-
Ready To Travel
Recently one of our EI specialists asked me how I manage to do the things that I do with three toddlers in tow, working with so many families who feel they can barely leave the house with one. And honestly I kind of laughed because having three has made me more organized than I ever was in my entire life. It’s also made me realize that I just have to leave the house with all three in order to do basics like survive. I was never this organized in my “old life” I was the girl up until 3 am before the trip trying to pack, remembering those last minute…
-
Sensory Week
My kids have been showing more and more interest in pretend play – so this weekend I adjusted our toy bins to reflect that – removing the textured balls, sensory bottles, squeaky blocks and squishies and replacing them with things like toy phones/camera, glasses, dress up hats, baby care toys, play tools and doctor sets. With the lack of sensory play happening in our playroom I decided to focus all of our projects/activities around messy sensory play this week! But why do I care so much about Sensory Play? It is so important and good for your child’s development. Think about your own childhood or what brings back those memories?…
-
Valentine’s Day Activities
We’ve been having so much fun spreading the love for Valentine’s Day this year and hope you enjoy some of our ideas for crafts and activities to get the little ones involved! These are all easy to adapt based on skill level so you can try them with your little ones and big ones – they’ll just need more or less help from you depending on their age. Hand Crafts We recently went to a story-time at the Curious George store where we made these beautiful little valentines. I thought they were so amazing we decided to make them again at home to share with you all! They are so…
-
Numbers & Letters Week: Days 3, 4, & 5
We’ve really been having a blast with our numbers and letters week – if you didn’t catch the first post, this is more a preview to letters & numbers since my three are still so young, but were showing some interest. I don’t expect my kids to have mastered much of anything besides exposure, but have been really impressed by just how much they’ve been picking up through our play! Letters: There are lots of options for letter play and toys when it comes to your babies and toddlers – we had this awesome puzzle that came in a case (honestly this is the best when you’ve got twenty-six pieces…
-
Numbers and Letters Week: Day 1 & 2
We’ve been having lots of fun with our numbers and letters this week! As much as we’ve been enjoying our theme library – we’ve also been trying some fun new activities or old favorites redesigned to incorporate our theme. Below are a few of our favorites from the first two days! Letters: Alphabet Soup This is such a great and easy sensory activity to set up – you could use with whatever sensory material you like! A simple redesign of our classic search and find puzzle pieces to complete the puzzle which you can do with sand, rice, dry beans, play-doh (or more liquid sensory if you’ve got plastic pieces),…
-
Numbers & Letters Week
This week we are focusing on everything numbers and letters! Obviously my three are a bit too little for me to expect them to know or learn their numbers and letters, but they’ve been showing so much interest in them – asking me or trying to tell me what each letter is, counting constantly and wanting to read our ABC book over and over – that I decided to embrace their interests and do what I’m going to call a little pre-learning week. As always with our theme weeks our first stop is the library where we can check out as many books as we like on our theme! I…
-
Repurposing and Reusing Infant Toys
We’ve finally gotten to that stage where most of the infant toys are not being used any longer – sure we’ll still shake our sillies out or start a marching band with the shakers or the rattles, but it’s pretty much time to go for the rest of it. Except that I hate the idea of throwing out all this stuff! I’ll donate some of it, but I always like to have some toys around for all ages whether for future fosters or just entertaining when we have friends with kids over. Rather than just putting them all in storage and wasting lots of money on new toys – I’ve…
-
Holiday Activities
We’ve been working up a storm over here getting ready for and learning about the Holidays! I’ve had a lot of fun with the kids doing some crafting and some play and these are just a few of our favorites! Felt Christmas Tree This was a great activity for my kids to keep them busy and away from our real tree (which is still standing with all ornaments intact thank you very much!) They had their own ornaments to play with and could decorate and undecorated their tree as many times as they liked! The felt just sticks to itself when they push down which makes it a perfect task…
-
Our Christmas List
So for three kids under two and with my background in play therapy you can bet we’ve tried just about every toy on the block! Here is our christmas list for this year although the kids won’t get everything (or many of the things) on this list we made it as a wish/reminder list. I mostly thought I’d share it for those of you stuck on what to get your kids or the kids on your list this year! For those of you looking for a “friend” most of these are good for/ geared toward about 15 months – 4 years as they have lots of potential for growth and…
-
Felt Snowman
If you followed along with our Halloween activities you already know I love a good felt song board, but there are so many other fun things you can do with felt too! Considering I ordered about 5 of these we’re going to have lots of felt projects coming up! This week we did a little story play with one of our Christmas books which was a hit on so many different levels for my kids. The book is The Very Hungry Caterpillar’s Christmas 123 – it’s a counting book (great pre-math skills) full of our favorite character from The Very Hungry Caterpillar (if you didn’t catch that theme week check…
