Muffin Tin Monday

Today there was no theme for Muffin Tin Monday, so we decided to celebrate Memorial Day with it. The kiddos did a project while mommy made the muffin tins. They dipped star cookie cutters into red and blue paint and pressed it on their paper.


It made a very cute and simple patriotic craft.

I found these really cute star muffin cups that came with red and blue pinwheel toothpicks at Wal-Mart. We had cucumbers, cheese, watermelon, crackers, leftover pork chops, and a cupcake.

The kids favorite was the watermelon!

They both LOVED blowing the pinwheels. The best part is that the pinwheel part comes off of the toothpick so we can save them to use again.

This lunch was filled with fun and play.

Since Daddy is off for Memorial Day, he had lunch with us. Almost before I was done eating my watermelon, he asked for the rind. He took two rinds and put it to his month and started making loud squawking noises like a bird. It was hysterical and had us all laughing!

Then, everyone else had to try it out too!

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.

Tea Time Thursday

Pretty much every Thursday On a Whimm post a tea time that she does with her kiddos. Well, I wasn't invited to her party, but I'm crashing it! I LOVE the idea and Lyssy LOVES tea parties, so every Thursday we are going to do a tea time Thursday.

Today, my friend T was hosting a tea party playdate that would could NOT pass up. It was so much fun and so cute. Of course, the kids ate great!

You know Aidman just had to where his hat.

Lyssy's dress is so beautiful!

He's doing a really good job at pouring.

I LOVE this picture!!

This one turned out good too.

The tea party favor was a lollipop flower.

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.