Pumpkins

 

 

Trying to get back at it!

I have been absent from the blog for a very, very long time!!  I am now looking to start back up again with my youngest "Bean."  Bug will be off to nursery school M, W, F this fall, so I am looking to do some trays for Bean while she is away.  I will only do two sets of trays and repeat them twice.  We will have music class on Wednesday so there will be no time to tot school on those days.  Hopefully I can keep up with this a bit more :)!  My posts will be duplicates for a bit since I will reuse some of the ideas I already used with Bug, but there might be some new ideas thrown in also.

Apple pie playdough

We have started our Apple theme week, and I just want to say that if you did not plan to make the Apple pie playdough - you should definitely try it.  It smells soooo yummy!!  My house still smells delicious because of it :)

I took the recipe from here. I didn't have allspice or nutmeg, but it turned out well enough without them. 

Bug loves to smell it and spent almost 20 minutes playing with it today. 

All About me - Sept 10-15

We started in on our All about me theme this week.  We did not get to everything because we both had doctor's appointments on 2 different days, but Bug had a lot of fun doing the things that we got to.  The first line is songs that we enjoy that help her move specific body parts (aside from Friday's "find the K's").  Bug LOVES to dance!

We made a batch of flubber and since I wasn't sure how it would turn out exactly, I first introduced it in the bath tub.  Bug did not want to touch it at first, but was ok with using utensils with it.  She eventually did warm up to it and I decided it was not messy at all, so we started playing with it at the learning tower.  I have been really bad about water bottles lately and was finding caps everywhere, so I gave it some thought and decided it would make perfect face parts for our theme.  She didn't really "get" that these were faces, but she did love it regardless.

This is the name recognition and gluing activity.  She matched up the letters first and then got busy gluing them on.  I was super impressed with how well she did with this.  She loves gluing, so you may be seeing a lot of gluing activities coming up :).

I printed out a black and white photo of Bug and had her color it.  We talked about her hair color, eye color, and lip color.  If I thought about it ahead of time I would have had a mirror there also.  You can see how she was coloring her hair yellow here, and the eyes are already blue.

Our letter this week is K, so here is a bingo dot page we did.

 

Looking back at our plans, there is so much that we did not get to (I don't have a pic of the dancing, letter K search, or the favorite things collage).  I'm ok with that.  As long as Bug is entertained and I don't feel overwhelmed, then I consider it a win.  We can always come back to these activities, plus I am sure I will get better at using these ideas with our daily schedule.  Well, until Bean comes along in October!

Apples

Here are the plans for next week when I will attempt to start up more of a routine with bug and have more activities planned.  It's a pretty basic planning board, sorry for not being fancy.  The plan is to have all of the paper things prepped Sunday so that everything is ready to go for the week.  I don't think we will get super strict about a schedule (it doesn't make sense to with a newborn on the way), but I plan to have this up on the fridge and cross off the activities we have done and jump around if need be.  We will have to go grocery shopping one day at least, and I was hoping we could go apple picking before this lesson, but it may be just as fun to go after.  We are going to a Golden Harvest Festival this weekend, so it will be a fun way to kick off the fall fun!  I am researching ideas for fall decorating too and may include a post with my finished product.  I have 2 shelves in the living room that would make a great way to display things, but I do miss having a great big mantal like in our last house.

There are so many great apple ideas out there on the web!  I can't wait to show pictures from our upcoming week of apples!

Looking to fall

 

 

I am trying to think ahead for Fall.  I feel like I will be so busy with the new baby that I don't want to forget all of the fun things I want to do with bug.  I have a few weeks of activities planned that I will share soon too.  I want to have stuff cut out and ready to use so I can still do these kinds of things with bug, but it will all be set to go without the prep work.  I anticipate there being no down time for such things with a toddler and a newborn.  Have you done a fall bucket list yet?  I got the idea from the pinterest pins that have been floating around lately.

Summer

Boy it is hard to schedule ideas during the summer.  Bug has shown a big interest in The Very Hungry Caterpillar lately, so I thought we would do some activities based around the book. 

Monday - caterpillar coloring pages, fruit bingo dot art

Tuesday - Lapbook from 1+1+1=1

Wednesday - Contact paper butterfly, gluing cut out butterflies

Thursday - Magnet page,  Watching the book video

Friday - Butterfly footprint art

It ended up being that Monday was really the only day we accomplished anything, lol.  Tuesday I had a Dr's appt, and then we swam at my parent's house.  Wednesday we went back again for more swimming and we always have music class and grocery shopping Wednesday mornings.  Thursday we went to the children's museum, and then on Friday I was just too pooped to do anything.  As much as I love to be busy and have a lot of things to do, it does make it hard to get anything accomplished at home.  I think that I will be putting together some weekly ideas already made up so that when I get even more pregnant, or when baby boy makes his appearance we will have things to keep us busy.

I do have a few things that we have been doing that keep bug occupied for some time.  I have 5 busy boxes that I pull out when I have run out of things to do, or if I need her to occupy herself for a few minutes so I can get something done (or just put my feet up for a minute).  I will take pictures soon of what I have in each one, but it's pretty much just random stuff that I have paired together.  Probably like 6ish things in each "box."  The rules of Busy boxes is that she can only have one activity out at a time, so she has to pick up right after she is done before getting out something else.

Oh and remember my issues with technology?  Now Pinterest is acting up for me.  It won't let me pin anything anymore.  I don't really have an obscene amount pinned or anything, so I am kind of annoyed.  Hopefully I will be able to get back to it and can share some of my future weekly plans with you all!