TOTSchool

Our week in TOTSchool

Emily is 35 months old

Emily loved coloring this Glyph that Elise’s blog. It was great practice in numeral and color recognition. I am planning on doing something like this each week.

Emily also had fun sorting her counting bears. Unfortunately I didn’t get a picture of that.

Emily helped make Muddy Buddies. She loved shaking up the bag to cover the Chex cereal in sugar!

This felt play food cookie dough set that my mom and I made has been a favorite of Emily’s all week! She enjoys pretending to roll out the dough and cut out the cookies. When she is finished we usually have a little tea party!

Our friends came over for Art Group and we added blue to our color wheel project and also made Duplo Prints with blue paint. Juliette was watching the girls work almost the whole time. Soon she will be getting her hands nice and messy too!!

Emily and Juliette are playing together more and more every day. Emily is always reading and singing to her. Here she wanted her to go on her bouncy zebra. Daddy was holding on to Juliette, but they both had a great time!

Some of our favorite books from this week:

• The Three Little Kittens ~ Margaret Barton
• If you give a Pig a Pancake ~ Laura Numeroff
• If you give a Pig a Party ~ Laura Numeroff
• Good Night Moon ~ Margaret Wise Brown

Check out the great things that others are doing with their children by clicking the buttons on the top of this page!!

Friday Art Group

Color Wheel Project ~ Blue and Blue Duplo Prints

This week we added the blue piece to our color wheels for the Color Wheel Project.

The girls colored one of the pieces of the circle with blue markers, and then glued on blue pipe cleaners, tissue paper, foam, construction paper, ribbon, stickers, cut up straws and sequins. 

Coloring with blue markers.  They are all doing really well staying in the one piece.

Gluing on the collage materials.

Juliette enjoyed watching from her high chair. This week we had 3 siblings watching us work.  It will be fun to see how the babies join in soon. 

Next, the girls made Duplo prints with blue paint.  I loved how each one came out so different!

   

After we cleaned up the girls had snack and free play.

 

Juliette is starting to join right in, I LOVE it!!!!

stART ~ The Three Little Kittens

Welcome to stART! I hope that you will enjoy our story and art project and maybe even share your own too! The linky will be open all week.

This week we read The Three Little Kittens, retold by Margaret Barton. This is a book that is based on the classic nursery rhyme. Emily enjoyed the fuzzy pages while we read the story.

I was very excited when I found this book because we just did the cutest project at Mommy and Me based on the nursery rhyme The Three Little Kittens. This book went along with the puppet we made perfectly!

To make the puppet the teacher had all of the pieces cut out and ready at the craft table.

• Emily had to glue 2 gray circles together (a small one for the head and a large one for the body).
• Next, she glued on the ears, nose and mouth.
• Then, she put on the eyes, which are green dot stickers with a back circle colored in the middle.
• Emily drew on the whiskers with a marker.
• Finally, I helped her thread the white yarn through the holes that were punched out in the body of the cat and also through the mittens (she got to pick which color she wanted for her mittens, no surprise that she picked GREEN!!). The yarn goes around the back of the cat to connect the two mittens.

When you pull the yarn it makes the mittens go close to the cat’s body.

Emily’s Kitten found her mittens!!!

Check it out!

I started another blog to keep track of the crafting that my mom and I are doing. On YummyFelts the blog we are looking forward to posting some of the things that we create for the shop as well as all the fun crafting projects that we are inspired to create for our homes, babies and friends. We also thought it would be a great place to offer tutorials for some of our favorite projects and of course giveaways of some of our favorite creations!!

Check out the new blog for a chance to win this cookie dough set!!

We recently made Emily a heart sugar cookie dough set and she really enjoyed playing with it.

She loves pretending to cut out the circle dough and put it on one of my small cookie sheets. Then we pretend to have tea and cookies with the finished sugar cookies with heart shapes icing.

Emily enjoyed it so much we thought we would give one away just in time for Valentines Day. So check out our new YummyFelts blog for a chance to win your own sugar cookie felt play food set.

Kids in the Kitchen ~ Muddy Buddies

   

When I first saw this recipe almost a year and a half ago I knew I wanted to try it, but I was waiting to give Emily peanut butter.  When I finally gave her peanut butter and saw that she loved it I forgot about the recipe.  Until now that is!!  This is a quick easy very kid friendly recipe that we all absolutely LOVED!

These yummy ingredients make a really tasty treat!!

• 9 cups Corn Chex®, Rice Chex®, Wheat Chex® or Chocolate Chex® cereal (or combination)
• 1cup semisweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 1/4 cup butter or margarine
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

Directions:

1. Into large bowl, measure cereal; set aside.
2. In 1-quart microwavable bowl, microwave chocolate chips, peanut butter and butter uncovered on High 1 minute; stir. Microwave about 30 seconds longer or until mixture can be stirred smooth. Stir in vanilla. Pour mixture over cereal, stirring until evenly coated. Pour into 2-gallon resealable food-storage plastic bag.
3. Add powdered sugar. Seal bag; shake until well coated. Spread on waxed paper to cool. Store in airtight container in refrigerator.

