June 15: Paper Toss and Painting

I found this Paper Toss Game and thought it might be fun for the kids to play.  I glued six toilet paper rolls together in a triangle shape and then crumpled up some paper into little balls.  I gave the boys the paper balls and told them to try to toss them into the toilet paper tubes.  If they were a bit older we could have done different points for each tube, but I just wanted them to have fun tossing the ball into the tubes. 

Koen's first attempt wasn't so much a toss as a shot, so it bounced off the edge and landed on the floor.  Frustrated, Koen decided he was done after one turn.  Unfortunately for him, I made him try it again.  After adjusting his technique, he did get a few in which improved his mood somewhat.  Tysen found it worked best to stand right next to the tubes to drop the paper balls into the tubes.  He had great fun with this game.  Even Brielle got in on the fun!  She'd crawl after the balls that didn't make it into the tubes and crawl back to put them in herself.  She was so proud of being so helpful!

Later in the day, Ty asked if he could paint handprint fish (described in a previous post), so we pulled out the paint and let the boys paint.  It was the best part of the day for all of us! :) 

June 8: Grocery Store Game

We usually try to grocery shop on  Wednesdays after bringing Koen to school, and Ty is usually fine with going.  He likes to help push the cart and put things in the basket.   But today was a different story.  He did NOT want to go to the store and made that very obvious.  He stated that we had plenty of food at home and we didn't need ANYTHING, and while we are extremely blessed, we did need A FEW things.  He finally changed his mind, got out of the van, and headed into the store.  Once inside, however, he wasn't so sure he was happy to be there.  He plowed through a sucker and a small bag of Froot Loops I happened to have along, and then it could have been trouble, but I had an idea.  He loves I-Spy books, etc. so what if we made the shopping trip into a I-Spy type game?  He went for it!  He helped me find bananas, asparagus, strawberries, cereal, M&Ms, yogurt, butter, and so many more things!  He was a wonderful helper...we'll have to play this game more often.  Why didn't I think of it sooner???

May 25: Find that Animal!

Each Wednesday I suggest games to Ty and he's just not that interested in them.  Today, though, a "game" just kind of happened.  Brielle had a doctor's appointment today and of course, Ty was there, too.  While we were waiting for the doctor to come in, Ty noticed the wallpaper in the room.  It was based on the Noah's Ark Bible story and had pairs of animals portrayed...but in a more abstract form.  He initiated the game by asking me if I saw the elephants.  So we took turns asking each other to find different animals.  Some were familiar like the elephants, giraffes, birds, etc., but I was surprised to find that Ty knew ostriches and other more not-as-common animals.  Sometimes it's the child-initiated, on-the-spot fun that beats any plan I may come up with.

May 11: Popcicle Stick Game





                                                

                                                                    Making the "T" was his favorite.

I found the idea for this little game at Ramblings of a Crazy Woman blog.  I pasted Popsicle sticks on construction paper last night.  Today, I gave Ty 6 Popsicle sticks and his own piece of construction paper and asked him if he could make the same shape.  He wasn't really interested in playing until I pulled out the old reverse psychology:  "I bet it's too tricky for a three-year-old!" (Is this bad?!?)  After that he laughed and wanted to try. 

The first page was two sticks in a line and the second one was the letter "T" for Tysen.  He got those just fine, but after that he was more interested in just making his own shapes rather than copy the ones I'd done.  I don't know if this was just him playing around or if coping the shapes was difficult for him.  In playing around with the sticks he did make a pentagon, so I showed him that he'd done one without even copying it...he laughed. :) 



And then Ty came up with a variation on another game we sometimes play.  Tysen has a tendence to fall asleep on the way to pick up Koen from school so sometimes we try find letters he can recognize, busses, count certain color cars, etc.  Ty had been talking about rainbows, starting with which colors are not in the rainbow (have you ever thought of the rainbow in that respect?)  When I asked him if he knew what colors were in the rainbow he said, "Purple, blue, green, orange, and red."  Funny that he listed them in reverse order from usual (and missed yellow).  Since he last mentioned the color red, I suggested we count red cars today, but Ty wanted to count rainbow cars.  It took me a minute to figure out what he wanted to do.  First he found a red car, then an orange car, yellow bus, green truck, blue car, and we had a little trouble with purple but we saw a somewhat grey-purple car and a dark burgundy car so we're calling it good.  Creative guy!

I need to be a proud/impressed parent for a moment, too.  Yesterday while the boys were playing Ty started counting...1, 2, 3, 4...all the way to 22 (!) only missing number 16.  I had no idea he could count that high!  I'd heard him count up to 11 with no problem but the others were a surprise.  I told him is was so proud of him and impressed and asked if he'd do it again...of course, then my silly Ty started counting 1, 28, 13...and laughed.  Silly kid!



