Experiences

This post will be very picture heavy... but here are some of the activities Dax and I have done over the past couple weeks...

1: Lots and lots of pretend play. Over the past couple weeks he has turned a corner in really participating in some pretend play. He talks to babies, his cars talk to each other, and he is now doing cooperative play with Daniel and I. He is still working on this skill because he definitely gets frustrated at least once a day because we're not doing what his little mind is wanting us to do. He's thinking a lot faster than he can communicate with us.... so we're working on using our words. It's a whole new world for him.

  2. Lots of ramps and block play!  My very favorite thing to do with kids for sure. They just learn so many skills through ramps and blocks and I'm seeing it everyday at home. The problems solving he is having to do is unreal, and he's been testing different things to see how they "roll" down (the second image is him trying to roll a square block). We're big into rolling cars, marbles, and his little wooden balls.  His pretend play is also really coming out in his block building too. He's bringing his animals into play, his cars into play, and even acting out his favorite story (the three little pigs) with them.

 

3. Art is still one of our favorite things to do! I set up an experience for him using paint and his basket of natural materials I leave on his table for him. He started just painting with his brush but quickly picked a rock out of the basket, painted it, and then used it to make a mark on his page. He did this with a few different rocks and it was awesome to watch! Each rock made a different print... it was super cool to see him make a print, look at the rock, touch the rock, and try to figure out what exactly was going on. He's like the epitome of a sensory learner so painting his hands is still a favorite thing to do. I also threw in a little aluminum foil and canvas for him to paint on this week to mix things up :)

 

4. Cooking! Daxton loves helping and is always pretending to cook so I thought I would let him help me make pizza for dinner last night! He absolutely loved it. I wrote a recipe for us to follow.... so we read the directions, followed them step by step, and he helped with every detail of making the pizza.

 

 5. Letters! We are still running full speed with letters! He is learning them so fast! He can now spell his name when you ask him, knows quite a few letters, is pointing them out in books, and is now running his fingers along the words in books while he pretends to read (!!!).  I ordered these great Montessori books online and we've been using the letter one a lot! It's really cool because it introduces each letter by the sound that it makes and the letters inside are tactile so they can trace the letters with their fingers and learn the feel for it. We've been talking about the lines and curves of each letter and I think it's helping a lot . The second image is something I made him last week to learn his name. Within 2 days of playing with this he had his name down. He loves this!

 

And the next photos include a project we did yesterday. We collected rocks, took them in and washed them (Dax poured the soap and scrubbed each rock), and then I painted letters on them with acrylic paint (apparently you can also do this with sharpie but decided to go with paint). I did a set with all capital letters and a set with all lower case letters. Then I got a couple empty egg cartons (yes I keep "trash" like egg cartons laying around the house) and printed a letter on each slot.  He'll be able to use these as a matching activity s well as just a hands on movable alphabet that he can explore with. I love these!

My Winter Projects

So I did a post on Daxton's winter projects.... so I thought I would show some of the things I've worked on this winter too :)

Thirty One Banner...
So I had my first booth at a craft fair selling Thirty One about a month ago and needed something with my name on it to hang on my tables.  Pink and blue are big Thirty One colors so I went with a pendent banner using those colors. I also gave the clothes pins a coat of silver paint to give them a little extra shine :)

Wooden Letters
I love painting and have made these letters in the past for important peoples babies (check them out here). At the end of the month I'll get a new great nephew so I made these for his Noahs Ark themed nursery :)

NOEL banner
I saw this idea on Pinterest and new instantly that it would look awesome hanging on our mirror in our living room. I have sort of a rustic/tradition Christmas thing going on and burlap fits right in with that. This was pretty labor intensive (had to print each letter to use as a stencil, cut the burlap, paint the letters onto the burlap with multiple coats, and hot glue around twine). It may have been a pain but is now one of my favorite decorations!

