Cost: Free
Rating: 2 out of 4 stars
Do You Wanna Build an Olaf/demonic Snowman
Cost: $5
Rating: 3 out of 4 stars
For O day, we attempted to do an octopus craft, but it turned out looking a little more like a jellyfish, especially because we lost some of the tentacles I had cut out somewhere along the way. This was another paper and glue craft and I cut out a big letter O to act as to octopus head/body and then cut out 8 squiggly lines (that turned into 6) to act as the tentacles. This was the best Izzy has done on his gluing to date and I think he thoroughly enjoyed it. For our Olaf activity, we decided to play a game of 'Do you wanna build an Olaf?' based on the movie Frozen. This is definitely one of Izzy's all time favorite movies, so I figured making him a reusable craft foam Olaf would be a hit. However, I am not the most crafty person ever and so we should probably change the name of the game to, 'Do you wanna build a demonic snowman?', but that wouldn't fit the O theme. This really is a cool reusable toy though and all you need to make it are some sheets of craft foam. I found a picture of Olaf and tried to cut out all of his body parts from the craft foam. Once all the parts are cut out, you can get them wet and stick them to either a window or the side of a bath tub. Today we opted to build our Olaf on our window, but I am saving all the Olaf pieces to build him again in the bath tub someday. Izzy loved 'painting' the water onto Olaf and pasting him on the window. Once Olaf was all built, Izzy even decided to paint the window... So much for cleaning it right before this activity. Oh well. And also, a word to the wise on this one, we bought a package of craft foam and that stuff is potent right out of its wrappings! Seriously... I had a headache for the rest of the day from the fumes of cutting out my Olaf pattern so I would let all the pieces air out for a bit before you try cutting or building. Octopus Craft
Cost: Free Rating: 2 out of 4 stars Do You Wanna Build an Olaf/demonic Snowman Cost: $5 Rating: 3 out of 4 stars
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For N day, we did a number craft. I was kind of lazy with this one and just wrote the numbers from 1-10 on some dot stickers and had Izzy stick them on a big letter N. Unfortunately, Izzy's love for dot stickers is fading and he only put 3 of the 10 stickers on his N. From there, he got some animal crackers and decided to add them to his N. To be fair, he did teach the crackers how to count as he slammed the crackers on the table and counted to 10. It went something like this... slam animal cracker, "1", slam animal cracker, "2"... all the way to 10. So he was still in the number spirit, just not the sticker spirit though one of the animal crackers did get a sticker for all his hard work in the end. And I gained an appreciation for animal crackers because they don't crumble easily... thank goodness. For our nature activity, we decided to go on a nature walk... well as nature walkish as you can get doing a lap around an urban apartment building. The main thing was that I gave Izzy a nice little bag to collect things in like rocks, pine cones, sticks, old pieces of gum, etc. I'm just kidding on the gum part by the way... sort of. We did see some gum on the sidewalk and Izzy thought it was a rock, but luckily I was able to get him to pass it up and find a real rock instead. Anyway... Izzy loved being outside and was so proud of his bag and seriously enjoyed collecting things in it. Maybe one day when we go visit the rurally located grandparents, we can go on a better nature walk. But for a 2 year old, this counts. Numbers Craft
Cost: Free Rating: 2 out of 4 stars Nature Walk Cost: Free Rating: 4 out of 4 stars For M day, we did a moon themed craft. It was just another paper and glue craft. I cut out a big M and we glued a moon and some stars on top of it. Izzy is really getting better in the gluing department so I think these crafts have really helped him develop that skill, though he still prefers having me put everything together once he has covered everything in glue. But hey, teamwork right? For our M day activity we talked a lot about music. First we played some songs on our keyboard. Then we listened to/watched music videos for some of Izzy's favorite songs. We might have also had a little sing-a-long to some of them. Izzy's favorite songs at the moment are Love is an Open Door from Frozen, All of Me by John Legend, and Heartbeat Song by Kelly Clarkson. He will sing along to all three of those and it is adorable! I tried to get a video of his singing, but it didn't work out quite right. After we were done with our music videos, we put in a Disney sing-a-long DVD we have and did a little dance party. Once again, I tried to get a video of his dancing but that didn't work out either. However, we did get a nice music day selfie! Moon Craft
Cost: Free Rating: 2 out of 4 stars Music Activity Cost: Free Rating: 4 out of 4 stars Our L day craft was so messy but so much fun! We did printing with Legos to make a big letter L. We used washable tempera paint and let me just say that stuff is amazing! It seriously lives up to the term 'washable' which is a great thing when you have a super messy 2 year old on your hands. And speaking of hands, in addition to using his legos to paint his letter L, Izzy also decided to dabble in the art of finger painting and made a huge smeary hand print in the corner of his L. See for yourself. Our L day activity was a leaf hunt. I cut out a bunch of paper leaves and hid them around our dining room/kitchen/living room area for Izzy to find. Once he found a leaf, he put it in a bowl and then went on the hunt for the next leaf. When all the leaves had been found, I let him play with them for a few minutes before we moved on for the day. Lego Printing
