Field Trip: Fire Station Tour

 Earlier this week we got to go on an awesome field trip with our friends from our Summer Reading Playgroup. We had all missed a public tour of the fire station earlier in the summer, and we were disappointed not to get to go. I decided to look into it, and found out that all that stood between us all and getting our kids into the fire station was a simple online form. We picked a day, got our form turned in, and we were ready to go!

My kids and I were the first ones to get there, so we goofed around while we waited for the rest of the group to get there.

 We got to tour the living quarters of the station (which that adults thought was interesting), but the real excitement was when we finally got to go out into the engine bay and see the trucks. Oh boy were the kids excited! One of the fire fighters "turned out" in his full gear so the kids could see it all. They got to check out each piece before it got put on, which was really fun.

 It was sure hot out in the engine bay, we were grateful to get to be the ones watching the whole "turn out" process, but not have to do it ourselves. That poor firefighter was sweating up a storm!

Doing a dance, or putting on suspenders...you decide. :)

 The kids were fascinated to watch as the firefighter put his gear on, but once he had the face mask on and the air regulator going they were not so sure about going anywhere near him. It's so good for them to have a chance to see that this is not someone to be scared of in case they are ever in a situation where they need to be rescued. Seeing how scared the kids were made me think this is something we ought to do every year so they get to see it often enough to remember.

 The kids all got fire hats and other trinkets to take home with them, which of course is always a plus!

 What an awesome way to spend a day! I highly recommend reaching out to your local fire station to see if you can do a tour like this!

Summer Reading Fun: Up, Down, and Around

 When I originally planned all these summer reading activities it was with the idea of implementing them in our local library using the book Bear and Bunny Grow Tomatoes, which I knew they had in their collection.  After our move, when I discovered that this book is nowhere to be found in our new library system (which surprised me because it's a huge library network), we had to switch things up and went with more of a general garden theme instead of just focusing on the tomatoes. It was still a lot of fun and worked out perfectly.

For our play dough this week I made this scrumptious smelling chocolate play dough. It looked like dirt, and the kids loved making their own little gardens with rocks, flowers/leaves, and toy bugs.

Our art project this week as really fun. The kids colored on coffee filters with markers, then sprayed their art work with water and watched the magic happen. After things dried in the sun for a bit we added some cute little apple borders I found here and hung our art on the wall.

For our gross motor, I had planned to play this fun apple toss game. I picked up a couple packages of these balls from Amazon for us to use. We ended up cutting things a bit short this week and never got around to playing the game, but I think the kids would have had a good time with it.

Our sensory bin this week was pretty epic. The kids thought it was amazing! I put 50 lbs of rice in a kiddie pool, added in the toys from our play dough fun plus all the fruits/veggies from our play food, and all the digging/scooping toys I could find. The kids had a blast digging and playing their pretend garden.

 For our snack this week we could have gone with any possible number of healthy garden fruits and/or veggies. Instead though I decided to have some fun with the kids and made a dirt cake instead. I assembled it in a clean flower pot (purchased just for this and scrubbed well before using), and stuck a couple bunches of fake flowers in there. It looked real enough that the kids were a bit shocked when I dug in and ate a big spoonful of the "dirt" right from the pot. I wish I'd gotten a picture, but they gobbled it up too fast for that.

Last, but not least, here is a list of all the fun garden themed books we used to inspire our fun. Clicking the image will take you to Amazon, where you can learn more about any book you're interested in.

*Diedre Mower is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. This post contains affiliate links.

Summer Reading Fun: Should I Share My Ice Cream?

When we discovered Mo Willems' "Elephant and Piggie" books, it was love at first sight. My kids love to listen to me read them (it helps that I do voices for each character) and Erik is even getting to the point where he can read them himself. I decided we'd use one of our favorite of these stories as our inspiration for our ice cream themed play group. 

 We started off with a fun play dough ice cream shop, complete with chocolate play dough. I had all our regular play dough toys out, plus ice cream cones, scoops, and sprinkles (beads). The kids had a blast with this one!

 Next we made our own ice cream cones with a few simple supplies. Did you know that you can buy already cut tissue paper squares at the dollar store? Like these, except I got mine at Dollar Tree for $1.

 For our sensory play, we let the kids go crazy with some "melted ice cream", aka shaving cream. It's cheap, it smells yummy, and it's pretty easy to clean up. That's three thumbs up from me!

 Our gross motor game was this fun sharing game. I was actually surprised at how much the kids enjoyed it. It was so easy to set up and was a lot of fun.

