Flower Pool Noodle Art

Today we had a playdate. We decided to use pool noodles to makes some flower art. I bought the flower shaped pool noodles at the Dollar Tree and cut them into 3 different sizes with a serrated knife (apparently, I can't cut straight).

We used the thickest noodles to do flower painting prints.

I love the brightness of this art.

We used the skinniest noodles along with silk flowers and cut out magazine flowers to make flower collages.

Many of the children sat for a very long time doing this gluing project.

We used the medium noodles, cut pieces of straws, and beads to make necklaces.

Aidman was very proud of his necklace.

Letter Ff

Here are our Ff workboxes.

Feathers: arrange feathers in parm cheese container.

Fingerprints: use ink to make fingerprints on an index card and examine with a magnifying glass.

Food: cut out pictures of food out of a weekly add.

All American Tea Time and Picnic Talk

This week's Picnic Table Talk over at ABC and 123 is all about being Patriotic for the 4th of July.

We decided to incorporate our weekly Tea Time Thursday with On a Whimm in our celebrations. We did an All American Tea Party!

We had Corn Dog muffins, Shortcakes with strawberries, blueberries, and whipped cream, Pickles, and Iced Tea. For decorations, we tied blue and red ribbons to our fancy glasses and got to use our red and blue toothpick pinwheels.

We even made a cute Flag craft to decorate our tea party.

First we ripped red paper.

Then we glued the red stripes onto white paper.

We added star stickers to a blue rectangle.

And WAALAA!! A beautiful flag!

Check out the Patriotic Muffin Tin Monday and craft that we did for Memorial Day too!

We LOVE the 4th of July. Since Daddy and I got married, we have always gone to the local minor league baseball game and then watch the fireworks from the stadium. We love baseball, fireworks, and ballpark hotdogs so it's just always a GREAT All American Day for us. We are already getting excited for this Saturday!!

Ff Table Top Toys

This past weeks table top toys went perfectly with the letter Ff. As you can see, the items that I add to my "table top toy" bins are not always used at the little table, sometimes we bring them to the floor or to the big table. I really should come up with a better name for them, I could always go with activity tray (except they are not on a tray, more like in a bin, activity bins) or workboxes (except I don't change them out everyday like most people, more like every 3 days). I guess what we call it now is best since most of the time it's at the table.

Here Lyssy is doing Farm animal patterns with pattern cards, she also made patterns without the cards (which I like doing better).

Here Aidman is counting with farm animals. This activity can be done with anything, we used farm animals because we had them. I printed out these number cards and they placed the correct number of items on it.

We did more counting with Ff numbers. We placed the correct amount of marbles on each number 4, 5, 14, 15.

We also did flower lacing. I took silk flowers and separated them from the stems. They laced the flowers and some beads onto pipecleaners. They made tons of bracelets with them!

Not pictured:

-I printed out farm and forest animal cards and let the kids color them and then play memory and matching with them.

-Farm Puzzles, we have one large floor farm puzzle and several normal size puzzles that they did.

I just now thought of and Wish I would have done:

Funnels! It would have been great pouring fun to use the funnels at our table top toys. Now that I have the idea I MUST use it in the next few weeks!

List

Seeing the written word is so important for young children and reading readiness. Seeing their thoughts written down is so much fun for them.

I try to make a habit of making list and writing things down for Aiden and Lyssy and then putting it on the fridge for them to see. This week for the letter Ff, we made three different list, one of our family members, one of their friends, and one of their favorite things. On these papers, I ONLY write what they say, I just ask them questions, write it down, and then repeat what I have written while pointing to the words.

Lyssy's Favorites:

food- carrots

color- pink

Restaurant- McDonald's

toy- ball

animal- giraffe

place- outside

thing to do- go to McDonald's with my Daddy

movie- princess

book- princess stories (Happily Ever After Stories)

Aidman's Favorites:

food- tomatoes

color- green

Restaurant- McDonald's

toy- baseball

animal- dog

place- Chuck E Cheese

thing to do- play in the rain

movie- Buzz Lightyear

book- Little Bill Baseball book at Church

Feet!!

Today was all about the foot for the letter Ff. First we read the Foot Book by Dr. Seuss. We LOVE that book.

Then we painted with our feet.

It was alot of fun.

Aidman walked everywhere while Lyssy pretty much stayed in one area.

Then we Followed 15 Feet.

The feet led to Funny socks to put on our Feet.

Lyssy looked really funny!

Then they followed the feet several more times.

Until Aidman's socks started coming off and Lyssy tackled him with a hug, he wasn't very happy.

Sink or Float

Every kid LOVES to do the classic sink or float activity. Today I let the kiddos choose which items they wanted to test.

Next, we predicted what was going to happen.

They really liked seeing if they we right or wrong.

And here are the results.

Afterward, they continued to retest all of the items over and over. It's just FUN to play in water!

Check out more Kid Friendly Friday Post at I Blame My Mother.

Fish and Finger Painting

Today we made these cute handprint fish (for the letter Ff).

First, the kiddos cut waves into their papers.

Then they painted their handprint on the paper.

While the fish dried and since we had paint on our hands anyway, we dicided to finger paint (also for the letter Ff).

It was fun!

Then we used a blue bingo dabber to give the fish bubbles.

So cute! So simple!

Fish, Flowers, and some Water Play

Today we went to this great water spout park.

The kiddos had so much fun running through the water.

Natural Floridians, snuggling up next to an alligator!!

Afterwards, we walked next door to the beautiful gardens where mommy and daddy got married to see Flowers and Fish.

The kids went crazy over seeing lily pads!

Aidman took my picture! This will be week 8 of 52 of capturing mom every week in a picture at Forever in Blue Jeans.

Brother and sister hand in hand. SO SWEET!

Oh the FISH!! They were so excited to see the fish. Aidman kept calling them catfish because of the "whiskers", but I'm pretty sure they are cod.

Aidman thought the pineapple growing was so cool! We also saw corn, strawberries, squash, and lettuce growing.

And the best part about the day was the snail Aidman found. It crawled ALL over his arm. See the grossed out look on Lyssy's face!

The nice thing about going to the garden was how peaceful it was. The kids didn't want to leave. Next time we go, I'll make sure we have more time to spend there since they loved it so much.