Practical Tuesday!

After making my last post, I just realized it was Tuesday so I decided to add another post for Practical Tuesday. I really don't know how often I'll be able to update this blog, but I'll just do what I can!

Today's Practical Tuesday activity will be sponge squeezing. My kids love doing this activity and I love it because the more practice they get at this, the less water I have on my beautiful hardwood floors when the kids help me clean :) You need a pitcher, two bowls, a sponge, and a hand towel. Fill a small clear pitcher of water up to a water line (draw a line, so the kids don't overfill when they do this themselves). I got a clear plastic small pitcher at our party supply store for about $2. Then pour the water into a bowl, showing the kids the correct way to hold a pitcher and pour. Then put the sponge in the water, let it soak it up then lift the sponge over the water and squeeze just a small little squeeze and wait until it stops dripping. Then move the sponge to the other bowl and squeeze all the water out. Continue until all the water is transferred from the first bowl into the second. The towel is there to clean up any water drips! This would be a fun activity for a warm summer day to do outside. After they are done with this activity and they want another fun thing to do with the water that would be great for their motor skills, just give them a paint brush (a real paint brush for painting houses, not a craft one) and a small bucket of water. Show them how to paint the fence (or your house, deck, patio...anything), by doing a nice stroke up and a nice stroke back down. Have them paint your fence with all the water. My 4 year old thinks this is the best to do. She loves to paint and this is just as exciting to her as real painting for some reason!

Practical Tuesday: Turkey Baster Activity

Turkey basters are a great first-time activity for 2 1/2 year olds and up. You need a sponge, baster, 2 glasses, food coloring. Give the child 2 glasses, one filled up with water and one empty. Put a couple of drops of food coloring in the water to make it colored. Then show your child how to use the baster by squeezing all the are out, keeping it squeezed and then inserting it into the water. Release it and watch it fill up with water. Then life it out slowly and hold it over the water to wait for the drips, then bring the baster into the empty glass and squeeze the water out. Have your child try to transfer all the water into the empty glass. Then have them transfer it back. Show the child how to clean up any messes with the sponge. It's a fun little activity that works on those pincher muscles, concentrating and coordination. As we progress, we'll do these activities with smaller tools, but start with the larger ones first :)

Dressing Frames

There are a lot of ways you can make your own dressing frames. My favorite ideas are:

1. Buy wooden 8 1/2 x 11 picture frames from the $1 store. Remove glass and the staple on the back of the frame baby clothes. Very easy and there's tons of small baby/toddler clothes at the second hand store if you don't have anymore.

2. To sew baby clothes onto a pillow cover of a small decorative pillow. It's easy to make a pillow case, use those standard instructions and then add the clothes ontop of the front piece before assembling and sew it together. These would make some fun pillows on your child's bed at night.

Lastly, I'm so excited! I got the BEST DEAL EVER on my local craigslist. I got this awesome play cube for only $20.

Here's the site for more information

My kids think it's great. It's 4 sided and has buttons, snaps, buckles, zipper, lacing, bowties, chrome closure, on every side so all three of my kids can work at the same time. It's also super fun and soft to jump on apperantly. It save me a lot of work for making dressing frames!

Color Sorting/Color Wheel

I got this deviled eggs tray from party city this morning for $2. I painted the bottom of each egg a different color. Then I got my container of odd buttons that I have in my craft room and found 5 buttons of each color (well, I need 1 more dark green and 2 more orange that'll I'll buy next time I'm at the craft store). I tried to put the colors in order so it'd look like the color wheel so you could use it for those activities later on, but I was doing it off the top of my head quick and I know the brown isn't in the right place. But thought I'd mention it so someone else could do it in the right order, LOL. My 3 year old can't wait for the paint to dry so she can get sorting!