April 27: Tangrams



Jack-in-the-box...
the only one we could really figure out.



A version of tangrams was on the back of a cereal box, so I saved it thinking it'd be a great game for Ty and I to do together.  I remember playing with the tangram shapes in school...creating shapes and pictures...I always enjoyed the challenge!  I looked up "tangrams" online, for those who are interested, and found out it's an ancient Chinese puzzle game.  There are plenty of online sources to play yourself if you so desire. 

Needless to say, it was a bit difficult to use the cereal box tangrams set.  The black shadow images were not true to size and used overlapping shapes...two things that made it tough for Ty...and me, too!  He finally started creating his own puzzle shapes (see his "whale tale" below).  I think it would have been much easier to have different color pieces and true-to-size puzzles to solve.  We'll hang on to the pieces though...maybe I'll go online and find some more kid-friendly puzzles for us to solve together. 

Tysen's "Whale Tale".

April 13: Candy Land

Well, I think it's a record...Tysen and I got about a half-game of Candy Land in!  After that, he was content to just have his guy jump around the board to "eat" the different candy.  Still, it was nice to play with him...he's getting the concepts involved, just not always choosing to implement them. :) 

February 2: Games and Gummi Candy

Today is a snow day over here so both Seth and Koen are home from school!  As the snow and wind swirl outside, the boys and Seth played tag, duck-duck-goose, and some racing PlayStation games.  The boys love their time with their Daddy and their Daddy loves spending time with his boys! 

Koen spotted the candy molds last night and asked to make more gummi candy...a perfect snow-day activity.  We first made this recipe last June and ended up with more than enough grape gummi candies (see post from June 29).  Today, I decided to make a half-recipe using the lemon jello we had in the house.  I didn't get a chance to link to grkids.com where I first saw it (now I can't find it there) or post the recipe last time so I'll include that with this entry.

Gummi Candy
Ingredients:
6 pouches of Knox gelatin
2 boxes (same flavor) of 3 oz. Jello (not sugar free!) 
2/3 cup PLUS half of a 1/3 cup of water

Equipment:
A medium Pyrex measuring cup...ideally with a pour spout  -- be sure it's glass!
A pot large enough to fit the Pyrex cup
Candy Molds (We got our set at Michaels)

Measure the water and pour it into the Pyrex cup.


Stir, stir, stir!



SLOWLY add all the Knox and Jello stirring the mixture thoroughly.  Cover the Pyrex cup and let it set for 10 minutes.  While you're waiting, put some water in the pot and start heating it.  It should be almost boiling when the 10 minutes is up.  Your mixture should look a little gritty.

Carefully place the Pyrex cup into the pot of boiling water.  Stir frequently.  You want to MELT the mixture, NOT boil it!  Constant stirring will help keep it from boiling.   



When the melting is done, it will be totally liquid...thinner than the original mixture, but not watery.  You may get a little foam on the top and that's OK. 

Are they ready to eat yet?

When you're finished melting the mixture, have your molds laid out on the counter and pour the mixture in.  No need to grease the molds, the candy comes out easily.  This is when the Pyrex pouring spout really comes in handy!  Be sure you have a number of molds ready as this mixture makes A TON of candy!!!  (That's why we made a half batch this time.)

Place the filled trays in the refrigerator for about 10 minutes to help the candy set (we needed to do this in the summer, not in the winter with a cooler temp in the house).  Pull the candy out of the trays and enjoy!  Store in an air tight container in the fridge. 

November 5: Games Galore!

Friday isn't usually game day, but it had been awhile since Ty and I had played a game together, so I told him I was going to finish working in the office for five minutes and then we would play a game together.  I suggested he go find the game he wanted to play, he cheerfully said, "OK!" and ventured into the den on his own. 

When I left the computer room a few minutes later and met Ty in the den, this is what I walked in on.  I'm not sure if he couldn't decide what to play or if we was hoping we'd play all of them!  After cleaning up the mess, he selected Memory as our game to play (not even in the original mess).  Of course, his idea of playing Memory is to dump out all the cards on the floor and try to find  matches (just FYI- there are way too many cards in this game for a kid to play.  I usually try to pick out 8-10 pairs).  I tried to line up all the cards (face up) nicely so we could play some similar version of the original game, but by the time I finished doing that, Ty was finished with the game.  After all, he'd found three matches! 

September 22: Thomas games

When I suggested to Ty that we play a game, he immediately ran for Thomas Tic-Tac-Toe.  It's a little advanced for him, but he loves it!  We just keep placing the cards in the slots, popping them out and then doing it again.  I try to teach him about getting three in a row, but he doesn't really care.  Every time he puts a card in place he yells, "I block you!"  So he's got half of the game down.  We'll keep working on strategy! :)

After tic-tac-toe, we did take the cards and try to play a memory/matching game with the five different engine cards, but that didn't last long.  We also pulled out a few puzzles...it'd been a while since we'd done those, too, so that was enjoyable for a few moments before he ran off to play something else.

