Old McDonald

When I saw this I knew I had to make one. Eiz takes this with her everywhere and loves to show off her barn. We will sing "Old McDonald" some of the time, but most often she likes to play with it by herself.

I found this idea over at Oopsey Daisy. She has some really neat ideas. Go check it out.

I just stuck a ziplock bagon with double side stick tape.

Felt Board

Who doesn't love felt boards?

I decided to make Eiz a board so that she would have different ways to learn. They were a lot of fun to make and Eiz loved to play with them.

5 Green and Speckled Frogs

Ice Cream can be used to learn counting and colors.

I thought the patterns for these were so cute.

The Itsy Bitsy Spider

I found all the patterns for the boards here.

Yost Lake Fishing

It wouldnt be summer without fishing!!

Aunt Cassidy came too. She left a few days later for Jamaica and wont be back until the middle of August.

Counting Cucumbers

Tanner and I have planted a garden the last couple of years with some luck. We end up eating a few tomatoes, some green beans and a lot of cucumbers. I mean A LOT!! We eat them plain, we eat them in salad, we even make pickles and we will cant keep up.

Saturday morning I got up with Eiz and realized that we still had a mound on the kitchen table. As I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with them, Eiz came up with her own idea. She would move them from the table to the window. Back and forth, back and forth.

She was having so much fun.

When she got tired of playing in the window she decided that it would be fun to count them with Daddy. So they sat on the floor and counted out 6 cucumbers. She did this for half and hour.

She is one strong little girl! :)

The end result of the 6 cucumbers. Yummy pickles.

Planting the Plum Tree

May 16th we planted a Green Plum Tree in our back yard.

Eiz LOVES the dirt and wanted to be right in the middle of

it all.

Sun Catchers!

I found this idea on www.frugalfamilyfunblog.com.

It is a cheap and fun craft for any age!

Cut a shape out of construction paper and lay on the sticky side of contact paper.

Stick tissue paper confetti on the contact paper.

To make the tissue paper confetti cut a bunch of very small pieces of tissue paper! :)

Cover with another piece of contact paper.

Trim the edges and hang!

They look so pretty in the window!

Rainbow Noodles

How cute are these!! I had a box of flower shaped noodles in the cabinet that had been in there forever so I decided to color them and let Eiz play away. I divided the noodles into plastic bags, added rubbing alcohol and food coloring, and then all you do is Shake Shake Shake!!! Thats it.

I love the way they turned out!

I mixed them with white beans so that the colors would be brighter.

Eiz played with these noodles all weekend.

I also added some bottle caps and pom poms for different textures.

A Book of Colors

Our newest daily activity is a color book. I have an 8x8 scrapbook that I have had for years and now I have put it to use. The last couple of days Eiz has painted 8x8 pieces of paper. We have done red, orange, yellow, and green and today will be blue and purple. Total we will have 10 colors including pink, black, white and brown. That leaves 10 more blank pages in the scrapbook for a number book. :)

Charts and Stickers

We use a lot of stickers in our house. We put them on paper that we are coloring, we put them on our hands, and we use them on charts. A while back I made Eiz a chart for brushing her teeth and going potty. At first I used them on a cork board with tacks which in not a good idea.

This is the very first chart I made for her.

Now we use this for the Potty chart. Its taped on the wall next to the toilet. I dont know if you can see, but Elmo is printed on the bottom. I use this while she sits and I tell her that she needs to show Elmo how to potty. It works almost every time. Once she fills in all the spaces, we will get a new movie or toy. Nothing like a little bribery. :)

Here is her chart for brushing her teeth. It is taped to the wall also, but next to the sink. Yes, we missed brushing Monday night. :(

This chart can be found here... http://www.makinglearningfun.com/t.asp?b=m&t=http://www.makinglearningfun.com/Activities/Mrs.Wishy/WWtoothbrushChart.gif

Art Display

I have been wanting an art display to put in Eiz room, but couldn't decide how I going to do it. Yesterday while walking around Hobby Lobby I found these cute wooded pegs that I thought would look so cute in the bedroom. I painted them the same color as her hair bow hanger then hung them 15" from the ceiling using black ribbon. I used the same ribbon and tied it from one peg to the other then used alligator clips to hang her pictures. I think it turned out so cute.

I might add another art hanger a

couple of inches below this one.

Letter Y

We are coming to the end of our Alphabet book. It seems like the closer we get to finishing, the slower its taking. We started out doing a letter day. Every morning after breakfast we would grab our cookie sheet and glue, color and paint away. I dont know if we have been busy these last few weeks, or if we just forget. Either way, we are about done!!!

This morning we worked on the letter Y.

Y is for Yellow

and Yarn.

