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.

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.