Body Part Boogie

Ryan and Justin love the song "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" a lot.  Justin pretty much knows his body parts and Ryan knows eight or so.  To add a little variety, I made up some body part cards.  Some are pretty basic while some are more advanced like thigh and calf.  Ooh.  Ahhhh.  We listen to music and dance/move as long as it is on and freeze when it stops.  I hold up a card and everyone has to touch that part of their body before the music starts again.  Ryan should start learning a few more body parts and it is a bit more exciting than always doing "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" a million times.

I punched holes in the cards and have them on binder rings. I love binder rings. They keep my flashcards and other things together. When you have boys who love to scatter things, it is a big plus!

Match Me!

A few months ago when a photo developing site was having a special, I ordered a few 16 by 20 (or something like that) photo collages.  One of them included two copies of 12 pictures, one picture for each month of Ryan's first year.  I thought the order had been lost in the mail, but it ends up that it was just lost under Rob's desk at work. 

I cut the pictures apart and laminated them to make them a little more durable.  Now we have a fun little matching activity.  Ryan thinks that the baby in the pictures is cute.

Cake Recipes

Justin has been playing with a wooden Melissa & Doug birthday cake toy that I recently gave him.  He has enjoyed selecting the toppings for it, adding candles, and serving cake to various stuffed animals.  Of course he often needs my advice before he can decide what should go on the cake.  It was getting old fast.  I decided to make up some recipe cards so he could decorate the cake on his own.  He LOVED being able to follow the recipes I made up.  Yay!  Of course he still needed my approval before serving the cake, but it bought be a few extra minutes before interruptions.

The cake has six pieces, so Justin likes to have six stuffed animals to serve.  He gathers up his choices and sits them around the table.  He puts one on each chair and two on the table.  He told me that it was okay that some were on the table because there were six animals and six cakes but only four chairs.  I suggested that some animals could share chairs.  He looked at me like I was stupid and told me that then there would be eight animals and reminded me that he had already told me there were only SIX pieces of cake.  I thought about explaining what I meant, but I was pretty sure that I would still be wrong as far as he was concerned.

The recipe idea would also work well with the Melissa & Doug pizza party set.  I chose the cake over the pizza because Justin is ALWAYS pretending it is someone's birthday.  I don't think that we need both sets, but I can probably make more recipe cards for something else.  He seems to really like them.