Having Fun Learning ~ The Color Green and Light Tables

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Having Fun Learning

Our week learning together in TOTSchool

Clara is 36 months old

This week at our Mommy and Me TOTSchool class Clara explored colors and shapes on this awesome Guidecraft Light Table for the first time.  She loved moving the Rainbow Shape Blocks around and stacking them to make new colors.  

I have seen homemade versions of this on Pinterest and now I definitely want to make one for us to use at home.

 We learned about the color green and she had a great time finger painting with yellow and blue paint to make the color green.  Clara loves to finger paint and she spent the whole time spreading the paint around and making designs with her fingers. 

We have been working on doing harder puzzles together and Clara was very excited to put this Frozen puzzle together.  She is getting much better at matching the pieces by looking at the pictures.

We had a great time playing at our friends house and making Homemade Slime together.

Clara helped decorate the cupcakes that we made to donate to Birthday Wishes, an organization that throws birthday parties for children living in homeless shelters.
You can read more about how we helped Birthday Wishes by making goody bags.

 Emily and Juliette LOVE Spot It, which is a fun game where you have to spot the object that is the same on each card.  It is a fast paced game because you just put the card down and call out the match.  Clara wants to play with her big sisters so I am teaching her how to play.   For our version I just have Clara look at the card and find the match.  Then, I go and we take turns until all the cards are finished.

This was a simple open-ended art set up that actually turned into a name writing practice.  I set out paper and paper strips with stickers and the new scented gel pens that Clara received from Uncle Keith and Aunt Nicole for her birthday.  Clara loves scented art supplies and has wanted to color with these nonstop since she opened them.  She started drawing and then when I came to check on her she asked for help with her name.  We picked different colors to practice her name in, so far she can write the C and the L, but then has trouble with the rest so since she is showing an interest in it I am going to continue working on this with her next week.

Our Favorite Books from this Week:

Little Blue and Little Yellow ~ Leo Lionni

Mix It Up! ~ Herve Tullet

Percival the Plain Little Caterpillar - Helen Brawley

Peekaboo I know! ~ Moira Butterfield

Check out the great things that others are doing with their children by clicking on the buttons below!!

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Homemade Slime

Homemade Slime is something that Emily and Juliette LOVE to make and play with.  We have made this homemade slime recipe with their cousin, for Emily's science themed birthday party and with Emily's Brownie Girl Scout Troop to earn the Home Scientist Badge.  It is so easy to make and so much fun to play with.  

I was so excited when my friend Tracy, from Tracy & Co. (be sure to check out her YouTube Channel!!) asked us if we would like to get together and that she was thinking of making some slime.  I told her I had all the stuff and I knew that Clara and her daughter would have so much fun with it.  

Tracy actually vlogged us making the slime and the girls playing with it so you can watch us in action.

Homemade Slime

(I have seen many different variations of this recipe, this is modified from Steve Spangler)

 You will need: glue, water, food coloring, borax, some measuring cups and spoons, a bowl or cup to mix the slime in and either spoons or popsicle sticks to mix with.

 First, I put 1 part glue (I used about 1/2 cup) in a cup for each girl.  Then I added 1 part water (I used about 1/2 cup) and had them mix that together with their popsicle stick.  Each girl picked a color that they wanted their slime and I added a few drops of food coloring to the cup of glue and water and let them mix it together a little bit more.

While the girls were mixing the glue and water together, I  added 1/2 tsp of borax to 1 cup of water and we mixed it together until it was dissolved.  

Finally, I added about 2 parts of the  borax solution ( I used about 1/2 a cup) to the glue and water mixture and had the girls stir it together.  Almost instantly you can see the slime forming and feel it sticking to the popsicle stick. At this point we just took the slime out of the cup and used our hands to mix it together well.  

This recipe is very forgiving, if you have to much water just pour a little out and if it is not slimy enough just add a little bit more of the borax solution.

Now for the fun part!!!

The girls had fun squishing and pulling and stretching the slime.  Tracy even put out cookie cutters and it was fun to put a glob of the slime in one and watch it spread out as it sat in it.

This slime will last for awhile as long as you keep it stored in a sealed ziplock bag or another airtight container.  

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A Very Birthday Muffin Tin Monday!!

