Blue Day

As I have mentioned in previous posts, one thing I am working on with Little Guy is colors.  I was inspired by a series of posts on Play Create Explore that focus on a color of the week.  While I was not quite ready to dedicate an entire week to each color, I though about what activities I could do in a day to practice a color. 

The first color we practiced was blue.  Our blue activities included making blue scented rice for a new sensory bin, painting with blue paint, using blue markers, wearing the color blue, and playing with blue play dough.

We made blue rice, using this recipe from Growing a Jeweled Rose and blue Kool Aid!  We had a lot of fun with it!

Since Little Guy had still been enjoying airplanes, I thought we would paint some.  I have these large plastic stencils that we used.

We started out using s sponge...

but it soon got on our hands!

Finger painting!

Our finished art.

What I learned was that there was too much for just one day!  We did this back in July (sorry it's late!), but did not get everything done that I wanted!  (We never even got out the play dough and I had a few more ideas that I did not even mention.)  After some reflection on my goals for Little Guy, we will do a couple of colors a week.  Stay tuned for more color activities!

4 great reasons to dye pasta wheels

I love using Kool Aid to dye stuff. I've used it to dye and scent rice and playdough. I was in need of a new sensory idea for the color red, so I let Little Guy pick some pasta from the bulk bins at the grocery store. He chose little wagon wheels.

We divided it into 4 groups and used Kool Aid packets and water. We set them in a bin and put it outside to dry (which didn't take too long in the heat).

Helping Mommy shake it up!

Are you going to help?

The one problem we had was that the noodles dried all stuck together, so we had to spend some time breaking it apart.

Our bin, complete with red tools.

Now for the reasons that you should dye past wheels:

1. It smells yummy!

2. It looks fun to play in. The pasta is not dyed uniformly, giving it a neat look.

3. It is a fun sensory bin.  It's great for scooping, pouring, and hiding your hand in!

4. It doubles as a fine motor activity. Little Guy had a blast threading them on the bamboo skewers.

Adding the wheels so carefully!

Look at that stack.

What have you dyed with Kool Aid?

Bubbles

Little Guy loves to blow bubbles. On a recent trip to the dollar store, we picked up a new bubble blowing kit.  Little Guy loved it! An added bonus was that he was much more successful at blowing bubbles out of these big wands than he usually is with the regular wands!

What great finds have you made at the dollar store?

Our garden...an update

Remember way back in June when we planted our vegetable garden?  Here's an update to how it looks now!

Our garden!

Daddy made the tomato cages out of PVC pipes.  We didn't get the cages in until kinda late, so that is why a couple of the tomato plants never got very tall.

What we have harvested so far:

• several cucumbers
• 2 big tomatoes
• a dozen-ish cherry tomatoes
• a handful of yellow pear tomatoes
• 2 jalapenos
• 2 orange snack peppers

Our first cucumber!

Our peppers, a cucumber, and a few tomatoes that made it into the house.

We have a lot of green tomatoes on the plants still, so I hope that warm weather holds out until they ripen!

Little Guy has loved helping to pick things from the garden, especially the cherry tomatoes.  When we pick them, we can usually get a small handful at a time.  Little Guy has been loving this so much that the tomatoes usually don't make it into the house...he's eaten them all before we get inside! 

Our sunflower plants finally bloomed! Remember way back in May when Little Guy and I started these plants out as seeds?  They have just grown and grown, and now are taller than all of our other plants and me! 

Our sunflower.

How is your garden?

More animals

Remember the tiger that Little Guy made? It was time to make some more animals.

I recently picked up some scissors for Little Guy to use, and he loves them! They have a spring to help them open back up, so Little Guy just has to practice the squeezing part of cutting for now.  So our animals are (partially) cut by him.
 

We started with another tiger. Little Guy cut all the stripes.

What a cute tiger!

Then we made another stripey animal...a zebra!

Do you like our model?

Look at all the stripes he cut!

Adding the googley eyes (they might be his favorite part)!

Our zebra!

The other animal we made was a lion. Little Guy has recently decided he doesn't like to paint, so mama had to do all the painting. I painted a red paper plate (left over from his birthday party) yellow. We worked together to cut the fringe for the lion's mane. After adding googley eyes and a puff for a nose, we drew on a smile!

Mommy, I don't want to paint.

Our lion!

What animals have you made lately?

Very Hungry Caterpillar Felt Board

Remember the Very Hungry Caterpillar busy bag I wrote about here?  Well, I decided that Little Guy and I needed to give it a test drive before we took it out somewhere.

We started with reading the story.  Then we pulled out the felt pieces and laid them on the ground.  As I read the story again, Little Guy put them up on our felt board.  It was a fun process!

First comes the caterpillar.

Add an apple and some pears.

Can you tell that Mommy put up the strawberries and oranges?

Look at all this food!

Yea!  All done!

This felt story was a big hit!  I can't wait to have more!

What stories have you made out of felt?