Cost: $2 Rating: 4 out of 4 stars Leaf Hunt Cost: Free Rating: 2 out of 4 stars For K day, our craft word of the day was kite. We cut a diamond out of colored paper to act as a kite and then added a tail and paper K on top. I also tried to cut out some little bow shapes to put on the tail, but those didn't turn out too well. What did turn out well was our craft. It was one of my favorites so far. For our key activity, I decided to make a paper puzzle for him. I used these printables here and just made two copies. One copy I left to be the puzzle 'board' and then I cut out all of the keys from the other page for him to match to the other keys. He enjoyed himself for a few minutes, but I think it was a bit too complex for him, so it didn't take long for him to move on to other activities. Kite Craft
Cost: Free Rating: 2 out of 4 stars Key Activity Cost: Free Rating: 2 out of 4 stars When Izzy was little, this was an activity that we did all the time! I was so great because it helped clean both him and his high chair after a particularly messy meal time. And it is so easy too! All you need is a high chair with a tray and some water and all you do is pour that water onto the tray of the high chair so your little one can splash around in it. So great for helping clean between those cute little fingers. Of course, sometimes you can do this activity just for fun like sister and I did today. At first, I poured the water straight on to the tray and she splashed once or twice but didn't seem too interested. Since both of my babies love water, I knew I could get her to enjoy this activity somehow so I decided to add a few drops of food coloring to make it more interesting for her. Sure enough, after the water was all pretty and green she started splashing away. Not only did she help clean that high chair, but with her big splashes, she helped clean half of my kitchen too! Pretty productive for a baby activity if I do say so myself. Cost: Free
Rating: 3 out of 4 stars This is another treasure basket I put together for Sydney using a bathroom theme. When you think of 'bathroom', you probably think of germs. I know I do. But there are a ton of fun bathroom themed items you can put into a treasure basket like a makeup brush, a toothbrush holder, a bath sponge, etc. Of course all of our items were unused so that germy side isn't even a concern. You can see all of the items I put into her treasure basket here: I'm not a very girly/beauty oriented person, so I don't know the proper names of everything that I included in her basket, but here is my interpretation of what is in there: 1 - Bath pouf 2 - Swim diaper 3 - Toothbrush holder 4 - Exfoliating bath glove 5 - Double sided pumice foot brush 6 - Travel size soap bottle 7 - Soap dish 8 - Compact brush and mirror 9 - Baby brush 10 - Makeup brush As usual, Sydney loved her treasure basket. This one had quite a few interesting textures for her to explore from the soft bristles on the makeup brush to the roughness of the exfoliating bath glove, there was a lot for us to talk about when it came to her sense of touch. Her absolute favorite item in there though was the swim diaper. Hopefully that is a sign that she will love swimming as much as her brother does. I know that I for one am super excited for summer to roll around so we can go out and take full advantage of our apartment's swimming pool. But first, Izzy has to finish out his ABC activities.. oh, and the whole warm weather thing has to hit. Can you tell I have a bit of spring fever? Cuz I do.. Cost: Free
Rating: 4 out of 4 stars If you have been following along with my blog, you may have noticed that G day and I day have been skipped. No worries... we did them, but our G day activity may have been illegal so I don't want to post it and officially admit to something, and our whole day was a bit off on I day so I didn't get any pictures. But if you want to know our words of the day for each then G was for giraffe and ghost and I was for ice and Isaach. Now on to the letter J... For our craft of the day, our word was jelly bean. I drew a big letter J on a piece of paper and my idea was to have Izzy line that J with jelly beans. However, we did this activity fairly close to lunch so Izzy just wanted to eat the jelly beans instead. This was fairly humorous for me to watch because he would often get a flavor he didn't like and run to the trash can to spit it out (or you know, pull the classic 'spit it out in moms hand' trick). Our activity of the day dealt with jello or more specifically knox gelatin. The night before, I made up four packets of knox gelatin using a 4:3 ratio between the powder and the water (for every packet I used 3/4 cup of water). Once the powder and my water were mixed together, I greased a pan and poured it in then left it over night to set. However, when I made up my gelatin, I made two critical errors: (1) I used cold water rather than hot so my powder didn't dissolve as well and (2) I should have used a different pan! For those two reasons, I'm guessing that this activity wasn't as cool as it should have been, but luckily I thought there was only one packet of powder per box so I bought 4 boxes instead of just the one I needed since there are 4 packets of powder per box. Needless to say, we definitely have the supplies needed to try this activity again.
