Easy Easter Craft

I've taken the easy route with crafts lately, stocking up on the dollar crafts from Michaels. She loves those little wood ornaments and foam magnet things.

But, we've been doing a lot of bunnies and eggs, which doesn't really (well, at all) explain what Easter is all about.

So, she made this colorful egg with watercolors and then we talked about what each of the colors stand for.

She painted the stripes and when it was dry, she cut it out.

Then we discussed each color and labeled the sections.

It was easy and fun and got some great discussion started with us!

Helping the homeless

I don't know if it's the hormones from this pregnancy or what, but every time I see a homeless person (mostly at the freeway off ramp we use almost daily), I totally break down.

Maybe it's the fact that that person was someone's baby, someone's son or daughter, or maybe that I envision my own child suffering or maybe God has just bent my heart toward this cause...

I'm not sure.

But what I know is that handing over a dollar never feels like enough and I always end up driving away in tears.

A couple months ago, we had a family service day at church and filled some bags that we could keep in our car and pass out to homeless people. Maddie, Mike and I made three and I was so bummed when we'd passed out our last bag.

Then it dawned on me that we could just make our own at home and keep our cars stocked!

Maddie and I sat down and wrote out cards to include in each bag.

*Forgive the chocolate all over the face. We'd made chocolate chip cookies together after preschool and she had just finished sampling one. :)

Then, we laid out our goodies.

We included bottled water, a can of soda, granola bars, fruit strips, wet wipes and a pair of gloves (from Target's dollar spot a few months ago).

Oh, and last minute Maddie asked if we could include candy from a birthday party, since she knows she can't have it (corn allergy!). So, each bag got some random pieces of candy, too. Ha!

Then, Maddie set to work!

She stuffed the bags all her own and I could tell she was taking such pride in what she was accomplishing.

We talked about what we were doing, why it was important and how the recipients of the bags might feel.

She wanted to show you all her handiwork. :)

When we were finished, we made six bags and it's a good start!

We'll keep them in my car and pass them out whenever we see someone in need.

It's the little things, right?

The Big God Story

Mike and I are part of an awesome focus group (with our church) that is studying Michelle Anthony's Spiritual Parenting book. It's a book, workbook and DVD series that is helping us learn how to guide Maddie toward a life of loving Christ and we're both really loving it.

One of the components of the program discusses helping your children understand The Big God Story (which sweet friends actually bought us for Grayson's shower!). It's developed to show children that there are many characters that make up God's story and they play a roll in it, too.

Our workbook materials included these paper cut-outs and I wanted to share the fun ways Maddie and I have been using them.

First, I cut the cast of characters out. :)

Then, each one got numbered in accordance to where they show up in the Bible.

After laminating and attaching a small magnet to each one, we were ready to go.

We moved her big white board out and talked about the people in God's big story.

She took a while just to look through each one, sticking it to the board.

She knew some details about many of them, such as Daniel, John the Baptist, Joseph, and of course, Jesus.

She loved that there was a cutout for her and we talked about how God has written her (and us!) into His big story.

Then, she worked hard to put all thirty in numerical order (which is one of those pictures up there!). It turned out to be a great Bible-based AND math activity! :)

We talked about each one as we put them in order.

Then, she asked if we could draw some of the characters. :)

And finally, we sorted by boys and girls.

I'm so glad we have this resource, but it wouldn't be too hard to find clip art pictures of them either. The book is a great tool and Mike and I look forward to using these things as Maddie grows (and Grayson, too!).

stART: Noah's Ark

This was totally not what I had in mind for stART this week, but it actually turned out to be one of Maddie's favorite projects we did this week (way better than what I'd originally planned for and will post about in Tot School!).

We're experiencing some crazy storms here, which is awesomely appropriate because our theme this week is all about rain. Anyway, the story we read (from her Toddler Girl Bible) was Noah's Ark, a familiar and favorite one of Maddie's. We'd always focused on the storm and the animals and Noah's faith, but for this, we talked more about the rainbow that appeared at the end of the storm.

