Sunday, February 10, 2013

Monsters!

Theme: Monsters

Honey Pot is 2 years and 9 months old

Little M&M is 10 months old

Books

Monster books were actually harder to come by than I was expecting! I know we have a dinky library, but really, this is a hot topic! So we found three, and combined them with a couple from our own collection. Here’s what we read:

Jeremy Draws A Monster by Peter McCarty

Frankenstein’s Dog by Jan Wahl

Monster Manners by Joanna Cole

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

The Monster at the End of this Book by Jon Stone and Michael Smollin

Honey Pot has entered a fun new phase where she reads books all by herself. Her Daddy and I are not even allowed to utter a word. Some books she knows by heart, and it is so wonderful to hear and see her “reading” and having such a love for books. Our baby girl is growing up!

Boogie Monster – Book and Craft

Actually this is included in our theme quite coincidentally. Our local story-time group read this book, as well as organized the fun craft to go along with it. We created one sock while we were there, and finished the second at home. We just made them simple. First Honey Pot squeezed some glue onto it for the eyes and nose.

Then I twirled on a chenille stem as antenna. I asked her if she wanted one, three or more eyes on it, but she just wanted two. No extra embellishments either! So here are our cute little monster socks!

She had a lot of fun dancing away while the book was read during story-time. And it was such a cute book!

Create-A-Monster Felt Board

I was inspired by the shape monsters on a blog called Houseof Baby Piranha. Instead of paper, I wanted Honey Pot to be able to reuse these, so I used felt! Here is what I created to make sure I had enough fun pieces:

Then I spread them all out as an invitation for Honey Pot the following morning:

So excited, she got right to work on them. The first monster is my particular favorite, as I would have never thought to decorate it this way myself. So animated!

And she was happy to make more monsters too – no prompting necessary. I helped with the arms and legs on these two.

And after playing around a bit, here was the final product. LOVE this, and I know she’ll love to play with these again and again.

Monster Math

I saw this idea on No Time For Flashcards. There, Allison recommended laminating these for reuse. I love the idea, so that I can keep changing the numbers with a dry erase pen and get tons of number practice out of these. First I set out all the supplies.

Honey Pot and I identified the numbers together, as she still has difficulty recognizing them. But she did all the counting. She did an awesome job of counting the googly eyes, and seemed to have lots of fun making the monsters. Such a cute way to learn math!

Wipes Container Monster Game

I came across this on Pinterest from a blog called Sweet Charli. So very cute! I created mine with paper instead of fabric though, because that’s all I had on hand. Although I did use felt for the mouth to make it softer for little hands to reach into!

Then I laid out alphabet tiles from our Upwords game.

Honey Pot loved just playing with these, but I wanted to include at least a little bit of learning! Using my scary monster voice, I had the monster call out which letter he wanted. I.e. “Feed me the letter M!” This made the game very fun for Honey Pot, and she spoke to him and fed him happily. Of course our monster was polite and said “thank you” when he was done munching loudly.

Sometimes, if the letter called was particularly tricky, I squished a few letters together to narrow it down for her. “Hmm, maybe one of these is the letter S?” This helps tremendously!

Then she discovered the fun of stacking the tiles. I decided to adjust my rules to accommodate this, and had the monster ask for a certain number of letters instead. I.e. “I’m hungry for three letters. Feed me a stack of three!” She loved this, and we got to sneak in more counting practice this week.

She loved the game so much; we dumped out the letter tiles and started again.

Even Little M&M explored the wipes container monster! I see a “treasure box” in his future…

Monster Slime

I wanted to include some sensory in this week’s theme, and came across a recipe for monster slime from a blog called All Things Simple. So. Much. Fun.

First I had Honey Pot empty a bottle of Elmers glue (we used the blue gel because that’s all I had on hand, but regular works fine) into a bowl.

Add a half of a cup of water, and stir.

Then tint it your color of choice with food coloring. We choose creepy, slimy green. Yes, that’s the official color name. Stir it up!

In a separate bowl, mix 1 cup of water with ½ of a teaspoon of borax.

Stir until the borax is completely dissolved!

Add the glue mixture to the borax mixture. Stir well, and wait for it to harden!

This took a few minutes, and then we drained the water and were left with some severely sticky muck.

I took over temporarily and kneaded it, and soon the stickiness went away. It became awesome monster slime! Not sticky whatsoever, and such fun!

I let Little M&M touch it briefly. He didn’t much care for it, but Honey Pot squished and played for a long while.

“Look! A handprint!”

And to enforce the monster theme, we added a couple googly eyes. The slime is not really moldable though, so they didn’t stay too well.

But it does BOUNCE!

We gave Little M&M another go at it.

I mean, look at this stuff!

