Puppets!

I don't know why I decided to do this, but for some reason I told the kids we'd make puppets. So, when we were doing our grocery shopping at Wal-Mart we stopped by the craft section and each kid got to choose 2 pieces of felt.


Puppet

After nap I traced a rough idea of a puppet onto the felt and cut it out. If your kids are a little older they can probably do that part by themselves, my boys are on the edge of being able to.

Next I threaded a yarn needle with a 1 foot length of embroidery floss. I tried yarn, but it is too hard to get through the felt. The emboridery floss was perfect (and for those who embroider, I used the whole six strands and did not bother stripping it.)



Then they had at it and sewed up a cute little puppet in less than half an hour with lots of rethreading the needle by me. We drew on features with markers. The crayons didn't work super great, but markers didn't show up at all on the black felt.......

This is a great activity for many ages because you can add difficulty by adding more details. I'm sure we will be making many more puppets in the coming weeks.

Preschool Corner: life happens

It's summer so I'm really not trying to schedule too much for learning, but still want to keep learning. If you know what I mean.

So, here's some activities we did:

We made cow costumes to celebrate "Dress like a cow day" at Chik-Fil-A. You get free food if you go in dressed like a cow. We were already going anyways to meet a friend, so..... We turned it into a learning activity.

We talked about how many legs cows have, and what do cows say. They also could tell me what cows eat and we talked about how our cousins had cows at their house. We talked about what we can make from milk and visiting the cheese factory.

Then we showed off our costumes by wrestling..... Sigh, they're in a major wrestling phase. I finally had to make specific rules about when and where.


We made puppets. I finally got my scanner working again, so I can post that pattern to share with everyone. It's very simple. I would say this is definitely a 3-4 year old activity. Princess just was not interested enough to get this completed.

 

I'm a big believer in spending as much time as possible outside. This is made harder by the 100 degree weather we've been having, so our outside time recently has been lots of splash parks and pools. As a result my kids are turning into little brown nut childs. They've also gotten immensely better at swimming and lots better at climbing. It's lots of fun to watch their gross motor skills develop.

So, that's our last week or so of preschool activites. to see a bunch of other great preschool activities check out the Preschool Corner.

Our new project coming up

Supplies for our latest project. And I'll get start posting about our last week or so later today after grocery shopping.

Imagination and Pretend

I loved making up games growing up. As kids in California my best friends and I would play BFG:ButterFly Girls. We would run all over our backyards and the nearby playground pretending we had wings when we were up in the sky and when we came to earth our wings magically transformed into cloaks so we could blend in. I was very disappointed when I moved to Texas and all the girls in that area were "too grown up" for imaginary play. Or at least the girls my age, so I played with kids a couple of years younger.

Fast forward a bunch of years. My kids play pretend games all the time. They find a place a window at the playground and suddenly they're the guy at the drive through. Or a short order cook. They run all over the playscapes fighting off "bad guys." In the pool they're drowning and someone needs to rescue them. It's wonderfully fun to watch.

Part of why I think they play like this so much is because I haven't been hyper nervous about what they do. I believe that TV has its place, not a central place, but there is things to be gained from watching it(and not just PBS). After watching Scooby Doo for a while they incorporated fighting monsters into their play. Edited to add: I was thinking that over and felt like it came off as people who don't let their kids watch TV are crazy and I have the best solutions. That is not my intent at all, more I think that some TV shows can add to your kids imagination because it gives them new ideas to add into their play. I get frustrated by parenting blogs where it feels like the person is on a high horse and thinks everyone else is wrong. So, I try not to do that too much here.....

We read lots of books. Both of their parents are bookworms, and we don't just read books. We also get them magazines and comics. They LOVE superheroes, and there is a comic with the Justice League that is aimed at preschoolers. They've devoured them, I think quite literally.

I also think playing with older kids helps enhance their imagination. They get to see more complex ideas for play and my kids have seen that.

As to what we have in our house to help with this:



Costume Box- I scour the after Halloween sales for costumes my kids would like. I also make some. I made my boys a couple of sets of knight armor. I've made more capes than I can count. It simple cut a cape shape out of a knit fabric or felt or fleece, and iron on velcro. That easy.



Play kitchen- this is honestly a great investment for any parent, with lots of play food. If you don't have enough playfood they will make anything into that. My kids have brought me a "plate" full of train tracks and said, "Here's your soup Mommy." Yummm.....



Legos- I've just moved my kids up to the little ones, we're donating the Duplos to my Mom's house. This is one area where you don't want to buy the offbrand, with the possible exception of Mega Block. My kids will all sit and play for hours with these. I'm actually going to put a post together later about this. I'll admit each kid has their own thing. Mine never really played with blocks, but Legos........

See more great picnic talk posts at ABC and 123

Tot School: Discussion

So, why a picture of a curly fry? Because we had a great discussion about things it reminded us of. They all decided it was a "nado fry," which to interpret means it's a tornado fry. See a few weeks ago we were driving home from Wisconsin and were in the midst of a tornado...... So, we talked about how it looked like a tornado and what a tornado looked like. We talked about how we got to find out how tornados form at the science museum.


Last week, we made Yankee Doodle. So, this week I've had nonstop requests to sing it. And Princess has been learnig the song, along with about 20 million variations on 10 little Indians (you can fill in whatever word you want: 10 Little Batmans, 10 Little Diegos.....). All Princess can remember of it is "all in a row," so she rpeeats it over and over and shakes her hand using sign language for 10. Since we're singing it in the car I use sign language to count because I can do that with one hand.


We made paper. I came to two conclusions: 1. This is really not age appropriate and 2. This kit is really bad, the materials are not well made, however I think I could figure out how to make my own kit.


Princess started to make a puppet, which I'll finish for her soon. She's really too young to do this project, but her brothers were doing it and that wasn't going to stop her. I'll post more details, a pattern, and help on making it later.

Outside play


We went to a great new park this week. The kids loved diggin in the sand, and right next and finding the dinosaur bones. Mainly they made castles. Anyone know a good sand castle kit?


Right next to that area was a nice little water area, it reminded me of running through a whale with lots of sprinklers. So you play in the sand, and then you get all the dirt off in the sprinklers. Very important rule, you can't go back in the sand afterwards. I'll post more info on this great park later.


At swim lessons one of the skils they want you to learn is to float like a starfish. So, she's been practicing it on her own in our baby pool. "Mommy I starfish. See Mommy."

And, here's the cutest picture of all, or so I think.


For more great Tot School ideas, go to Carisa at 1+1+1=1