She's been really into watercolor painting so after we read the story, she wanted to, "paint the rainbow." I gave her piece after piece of cardstock (which holds her glops of paint better than regular printer paper) as she painted the rainbows.

Clearly, she worked hard on this, huh?!

When the pieces dried, I took each one and cut an arc, each one fitting inside the next. I used up all of her artwork to do this (and she was okay with me cutting it, since I told her we were making a puzzle).
Then, I gave her the arcs and explained that we were going to make a rainbow. She was thrilled because it was her art we were using.
She had to find the biggest piece, glue it and place it on the sky (or, scrapbooking paper).

She kept doing it, piece after piece, constantly stopping to see if it'd fit or if she'd need another piece.

When she finished, she glued on some clouds that I'd cut out.

She is so proud of this rainbow and will tell you that she painted it and put it together!

To see what others are up to this week with stART, visit Michelle's blog!

Tot School Time!

Our actual tot tray use this week was a little light because we were very busy with Halloween crafts and baking. But, we still got in some fun new activities that kept Maddie happy!

I saw this on one of my favorite blogs, Izzie, Mac & Me and knew we had to try it out. I only had an 18 spot egg carton, but it still worked out. I wrote numbers one through six in it and then put a "magic pebble" inside. She would close the lid, shake it three times (we'd count out loud), open it up and see what number the pebble landed on.
Then, using a template from Spinner's End Nursery (she has a couple versions; I printed, matted and laminated all of them and have USED all of them, too!). She would cover up the number that she landed on. She used the pumpkin erasers and I used the bats. :)
I don't know if it was the novelty of the "shaker box" or just practicing numbers, but she lasted with this activity a loooooooong time.

I'm bummed I didn't get a better picture of this, but it was another number activity. Using the same shaker box, we changed it up a little bit. Nicole did this with her son and I was excited to try it with Maddie. I printed out a grid that she provided (this time with blank boxes) and put out her little stamps (dollar spot at Target; she now has quite the collection of them!). She would stamp out whatever number she landed on. This was a GREAT activity for teaching/reinforcing one-to-one correspondence and counting. She loved it. I think we went through six grids!

Daddy got in on the fun too, which always makes Maddie super happy!

When we stayed at the hotel last weekend, they gave us this really cool art set. Maddie has loved sitting and coloring, painting and using all the different markers. Thank you Heather!

But, the highlight of the week was when we read the story of Noah's ark in our toddler Bible. It was raining and I thought it was the perfect day for this. After reading the story and talking about it, we set out to make our own ark, using a shoe box and lots of glue!

We glued on windows, sails and water. She colored the floor of the boat and decorated it to "make Noah happy." Then, we went through all her little figures and found two of every animal that we could (and surprisingly, there were a lot!). I cut a door in the boat and seriously, every day since, she has marched those animals in and out of the boat.

Here's what I hear when she plays:

"Hurry hippopotamus! Where's my partner? Get in the boat! The flood is comin'!"
Now, repeat that with about 20 different animals.

When I saw this on Shannon's blog, I couldn't wait to introduce it to Maddie. She's been so interested in cutting but still really struggles with enough strength to actually cut. So for this, I rolled out a bunch of Play-Doh snakes.

She cut those snakes into millions of tiny parts! I think she worked on this for about 45 minutes, deep in concentration. Thank you Shannon for posting such great detail about this activity!

And finally, I had to throw in a shot of some of our cookies. We bought some sparkly black icing and piped in the details. Maddie loved this!

Check out what other tots have been busy with by clicking over to Carisa's blog!

Tot School Time!

It's time to recall another week of Tot School! We had a great, Maddie-led week. I really listened to what she wanted to do and let my plans fly out the window. It was liberating. :)

After our Muffin Tin Monday snack and apple pies, we decided to make some apple prints. Let me just say... Disaster. Ha! Maddie ended up in the bath, red paint ended up (somehow) in her ears and green apple prints were also made on her nightgown (again, somehow).

