Tot Trays - Colors

Our tot trays are all about colors this week!

Dark blue and light blue pom pom patterning

Tonging oranges

Dropping yellow popsicle sticks into a water bottle

Transferring purple water using a medicine dropper

That's purple kool-aid in the dish.  We'll do this activity in the kitchen for sure!

Kitty cat color sorting

Color-object matching

This is from a Time for Tots set I got a few months ago.  Sweet Girl loves matching with the Mickey Mouse swatches and requests it almost every week.

Red object sort

(blocks, apples, turles and airplanes)

Counting using colored blocks

I'm linking up to Tot School!

Toddler crafts - Week in Review

It's that time again!!  Here's what we were up to this week!

Star Princess wand

Sweet Girl said her doll needed a magic wand, so I went to my go-to site for crafts (No Time For Flashcards) and found this super cute and super easy magic wand.  I didn't have a dowel handy, so I used a chopstick.  And I also used sticky-backed jewels instead of glue because I knew Sweet Girl would want to play with it right away!  She loved it and kept waving it around, saying "make a wish" (I wished she would stay this precious forever!!).

Sponge shape painting

Super easy craft!  Just cut a sponge up into different shapes.

Shape collage

I saw this neat idea at Let's Explore where you cut up different shapes and have your kiddos make shape collages.  We are all out of glue at our house (eek...I know!), so I decided to cut our shapes out of sticky foam.  I put the stickers in a serving dish and set them out on Sweet Girl's little table.  She literally did this activity all day!  She would put a few on, go play, come back and do some more, etc.  I love how she grouped the different shapes together!  I think I'll definitely make this a routine activity at our house and maybe just switch the type of "stickers" out.  I know the Dollar Tree has lots of foam sticker choices.  Hmmmm...must go shopping!

Here are all the cut up shapes in the serving dish (dish is from the Dollar Tree).  The empty middle part was for the "trash" since she had to peel off the backs of the foam stickers. 

Triangle shape fish

I saw this here and thought it would be fun to do since we were talking about shapes this week.  It was WAY too complicated for Sweet Girl and I ended up doing the majority of it (minus the two random triangles and the pen markings).  Regardless, we got to talk a lot about triangles and size. 

D is for....dinosaur tracks

This was really fun and definitely much more age appropriate for Sweet Girl.  We pretended the brown paint was mud and the blue paint was water and made dinosaur tracks.  Afterwards, she had a little practical life lesson and got to wash them off in the sink (i.e. play with water as I washed them off!!).

D is for....shape dinosaur

This is from Now I Know My ABCs over at Totally Tots.  It was perfect for our week since we "built" our dinosaur out of all different shapes.  Sweet Girl insisted the four legs HAD to be together!! 

I'm linking up at ABC and 123 this week.

Learning Toys - Shapes

I switched out our learning toys in our playroom and family room this week.  I try to do this every week, but sometimes I never get around to it!  I usually remember once the toy baskets have gone untouched for a day or so.  Here are some of our learning toys this week.

Melissa and Doug Shapes Puzzle

Sweet Girl loves completing puzzles.

Smart Snacks Sorting Shapes Cupcakes

Look at that determination!

Lauri Toys Smart Shapes and Stacking Pegs

Shapes for lunch!!

I tried to incorporate shapes into our foods this week.  This is Sweet Girl's lunch one day....here we have a heart shaped sandwich, oval grapes, triangle cheeses and a circle cup of applesauce.  She thought this was pretty neat!!

ABC Fun - Letter D

Our letter this week is letter D and it's all about DINOSAURS! 

Alphabet Sensory Bin

I like to start with our alphabet bin because we can talk about the letter and it's sound.  Our sensory bin this week is full of capital D, a dolphin, a dinosaur and a duck.

Dinosaur Hunt Sensory Bin

I also put together a quick dinosaur sensory bin for Sweet Girl.

Here's what in our dinosaur bin:

3 bags of decorative sand

one large dinosaur (from the dollar store)

mini dinosaurs (these were all in one pack...also from the dollar store)

6 easter eggs with mini dinosaurs inside (eggs from Easter last year)

2 dinosaur fossils Sweet Girl made at an art class a few weeks ago

2 paint brushes

Doesn't it look like so much fun?

Dinosaur shape matching

I saw this at Yellow Mums and thought it would be perfect since our week is all about shapes!!

Heads and Tails Matching

This is from the dinosaur tot pack at 1+1+1+1=1.

Check back at the end of the week to see our letter D crafts!!

