No-Sew Nativity Hand Puppets

I found these adorable NO SEW puppets on Pinterest last year and fell in love with them (original website and free pattern here). I made a set for myself and then attended a Relief Society meeting where all the ladies got to make a set for their own families. It was a lot of fun, and the puppets are so stinkin’ cute! In the hustle and bustle of the holidays though, I never did share these on here so you just barely get to see them now. Don’t worry though, there’s still time to make a set for your family before Christmas gets here!

When I made mine I used a hot glue gun to hold together the front and back pieces and to glue on the chunkier embellishments such as ribbons and beads, but I used Tacky Glue to put on everything else. If I were to make these again, I would definitely use the hot glue for everything as I've had to re-glue several of the smaller felt pieces this year as Erik plays with them.

I love that this is a way for Erik to really get involved when we talk about or read the Christmas story. He loves the bright colors and the soft felt. My favorite is when he mimics the face the angel is making; I wish I had a picture to share because it’s pretty funny! 

Easy-to-Wash Bath Paints

Well, sometime in the last few weeks (while I've been busy doing nothing important and have only occasionally stopped by to see how things were going on here) my blog here passed the 10,000 views mark. Maybe to some big bloggers out there that's what you get each day, but for me it's a pretty major achievement. So, before I jump into today's activity I just want to offer a warm welcome to any new readers out there, and a cheery hello to all the old ones. Thanks for stopping by!
With baby number two on the way here, I've been having a hard time scraping up the energy to do anything, so poor Erik hasn't had too many new things to do lately. I'm starting to realize though, that I get just as much enjoyment out of working on preparing activities and typing up blog posts as he gets out of doing the things I come up with. I've been feeling bored the last week and realized today that I need to get back into the habit of doing fun new things around here more often. So, in the spirit of that realization, I hit my pinterest boards and found this recipe for bath paints. It's cold around here today and I thought that sitting in the warm bathroom to paint and then taking a nice warm bath would probably be really nice for Erik, so we went for it.
Now, you may remember that we've done bathtub painting before, so why bother with a new recipe? Well, the other one I've used in the past can be a bit hard to clean off once it's had a few minutes to dry, so I was hopeful that this would work a little better as far as clean up goes. It was quick and easy to mix up. I actually didn't really measure the ingredients, I just used the recipe as a basic guideline and mixed things in until I got a consistency I liked. Erik is really interested in colors these days, so this was a fun chance to talk about the different colors and for him to watch new colors form when I mixed them up.

 Erik helped mix up the paints and was WAY excited to give this a try. He had his clothes off in the blink of and eye, and was in that tub ready to go! He dove right in, and loved every second of his painting time!

It's been a long time since I've done something creative with him other than just handing him some colored pencils and some paper; it was fun to watch him experimenting with colors and ways of painting (brushes, hands, feet, etc).  

 When the paints had been enjoyed to their fullest potential and had become nothing more than a messy slipping hazard, I turned on the water, washed the worst of the mess down the drain, and then filled the tub with nice warm water and let Erik "swim" and help wash the tub. The paint washed right off of the walls with little to no scrubbing, hooray! I love things that let Erik make a mess and have some freedom, but that are contained and easy to clean. We will definitely be doing this one again!

Goin' Fishin'

I realized the other day that I never posted one of the activities we made while we were staying with my parents this summer. It was pretty easy to throw together, and is a lot of fun!

This is just your classic fishing game, the inspiration for which came from here. Mine are not anywhere near as adorable as hers, especially my fishing rod (hers is awesome), but they get the job done. For the fish I just cut a fish shape out of different colors of felt, and jazzed them up a bit with puff paint. To make them magnetic I put a roll of wire in the mouth of each fish. Honestly, I can't give you any more detail about what kind of wire it was, it was just something I found laying around.

For the fishing rod I tied a piece of yarn around the end of a dowel rod and hot glued a magnet to the end of the string. Easy Peasy! Depending on whether Erik felt like sitting or standing, sometimes the string was too long, so we just twisted it around the end of the rod and it worked great. I liked having a bit of extra length on there to give us more options for where to play with this. 

This activity takes some practice when you first get started. We haven't played with it in months, and so today when I pulled it out it was like it was brand new again. Erik struggled to control where his "fish hook" was swinging, but he eventually got the hang of it and we sat and fished on the living room floor for quite a while. It really was a lot of fun! This is a great way to work on hand/eye coordination, talk about colors, and kill some time while you're waiting for your laundry to finish. :)

Sticky Spider Web Flop

As with the majority of the activities we do, this is one I saw on pinterest a while back, and when we were bored this morning I decided to give it a shot. It seemed simple enough. Make a "spider web" out of tape (we used painter's tape, since it was already handy and would come off easily), throw wads of paper at it, and enjoy watching your "bugs" get trapped in the web. 

We tried putting the tape up in a doorway, but I was having trouble getting the tape to stick well enough to the door frame, so we moved to the space between our two arm chairs so I could wrap the tape around the chair frames. This should've been my first hint that things weren't going to go as planned.
Once we'd made our web, I grabbed a few sheets of paper and had Erik help me wad them up. I excitedly told him to watch while I demonstrated how to throw the ball at the web and make it stick. Except it just bounced off the tape. Hmmm... that's odd. Brushed it off and encouraged him to try with me, sending two wads of paper into the web (double the chance of success, right?) They both bounced off. I tried just sticking the ball onto the tape, and it held, but just barely.
It was obvious that this wasn't going to work. In desperation I tried rolling up a ball of tape (sticky side out), and we threw that at the web. It worked, but in order to get the ball big enough to keep the difficulty level down, it became pretty heavy, and started pulling our web down with it.
That's when I gave up, pulled the web down, and added it to our sticky tape ball. Erik enjoyed playing with the wad of tape for a moment or two before we just threw the whole mess away and turned on Sesame Street instead. At least there's always Elmo, right?