Maddie has been asking about rainbows a lot recently. So, I read her the story of Noah's ark and we talked about what a rainbow stands for. Then, she glued Fruit Loops onto the rainbow I printed from here. She didn't end up finishing this because she quickly realized how tasty this colorful cereal is!

Oh! Later in the day, she decided she wanted a candy necklace (she had one once and fell in love). I decided to make our own candy bracelets, using leftover Fruit Loops and a pipe cleaner. She diligently strung the cereal and then really enjoyed eating and wearing her tasty snack!

Ahhh, she's shown daily interest in dressing herself. It's a... challenge. :)

She spent some quiet, independent time with her Very Hungry Caterpillar felt pieces. She didn't know I was listening, but I loved to hear her "retell" the book.

We were bored one evening so I got out our jar of giant buttons and an old Puffs container that we used to use for games. She turned the container into the "bank" and we "bought" buttons over and over again.

Seriously, so simple but so fun. The buttons turned into tacos, cookies and tokens as she changed the game. By the way, we love these buttons and use them for all sorts of things (sorting by color or shape, hiding them and hunting for them, ect; they're from Oriental Trading Company but I can not find the link).

**This picture refuses to flip and I'm over trying. Ugh.**

I put out several new trays this week and this was the first. I took a bunch of buttons, placed them in one bowl and then took colored chips and placed them in another. Then, I taped an index card to the tray, giving her a visible space to work. Her job was to take a button and fit a matching chip inside (I did contrasting colors for this picture so you could see how they fit in).

She loved it and even though it was simple, it kept her attention.

Since she's been so into tongs and transferring activities, I put out an ocean-themed one. I used this ice cube tray and tiny seashells.

First, she had to hold each and every shell up to ear, just to see if she could "hear the waves."

Then, she had a great, focused time transferring the shells. I'm really hoping that all these tonging activities will build up her hand muscles, thus helping her cut with scissors (because the girl is scissor crazy!).

The last tray was a dinosaur bath skid thing and bowl of marbles. There are a lot of suctions on this, so she just used her fingers to balance the marbles on top.

I think there were, in fact, too many suctions. She lost interest halfway through and never went back to it.

And finally, we spent a lot of time outside, either at parks or in the backyard. She's obsessed with an episode of Max and Ruby where they make a hopscotch game. We decided to make our own in the front yard and it was a big hit. Plus, I liked it because it was far shadier than the bike rides or nature walks we took. :)

Check out Carissa's blog for more Tot School ideas!

Tot School Time!

It was a very light Tot School week for Maddie and me. And I mean, very light. We're really settling into our new routine of Mike being back in the classroom (summer vacation was like, 11 weeks long, and our schedule was just so different) and we were booked with play dates every single day. We hit up the zoo, Disneyland, the park... I'm tired. So, here's all I have. It's sparse.

Maddie loves building towers with her peg board pieces. I really tried to work on patterning, but she had no interest. In the picture, she was showing me that she did find a red one (which was next in the pattern) but she was saying, "I not use this for my tower though!"

Oh, this was a big hit and the total cost was just $3 (a better picture of it is below). I bought a pumpkin-shaped ice cube tray and small plastic pumpkins from the dollar store. Using the tongs (only a dollar at the party store), she had to transfer the pieces into the tray. It's great for one-to-one correspondence (since only one pumpkin fits in each spot anyway) and fine motor skills.

She has loved this and we've done it almost everyday since it's been out.

Maddie loves, loves, loves going to our nearby bookstore for some reading time on the stage. She could, quite seriously, spend at least an hour there and still fuss when it's time to leave.

This was a really fun project, inspired by Nicole. Anyway, since we were studying how God made the sun, the moon and the stars so I took a piece of white cardstock and colored stars and a moon, all in white crayon. She used watered down paint to "find" the hidden pictures. She loved doing this and the finished product was SO pretty!

And then... We ran around and chased each other in restaurants...

Held hands at theme parks...

And enjoyed good cupcakes with good friends at birthday parties.

Next week promises to be a little bit calmer so I'm hoping to get more Tot School time in. Check out Carissa's blog to see all the other tots and what they're learning!