Love Bugs

When I saw this craft  on the PreKinders website I knew we had to make it!  Emily loves her little Love Bug.  Her favorite part is the movable wings. 

I am planning on using these for some very special Valentine’s Day cards this year.

Emily used our new heart punch to make the little purple hearts for the wings.  After a couple she told me I could help too :0)

 

I traced a large circle and a smaller circle onto a piece of red construction paper and another large circle onto a piece of pink construction paper.  Emily cut them all out all by herself!!

Emily glued the two red circles together to make the body of the bug.

Next she glued on the wiggly eyes.

I cut the pink circle in half and punched a whole through the top of the two pieces and the center of the body.  Emily put the brad through the holes to attach the wings.  Finally Emily glued the little purple hearts onto the wings of the bug.

I wrote “I LOVE YOU” and the date on the middle.

stART ~ If You Give a Pig a Party

Welcome to stART! I hope that you will enjoy our story and art project and maybe even share your own too! The linky will be open all week. Click on the button above for more details about participating in stART.

This week we enjoyed reading If You Give A Pig A Party, by Laura Numeroff. This is another really cute book from the “If You Give A…” series by Laura Numeroff. The story line is simple but so cute about all the funny things that happens if you through a party for a pig. It kept Emily engaged in the story and is also wonderful for teaching cause and effect. We have even started telling our own stories similar to this using Emily in them. (If you give Emily a pickle, she will think of barbecues in the summer and want to go play outside…) She thinks it is very funny to be apart of her own little story!!

This book was a very appropriate pick for the week since Emily’s 3rd Birthday is on Saturday (I still can not believe she is going to be 3 it feels like yesterday that she was born!!) For our stART project we thought it would be fun to make a party hat to go along with this story. I saw a neat stamping idea in Martha Stewart's Magazine that I wanted to try out so we used it for this project.

Emily’s Birthday Hat

Emily picked, (now this will not be a surprise for many of you) GREEN for the color of her hat. So I cut out a party hat shape, gave her some paint with glue mixed into it and a rolled up piece of corrugated cardboard for her to print with.

I rolled up a piece of corrugated cardboard and taped it so it would stay together. Then Emily dipped it into green paint that I mixed with glue.

Emily glued on a green pom pom at the top.

She sprinkled it with glitter and since their was glue in the paint it stuck very nicely!!

She loved adding sequins and mini pom poms, which was great fine motor skills practice.

Finally Emily added a felt 3 that my mom cut out for her with our new die cuts (so exciting!!!) since every birthday hat should say how old you will be :)

Emily’s finished birthday hat!!

Little Miss Valentine

This cute little “Heart Girl” as Emily called her was a quick and cute craft with a fun fine motor twist!

I cut out a large heart for the body, two small hearts for hands, 2 half hearts for feet and 4 strips of construction paper for arms and legs.

First, Emily drew a face on the heart with a marker.

(I was going to have her use wiggly eyes, however her face came out SO good we thought it would be best to save them for another project!)

 

She folded the strips of paper for the arms and legs into accordions, and yes she did them all without asking for help, I was totally shocked!

Emily enjoys helping me fold towels and the napkins to help set the table for dinner so I thought she would like this, but I had no idea how much she would like it.

She glued the arms and legs onto the heart  and  then…

…added the hands and feet.

**Don’t you love all her jewels, I love that she wants to play dress up now it just looks to cute :0)

Lacing Hearts

I made a flower lacing set for Emily in the spring and she really enjoyed playing with it. I usually kept it in my bag to take out when she was getting fidgety at church or while we were waiting at a restaurant or doctors office. So I thought it would be fun to switch it up a bit so I made her a Valentine Lacing Set.

All I did was use my heart cookie cutters to make an imprint in pink, white, red and purple craft foam. I cut them out and punched holes in the centers.

Finally I gave Emily a pipe cleaner with a bead attached to the end and let her lace them on.

I love that we can use this to practice patterns as well as work on fine motor skills. The foam makes it nice and quiet so it is perfect while Juliette is napping or we are at church!

Chocolate Football Sugar Cookies

We went to our church to watch the super bowl on a GIANT blow up screen.  They serve yummy foods and everyone brings a dessert to share.  I thought it would be fun to make football cookies.  I found a chocolate sugar cookie recipe and Emily and I got to baking!

 

Emily is becoming such a great helper, I was able to leave her to do all the scooping…

 

…while I went to see what Juliette was up too while Daddy was watching her, I think she wanted to help too!

 

I gave her a little rolling pin and some of her own dough to roll out.  I used a oval cookie cutter and pinched the sides a little bit to make it football shaped.

I melted white chocolate and put it in a squeeze bottle and let my husband decorate the football with laces.

Emily got to help decorate a few of her own cookies too!

Muffin Tin Monday

This week there was no theme for Muffin Tin Monday, so we decided to have our lunch at Grandma’s house (I left my muffin tin there so figured we would raid her fridge for lunch!)

Emily’s Muffin Tin Lunch

Top Row: Mozzarella cheese circles, Fruit cocktail, Chocolate sugar cookie football

Bottom Row: Pita chips, Hummus, More pita chips

 

Emily and I made these delicious little football cookies for a Super Bowl party at our church last night.  I saved a few for a Muffin Tin treat!!

 

Emily and Daddy watching the game last night!!

 

Juliette thought her cups were much more exciting than the game!!

TOTSchool

Our week in TOTSchool

Emily is 35 months old

This week Emily has been sick so we spent the week at home. She was tired and spent most off the time resting on the cough, however we did manage to fit in some fun activities and projects when she was feeling up to it.

Emily enjoyed this fine motor skills practice. I cute pink, red, white and silver pipe cleaners to fit inside an empty onion powder container. She spent a good amount of time filling it, twisting of the lid, emptying it and filling it again. I thought the Valentine’s Day Colored Pipe Cleaners made it all the more fun :0)

We made a fun Mr. Groundhog puppet to go with a cute Mr. Groundhog song to celebrate Groundhogs Day!

Aunt Jennifer came over and was coloring with Emily and Juliette was very excited to get in on the fun!

Emily enjoyed playing with the Valentine’s Day Lacing Hearts that I made for her. This was another fun fine motor skills practice activity.

I saw these groundhog color by number printable on Our Little Family and Emily LOVED them. They were great for practicing numeral recognition and colors. We also did the Roll and Color Groundhogs Day game too!

Emily built a Block Maze for the cars and dolls to walk through. Next time I think we need to bring out the Duplos because we ran out of blocks pretty quickly!

Recently Emily has been really into stamping we played a counting game with this snowflake stamp. We took turns rolling the dice to see how many snowflakes to make. We played until the paper was filled up. We both had fun and it was great counting practice for Emily.

For our stART project this week we read Pooh Loves You and Emily made a Love Collage. Emily was able to cut out all the pictures without any help. She was very proud of herself and excited to start cutting out her own things now!

After our family dinner Emily showed Grandpa how to make ice cream with her play-doh ice cream set.

She also showed everyone how she nurses pink baby! I am so proud of her :0)

Emily has been very interested in her name so when I found this site that lets you make your own dot tracing printable I knew I had to make one with her name, so she can practice writing it. I laminated the printable so that she will be able to reuse it!

Our favorite books from this week:

• Groundhog Stays Up Late ~ Margery Cuyler
• Pooh Loves You ~ Fran Posner
• Bear Shadow ~ Frank Asch
• Good Night Moon ~ Margret Wise Brown

Check out the great things that others are doing with their children by clicking the buttons on the top of this page!!