Christmas Card Holder
 So I had the traditional Christmas card holder but was never a fan of it. It always got too full and you couldn't see the cards easily without knocking them all off. So when I saw this idea on pinterest I knew I had to do it. Simply hole punch each card and put them on a metal ring, tie a bow on, and now you have a precious flip book of all your Christmas cards. I love being able to flip through the cards and plan on keeping them through the years!

Napkin Rings

We had a ladies Gala at my moms church and our decoration for our table was a rustic/traditional theme so I volunteered to make napkin rings for us using paper towel tube, burlap, twine, and ribbon! Super easy and they turned out super cute!

So those are my mommy projects I've done over the past few months! Best part is that other than the painted name, they didn't cost me a thing because I already had all the materials!  I love having time to be creative again!

Winter Projects

With Daniel traveling so much and the weather being nice and cold we have filled our days with lots of Christmas time projects!  This post is going to be pretty picture heavy but I wanted to share some of our projects... and maybe give you some ideas of things to do too :)
Oh and best part about these projects..... between all of them I think I only spent a total of less than $5!  My projects are all pretty spur of the moment so I make use with the things I already have at home :)

Nutcracker
This little guy has been my favorite project. It was a mommy/son project so we both worked on it together. I found the wooden nutcracker at hobby lobby for 50% off, had acrylic paint, and then got a glaze to put over it to make it nice and shiny. I'm pretty sure painting a little figurine like this will be a new tradition for me and Dax.

Salt Dough Ornaments
Salt dough is so much fun and you can do so much with it. I found this recipe on pinterest and just cut it in half (it was set to make 12).
4 cups flour
1 cup salt
1 1/2 cups water
I let Dax help me do all the measuring and pouring and rolling the dough out on the cookie sheet. It was a pretty messy project but lots of fun! After you get all your shapes cut out don't forget to poke holes in the ornament to help air to go out.... or they'll puff up and you have to try to fix the damage later. Trust me... learned that one the hard way. Then you just put them in the oven for 20-25 at 300. And let them cool. I used acrylic paint because it tends to last longer and then covered them with a glaze again to make them nice and shiny.

We made all the cute hand print ones (and even a footprint one.... but my precious dog decided to eat it.... don't get me started) and then I let Dax have his way. He was really into a tiny toy dinosaur that day so we pushed that into a round piece of dough (top left on the picture about) and then he "walked" the dino around on the donut looking one (top right) and made footprint in it. He loved this!

(the left over salt dough made for great pretend "pancakes" )

Nature Paintings

If you've read the blog at all you know me and Dax both love nature. So we used a little acrylic paint and glitter to make a few ornaments and pictures for the walls.

The next day we painted glue on all of the final projects and used our fingers to sprinkle glitter on all of them! They all turned out really pretty and look great as Christmas decorations!

Glass Ball Ornament

I have a ton of extra ball ornaments that we didn't use on our tree so we decided to paint one with acrylic paint and at a cute bow on the top to hang on our tree. Dax was really proud of this project

 Gift Wrapping

In every class I've ever taught the kids have loved getting to wrap presents. So the other day I let Dax wrap a gift for his daddy. He thought he was so big and had so much fun! I let him do it all, the cutting, taping, folding, put a bow on, and even sign the tag. 

If you have any fun winter projects I would love to hear them!!!

LOVE

This house was full of love this year...  and for some reason I felt way more into Valentines day than I usually do.... maybe having two valentines makes it that much more exciting :) 

Dax fingerpainted the Valentines for his classroom and teachers.

Not only did he love doing it.... but they turned out super cute and didn't cost a thing!  I just cut the  paper in strips, folded them to be able the size of valentines, and wrote Happy Valentines Day inside. They were perfect. For his teachers we did some that were about the size of 5x7's and fixed up a little goody bag of treats.

Now here's how Valentine's Day morning looked at our house this year...

Daniel leaves the house at about 4:30 to head to the hospital each morning. I stayed up late the night before and got all these goodies ready and left this note...

