Tot Trays

Here are Sweet Girl's tot trays for this week.  No particular theme in mind, just a bunch of random ideas I had.  I know she will love them because most of them have "little things" to go along with them!!

Shape patterning

The patterning strips are from COAH.  She has tons of ideas and amazing printables on her site!!

Tonging starbursts

Land vs. sea sorting

Counting mini farm animals

Big vs. little bear sorting

Fish matching

Clothespin color wheel

This great fine-motor and matching idea is from Allie over at No Time For Flashcards!

Hope you have a great week!

Toddler crafts - Week in Review

What a fun filled week we had!  Happy Friday!

Shamrock sun catchers

These were really easy to make.  I just laid down a piece of contact paper on our counter, gave Sweet Girl green tissue paper and glitter and let her go at it!  Once she was done, I covered it with another piece of contact paper and then cut out shamrock shapes!!  I love having these sun catchers in our kitchen window!!

Finger painted shamrocks

We used yellow and blue paint to make green shamrocks.  Sweet Girl didn't get the whole "color mixing" thing, but did enjoy getting all dirty!  This would be a great activity for teaching color blending to older children!

Rainbow with a pot of gold

This took FOREVER to make.  First we had to sort our cheerios by colors, then glue them onto the rainbow (I did that part...Sweet Girl lost interest after the sorting).  Then we took a little break for a while and came back to add the pot of gold, clouds and sun.  Sweet Girl insisted it had to have a sunshine!!

Heart shamrocks

We made shamrocks out of heart shapes.  Then Sweet Girl used her watercolors to paint the page (watercolors are her absolute favorite!!).

F is for....feathers

Sweet Girl loved this one because it involved glue and feathers.  Warning, though....cutting out the letter F made quite a mess.  There were feathers everywhere!!

F is for....flower prints from soda bottles

I saw this neat idea over at Frugal Family Fun and thought it would be great for our letter F week.  As you can see we made three flowers and then Sweet Girl decided to add her artistic touch! 

What did you do this week???

Happy St. Patty's Day!!

Happy St. Patty's Day from my family to yours!!  What a great reason to have some fun!!  Like I need an excuse to make something or have a party.  Tomorrow we are having some of Sweet Girl's friends over for some outdoor fun, crafting and little celebration. 

Here's what I have planned!!

Rainbow cupcakes

Yummy!!  These were a little time consuming to make, but look so pretty!  Sweet Girl actually had one for breakfast this morning....shhh...don't tell!!

St. Patrick's Day coloring books

I put together these super simple coloring books from different images I found on the web.  The front page is from here.  We are also going to finger paint and make some shamrocks out of hearts!!

St. Patrick's Day treat bags

I saw these super cute and free printables over at Cap Creations and just had to make them for our little party!!  How cute!

Here are my lucky charms!!   How did I get so lucky???

I made these little shirts for my kiddos using transfer paper.  I added fabric glue and glitter for Sweet Girl's shirt and just fabric paint for Little Man's! 

Do you have anything fun planned for today???

ABC Fun - Letter F

It's letter F this week and we have some FUN things planned!! 

Alphabet Sensory Bin

There are tons of things in our letter F sensory bin this week...flowers, frogs, flamingo, french fries, flip flop, fan, flag and lots of letter F's.  Like all of our other letters so far, I start with the sensory bin so we can talk about what the letter looks like and what it sounds like.  Sweet Girl loves the sensory bin and will pull it out of the cabinet I keep it in a few times each week.  She usually carries around all the different objects....guess I should find a bag for her for this one, huh?

Flower button board

I saw this great idea over at Chasing Cheerios and decided to make a flower button board to go along with our letter F week.  The board was so easy to make and if I didn't have little hands trying to get to all the buttons I would have been finished in about 15 minutes.  It's definitely something I will keep in the rotation for a while.

Frog color matching

I pulled out our bean bag frogs and made some colored letter F lily pads to match the frogs.  We have several frog books I plan to incorporate into this activity, as well as some froggy songs.

Planting flowers

I found this super cute little watering can and a flower growing kit at Michaels this past weekend.  After my coupons, the kit and watering can were only $3, so I couldn't pass them up.  I know Sweet Girl will love planting and watering her flower.