 For our snack we had ice cream of course! I chose ice cream sandwiches due to the low cost and ease of serving/clean-up. I did seriously consider making home made ice cream, which would have been Amazing, but a lot more work.

To round out our ice cream week, I had several fun ice cream books on hand for the kids to look at. They were all great, but the first two here were the definite favorites. Click any of the books below to go take a closer look at them on Amazon.

*Diedre Mower is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. This post contains affiliate links.

Shapes; Cutting and Sorting

 If you're like me, then you get a mountain of junk mail every week. Piles and piles of it. Normally I just toss it into the recycling, but then I realized that we could get more use out of it first. Here's what we did.

I started by having Erik cut different shapes out of construction paper, then I had Sharli glue them on to a piece of card-stock. We labeled each one, just because I can't seem to not label things. Also print awareness, let's go with that one. :)

 Next we gathered up all the sales papers from the grocery store, but you could also use old magazines. I handed each kid a pair of scissors, and told them to look for shapes.

 As we cut things out we sorted the pictures onto the shapes on our paper. Squares and circles were the easiest to find, but we managed to find one or two triangles, and even a heart shape. The kids had a blast, and spent more than half and hour cutting up all the papers. Even Maren got in on the action, tearing the papers randomly instead of cutting.

 When the kids got bored, we cleaned up the mess and I saved our cutouts and the paper with the shapes so that we can pull them out to play with later.

Pudding Writing Spelling Practice

In March of this year our family loaded up and moved from our beloved Glenwood, New Mexico to Arizona's Phoenix valley. One of the many HUGE changes that meant for our family was that Erik started attending a new school. He went from a tiny school with one teacher (pre-k through 3rd grade) and a grand total of 8 students, to a school with more than 1000 students and a class of more than 25 kids. His new school has a mandatory homework policy (don't even get me started!), so we found ourselves trying to find ways to help Erik get his work done without pushing him to the point of burn-out. Practicing spelling words was becoming a fight, so I've been compiling a list of fun ways to get that job done. I'll be sharing several of them here for anyone else looking for better ways to memorize things.

For today's Spelling Practice idea, we've got pudding writing. It's so easy to set up! Mix up a box or two of instant pudding in any flavor, spread it on a sheet pan (or serving tray, or whatever you have that works) and tell your child a word to spell. They get to use their finger to write the word, then lick it clean when they're done. Everyone wins!

 Well, everyone wins except for you, because you have to look at my crummy phone pictures. I lost my camera for about a month so this is as good as it gets. :)

 The fun thing about this is that it works for all ages. For Maren and Sharli this was just pudding painting, like we've done before.

 There are several reasons why this is an excellent way to practice spelling. Here are a few:
- the more senses you get involved the more likely you are to remember things. This is great sensory stimulus, bringing in smell, taste, touch, and sight.
- the more emotions you involve in an experience the more likely you are to remember it. See the joy on this face:

 - gross motor (large muscle) movement (moving your whole arm while you write in the pudding) means you're getting more of your body involved which means better memory building.

 So, whether you're looking for a way to learn some new words, or a way to keep little fingers busy, there's something here for everyone.

Field Trip: Phoenix Children's Museum

 We got to spend a few days after Thanksgiving with our family in Gilbert, AZ. While we were there they took us to visit the Phoenix Children's Museum. It was SO much fun!  ***Warning, lots of pictures coming your way! :) 

 One of the first things you see when you get past the admissions desk is this amazing climber. It is huge (at least 2 stories tall) and full of fun and wacky things to climb over, under, around, and through.

 It was so big that it was not too difficult to get somewhat turned around in there. I was glad we had enough adults to stick with our two older kids so they didn't get lost and panic.

 Once you're all climbed out, you can head farther into the museum to see all the other amazing places to play. Things like this kid size grocery store.

 One of our favorite rooms (and it's pretty hard to pick) was the Texture Cafe. An awesome kid-size "restaurant" where you kids can dress up and create yummy fabric culinary masterpieces. There is a seating area where moms and dads can wait for their meals to be brought to them.

 There was also a little baby area so little sibling could be corralled and entertained while the big kids played.

 In the art studio there are several different art projects the kids can choose to take part in. They had a lot of fun in here!

 The tricycle car wash was super fun. The kids kept going around and around through the whole thing.

 Sharli loved the face painting station, where each kid can paint their own master piece on them self or anyone else they can con into sitting still for them.

 And, if you somehow manage to get tired of the rooms and rooms of fun things to do inside there are some fun and unique play structures outside.

We had so much fun here, and look forward to going back someday!