Happy Easter!

Happy Easter! We hope you had a wonderful day!

The Easter Bunny visited our house last night, and left Little Guy a basket!  It had sidewalk chalk, animal crackers, bubbles, a Leap Frog music player, and a "Farm on a String."  (We generally don't give Little Guy candy, so he got animal crackers and yogurt melts in his eggs instead.)

He had fun pulling out the different items.  First out was the sidewalk chalk.  Then he found the animal crackers (I remember those little boxes when I was a kid, and couldn't resist getting one for him).  Next he found his music player.  We thought that this would be a big hit as he loves music and dancing.  He had a lot of fun dancing to the music!  (This music player was enjoyed multiple times throughout the day!)

Bubbles came next, followed by his "Farm on a String." Each animal has a hole, and you thread the long cord through it.  It was a success!

 After nap, we went looking for Easter eggs in the front yard.

Little Guy is looks like a little boy in those shorts and polo shirt!  Where did Mama's baby go?

Later, while I was cooking dinner, Daddy and Little Guy got out the new sidewalk chalk!

We had a fun Easter!  I hope yours was great, too!

Dyeing Easter Eggs

This was the first time that we dyed Easter eggs with Little Guy.  Last year he was only nine months old, so we did not dare to try eggs!

Getting ready to dye Easter eggs!

We dyed eggs outside since it was beautiful weather.  I spread a plastic tablecloth from the dollar store on the ground as our work surface.  I looked for some small bowls to dye the eggs in, but couldn't find any so I used some of our mugs.  Since they were tall, it was helpful to minimize splashing as Little Guy dropped the eggs in!  We had four colors, so we would just need to do two rounds of dyeing since we had eight eggs.

Little Guy trying to gently put the egg in the mug.

We tried to let Little Guy do most of the work.  He started by putting the eggs into the mugs of dye.  He didn't quite grasp that they were (somewhat) fragile and just dropped them in.  It did get somewhat better as we said "Gentle!"  Oh well, the cracks won't hurt us!

Here is my blue egg!

He really enjoyed having the eggs in the dye.  He liked stirring the eggs as they were soaking.  There was not quite enough liquid to cover the eggs, so this helped to completely dye the egg.  It also left white lines on the eggs, giving them an interesting look!  He did not want to take them out, which meant that we had very vibrant colors.  We had to convince him to take the eggs out.

Daddy, this egg goes in here!

Overall, we had a fun time dyeing the eggs!  Little Guy seemed to enjoy the experience, and it was not overly messy.  His fingers did get a little stained from pulling the eggs out of the dye, but a toddler with green fingers is cute, right!

Our beautiful Easter eggs!

How was dyeing eggs with your toddler?

Easter Egg Color Matching

We have many plastic eggs at our house, thanks to our Easter egg play table.  I wanted to provide Little Guy with a learning experience with the eggs, so I decided to make a color matching activity using an old egg carton and the plastic eggs.

First, I colored the inside bottom of the egg carton holes the colors of eggs that we had.  To keep it somewhat simple, I chose six colors and colored the two holes next to each other the same color.

Then I got the eggs out of the table, so Little Guy only had the twelve eggs from which to choose.  I sat on the floor with him for this activity, asking him to find each color.  This way he received immediate feedback on whether his choice was correct or not. 

Here are the yellow eggs!

These two are orange!

He did very well!  Daddy was watching, too, and we were both pleased at how well he matched his colors!

What activities are you doing with your plastic eggs?

3 fun things about oatmeal

We started a new sensory bin with oatmeal this week.  Oatmeal is very fun to play with.

Fun thing 1: You can easily scoop it with a spoon.  Little Guy was using a spoon to scoop it into containers.

Got my spoon, ready to scoop!

It can go in this big container!

Fun thing 2: It can go in a variety of containers.  Little Guy got down the bag that holds all the old food containers that I am holding onto, and poured and scooped oatmeal into several of them.

Twist on the lid, and shake, shake, shake!

Fun thing 3: Once it is in a container, you can shake it up!  It made a noise that is different than other sensory ideas.

It even goes in this square container!

For me, oatmeal is pretty easy to clean up.  Little Guy used his dust pan and hand broom to clean some up.  When he worked on cleaning, most of it missed the garbage can.  I easily cleaned it up with the broom and vacuum.

What is in your sensory bin with oatmeal?