Momma made...Quiet Book

I started working on a quiet book for my kiddos when I was still pregnant with Little Man.  I am very much a novice when it comes to sewing, but I have always wanted to make one.  And, leave it to me to decide to start with the ENTIRE ALPHABET.  What was I thinking?  It was definitely an involved project, but I loved every minute of it (and am planning on making more too)!  I hand stitched each page, but did use my sewing machine to sew the pages together.

I found an awesome pattern for an ABC Quiet Book at this etsy site and decided to give it a go.  The site has amazing options for quiet books and the directions for making the books are very detailed and instructional (even for a beginner like me). 

Here are some of my favorite pages:

The dog is a finger puppet and the dog food comes in and out of the bowl.

The mailbox opens and closes and there is a little letter in the mailbox.  This is Sweet Girl's favorite page...she loves the letter (and calls it "email")!

The bows untie and you can play with the hair.  (Sweet Girl doesn't know this yet!!).  And the yellow square for the ice cream is actually a pocket where all the ice cream scoops and cones are stored.

The eyes around the buttons can be removed and the owl's wings open and close.

And here is the amazing cover!!  I have to give all the credit to Shelley from Shelley Wallace Designs, though!  I wasn't able to sew all the pages together with my sewing machine and I was terrified I would mess it up if I tried to hand stitch it together, so I contacted her and she graciously offered to do it for me!  She is so talented!!

What about you???  Have you ever thought about making a quiet book for your little ones??

I'm linking up to....

Handmade Tuesday, Too Cute Tuesday, Get Your Craft On and Show and Tell

Tot Trays - Shapes

We are working on shapes this week, so all of our trays are shape-related.  Enjoy!

Shape lacing

I've included string, as well as pipe cleaners.  Sometimes Sweet Girl has a little difficulty with the string.

Shape tonging

We are trying out tweezers instead of tongs for this activity.

Sweeping stars

This is something new for us.  I picked up this mini dust pan and broom at the craft store for $1.00.  I'm planning on having her dump the stars onto the tray and then try to sweep them back up and pour them back in the bowl.  Sweet Girl loves to help clean around the house, so I think she will like this one.

Shape-object matching

Big and little star sorting

Pouring oval beans (I'm stretching this one, I know!!)

Sorting button shapes

I'm linking up to Tot School!

Toddler crafts - Week in Review

We had lots of fun this week!!  Here's what we did at our house!!

Playdough cupcakes

We used our "snow-dough" and our chocolate playdough to make pretend cupcakes.  Sweet girl also used pink and red sugar sprinkles to decorate the cupcakes.  They looked yummy!!  We read If You Give a Cat a Cupcake to go along with both of our cupcake crafts.

Heart sun catcher

I saw this idea here and thought it would look pretty hanging on our kitchen window. 

Heart frame

Sweet Girl and I actually made this for Dada for Valentines day last week, but it wasn't quite ready for last weeks craft review.  We used a simple wooden frame from Michaels, a heart shaped punch, red and pink cardstock and Mod Podge.  Dada loved it!!

Ice painting

Read here to find out more about this fun activity.

C is for....crab

This is from the Totally Tots blog.  They have great ABC crafts!  We read Clumsy Crab to go along with this activity.

C is for.....counting cupcake

I found this craft at No Time for Flashcards.  Sweet Girl picked her favorite number (8), so we had to add 8 candles to the top.  She really enjoyed this craft and loved singing Happy Birthday!

What did you do this week???

Ice Painting

I promise I am almost done posting Valentine-related crafts and activities!!!  I really wanted to share this particular activity because we had so much fun making and playing with these ice cubes!!  And...I don't know about where you live, but our weather has FINALLY turned the corner (fingers crossed) and we have had sunshine and some warmer weather all week!!  I had originally made the ice cubes for indoor crafts, but since it was so nice, we took these outdoors too!

Heart shaped ice cubes

I made these using a heart shaped mold from the dollar section at Target, Crayola washable paint and popsicle sticks.  I added a small amount of paint to the bottom of the heart shaped mold, filled up the rest of the mold with water and then placed them in the freezer for an hour or so.

After about an hour, I pulled them out and stuck a popsicle stick in them so Sweet Girl would have something to hold onto when painting or drawing.  Then I left them in the freezer overnight.

Here Sweet Girl is drawing with the ice cubes.  It took them a while to start melting (I even had to zap them in the microwave for a few seconds), but a lot of the paint collected at the bottom of the mold so it was kind of like a crayon at first.

What a fun painting activity!!