Telling stories with wooden pieces

Because I'm a craft hoarder, throughout the years, I'd built up a little collection of these painted wooden pieces (most craft stores carry them). I never knew why I was collecting them, but because they were cute and cheap (anywhere from $0.29 to $0.59), I of course had to have them.

Anyway, imagine my excitement when I saw how other bloggin' mamas were using them as storytelling tools.

I squealed when I first saw it on Chasing Cheerios because I wanted to try it with Maddie.

And so, we do and it's always fun.

Here are some of our wooden pieces.

Every time we're at a craft store, I let Maddie select a new one that we can add to our collection.

She loves to search for just the right one to tell a story...

She's learning how to tell stories (most start out with, "It was a dark and spooooooky night...") and she's being exposed to literature components. If I ask her who the characters in her story are, she's able to tell me which animals or princesses or pirates are at the lead.

I don't know if it's the wood, the bright colors or the fact that they're just fun (some even have felt pieces on top), but she always gets excited when we get these out. They also make a great activity pack, since she can use them to tell stories at restaurants, trace around them or sort them (we recently did a sort of things that are alive and not alive).

Next time you're at a craft store which is daily for us, pick a couple up and try telling some stories with them!

How to Make a Fairy Curtain!

Maddie is really into playing pretend and since she also loves fairies, I thought she'd like a fairy curtain (for lack of a better name) in her bedroom. I looked at buying one (Ikea has some), but I thought I could do it for even cheaper (and I did!).

I'm sure there are online tutorials for these kinds of things, but I just learned as I went and made my own directions (and they actually worked! Amazing!).

But, the best part was that the whole project cost about $10! I'll do a price breakdown at the end.

We have a little hole-in-the-wall fabric/ribbon store near us and it is so ridiculously cheap. I love going there.

I got the straw wreath, the bolt of organza (not pictured here) and the butterflies there.

First, I used some wide satin ribbon (which I already had from my tutu-making days) to cover the wreath.

I used dots of hot glue, as I wrapped, to make sure that the ribbon would stay in place.

Then, I cut long strips from the organza. I measured how long I wanted them, which for us, was (I think) 83 inches.

Now, the next part has no pictures, but I took the strips and bunched and pinned (love my straight pins with pretty color heads!) them all around the wreath. The straw wreath was super easy to pin into and feels nice and sturdy.

I bought three bunches of silk flowers (Maddie picked the pinks and I threw yellow in for variety). For each flower, I pulled all the plastic parts out, leaving it nice and easy to glue on.

Oh, and I'm sure you're wondering where I got those suh-weeet Spongebob pajama pants from, right?! Ha! I'm gonna blame my mom for buying them for Mike! I like them because they're super soft!

I glued the flowers around the wreath, securing each one with a pin.

It might be cute to also add a jewel (which I have from hairbow making...) in the center of the flower, too.

Maddie asked that there be butterflies, so I glued some on the organza.

I wrapped three pieces of ribbon around the top and had Mike hang them on a small cup hook he drilled into the ceiling (he's the best; totally rolls with all these projects).

Pretty, huh?!

She got out of the bath and ran to her room to see the finished product (she's been anxiously waiting for it to be done!).

Loved it!

For now, we put her beanbag and small rug inside. Who knows what else will end up in there!

This was such a quick, fun and easy project.

Oh, and cheap, too!

Here's the breakdown:

Wreath: $1

Flowers: $3 for three bunches

Whole bolt of organza: $4 (I finished the project and still have half a bolt left, too!)

Ribbon: Free, since I already had it

Butterflies: Each one was $0.40 and I used 6

Grand Total: $10.40

(So I fibbed when I said it was under $10; close enough!)

I can't wait to see how Maddie uses it in her make-believe play (she said she's getting ready for a wedding underneath it right now! Ha!).

Plus, it looks super pretty hanging in her room!

I'm trying something new and linking up HERE!

Tot School: Pond

What a fun week Miss Maddie and I had, learning all about ponds. She loves visiting the nature center and her favorite thing is to sit and watch the turtles and ducks enjoy the pond. So, I knew she'd be interested and she was! Let's review the week, shall we? :)

Art and Music

I printed some frogs, laminated them and taped them on popsicle sticks that I'd broken in half. Then, I made a log by cutting slits in a toilet paper tube (a paper towel roll would be much roomier but we don't buy paper towels, therefore our froggies were a little smooshed).

I taught Maddie the song about the green little speckled frogs and how they were sitting on a speckled log (I'm sure there's a title for it!). She loved it and when we got to the part where one would jump in the water (where it was nice and cool, aka: the bowl), she gleefully pulled the froggy off the log.

We also had to make our own froggy...

Who is, by the way, sitting on a lily pad (though she thought it looked like a green diaper and found it to be pretty silly).