Recycled Bird Feeder

Eiz loves watching bird! When we bought our house there was a really nice bird feeder in the back yard. Because the ground was always to wet for a step ladder we had never put any seed in it. I found an empty pop bottle at work so Eiz and I turned it into a small feeder that we could place closer to the kitchen window.

I didnt have a metal holder the day we made it.

Leftover PVC pipe had to work for a couple of days.

Eiz colored the bottle with permanent markers. Just because it says permanent, doesnt mean that it will keep its color in rain and sunshine. All of the color on ours in now gone. :(

I noticed today that with the rain and warm weather that we have had, our bird seed is actually growing. I cant decide if I want to let it grow and see what it looks like or if I want to fill it with new dry seed.

Coffee Filter Butterflies

While Tanner made dinner the other night, Eiz was into everything. I was trying to come up with things for her to do, but nothing would keep her attention for very long. I decided to strap her in the high chair and make coffee filter butterflies. I didn't have any water colors so I made my own using water and food coloring. You really don't need a whole lot of water or your colors will be to light when they dry. Once you color them and let them dry, add a pipe cleaner for the body and antennas.

We have a nice big window in our kitchen and I love to use it as a display for art that Eiz has made. I hung our butterflies from the curtain rod using fishing string so that they look like they are flying. Sorry the picture is so dark and please don't mind the neighbors backyard. :)

Here is one that was made using water and food coloring. The colors look much brighter once they have dried.

I just used food coloring on this one and the colors are so dark.

Rainbow Cupcakes!

I was looking online a while back and found the cutest cupcakes. Their recipe said to mix a white cake mix with Wiltons icing colors, but I didnt want to dig mine out so I used plain old food coloring. The colors were a little lighter than what I wanted, but they still turned out so neat.

Here are the colors that I ended up using.

Eiz was helping and while I was getting the last bit of orange out of the bowl it went all over her.

Ready for the oven!

Finished product. (They look like Hippie Cupcakes)

The inside was really cool. Because this was the first time I made them I learned that you dont need that much purple. It made the rest of the cupcake really full where you couldn't use as much of the other colors.

Noodles

Dry Rigatoni was the very first thing I put in the sensory tub. Eiz absolutely loved it. When it was time to put it away, she had a massive melt down. I had never seen anything like it before. All over a tub of noodles :)

She enjoyed scooping them into the cup. She would pretend that she was drinking them. Every now and then I had to tell her to get them out of her mouth, but all in all she did pretty well.

Letter B

Eiz still needs a lot of help working on her letter art. I actually havent taken any pictures of her working on them because she needs my help. I will try harder to take some this week.

Bumble Bee.

She liked putting the yellow pieces of paper on the glue dots.

Brown Bear. Didnt she do a great job painting! ;)

Letter A

I printed off the letter A. I wasnt sure how Eiz would like the project, so I didnt try to hard. I gave her the red crayon and man she went to town. This was the most she had ever colored on one page. I added the stem and a couple of leaves and we called it an Apple. :)

I was really excited about making the Alligator. I had seen on several blogs where you paint bubble wrap and then lay a piece of paper on top. It creates small circles and on our alligator it was his skin. Eiz was very proud of this and wanted to show Daddy. She calls it an "Allig."

Alphabet Book

To help Eiz learn the alphabet, we have been working on a letter each morning. Today we finished the letter E. The projects are really cute and easy. Eiz loves coloring, painting, gluing, sprinkling glitter, you name it. For each letter she decorates the actual letter, but we also decorate an object that begins with the letter. I will post the letters that we have finished.

At the end of the day, when the letters are dry, I put them in page protectors. All the pages go in a three ring binder where Eiz can flip through them. I love having crafts that she has done. My favorites are the ones that are made with her hand prints. :) I hope when she gets older, she will think this book is as neat as I do.

Rainbow Rice

I love this rice. Its fun, cheap, and great for the sensory tub. Making this is so simple. Buy a bag of plain white rice. The cheaper the better. Pour it into a ziplock bag and add a slash of rubbing alcohol. Then add a few drops of food coloring and shake. Thats it!!! Eiz is a little young to shake it, so Daddy did it. Once it is the color that you like, pour out onto wax paper and let dry. It doesnt take long, but you might want to let it air out over night. I bought a dish pan at Walmart for $2.50. That is what we use for her sensory tub. You will use it for all kinds of things!!

I used the neon food coloring. It turned out really bright.

Here is what it looked like before Eiz got to dig in.

I know. The kid needs a shirt. (She actually realized that she can reach the water dispenser on the fridge and she soaked her shirt.) She really liked finding the gold coins and putting them in a bowl. When she found all 10, she would dump them back in the tub and start over.