*I went back to the original blog post and read through the comments and it looks like most people who tried this had the same problem. At least I know I'm not too stupid to make tape stick!

Water Bead Sensory Bin

So I know you've all seen these all over pinterest and the internet in general. These water beads are super popular right now as a sensory material, and I can totally understand why. They're fascinating little buggers, even for adults! I had never given them a try, but I've seen them around for a long time now and have wanted to play around with them.
A while back I decided that it would be fun to hit the dollar store every once in a while and just wander through to see what I can find. I think last time I spent about $10 and got enough fun stuff to keep us busy for a while. One of the things I found was a box of water beads, and for a dollar I was willing to give them a try. They are such bright pretty colors and look like candy, so Erik and I had a nice little talk about how we CANNOT eat these, and for the most part he did really well with that. I think the only time he moved to put them in his mouth was to get a reaction out of me, not because he actually wanted to eat them. We talked about how small they were, and tried to squeeze them to see if they were hard or soft. Then we added in the water and waited for them to grow. And waited. And waited.

 We went and played for a while, but kept coming back to check the progress of our water beads and to talk about how they were changing and growing. Erik has been interested in colors lately, so we talked a lot about the different colors we were seeing. After several hours they'd finished growing and we spent a long time just playing in the tub of beads. Erik loved it!

 When he seemed to be losing interest, I added in a few cups and scoops and we got to practice scooping and pouring. He was really enjoying discovering this new material, even his toes had to get involved...

This was  a great, inexpensive way to keep my busy boy out of trouble and engaged in something. If you want cheap, easy, low-mess fun than water beads are for you. I loved all the opportunities they gave us to develop language as we had a natural conversation about what we were seeing and feeling. They were beautiful and interesting and a whole lot of fun!

Walk (and Skip, and Hop, and Run, and...) on the Line

*Warning: If you have a problem seeing a mommy blog where the child is not dressed in a perfectly coordinated outfit (or even wearing any pants), and the home is messy and actually looks lived in then you better not read this post. :) 

Ever since he could walk, Erik has loved to see how close to the edge he can get. He loves trying to balance on things and see if he can walk on them. If he loses his balance though, he's okay with that because it means he gets to jump off of whatever it is and that's dare devil enough for him. 

I've toyed with the idea of making some kind of balance beam for him, and had even considered doing this particular idea, but I just never did it. Our new apartment is TINY so I don't have a place to put any kind of balance beam, and tape on the floor just didn't seem like it would be all that exciting. 

Then, I started seeing pins for games using masking tape all over pinterest, and thought that if everyone else thinks it looks like fun than maybe Erik will too. One day when he was bored and driving us both crazy I grabbed my roll of painter's tape and let him help me make a line on the floor. It looked too narrow, so I ended up putting three strips side by side. 

We started out walking on the line...

...but that soon turned into jumping.

 His "Ta Da!!!" pose: 

 Next he wanted to find out what else could walk the line. Various toys were put to the test, starting with this toy horse.

 It quickly became apparent that his toys were as good as he was at this game, so it was time to see what else could do it. Suddenly all the books off of my bookshelf were taking turns sliding down the line.

 Then, he decided he needed a bigger challenge. Would a can of pumpkin roll down the line? It turns out cans are a little more prone to wandering wherever they please. To be fair though, he gave a good number of cans a chance at the line, with generally the same results for them all. Cans just aren't good at rolling straight.

It was so fun to watch Erik work those legs muscles as he walked, tip-toed, jumped, skipped, hopped, and crawled along the line. It was even more fun to watch his little brain work as he tried sending object after object along the line. Amazingly enough, this simple little strip of tape kept this kid busy for well over an hour, and that's not including the time he spent the next day playing with the ball of tape we made when we pulled up the line. 

Squeeze Bottle Fun

This is another one of those "busy" activities I mentioned a while back. This one has been a huge hit though, and Erik begs to do it more than any of the others.
This one doesn't come from some college class, or great pin off of Pinterest. This idea was born as I was wandering through the store and noticed these ketchup/mustard bottles on sale for less than a dollar. I've actually been wanting some of these for a couple of other activities, but when I saw them in the store that day I knew right away what their primary use (at least for now) would be.

If you want something simple to prepare and engaging for your toddler, this should do the trick. All I do is fill up both bottles with water and turn Erik loose outside. He gets to enjoy spraying water all over while also building those hand muscles. 

 Once the bottles is more empty than full, it gets harder to aim and squirt at the same time, so I trade him for a new bottle. When the next one is getting low I combine the two together and he's ready to go for a few more minutes without my having to go back inside to refill bottles at the sink.

 Erik would keep spraying things for as long as I'm willing to keep refilling his bottles. This particular day he started trying to spray each individual pebble in front of our apartment. If he'd had an unlimited supply of water (aka a less lazy mom) he could've been occupied for a VERY long time.

Building a child's hand muscles is very important since they will need strong hands/fingers to be able to write some day. The more fun you can make this muscle building the more effective it will be.