Literature Connection

After reading the book, In the Small, Small Pond, we created our own pond.

Using my roll of Ikea paper (best buy ever), I outlined a pond. I also printed off some pictures of pond animals (from HERE) and set out blue paint and various painting tools (brushes, sponge, roller).

Maddie happily painted the pond blue...

Colored her pond animals and then glued them on.

And you know, this was one of those moments where I felt so lucky to be working and playing with her. She's getting so grown up (at the ripe old age of 2) and I often notice that we'll slip into quite the conversation.

On this day, she was coloring the alligator when she asked me if I'd ever seen a real alligator. I told her that I had and she asked me if they looked like armadillos. I know you're probably thinking, "So...?" But, it was just one of those moments where I was reminded of what a gift she is, this inquisitive little person of ours. And, how mighty the blessing it is to be able to learn with her and watch her grow.

Okay.

Back to Tot School. :)

We also had to reread Little Quack (nine bajillion times; I swear I'm going to have to throw her a Little Quack birthday party since she loves the duck so much).

I set up a tray with labeled construction paper and a bowl of her Little People animals (we have the alphabet zoo set and I find them to be very handy for work and play!).

She loved sorting (or, in my teacher speak, classifying and categorizing) the animals and it was a great vocabulary exercise, too!

Fine Motor Skills

She did a dot stamping page from HERE.

Side note: She was about to color the flies when she asked what color she should make them. I shrugged and said, "Try the bright green." She answered that no, she would do brown. Fine. When she was done, she said, "Look, I did the flies brown. You said green, but I did brown. It looks good. I have big ideas." Ha! You certainly do, dear.

And see, she does have big ideas.

I've wanted to try this for a while, and since ducks live in a pond (and I have a ton of feathers), I thought this would be the perfect week to do so.

Her task was to transfer the feathers from bowl to bowl, using the mini clothespin (I colored dots where her fingers should go) as tweezers.

I'm not sure what it is, but she's just always hated clothespins. I thought the mini one might help her, but she just didn't like it. She tried a few times and then asked for tweezers.

And so, she completed the tray using the metal tweezers instead.

Reading

I should've taken a better picture of this, but you may have seen it floating around in the blogosphere lately (Ha! Blogosphere is actually a real word! Who knew?!).

Anyway, I labeled some eggs with capital and lowercase letters. Inside each one was a pond animal (alligator, snake, lizard, fish, ect).

Honestly, she wasn't a fan of matching the lowercase letter with the uppercase letter because the eggs made a high-pitched squeaky noise when turned. But, she loved finding the animal inside and telling me what letter it starts with!

Again, another poor picture, but I printed out THIS page and put out a dish of sparkly letters (purchased from a really random little store; I'm not sure what their original intention is, but they work great for a toddler who likes her letters and her sparkle). Oh, I also added some letter stickers to the page.

We did a couple of things with this one. First, she went through and matched up the letter with the correct square. Then, we pulled the letters out and did it by sounds. Finally, she'd pull a letter, keep her eyes closed, and use her fingers to try and guess which letter it was.

It is very hard for a two year old to keep her eyes closed and guess.

Pretty sure she cheated peeked.

A lot.

Math

I printed THIS page and thought they were frogs. Therefore, I wrote numbers on foam flower stickers, which we were using as lily pads.

See, the whole frog and lily pad thing makes sense, right?

Turtles and lily pads?

Not as much.

As she was working on matching the sticker and counting, she decided that the turtles just liked flowers and had "picked them from the garden. Like at Vons."

I put some foam fishy stickers in a bowl and divided a piece of paper into three sections.

She sorted the fish by size, something that she's getting really good at doing!

Sensory Activities

Ahh, one of the highlights of the week.

The pond.

In the kitchen.

I dragged in her sand and water table and together, we worked hard to clean it up.

She was so excited and gave this thing a good ol' cleaning!

Then, we sorted and sifted through my box of millions of small animals (saved from my days of teaching first grade, however the Dollar Tree is awesome for picking some up). We pulled out any and all animals that could be considered pond life.

She also grabbed handful after handful of pond pebbles (known to most as the ever-versatile floral rocks from the dollar store).

She tonged and tweezed and scooped and measured to her little heart's delight.

We played a game, initiated by her, to see which objects would sink and which would float.

She kept certain animals in "Pond One" and certain animals in "Pond Two" because we all know that "Lizards are not friends with crocodiles. They only want to fight and eat each other."

And yes, she is wearing Minnie Mouse ears. Very odd, but she insisted.

We played with the pond many days this week. Each day, we filled it with fresh water (I'd fill the pitcher and she'd pour). It was sad to move it out but one can only side-step a pond and bang my shins on it for so many days.

Field Trip!

