Saturday, January 28, 2012

As I mentioned in a recent post, the kids now have the opportunity to take on cleaning tasks around the house to earn some coins for their piggy banks.  One of them is "sort dirty laundry".  Well, I quickly realized that to make that work I needed to set us up for success.  So, I created four labels (marker on card stock) and 'laminated' them by sandwiching them between two pieces of clear Contact paper.  (I LOVE THAT TRICK!....and use it a ton.)  Using cord, we tied each of the four labels to a laundry basket.


Now, my 5-year old can read the labels while my 3-year old can look to the color for guidance.  Oh, for all those multi-colored garments or colors that we don't have much of....
the "?" basket works out great!

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Adding creativity to the day-to-day...


Macy's preschool teacher sends home terrific ideas for projects to do at home.  So, using these as inspiration (along with an idea I saw on-line) I combined them to spice up bath time.
Placing shallow plastic cups (ok...they're jello shot cups...long story) in a muffin tin, I gave lil' Macy a small pitcher full of water to fill the cups.  Then, talking about primary colors and color mixing, we used food dye to create six different colors.  We popped these into the freezer.  Each night at bath time we'd pick out a few and stick them in the tub.  We talked about how frozen water can melt...while having a ball with colored bathwater.  No- I didn't have green children at the end of bath time.  :)  There were only a few drops of food dye in each cup.
What is great about this is that there are so many fun lessons to be talked about- from art to science.


Like all kids, mine will occasionally ask for something from the store.  I realized that I kept telling them that they need to get a job, but never really followed up with giving them one.  :)  So, after seeing something similar to this idea on pinterest, I decided to make some for our house.  We had LOADS of magnetic business cards that we had collected from pizza places, etc.  I glued some heavy card stock to each, cut them in half and started markering in some jobs.  The MOMENT I put these on the fridge, my kids were taking one off to do.  I kid you not!  Hopefully I'm not jinxing myself here by jumping for joy too early.  Our youngest wanted to vacuum the living room (so we had to clean up the toys on the floor first) and our oldest wanted to dust (she even took items off end tables before doing so).  Afterward, we sat down with daddy's coin bucket and talked about money a bit.  Would they rather want one quarter?- or 25 pennies?  You guessed it.  Each wanted payment in pennies. 
I think I'm going to go to the bank for a few rolls of pennies tomorrow.  :)
 

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Peppy Peppermint Buddies....




I had every intention of taking step-by-step photos of these being created, but that dream faded fast.
These lil' snowmen are made of paper clay.  (The armature is constructed from a wood craft ball and aluminum foil- - which I glued to the metal lid prior to sculpting.)  The small glass jars are from Hobby Lobby.

Hmmmm.....I kinda want to try some large pieces now.

Stay tuned.