Once Upon a Time Shower

One of my best friends in the world is pregnant with her second little one. I got the privilege of throwing her a little sprinkle shower and I had a ball doing it. Her mom had suggested a children's book theme which was perfect! My husband and I are naturally book junkies and we give everyone children's books for almost every holiday. Plus we got boxes of books passed down to the girls from various members of our family, so we had a ton of supplies.
First objective was to create a menu. I tried to pick items that I knew that the mama was really enjoying throughout her pregnancy. The number one item was chicken salad, but  also shared some pasta salad, cheese and crackers, fruit, meatballs, goldfish and cupcakes. Then I sat down in front of the bookcases in the girls rooms and pulled out the best book associated with the food. Some of these were just lucky finds, others I got a little help from the internet.

We had a few activities which involved children's book themes too. One of my all time favorite children's books is The Giving Tree. I have read this countless times at camp to campers. This was perfect for the party. I painted canvas blue and then painted a tree trunk. I cut out leaves from various colored green scrapbook paper and asked the party goers to leave little comments on the leaves for the baby. The instructions that I read suggested using double-sided tape after placing the leaves on the tree I have learned that the tape isn't strong enough and that Elmer's glue is a better choice. It turned out really lovely.

For other activities I also printed out a children's book quiz  with the answers from here and the winners got prizes. We wrote silly sayings on diapers to amuse the parents as they change those stinkers too. Simple.

Around the house I decorated with books. I printed out The Keep Calm sign below from Google images (and I felt pretty hip about) and I printed out covers of Golden Book series and created a book banner. I simply whole punched two wholes on each page and strung a ribbon through them. That I hung across our sliding glass doors. I placed books around the house in tables and even in the bathroom. 

  I set up a couple of tables. We know that they are having a baby boy so I added those touches here and there with the blue table cloths and the baby boy picks on the cupcakes. Each table had a center piece that included a book and stuffed animal that is associated with the character of the book. We were also going to decorate book plates for the baby books that each person was asked to bring in lue of a card. The invite had ABC's on it which was perfectly fitting for the theme.



 

For the party gift I had two. I made bookmarks with a little baby boy charm and a sticker on the back that said Once A Upon Time Baby Shower with the date and name. And I made these little baggies of gummy worms which was a great suggestion from the grandma to be. I had these avery circle labels and I made them online through their program. It is super easy to use and it was easy to place on clear baggies with gummies.

Overall it was a great shower and it was super fun to put together. It was a fun and easy theme for me to run with. My one girlfriend made a bookshelf diaper cake which was adorable. Books are such a big part of our life with our girls. We read to them everyday multiple times a day and pretty much Vivian has a book in her hand most of the day. It was so fun to use this theme and the very best part is that in a couple of months we will have a new little baby boy hanging out.

Permission to Make a Mess with Cheap Preschool Halloween Crafts

Last week we went on a family walk and passed a house in our neighborhood is that is vacant, falling apart and on sale. The nosy neighbors that we are we  peeked in the windows and did not see much however on our way off the property I saw a pile of rocks, so I grabbed a couple with these projects in mind.

First I let Lydia paint the rocks. I set her up only orange paint for the big rocks and then let her paint a couple of the smaller ones any way she liked. We had to let the rocks dry before phase 2 began. The transition activity I picked up at Michael's for a dollar. They are little watercolor pages which have the paints on the bottom that are activated by the water and brush. These are by Creatology and were Halloween themed.
  After the rocks were dry I had Lydia glue faces on the rocks.  She loves to use real Elmers glue. She feels like she's a big girl. One rock was a pumpkin, the other a cat. I used scraps of paper to make the parts of the face, I also had googly eyes which Lydia really enjoyed. She attached them all on her own. On the smaller rocks I used a regular sectioned plate and placed random items in it like sequence, buttons, pieces of ribbon, scraps of crafty things I had or had been given. So she could decide to make faces however she wanted.
I love the way her projects turned out this time. They are certainly fun and creative. I was thinking about my approach with her during these times and for almost all of this activity I was making dinner, so I would set her up and let her just do it. I have no fear of her making a mess, because well that is part of it. She spilled water, so we moved her to the other side of the table. She got paint on herself, so before dinner we washed it off. She wanted the stick buttons on random places of the rockfaces and I certainly didn't stop her. She got glue on the floor, we wiped it up.

I truly believe that part of the process and purpose is to let them have a creative outlet and be guided by their own whims. This is not to say that all of these endeavors always go perfectly, but I try to pick times that I am willing to be a gamer about it, meaning I am in a state of mind that is patient and open-minded and prepared to redirect the preschooler. Some may wonder where was Vivi? Well she was napping. Gluing is not quite the right toddler task, so timing does have  a lot to do with a successful kid craft experience.

 

Another Halloween craft which was very simple and a lot less prep I gave Lydia a wooden Bat mask to color with markers, also a dollar at Michaels and she wanted to color it pink and purple. I let her use the glitter glue squeezers and she decorated it with glee and for a long time. Once again, I just gave her the tools and the directions and waited to see what the result was.

Listening Ears at Coffee Pot Park

The weather is starting to cool off, at least for us thus we ceased the opportunity to be outdoors. We are still passionately curious about our local parks and we are continuing on our quest even though my original goal had expired. On this cooler early October evening we headed to Coffee Pot Park.