Last week was Clara's 3rd Birthday and she has really been enjoying having Muffin Tin Monday lunches so I was really happy that I could make one for her on her birthday.  I let her pick what she wanted in each cup so that it was a special meal for her.

Clara's Birthday Muffin Tin Monday Lunch

Top Row: Strawberry banana yogurt with sliced almonds, mini chocolate chips and shredded coconut topping, A #3 cheese sandwich, sliced cucumbers
Bottom Row: Sliced Strawberries, Cheese-Its, Ranch Dressing for dipping the cucumbers

Clara was really happy about her Muffin Tin Lunch!!!

Be sure to check out our other Muffin Tin Meals for lots of yummy lunch ideas.

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Having Fun Learning

Our week learning together in TOTSchool

Clara is 36 months old

This week we had a lot of fun celebrating Clara's third birthday and most of our activities were planned around things she liked or wanted to do.  Right now Clara really enjoys playing with her babies and other dolls, especially Emily and Juliette's American Girl Dolls.  

I really like giving lots of opportunities for Open Ended Art, as much as I love the finished project of structured crafts and art projects I know it is very important to let her just explore with different mediums.  I set her up with paint, different brushes water and a large piece of paper and let her just paint.  In the end we talked about the different colors she used and where they were on the paper.

  

Her most requested activity this week would definitely be our Birthday Themed Sensory Bin, which she went to play with on her own many times throughout each day.

At our Mommy and Me Totschool Class with we learned about the color purple and triangles.

 Clara glued a purple triangle into her notebook

 The kids worked together to mix their color pallets to make different colors.  Here Clara and her friend are making green.

 Clara poured red and blue water into a cup to make purple.

Finally she colored a "Color Wheel Flower"  each petal was a different color, she had to match her markers to the color on the petal.  

Our favorite books for this week:

Little Miss Birthday ~ Roger Hargreaves

If You Give a Pig a Party ~ Felicia Numeroff

Corduroy's Birthday ~ Don Freeman

Check out the great things that others are doing with their children by clicking on the buttons below!!

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Birthday Rice Sensory Bin

Clara celebrated her 3rd birthday yesterday and recently she has really enjoyed playing in our sensory bin.  So, I thought is would be fun to surprise her and create a birthday themed sensory bin that she could explore this week for her birthday.

Clara's Cupcake Birthday Rice Sensory Bin

I filled the bin with plain white rice, which is our go to sensory bin filler. Then I added in multi-colored pom poms, a pack of birthday candles, individual silicone cupcake holders (I found these a few years ago in the dollar spot in Target), and finally since she turned 3 some number 3 cookie cutters and foam threes.  There are also an  assortment of spoons and scoopers.

She loved scooping, pouring, filling and decorating in her special birthday themed sensory bin.

Another fun game the girls like to play with the sensory bins is finding all of one type of object.  With this bin I hid all the number threes under the rice and Clara dug around to find them.

Linking up at Everyday Early Childhood where you can also find more great ideas for little kids.

Before you go be sure to check out our other SENSORY BINS.

(Just click on the underlined link for more fun posts!!)

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Happy 3rd Birthday Clara Louise!!

I really can not believe that we are already celebrating Clara’s 3rd Birthday!!

She is so grown up and her own little person now. She of course looks up to and loves doing everything her big sisters are doing. Most of all she always makes us laugh, whether it is one of her cute facial expressions or something funny that she is telling us. I can’t wait to see what new adventures are in store for us this year!!

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Helping Others ~ Making Goody Bags for Birthday Wishes

In honor of Clara’s third birthday, which we are celebrating this week we deciede to make goody bags to donate to Birthday Wishes. Birthday Wishes is an amazing organization that plans birthday parties for children that are living in homeless shelters.

We have been baking cupcakes to donate for the parties for the past 6 months and the girls are always excited to help me make them and decoreate them. They also collect goody bags which they give out at the parties. I have been wanting to have the girls make them, but haven’t had a chance until now. Since we are not haveing a friends birthday party for Clara I thought this would be a great activity to do together and we were able to spend the money we would have spent on goody bags for her friends on these goody bags.

