them at Walmart, they were unbreakable, so they were deemed safe. The method we found for dying our eggs was to get some shaving cream, add some food coloring, and then roll our eggs around in the colored cream. The first egg we did turned out nice and pretty and red, but something happened with the rest of them and they only had some colored spots. It was definitely worth it though and Izzy loved playing in the shaving cream! The last Easter activity we would like to share with you is one we did to bring in the true meaning of Easter... the atonement and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In order to do this, we made a toddler version of the ever popular resurrection eggs. To do this, you need six plastic Easter eggs and each egg gets its own item and part of the Easter story. The eggs go as follows: 1 - A bread crumb: Jesus ate dinner with his friends. 2 - A picture of a cross: The next day He died on the cross. 3 - A piece of tissue or cloth: His body was wrapped in cloth and placed in a tomb. 4 - A rock: A stone was placed in front of the tomb. 5 - We left this egg empty: 3 days later, his body was gone. The tomb was empty. 6 - A sweet treat (we used reese's): Jesus Christ had been resurrected. That is the sweet surprise of Easter. Izzy loved this activity and we did it a total of 3 times on Friday. It is a really great, concise, and understandable way to introduce kids to the Easter story. Oh and to complete this activity we threw in some selfies just for fun. Easter Sensory Box
Cost: $5 Rating: 3 out of 4 stars Shaving Cream Egg Dye Cost: $2 Rating: 4 out of 4 stars Resurrection Eggs Cost: Free with all of our other Easter supplies Rating: 4 out of 4 stars |
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
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