Monster Sensory Bag

I wanted a quick sensory bag for Little M&M to enjoy, when I noticed a near-empty bottle of shampoo under my sink. I don’t know about anyone else, but I finish my conditioner first and wind up with many near-empty bottles of shampoo. How serendipitous! Instant sensory fun. Just add googly eyes.

He loved it!

And of course, so did Honey Pot.

She even created a game. She flipped the bag over, and squished it around until each of the eyes was facing up again.

What a fun week!

Sunday, February 3, 2013

Get Well Soon Card

Honey Pot’s uncle has been in the hospital for a couple of weeks. I thought it would be nice for her to hear this and do something for him that might bring a smile to his face. I found this cute idea floating around Pinterest, originating from Flickr, and altered it slightly.

First, Honey Pot dipped a heart-shaped sponge into red paint, and stamped it onto a blank card.

She did this two more times, and we waited for it to dry.

Then she attached three band-aids onto the card wherever she pleased.

And finally, she glued on some googly eyes.

I think it came out adorable, and I’m sure her Uncle enjoyed it!

Bubbles!

Theme: Bubbles

Honey Pot is 2 years and 9 months old

Little M&M is 10 months old

Books

We checked out two books from the library about bubbles this week, and combined that with a simple one we already had at home. What FUN books! I really wasn’t expecting much of them, to be honest. But I thoroughly enjoyed reading these again and again; and Honey Pot requested them often this week!

Bubbles, Bubbles, a Sesame Beginnings Book

Baby Piggy and the Giant Bubble, by Dina Anastasio

Bubble Trouble, by Stephen Krensky

Lava Lamp Experiment

While visiting my sister and her daughter, Honey Pot did a wonderful science experiment! We had so much fun with it, that we kept it and reused it for our theme this week. First, we filled a small water bottle 1/3 of the way with water, and added food coloring. Honey Pot chose blue! Then we filled the bottle the rest of the way with vegetable oil. We noted how the vegetable oil and water stayed separated, and how the blue coloring only mixed with the water. Then, I broke up an alka seltzer tablet into two pieces so that it would fit in the opening. Honey Pot dropped them in.

Then it began to bubble!

What a great experiment! We added a second tablet so we could watch it again.

Once it all settles, you can put the lid back on and reuse it another day, as we did.

Blowing Bubbles

Last summer, Honey Pot made bubbles snakes. What an awesome way to blow bubbles! If you haven’t yet tried that, I highly recommend it!

Since we’re a little out of season for bubbles, I didn’t want to do anything extravagant. But I did want Honey Pot to be able to blow some bubbles. A blog called Spoonful had just the idea for me. I rubber banded a few drinking straws together as a bubble wand.

She dipped it into her bubble solution (leftover from her Elmo birthday party!) and blew multiple bubbles at once.

Then as I was cleaning up, she wanted to try the regular bubble wand as well.

Bubble Wrap Game

What kid doesn’t love popping bubble wrap? I found a blog on Pinterest called Apartment Therapy that came up with a travel game using bubble wrap. I was inspired by their idea to create my own game, a Tot School review, if you will. I wrote down all of the letters, numbers and shapes that we have covered in Tot School so far, and placed a piece of bubble wrap over it. (I just so happen to keep some bubble wrap in my craft supplies for such an occasion as this! With the rest, we may try some bubble wrap painting!)

Then Honey Pot went on a hunt around the house for each of these things! She went right to her room to search, and was very successful there.

A number on her 3 Little Pigs house…

A shape in her play food set…

A letter on her alphabet puzzle (good thing she didn’t cheat and think to use this puzzle for every letter in the alphabet)…

She found a book in the shape of a rectangle…

A heart mirror in her Minnie Mouse house…

Such a great review, and I was very pleased with Honey Pot’s eagerness to go on this scavenger hunt. She loved popping the bubble wrap too!

Frozen Bubbles

Science Made Fun, which I found on Pinterest of course, demonstrates an amazing activity to do with bubbles in the wintertime. Simply dip your wand into the bubble solution and catch it back on the wand. Then wait for it to freeze. It really only takes a few seconds! We found that smaller bubbles worked best.

Here is Honey Pot feeling it and popping it!

Awesome! We will be doing this again for sure!

Bubble Painting Thank You Cards

We actually made these a couple of weeks ago, but it most certainly fits into this week’s bubble theme. This was inspired by a post I saw on Meet The Dubiens. We made thank you cards for the kids’ Christmas presents with bubble painting! First we put a glob of paint into the bottom of a few cups. Honey Pot chose pink, purple, blue and green. Then I added just a splash of water and stirred them up. Honey Pot blew bubbles through straws (as she is so keen on doing in her milk)!