Lots of hands on activities this week!!  Be sure to check back on Friday to see our letter F crafts!!

Momma made...Cupcake Matching/Memory Game Tutorial

I received several inquiries about the cupcake matching/memory game I blogged about with our letter C activities so I thought I would put together a little tutorial.

The cupcake squares are soooo simple to make I almost feel silly posting a tutorial, but here goes!!

First, gather your supplies.

You'll need two pieces of felt, felt cupcake stickers, fabric glue and either needle/thread or a sewing machine.  I got the felt cupcake stickers at Michaels.  They were with the felt supplies and came in a pack of about 20, I think.  (I also HIGHLY recommend a good pair of fabric scissors for cutting felt.  This is the pair I have.)

Next, evenly space your cupcakes on your felt. 

As you can see, I was able to get 8 cupcakes per sheet of felt.  Do not remove the paper backing yet.

Then cut out your squares.

My squares are roughly 2"x2", although I didn't measure them.  I basically just left the cupcakes on the felt, tried to eyeball what looks "centered" and then cut.  After I cut my first square I used that as a pattern for all the remaining squares (as shown in the picture above).

You should have 16 squares once you are finished (if you are making 4 different pairs of cupcakes).

Next, remove the paper backing from your felt cupcake sticker, add a tiny dab of fabric glue and center your cupcake in your felt square.

(I decided to use the fabric glue because I wasn't sure how strong the sticker was.)

The only thing left to do is to sew your felt squares together.  I used my sewing machine since I only had to do straight lines (I'm awful with anything else!!), but they would be super easy to hand stitch. 

Hope you enjoy and please drop me a line if you make them for your little ones.

        

Tot Trays - St. Patrick's Day

All of our tot trays are inspired by St. Patrick's Day this week!!!  Happy early St. Patty's Day!!! 

Pot of Gold Counting

We are still working on number recognition so I thought counting gold coins would be fun. 

Pouring and dividing split peas between three containers

Sweet Girl loves pouring so this should be fun for her.  The glass dishes are tealight holders.

Tonging green sparkly pom poms

Shamrock ABC's

This is from Oopsey Daisy's recent mommy school pack.  I printed off letters A, B, C, D, E, F and G and have cooresponding green alphabet stickers to match.

Shamrock size sequencing

Also from Oopsey Daisy

Coin drop

Always a favorite!!

Shamrock sticker sort

St. Patrick's Day Sensory Bin

I decided to keep our St. Patrick's Day sensory bin simple this month.  In here are three bags of split peas, some green shamrock coins, some of our green transportation counters, a green bowl and three green eggs (which have little surprises in them).

Check back at the end of the week to see our St. Patrick's Day crafts!! 

Toddler crafts - Week in Review

The weather was cold and rainy this week, but we had lots of fun inside!  Here's what we did at our house!!

Strawberry

We love strawberries at our house so this was a fun craft to make!!  This is from No Time For Flashcards.  I used sticky back foam for the "strawberry seeds" instead of glue since Sweet Girl usually goes a little overboard with the glue!!

Carrot

This is also from No Time For Flashcards.  Sweet Girl saw me looking through the different crafts on the computer and spotted the carrot craft.  We said we were feeding our elephant carrots!!

Feather art

This is probably my favorite of this week!!  I know it doesn't look like much, but Sweet Girl did it all by herself.  She had a left over piece of paper from one of our other crafts and asked for the glue and feathers.  I was over with Little Man and when I came back I saw this feather masterpiece!!  My new goal is to provide more opportunities for "unstructured" arts and crafts!!

Paper plate elephant

Also from No Time For Flashcards!!!

E is for.....egg

E is for.....elephant

 And since our week was all about foods, I included some pictures of Sweet Girl helping in the kitchen.  She is such a great helper!!

Stirring the lemon filling for our lemon bars

Breaking (and sorting) asparagus

Asparagus is probably her favorite food (no...seriously!!) and she loves to help break the woody stems from the asparagus.  The sorting was totally her own doing!  Look how everything is so neat and orderly!

And just because he's so dang cute!!!