Emily enjoyed shaking up the bag to coat each piece in the powdered sugar.

She was so pleased with her creation!!

Check out Kids in the Kitchen for some other great kid friendly recipes!!

Muffin Tin Monday

This weeks theme for Muffin Tin Monday is ABC & 123.  I am so glad that we are back on track with our schedule and able to participate!!

Emily enjoyed her Muffin Tin Monday Breakfast too, she was very happy to help make waffles too.  She was jumping around yelling Muffin Tin Monday as soon as I took out our muffin tin!

Emily’s ABC and 123 Muffin Tin Breakfast

 

Top Row: ABC & 1,2,3 waffles cut out with cookie cutters and filled with Apples, Blueberries and Chocolate Chips

Bottom Row: Apples, Blueberries and a Clementine

Yummy Yummy Muffin Tin Breakfast!!

    Emily worked on this Turtle Glyph that I saw on Inspiration Surrounds… Creativity Abounds after breakfast.  It reinforced the numbers 1-5 and Emily was excited about coloring with our smelly markers!

TOTSchool

Our week in TOTSchool

Emily is 35 months old.

These are the past two weeks in TOTSchool and I am now finally caught up!! It definitely feels good to be back on track. I am looking forward to some great activities in the next few weeks. Emily has really started to show and interest in letters and writing them so that is what we will start to focus on.

We worked on the letter Ii with our friends at Sarah’s house. She has some good pictures of the finished products. We made igloos for our Alphabet book.

We made handprint/fingerprint penguins. I loved the way these came out. They look like they are marching across the paper. We used the side of their fist for the body and then their fingerprints to make the white belly, beak and feet.

Gluing mini marshmallows on this snowman was a great fine motor skill practice. They also enjoyed eating the marshmallows :0)

Emily had fun stamping with this penguin rubber stamp that she received for Christmas. I couldn’t believe what a great job she did lining them up. I left her to do what she wanted with it and really expected to see a bunch on top of each other. When she finished she called me over and asked me to write their names under them. Many of them were named Grandma and Grandpa I thought that was pretty funny.

We started a color wheel project in our Art Group. For the first week we did red. We will collage the primary colors and then work on the secondary colors.

We made blob paintings after reading It Looked Like Spilt Milk. Emily decided hers looked like a butterfly and it really did!

This, handwriting ring from Confessions of a Homeschooler was my favorite printout of the week!! I can’t wait to make some more. Emily loved working on it and it stayed out all week. She did an amazing job tracing the lines and different patterns too. I think she is definitely ready to work on letters now.

Emily decorated a teddy bear cupcake and Juliette really wanted to taste some, but she still has a while to go before we introduce her to these sweets!!

When we were at my mom’s house Emily wanted to play with these Make a Picture Tiles. This was one of my favorite games/toys when I was little. You get to make all different pictures with the different tile cards. My mom had this from when she used to sell discovery toys.

For our stART project we made paper plate penguins after reading If I Were a Penguin.

During our Art Group we worked on our Color Wheel Project. This week we focused on Yellow. Here Emily is painting with spaghetti

Some of our favorite books from this week:

• It Looked Like Spilt Milk ~ Charles Shaw
• If You Give a Pig a Pancake ~ Laura Numeroff
• If You Were a Penguin ~ Wendell and Florence Minor
• Good Night Moon ~ Margret Wise Brown

Check out the great things that others are doing with their children by clicking the buttons on the top of this page!!

Look who is eating now!

Juliette started eating solid foods about a month and a half ago. 

This is Juliette’s first time having rice cereal.

I am starting to make her other foods too.  She has tried…string beans,

  peas,

carrots,

and sweet potatoes.

I have been making my own baby food.  I wanted to for Emily, but she was such a picky eater as a baby that I just got discouraged and ended up buying jars.  Juliette seems to enjoy the food I am making so I am set to stick with it. 

We are starting fruits in a few days and I am not really sure about preparing them, I am going to start with apples since I do know how to make apple sauce, and that will by me some time to research!! 

If you made your own baby food and have some great tips I would love to hear them.  I am wondering about storing, reheating and traveling. 

Friday Art Group

Color Wheel Project ~ Yellow and Yellow Pasta Painting

The girls really seemed to enjoy the play dough this week.  They were rolling it out and using the cutters to make all different shapes.

Color Wheel Project ~ Yellow

We continued working on our color wheels for the Color Wheel Project at Mommies Little Artists.  For our projects the girls are making a color wheel collage.  I was so excited to see how they look with the next color added. 

The girls colored one of the pieces of the circle with yellow markers, and then glued on yellow pipe cleaners, tissue paper, foam, construction paper, ribbon, stickers and sequins. 

Yellow Pasta Painting

I have been wanting to try Spaghetti Painting for awhile now so thought that it would go very well with our YELLOW themed art group today.  I also added some different types of dried pasta to paint with too, since I wasn’t sure if all of the girls would like the feeling of the cooked pasta.  To my surprise it was Emily that was the most uninterested in it!!  She did try it at the end though. 

Painting with pasta is pretty cool!!!

Juliette watched the girls paint while I was holding her, but she did spend some time hanging out in her Jump-a-roo too!!