B is for Butterfly!

B is for Bats...yuck!

There are SOOO many cute ideas for making bats with your child. With Fall coming up, why not start getting ideas on different bats you can make!

Here is a cute example. I am a sucker for crafts made with handprints or cutout hands.



The body is a heart, the wings are hands cut out, and then the head is a circle with ears. You could use buttons, beads, candy or other household items for the face.

Banana Pudding!

Another recipe favorite for us is the very simple BANANA PUDDING.

Since it is B week, it fit in perfectly!

ingredients:
2 boxes of vanilla instant pudding
bananas
Nila Waffers
whipped cream
milk


Make the pudding according to the directions on the box.
I like to use a clear bowl so you can see the pretty display. Layer the pudding, waffers and bananas in the bowl. As you are doing this, be sure to have your child help! He/she will love putting the banana pieces and cookies along the top of pudding layers as well as along the outside of the bowl. Top off the yummy dessert with whipped cream. Enjoy!

Just another day

Today has been such a nice day! Tristan and I got to go out to the park and to the library. It is "B" week, afterall, so we needed to get new books! We had a great time sitting and reading together in the kids section. You have to understand, though, this is monumental for us. The last time we went to the library I thought we may get kicked out! I realized later it was really my fault because I had never really explained how quiet libraries needed to be and so forth. Today, walking in, Tristan put his finger over his lips and said, "Shhh, Mama....whisper..." The little guy whispered the WHOLE time we were in there! WooHoo!!

So today we focused on  books. Since quitting my job, I have  decided to make more of an effort to get to the library weekly. Tristan really enjoyed going through his section and finding some books he thought he may like. I encourage you, if you do not already, go to  the library and spend some time there with your child. There is lots to learn from books! 

potty training songs!

click here for potty training songs

I ran across these today and giggled like crazy. They are too cute! Enjoy!

Teddy Bear

Teddy Bear
(sung to the tune of row, row, row, your boat)

Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, turn around.
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, touch the ground.
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, tie your shoe.
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, that will do.
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, go upstairs.
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, say your prayers.
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, turn out the light.
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear, say goodnight!

-Author Unknown-

B week :) brown bear with beans and a snack

Tristan and I started off the week with the letter B. He made a brown bear with beans and we made blackberry butterfly jigglers. Yumm-o! Enjoy!

Last week I posted about the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear What do you see? It was perfect for this activity! Tristan enjoyed it alot!


 Tristan really liked gluing the beans on the letter B. He got really excited to try and cover up all of the glue spots. He told me that the bear needed paws so he glued some on his paws as well. :) You could also use buttons or beads, too!

This is one of our blackberry butterflies. They were REALLY yummy! I always cut the recipe for jigglers in half because we will never eat all of them, but we still got 6 butterflies out of the pan.

potty training blues...

I have heard awesome stories of how children suddenly decided they wanted underwear and bam, no more diapers!  That is not the case for us... whoa...

Some of the books we have been reading are The New Potty by Mercer Mayer and Potty Time with Elmo. Another all time favorite is Once Upon A Potty by Alona Frankel.


Once Upon A Potty is a favorite from when I was a little girl.  The book is sold where you can choose it for a girl or a boy. The books are super realistic with images but in a cartoon way. They are very real. I just love them!


We have tried all the tricks in the books for boys but we are still working...

Upcoming B week :)

Yesterday we had to go to Richmond for a doctors appointment so we did not get to do an activity as planned. Thats ok... we are flexible :)

I am excited about next week, though. There are SO many B activities that I am having a hard time deciding which ones we will actually get to do! Here are some thoughts to get your creative juices flowing.... bats, butterflies, bees, bears, blue, brown, books, black, bugs, birds, bird feeder, bug box....I could keep going! I want to also give you some fun songs you can sing and hopefully little puppet plays too. I am trying to think of the best way to get all of that on here, though. :) Get excited! It is going to be FUN!

One book I love for B is Brown Bear Brown Bear What do you see? By Eric Carle Such a a great book to read with your child!

APE time

I am not an artist by any stretch of the imagination. I really wanted to make an ape with Tristan, though. I apologize for how much this does not look like one! I tried! He didn't care. He still told me that ape starts with A so I was happy!

 Because of my sons age, I went ahead and cut out all of the body parts. I wanted them to all be basic shapes likes circles and squares etc, but it didn't work out that way. We did talk a lot about circles with this project, though. If you child is older, try having them come up with shapes that they can make to put together to create an ape (or other object/animal) or draw it out and let them at least practice cutting.

 I put all of the pieces together (roughly) so he could see what we were trying to make. I wanted him to be able to try to get a picture in his head to see what he could come up with. I was just curious ;)

Tristan's final product! Not too bad! You can't tell too much, but there is a massive amount of glue stick smear on here. We will keep working on that! I'm thinking this guy looks more like several other animals that it does an ape. Oh, well...