Anyway, the idea of this activity was really just to dissect a large piece of jello. However,I did want to try injecting some color into the jello, so using our favorite eyedropper, we injected some colored water into the blob of gelatin. While you could sort of see the color as it went in, I think it would have worked better if I hadn't of made the two mistakes I mentioned above. Izzy still enjoyed dissecting the jello though and it kept him nice and busy until daddy got home from work. For H day, our craft word of the day was heart. I simply wrote a big capital H on a piece of paper and let Izzy decorate it with heart stickers. To make it even more fun and interesting for him, I got the puffy heart stickers instead of just plain ones. He loved it! Our activity word of the day was hammer. For this activity, I took an empty egg carton, gave Izzy some golf tees to use as nails, and let him hammer the golf tees into the egg carton. The hammer we used definitely wasn't a real one but rather a toy one that comes with a toy tool box he has. Izzy might have hammered one or two into the carton, but it didn't take him long to figure out that using his fingers was easier and more efficient. So for the most part, he just poked the golf tees through the carton. We started with the bottom of the carton, but when that was all full of holes, we just turned it over and stuck the golf tees through the top. Izzy also thought it was pretty fun to open the container and see the golf tees poking through. Heart Craft
Cost: $1 Rating: 4 out of 4 Hammer Activity: Cost: $2 Rating: 2 out of 4 stars Warning: We made the horrible mistake of cutting Izzy's hair the other night. Don't be too alarmed. Now you may proceed. Neither D nor F day turned out as planned and I wasn't able to get many pictures from either day to share, so we are just going to save some time and combine the two days in to one post starting with D day. Our words of the day for D day were duck and dinosaur. For our duck craft, we cut a big letter D out of yellow construction paper and glued it to a piece of white paper to act as the body of a duck. Then we added some stars for feet, an oval for a head, and a heart for a beak, threw in one big googly eye and viola! We had our duck. Our dino themed activity was one that I had looked forward to for a long time. I cut some big dino feet out of a cardboard box and painted them to look simply amazing. Then I cut some slits in the middle and inserted a ribbon in order to tie the dino feet on to Izzy's feet. I thought once he had his dino feet on, he could stomp around the house and be a cool dinosaur for the day. I was so excited and took my time to try and get the feet to look exactly dinoish and purely awesome! Husby and I even tried them on the night before to make sure they would work just right. However, when it came time for Izzy to try out his dino feet, he wasn't interested in the least and wouldn't even let me put them on. Good thing they can be stored in his closet and saved for a rainy day when he is feeling a little more dino-y. For now, you can see a picture of them on my feet plus my awesome striped socks. Thanks husbers! The night before F day I reviewed the activities we had planned and decided I wasn't feeling them anymore so I did a last minute switcheroo. Originally F was going to stand for feather and football, but I wasn't feeling the whole feather thing so we switched it out to be football and fish. I came up with these activities last minute, but I still thought they would be fun. Football was to be our craft word of the day and I simply googled 'f is for football coloring page' and found a pretty good one that we colored together (though Izzy's coloring job was so light that it wouldn't show up in a picture so no pictures of that). Then for our fish activity, I was going to get a container of water, color it to look like the ocean and throw in some fish crackers for him to fish out. I thought it would be a great activity for him because the day before when we were at the doctor's office for sister's 6 month check up, he kept looking at the fish tank in the lobby and saying very loudly, "Eat fish!" Well obviously I couldn't let him eat the doctor's fish, but the fish crackers were totally up for grabs. However, as soon as I filled the container with water, Izzy decided he wanted to be the fish in this scenario and took off all his clothes and hopped in... no eating of the fish crackers was involved. So yup... my idea totally didn't work, but at least he had fun pretending to be a fish and sat in the container for a good 15 minutes until sister woke up from her nap. Since this is really kind of a lame post, I thought it would be a good time to talk about the fun way I have been introducing Izzy to our words of the day each morning. I call them his letter boxes, though they are really his letter bowls. This is the one I made for D day: In order to make his letter boxes, I simply write the letter of the day in both upper and lower case on an index card and tape it to the lid of the bowl. Then I add an object representing each word of the day. For D day that was a rubber duck and toy dino. For F day it was a plastic football easter egg with two goldfish crackers inside of it. Izzy gets pretty excited to open his bowl each morning as we briefly talk about the letter and words of our day. It is a pretty fun way to start the day and gets him all prepped for what is to come a little later on.
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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
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