Lydia loves a good park mostly for the climbing and partly to meet new friends and play. As soon as we unlatched them from the car seats Lydia sprinted to the playground and meet Peyton, a little girl just slightly older than her to play with. The playground has a sand foundation which is not my favorite because no matter what there will be a gallon of sand in their shoes and all over their hands.

Vivian was much more adventurous then our last park trip with her. She has no fear and several times would run over suspension bridges right to the very edge, luckily Eliot is pretty tall. The playground is designated a 5-12 space so it wasn't really designed for either of my girls but that didn't stop them.


Lydia hasn't liked a swing since she was about 9 months old. Something about it makes her feel out of control and uncomfortable though her desire to do things that other kids are doing always leads her to the swings. She started swinging face down on her belly which tends to work well for her. On the other hand, Vivian is swinging and loving it.
The park is located at the eastern end of 30th street. Next to a round about that takes you near the shoreline towards Snell Island, North Shore and Downtown. It is very shady and right on the water which gave us a great breeze and view. A small picnic area makes it a nice party park but definitely for older kids because it is very close to the road and there is no fence boundary.
After Peyton and her brother Silas left another little person came along named Jack. Jack was a little younger than Lydia but they played together, until the exhausted Lydia just became obsessed with little Jack. She followed him and tried to race up the stairs but Jack was a little too little handle Lydia's enthusiasm. I cracked a couple of jokes about older women and finally we had to head home because Lydia had practically imprinted (Twilight reference) on Jack.
In the car, I talk to her about putting on her listening ears. Her beautiful, perfect amazing listening ears that God had given just to her. She looked at me almost was genuine glee and wonder. In that moment, I saw the look in her eyes that she was hanging on my every word and that I, as her mom, and created a perfect parenting moment. She's 3 so there will be many days that those listening ears may not be turned quite up as loud as we need them, but from that day forward she was earnestly excited to put them on.

Lydia does Science

At Lydia's school we have had a few homework assignments. First we had to make a collage of her family and most important people. So they could share it at school. And then we were asked to make a sensory bottle. There was a very nice handout with several options but Eliot and I liked the Density Bottle the best. It seemed cool.
The ingredients were the following:

• honey


• corn syrup


• dawn dish soap


• colored water


• vegetable oil

It is a preschoolers homework so it's rather simple. You pour some of each in this order in the bottle what was sent home. We even had a funnel.

They suggested we colored the water so Lydia picked blue. Well actually she picked purple but the red and blue food coloring dyes made it too dark and it wasn't bright enough to stand out. So blue it was.

A few things did go awry. First the Dawn Dish soap we had was not the traditional type, it was the antibacterial kind which I think made a difference when we poured in the water. The blue water was just absorbed by the soap and so we instantly had 4 layers instead of 5.

Then I accidently closed the bottle the teacher sent home with the vegetable oil bottle's top. The wrong top got stuck on. It was stuck on lopsided. Something about the combination of varies sticky oily drippy liquids with a lopsided wrong top caused this thing to be a permanently placed on it. We got tools. It didn't help. We used that cool rubber jar opener to help hold it steady. It didn't help.

We ended up making 2 more in different bottles. We used a Publix 16 ounce water bottle which after sealed feel and the whole thing turned into mush. Brown thick yuck. We left it on the kitchen counter to see if it would naturally balance out. It didn't. Then, we used the honey bear bottle which did keep the strata format which was intended but the water wasn't noticeable therefore only 4 layers rather than 5.
I would give us an A for effort. A B for the bear, because we didn't really follow all the directions since there was no footnote about antibacterial soap. And a colossal failure for the original little bottle. Here is a link for the project from a mommy blogger with what the actual bottle should look like.

Rainy Day Activities

The last couple of days it has been rainy. It is always tough to entertain the kids on those types of days instead of flicking on the television. It is also a challenge with kids of different ages and abilities. Luckily, Vivi is now 13 months and she is more able to participate in a few activities. I had some empty containers that I was saving but I wasn't sure why. I quickly filled them with different objects: dominoes, couscous, a bell, a little person, a couple of little bouncy balls and even one with colorful pompoms. They all made a different sound and some loud some none, but she loved it. She picked them up and shook them up. She loved the one with couscous the best. It had a nice shaker sound.
Meanwhile, Lydia got a few crafts for her birthday that we decided to work on. One was a little mirror to decorate. She loves the glitter glue much to any mom's concern but she did a good job keeping it on the mirror. I have to say it was an easy activity to do and she was able to not only be creative but use various small motor skills.
For Vivi I had an only busy bag set of colored popsicle sticks that have Velcro on them. I prestuck them for her and she liked unsticking them. She isn't quite ready yet to stick them together but it was still a great activity. I have about a dozen of them and so it would take her bit to unstick them. I would simply reconnect and she would start over.
The mirror took Lydia almost the entire time we were sitting together. There was jewels and stickers.
Once she did finish we worked on a princess sticker book she also got for her birthday. The book had little descriptions and outlines of where to put the stickers that Lydia called their shadows. I pulled the stickers out so once I read the description she could find the right picture. There was a page for the princesses, their friends, and the villains.  We did the first page before dinner and the last couple pages after dinner. It provided a lot of opportunities to have conversations about princesses in general.

Admittedly, my 3 year has a much better grip on all that stuff than I would have imagined. And yesterday her favorites were the villains. She chanced Vivian around the house growling like a wicked witch and Vivian ran away laughing so hard. It was delightful.
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