The white teddy bear was from Dax (you could squeeze it's hand and it was a little kids voice saying "i love you soooo much" and making kiss sounds. adorable) and the rest was from me.  He also has a new messenger bag with his initials monogrammed on it on it's way as well (for overnight stays at the hospital).
The "i love you because" frame was an idea from pinterest!  I made my own version with a plain black frame I had at home and some scrapbook paper.  I wanted to make the frame a little cuter so I decided to get a little craft :)

Again, this was all just stuff I had at the house so that was super convenient. I had the stencil so I just sponged on some acrylic paint and here you have the finished product....

I'm really happy with how it turned out! It will be fun to keep around the house so we can write things on it to one another every now and then :) (ps if you haven't seen the pin on pinterest you just use a dry erase marker to write a message on it).

Daxton got the most adorable stuffed monkey and some new big boy forks and spoons for Valentines Day from mommy and daddy. I got surprise with roses and guirardelli chocolates... and the best part..... a morning of sleeping in and room service with Daniel in a couple weeks!  We've decided the thing we miss the most about not having kids is being able to sleep until noon on Saturdays together. Our little boy wakes up by 6 most mornings.... so in at least 18 months.... we have not slept past that.  Also in 18 months.... I have yet to leave Dax overnight. Crazy huh??  So to make that a little easier on both him and me, Daniel's parents will come to our house and spend the night with Dax there while we have our night getaway in downtown Tulsa. I'm pretty excited about it.... ok... maybe a lot excited about it (I mean sleeping in.....room service... what's not exciting?!)  It's the little things when you become a parent.... no need for expensive gifts and diamonds.... just a good nights sleep is all it takes to make this momma happy!

The Boy Needs a Job

So toddlers are busy little people. Anyone that has ever been around them has probably figured that out within like 15 minutes. And I think Dax is even busier than most (he's sort of like his daddy... yikes). He is so inquisitive that he just has to be going all the time... or he might miss something. He tries to figure out how things work and once he gets his mind on something there's no changing it!  Well in the past week I realized that he was really seeking out task oriented activities. He's cut back from just playing with his cars or balls or climbing up his slide, and has started really sitting down and completing "task". Also, if he starts getting fussy or into things he shouldn't, I can give him a "job" and it instantly turns his mood around and gets his mind off of whatever he was previously doing. This tells me that he's bored just playing with his toys. He needs a challenge. The boy needs a job.

So with that in mind... I made a few new activities for Dax this week. Take a peek....

Activity 1 (Thanks to pinterst!):   Pushing puffy balls through holes you cut in the lid of a tub. This is great fine motor work and Dax loves it!  The first time I presented it to him I put the balls half way in the holes and let him push it in the rest of the way. But the next time he did them all on his own.  Keep an eye on your little one though because the balls are a choking hazard.

Activity 2:  Popsicle sticks and cups/tubes. While rummaging through my art supplies, I found a baggy of popsicle sticks.... and I already had random tubes out for Dax to play with. He loves putting the sticks in each of the tubes/cups and then dumping them out and starting all over. He also loves transferring from one container to another. He started out doing only one stick at a time, and quickly realized that would a little work he could do a handful. More great fine motor skills, eye hand coordination, work on pouring, and cause & effect.

 And Activity 3: Pouring and scooping rice.  Dax has been helping us feed the dogs lately. We use measuring cups to pour the dogs food into their bowls and he just really loves it. Well the other night he helped daddy.... but then decided that he didn't want to stop, he just wanted to keep scooping and pouring, daddy didn't want him to (because it's nasty stinky dog food and the dogs would puke if they ate all the food Dax was trying to give them) so needless to say, our strong willed, determined, task oriented little boy was not happy. I got out a couple bowls, different sized measuring spoons and cups, and rice and let the boy get to work on pouring and scooping. This was great practice with working his wrist. It was also a great sensory experience because he was able to dig his fingers into the rice and see how it felt. He also did some pretty good problem solving because he couldn't quite figure out how to turn his wrist to empty the scoops so he figured out that if he just shook it really hard the rice would fly out. This was a messy activity but since we did it on the tile we were able to just sweep it up when he was done and save it for another time.

If you have any task oriented activities I could do at home with our little man I would love to hear them, and Dax would love to try them out!