She was quite the lucky duck this week because Daddy took her to visit a real pond, full of terrifyingly aggressive geese!

I love this picture. Mike said that he snapped it just moments before the gray guy next to her decided to nibble her fingers.

Suddenly, she's not so into visiting ponds anymore... Poor girl!

And so, there's our week! We also worked in some physical activity by moving around the house like turtles, ducks and alligators. She loved it all (and I did, too).

Hop over to Carisa's blog to see what other Tot Schoolers were up to this week!

Maddie's Latest...

This has certainly been a summer that I never dreamed possible, and we're making the most of it. Aside from trips to the aquarium and concerts in the park (pictures to follow in later posts), we've been having lots of fun at home, too. Here's what we've been up to lately...

I set up a "restaurant" a few days ago and we've been playing non-stop. She likes to either bark orders at the waitress (as in, me) or be the waitress (and sit and dine with us). She always says that she'll "pay duh bill" but usually hands it to me and says, "Pay this, Mommy."

Mike bought a ton of these clear acrylic, magnetic frames and I recently put pictures inside them. I put in pictures of family and friends, as well as trimming down some of her artwork to fit.

She loves to stand there, with her magic pointer (aka: drink stirrer) and talk about the pictures. It's a great vocabulary activity and I love to hear what she remembers about each picture.

Mike found an old box and I put Maddie's fish inside. She uses her fishing pole to catch them, which makes it a little bit harder than just scattering them on the floor.

She has become obsessed with clips and buckles. Her car seat, highchair, stroller, shopping cart... They are all simply amazing. Our next goal is to show her how to undo the clip, instead of just clipping it.

This is an AWESOME project that I highly recommend you do (I got it from Chasing Cheerios). Seriously... So cute. Mike bought a bag of mortar mix and we poured it into round cake pans (they'd been greased down with cooking spray). Maddie left her handprints and footprints in them and then decorated them with glass rocks. They popped out of the cake pans seamlessly and are absolutely adorable. Grandma and Nana and Poppa are each getting one!

Photo Shoot with Disney Figures

"Oh Mom, I love this dollhouse. You know what we should do? We should take pictures of ALL my Disney figures! This will be SO much fun!!"

She'd put the figure right in front of the camera, sign "please" and then make the doll dance (all while I'm taking the picture). If I'd try and trick her and NOT take the picture, she'd say "No, no, no!" and put the camera in my face.
She really was most excited about me taking pictures (as if it's not a daily thing anyway!).

"Ohhh Mom, have you seen THIS one?! Take a picture! Quick!"

She finally decided to actually play with the figures and I was able to go through and delete about 40 pictures of Belle and her friends. :)

Some of our favorite things...

This is the ridiculously cool dollhouse that my parents got Maddie for Christmas. It is SO nice and she loves it. It's really sturdy and came with neat wood furniture. She puts her little dolls and figures up and down the stairs, to bed and in the bathtub. I loved my dollhouse when I was little, and I'm hoping this will really grow with her.
I'm not sure why this picture insists on being vertical, but I wanted to share all the amazing felt food that my sisters made for Maddie. I tried to get a picture of her playing with it (which she does all day long), but thought I could better display their handiwork this way.
Maddie LOVES her nativity scene from her grandma! We DO wish that baby Jesus wasn't stuck (or, as Maddie says, "guuuuhk!") in the cradle, but other than that, it's perfect. She asked me about, oh, two million times today to take poor baby Jesus out... :)

Slightly unrelated, but tonight, we were brave and ventured out to dinner with our fabulous friends. Maddie was, well, less than angelic, and I'm pretty sure that no one was disappointed to see us leave. LOL. At least she went to bed beautifully!

Merry Christmas!!

Santa did the craziest thing last night. He left this awesome kitchen for Maddie, but he left it unassembled! Grrr. Thank the LORD that Uncle TT put it together for her. It only took a mere two and half hours, too!

So, she came out this morning (when I finally had to wake her at 8:00!) and I was telling her how Santa left her THE coolest present. She comes out, looks at the kitchen, and then immediately grabs Abby Cadabby. LOL. So much for the large kitchen in the middle of my family room! :)

She LOVES her new Cabbage Patch baby! She's also sporting her new raincoat, which got put to good use today. Annie and Megan made her the MOST amazing array of felt food, which I will definitely post a picture of later. We've spent the day at Nana's and Poppa's house, where she was showered with gifts.

Nana and Poppa got her this little pony and TT gave her endless rides around the house (at top speed, too). She also got a rocking horse from her Abuela (and I'm so mad that I didn't take any pics of her and Grandma's visit!).

After a long day of friends and family visiting, Maddie actually took a nap on me. She hardly EVER does that and it was SO nice to cuddle with her. I do wonder how she was able to sleep through so much noise when I can't even open a door when she's at home without waking her!