Archive for March 2011
Time to link up your best post of the week and share it with the world a second time. Since I host I never share my best. This week judging on facebook likes it was My No Sew Tutu tutorial although I’d probably say based on what a big hit it was with my son the Trash Rainbow was our best. I hope this week is full of fun and learning for you and all the little ones in your life.
Part of learning to read is learning all about why we read. For pleasure, for directions, and for information. Most young children use the words story and book synonymously by introducing them to non fiction books you are opening their minds up to another use for books and print. So next time you are at the library checking out books if you don’t already know where the non fiction books are find out and grab a few . These are some of our favorites.
A Picture Book of Helen Keller (Picture Book Biography)
Imagine You’re a Knight!
Delivering Your Mail
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Little Shark
Baby on the Way 
Trash And Recycling
Happy St. Patrick’s Day. You can’t have St. Patrick’s Day without eating something green and we know how easy that can be with little kids. One way to encourage healthy eating is to play with food, make up recipes and taste test! So we made these super easy green popscicles that are all natural , no food coloring and we even had fun playing test kitchen trying a few times to make the color green.
Attempt #1
Ingredients: We opened the fridge and looked for blue and yellow ingredients. We settled on blueberries and lemonade. You and I both know that it won’t blend to green but as long as the waste isn’t too much let your kids experiment. As soon as my son poured in the lemonade he could see that this was not the mix we needed. It was super tasty though and I blended it and drank it!
Attempt #2
Ingredients : We went back to the fridge and grabbed the spinach. I suggested the yogurt ( vanilla or lemon would make it yummier) and we tried again.
Blended.
Strained the big spinach out.
Froze it
Taste test – he loved it!
It tasted like watery lemon to me, if you are going for tasty – add a ripe banana and like mentioned above use vanilla or lemon yogurt. These green treats we made a few years ago were great.
The point of this activity was the process of trial and error, color mixing and having fun with healthy food!
I have made many a tutu in my day, but this is the first for my daughter. There are tutorials all over the place and they may use other methods but this was how I learned years ago and it’s fast , easy and worth sharing. I love the silly fun frills that come with girls and know that once she can voice her opinion about clothes, hair clips and tutus my reign supreme will be done. She loved feeling the texture of the tutu but really it’s a fun prop for pictures at this age, in a year or so it will be good for play. The nice thing about these easy tie tutus is that you can add or remove tulle as needed as long as the ribbon is long enough. As with any object with string/rope/ribbon these are NOT to be used unsupervised, slept in or any other activity that isn’t directly supervised.
- Gather your materials. You will need tulle ( I used a roll of 6″ wedding tulle from Wal-mart), ribbon for the waistband, thinner ribbon for contrast and scissors.
- Measure your child’s waist with the ribbon, double it and cut.
- I am not one to measure mostly because I am impatient with everything other than small kids but also because my son turned my yard stick into a lance to go with his Knight’s Shield. So instead I use my arms. For the tulle I did 2 arms lengths and cut. I like longer pieces because once you pop them on the ribbon they will be poofy. Tutus should be poofy! I did 30 of these. Not all at once.
- Then I folded the tulle 4, made a loop around the waistband ribbon, pulled it through and tightened. At the bottom you will see a loop , just snip it.
- Keep going after 9 I popped on a contrasting ribbon in gold. These were only one arms length and I added it on the same way.
- Once all the tulle is on ( test it on your child a few times) make a spot in the front middle and using the same ribbon as the waistband is made from tie a bow on. This gives the illusion that the tutu is tied in the front but stops your child from being able to untie it themselves.
- Tie it on and take pictures
I am saving this for when she is a little older although she had fun practicing pulling up in it. 
My daughter is learning her shapes and colors. She is doing fabulous, but I remember my son having trouble with certain shapes simply because we didn’t talk about them as much. Let’s face it diamonds, ovals, and octagons (other than stop signs) don’t really come up that often. So I came up with this sensory box as a fun way to practice these shapes.
You will need scissors, craft foam, cardboard, aluminum foil, and black beans.
I drew some shapes onto the craft foam and cardboard. Rectangles on green (for emeralds), octagons on red (for rubies), ovals on blue (for sapphires), and diamonds on the cardboard.
Cut the shapes out and wrap the diamond shapes with small pieces of foil.
Pour the black beans and shapes in the bowl. I chose black beans because I thought it would look more like coal. It really makes the colors stand out, too.
To make it a tad more authentic for mining, you can cut strips of construction paper and tape them together to fit around your child’s head. Then cut a 1 inch section off of a toilet paper roll and tape it to the headband. I thought we had yellow tissue paper (very cute for the headlamp, but we didn’t). He’s still cute, I think.
You can give your child tongs, sifter, strainer, colander, or measuring cups. Try anything to make it feel more like mining. It’s all about having fun.
Every time my daughter found a shape I would say “Wow, you found a blue oval. Great job!” or the corresponding shape and color. We had a blast mining. My son had to play along after he saw how much fun my daughter was having.
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Kim is a contributing writer for No Time For Flash Cards, a mom to a toddler, a preschooler, and a foster parent, too. She juggles her day by trying out fun activities and crafts with the kids. After all, she is just a big kid herself. See what she has been up to over at Mom Tried It.