We went to Walmart and Dollar Tree to pick up all the things we would need to fill the bags. The girls worked together to decide what would be fun to include in each bag. It was cute to hear them talking about the things they like getting.
In the end we decided to fill each goody bag with:

• Silly Straws
  
• Bouncy Balls
  
• Mini Slinkys
  
• Stickers
  
• Play Dough
  
• Spiny Balls
  
• Pencils
  
• Bubbles
  

I set everything up on our low folding table, which was the perfect height for clara to be able to take a bag and then walk around the table and pick one thing from each container to put into the bag.

The girls worked together to put all of the bags together. They were careful to check when they were finished that each bag had everything because they didn’t want anyone to miss out on anything.

Clara was so proud of her finished goody bag, she was actually able to put them all together on her own. I just helped her tie the twist tie to close it.

Together we made 25 goody bags to donate to Birthday Wishes. I can’t wait to bring Clara to drop them off.

We actually had so much fun picking out the items to go into the goody bags and putting them together that the girls said they want this to be one of our new birthday traditions. I couldn’t be prouder of them for wanting to give back to others as part of their birthday celebration.

If you would like to find out how you could help out Birthday wishes be sure to visit their website and their Facebook page.

Check out some of the other ways our family is helping others and volunteering in our community.

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Clara’s Strawberry Sprout

In Tot School last week Clara planted some strawberry seeds. We placed the container on the windowsill and have been waiting for the seeds to sprout. We were all so excited when we checked on it and found this little green sprout!!

We can’t wait to watch it grow. In the meantime we will be working on lots of fun plant art and science projects and reading books all about gardens, seeds and planting.

We have already really enjoyed these great books about plants and gardens:

The Small Seed, by Judith Nicholls ~ We are loving that this is a touch and feel book. It starts out with a small seed being planted and grows, roots a shoot and then a stem. Finallly, there is a beautiful sunflower. All done in a fun rhyiming text. Clara loves finding the touch and feel part on each page and I think the tactile interaction helps her retain the information better too.

The Surprise Garden, by Zoe Hall ~ This is a fun book that shares the journey of 3 children planting a garden that surprises them with all the wonderful food that grows from the plants. I really liked how it talks about the different parts of the plants that we eat. All of the girls have really enjoyed this book which is always nice. We also really enjoyed the collage like illustrations in this book.

Up in the Garden and Down in the Dirt, by Kate Messner ~ I really love this book because it shows young readers what is going on not only Up in the Garden where the plants are sprouting and growing, but down in the dirt in the hidden world where the roots are growing and insects creating creating tunnels and burrows. This is the story of a garden over the course of a year. We really enjoyed looking at the illustrations and finding all the fun details on each page. At the end of our book was a quick refrence page that gave a few facts about the different animals that were introduced in the garden and explained that some are helpful and others are not. Again I liked that this books was fun for all the girls to read together.

What are some of your favorite planting themed books?

For more planting fun and activities be sure to check out some of the plant and garden projects we have done already!!!

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Muffin Tin Monday Revisited

It has been a LOOOONNNGGG time since we have had a Muffin Tin Monday meal in our house. My older girls used to love them and I was always amazed at how much better they ate when they had a meal in one of our many different types of Muffin Tins. Recently, I was talking to my sister in law about how to get our girls to eat a little better and remembered Muffin Tin Meals. After talking she tried it with her girls and actually texted me a picture of my nieces muffin tins, then I knew I had to start this up again with Clara. Of course the first one we did she said she did not want and that she does not eat muffin tins. This time I just put together her lunch and placed the Muffin Tin infront of her. She loved it and ate every last bit!! I am so excited about bringing Muffin Tin Monday back into our routine and am looking forward to sharing our different meals here.

Clara’s Muffin Tin Lunch

Top Row: Homemade Hummus and Pita Chips

Bottom Row: Grapes and Watermelon Chunks

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Baby Fun ~ Big Buttons

 

Clara is 9 months old and wants to do everything that her big sisters do.  She loved playing with our collection of  really big buttons.

These REALLY BIG BUTTONS are a lot of fun for all ages!  We use them for sorting, patterns and now baby play.  Clara enjoyed exploring them.  She looked inside the container, picked up the buttons and especially liked dumping them all over the floor.  This is a great activity for developing fine motor skills and cause and effect relationships.

Here SHE is!!!

Our family was blessed with another beautiful baby girl!!! 

Clara Louise was born on May 2, 2013 and her big sisters at completely in love with her.