Happy Fathers Day

For Fathers Day I had the boys each make a hand print for Rob.  Justin LOVED having me paint his hand, but Ryan was not quite sure.  I could not believe that TB's hand is almost as big as Justin's!  I figure later this week I can "steal" the hand prints and put them in the pile for the boys' scrapbooks.  I have some extra hand prints that Justin wants to mail out because he knows that people "would just love" his hand prints.  I suggested decorating one of them like an alligator and he told me that was silly because they are just hands.  Okay then.  Don't know what I was thinking.  We also made a bookmark.  I took a picture (several actually so I could get one that showed their faces) of each boy wearing Rob's hat and shoes.  They love to wear his things and pretend that they are like Daddy.  I cut out each picture, mounted it on card stock, added some quotes, and laminated it.  Not great pictures of the bookmark, but you get the idea.  Justin also helped to wrap it.  He is a little heavy on the tape, but was proud of his ability to wrap the present AND put a bow on it.  Both boys were quite interested in their cut out pictures, so I think that I will have us all get some basic pictures taken and then cut them out so I can make figures of the family for the boys to play with.  It will either entertain them and be a lot of fun or a cheap form of therapy to act out their aggressions. :)

Clink! In the Can (and Back Out)

My  mom (and probably a million other people) made these with juice can lids to drop into the container.  Justin loved that when he was younger.  I decided that TB might as well.  We don't have juice can lids, but I have a can opener that opens the lids with a smooth edge so I am slowly saving up lids.  In the meantime, I am having him drop in clothespins.  He loves it.  We also have some used gift cards and similar credit card sized cards that I have him drop in as well.  I have a lid designed for clothespins, one for cards/can lids, and another that has a slot for clothespins AND a slot for cards/can lids.  Pretty exciting stuff.  Makelearningfun.com has what they call clink cans or clank cans (I forgot which).  You choose a story and they have clip art to go along with the story that you tape or glue on the can lid so the child can drop the lid in as you read the story.  I think that at least for now Ryan would rather just drop things in, get them out, and start over again.

I love the clothespins that I found here in Namibia.  They don't pinch very hard.  I don't know how functional they are for things other than kids playing.  You can pinch your fingers with them and it doesn't hurt.  Of course leave it to Ryan to put it in his mouth backwards, get his tongue between the parts you pinch, and bite down on it.  I was impressed that he could manage to hurt himself.  Leave it to him.  Now to find more things that he can drop into the can.  At some point I plan on covering the outside with a piece of scrapbook paper so it looks a bit nicer.  I might make Justin one too and use plain card stock so he can decorate it however he wants.

Play With Your Food

Very flattering picture of Justin, huh?  As if having his hair growing out isn't bad enough!

Don't you love the cocoa puffs on the cheerios?  Do you think that I was working on 1:1 correspondence?  What about fine motor skills?  Nope.  I just found that it takes Justin longer to eat this lovely snack if he is putting the cocoa puffs on the cheerios first.  It also means he eats more cheerios than he otherwise would.  I could get some Trix and have him work on making patterns.  Think of the challenge Fruit Loops and Trix could be for him.  It buys me a little more time between his demands for more food and I can pretend that I am working on educational outcomes so I can feel good about what he is eating.

Ideas from makelearningfun.com

I have found lots of cute ideas on makelearningfun.com.  Many of the ideas are similar (same activity, just different themes) or more for a classroom setting, but I have had fun adapting them for my kids.  Pictured are the Brown Bear color word cards and The Hungry Caterpillar days of the week.  I didn't want them as large as they have them, so I simply printed multiple pages per sheet. I used card stock and laminated them.  For the color word activity you look at the picture of the animal (red bird, blue horse, etc.) and clip a clothespin on the box with the correct color word.  Pretty easy for Justin and too hard for Ryan, but they both enjoy it in their own way.  Justin likes doing this kind of activity and Ryan wants to do what Justin does.  The days of the week are just pictures that go along with the Eric Carle story.  Each picture shows the food the caterpillar ate and has the day of the week printed on it.  Justin doesn't know the days of the week in sequence yet and I figured this way he can learn the order without me teaching him.  I have decided to put flashcards and just about anything else I can on loose leaf rings.  Makes storage easy and I don't have to deal with baggies, rubber bands, etc. 

The website isn't designed as well as I would like, but it has a lot of ideas that I think are cute and my boys agree.

Strike!

I made a bowling set for the boys because Justin kept begging for one.  It wasn't hard to make, but it took awhile for me to get it done.  I did, after all, have to drink 10 bottles of Coke Zero for the bowling pins. The sacrifices I make for my children. :)  Once the bottles were collected, I made sure they were clean and ripped the labels off.  I am sure that my boys saw this step as unnecessary, but I figured if we were going to keep them for any length of time they should be clean and not growing stuff inside of them.  I decided to go one step further and put colored bands around them.  I cut strips of red, yellow, and blue cardstock and taped them (glue gun needs more glue sticks) around the bottle.  I figure that this way I can expand the game to ask Ryan to bring me a bottle with a certain color on it.  It could also give Justin the opportunity to count how many of each color he knocks down and then add to find the total.  He can also compare colors of the bottles knocked down and practice using words like more, most, and fewer.  You knew I would try to take a fun game and ruin it, didn't you?

As it turns out, they really enjoy bowling as long as I set up the pins. :(  Ryan takes a bit of a different approach and attacks the pins from above.  That's okay too.  The boys, however, have the most fun picking up the bottles and banging them together, banging them on things, or using them to attack each other as they run through the house screaming.  Oh well.  They are lightweight and inexpensive.