Diecuts with a View All-Occasion 12-by-12-Inch Glitter Scrapbook Paper

Fruit Smoothies

My family LOVES homemade smoothies. A lady I used to work with gave me this recipe. It is the best! Of course, tweek it with your favorite flavors :)

1 cup of juice (orange works well)
1 cup of yogurt (I usually use one yoplait container or 1 cup out of the big tub of yogurt)
1 full sized banana
frozen fruit (prob. about 2 cups)

dump it all in the blender and blend until it is very smooth

This makes enough for my son, me and my husband. Not huge portions but plenty..

I like this recipe because I do not like to use ice. It is just my preference. Also, they are very healthy! When my son goes through his spells of not wanting "real" foods, I try to stick one of these in there. It at least makes me feel a tiny bit better :)

Bon Appetite!

recipes

For several reason, we have yet to make our "A" snacks. I have all of the ingredients ready to go so I will still post pics with the final products once we get to make them. I went ahead and put the recipes on their own page. Go to the tabs at the top of the page and you find them there. I will gradually add to them as we go! Don't forget, if you have any awesome ideas to share, please post them in the comments below each post. I know other readers would love to have more ideas :) Have a blessed day!

Making a Display

One of my friends and I were having a discussion several weeks back. We were trying to come up with the best idea for displaying the things that our children make without having those paintings and crafts overtake the whole house. Below you will find the step by step on how to make a magnetic board. It is simple and anyone can do it! The best part is you can make them in so many ways and for so many different purposes! The one I made below is very simple because I expect it to be totally covered up!!!
Materials:

• MAGNETIC white board (you can get these anywhere in any shape and size. Ebay is great for this too)
• STRONG magnets - I got mine pretty cheap on ebay otherwise try a hardware store. They need to be really strong to go through the art project and a piece of material
• ribbon for a boarder and to hang
• a large piece of material
• something to use for your magnet covers such as buttons
• glue gun

Let's Begin!

Iron your background material and lay it upside down on your surface. Place the magnetic board upside down on top of the material.

With a glue gun, glue the material on the edges so it is tightly fixed onto the white board.

Turn it over

(picture wont rotate) This shows the board now covered with the main material. Now you want to get the ribbon that you chose for the boarder. Because my brown ribbon with cars and trucks on it was so thin, I decided to use a thick white ribbon behind it to make a wider border. It is up to your taste on how you want to do this. Glue guns work really well but you are going to want to test a piece first because some ribbon shows glue through it.

Glue the ribbon around each side of the board. Be sure to pull it tight so it does not gap.

After the boarder is completed, decide how you want to hang the board. When I covered the board with the fabric, I covered the hardward for hanging so I had to cut out holes in the fabric. I used a solid brown ribbon and tied it to both pieces of hardward for the board to hang from.

If I had made this for a little girl, I would have used a lot more bows and ribbon. You could put bows with the ribbon on each side at the top. It would be too cute! :)

Again, I don't know why this won't stay rotated. Sorry! Anyways, above shows the final product.

Don't forget to come up with a cute idea for your magnets! I looked high and low for cute truck buttons to match the ribbon but I never found any. I decided to cut a up a piece of ribbon that had trucks, boats, planes etc. I glued one of each onto white ribbon to match the boarder then glued it on the magnet.

Have fun getting creative! :)

A is for Apple prints!

A is for APPLE prints!

Ok...so my son really likes to paint. And with this comes GLOBS of paint :) This works MUCH better with not so much paint, but nonetheless, it is still fun. Have Fun!

                                     I can't seem to rotate this.... but here we are getting ready!

The final product. I chose to use red and green for the obvious reasons, but any paint works. Also, the less paint, the better the prints! Have fun!

Day One!

Today was day #1 of our  letter learning adventure! We started with the letter "A" and boy is this going to be an interesting journey! Today, I cut out a capital "A" and a lowercase "a". I had planned to glue grass on them first, and to make them much cuter, but due to Tristan's temperment, I knew we only had a small window of time to work today. I wanted to make the best of what time he was willing to focus :)

So I cut the letters out of pretty scrapbook paper. I always keep a random supply on hand. Any kind and color of paper will work, though. Then I got black paint and squirted a tiny amount for dipping fingers in to. We used Tristan's pointer finger and made three dots right in a row. We did this is several places around the two letters. Then we drew legs on them to make them ants. We talked about how ants starts with "A" and how we have two kinds of letters...capital (or uppercase) and lowercase. Tristan really enjoyed making ants. As you can see in the picture, he did some totally on his own ;)

Another idea which would work great if you have one is to use a stamp pad instead of paint. I just try to use supplies that I already have.

You could also, for older children, have them cut out three circles for each ant, then glue them and make the legs and antenna. That would help them with cutting and gluing as well.

There are many things that I wish we had done differently, but this is what we got! Tristan knows what an A is and he had fun. Mission accomplished!

Tomorrow we will be making a yummy Apple treat!