August 9: Two minutes of Candy Land

The month of July got us way off this schedule I've been trying to keep.  Between being away from home and having family visit our regular activities just didn't happen.  So I'm trying to get back on track.

Monday is Game Day.  Well, when I suggested playing a game Koen was already coloring a Thomas picture and didn't want to finish it later.  Tysen, though, was excited and pulled out Candy Land.  Now his idea of playing Candy Land is taking the game pieces and making them jump all over the board until they reach the castle.  I thought I'd try to introduce him to the more structured version of the game today but that was not of interest to him.  He then abandoned the game and left with Daddy when Daddy said he was going to the tool store.  Literally, we "played" the game for two minutes...maybe less.

So much for getting back on track with our schedule.  I guess tomorrow is another day.  Of course, the boys are off the Grandpa and Grandma's overnight for the next two night, so we'll pick up later in the week. :)

P.S.  A bit later, after Koen finished his picture he said he wanted to play a game...on the computer!  Not with mom...hmmm...I guess it's still in the spirit of things!

July 12: Monopoly

We haven't been faithful with our schedule due to the fact that Jane, Mark, Evan, and Annika are in town, but we did fit a game in this Monday.  Koen and I searched through Grandpa and Grandma's games and Koen picked Monopoly.  We've played this before at our house, though it's a modified version.

To start out, Koen and Ty argued about who would get to be the train for the game.  Seth and I finally helped them decide that Koen would simply use his Thomas train for his game piece and Ty would get the train game piece.  Win-win!  In our version, we roll the dice to go around the board, but if you land on a property you automatically get the card.  You can go around as many times as you want to, but this time we just went around the board once.  Koen reached "Go" first and had the most cards!  This kid seems to win all the games fair and square!   

This revised game is good practice for counting, both the number you roll on the dice and the squares you move ahead.  The money concept is a bit advanced for our kids at this point, but as long as they have fun playing together and enjoy the family time, I'm satisfied!

June 28: Cootie!

Today's game was Cootie...not one of my personal favorites, but maybe that's because Koen keeps winning!  It is a fond memory for me though, as we used to play this at my Grandpa & Grandma Smits's house when I was a little girl.  Ty only half-played, rolling the dice a few times and then just building his cootie.  Apparently, I was doing so poorly, Ty looked at me and said, "I help you, Mom."  I think that was my favorite part of the game!  After the "official" game, we just played with the different cooties.

June 21: Game Day

We gave a Bean Bag Toss game to Seth for Father's Day (though we may be returning it for a more sturdy version).  For game day today, we set up the Bean Bag Toss in Grandma and Grandpa Smits's living room (we were there so Daddy and Grandpa could ride to Grand Have together for work).  Ty loved sitting right next to the board and dropping in the bean bags.  Koen tried to stand a ways away and toss it in, but was immediately frustrated when he couldn't do it.  He pouted for a while until I got him to stand closer to the board and try to toss it in, and wouldn't you know?  He got them all in with no problem.  His perfectionistic mind-set might hold him back from having a lot of fun if we don't keep encouraging him to keep trying!  He did have fun with it for a few minutes after that, but then went off to play with his trains.

Earlier that day we had watched _Word World_, a show on PBS Kids.  We no longer get PBS at our house since the Digital TV switch, so the was the first time I'd seen the show.  I was really impressed!  They used the root word "-oat" and then made different words from that.  Grandma Smits had flashcards with letters on them, so I got Koen playing a game creating new words out of different root words.  We used -oat, like in the show, -in,-ig, -an, -age, and a few others.  We made some real words and some non-words which he had no problem recognizing.  He had more fun with this game than with the bean bag toss!

June 14: Picture Link

For our game day, Koen and Tysen chose to play Picture Link with their friend Ian (he was at our house for the day) and me. Picture Link (by Binary Arts), a birthday present for Koen from Grandpa and Grandma Davies, has been fun for the boys. It's a fairly quick and simple game, yet still fun for everyone. Tysen just has a good time with it and doesn't play by the rules, but Koen is beginning to learn about strategy. Koen r-e-a-l-l-y likes to win, so when someone else wins I've had some teachable moments to show him how to keep a good attitiude. Of course then I have to model that for him when he wins. :)

We played a few rounds and then the boys were off chasing monsters again.

June 7/Day 1: Game Day

After this past school year, I've learned that Koen really thrives on routine. He was THRILLED with the idea of having each day of the week hold a different special activity. He already knows which activity belongs with each day. Smart kid! And whatever excites Koen tends to excite Tysen.

So the first day on the new (flexible) schedule was Game Day. I asked Koen which game he would like to play...he has a number of games, many that we haven't played in a quite a while. I listed a few options and he replied, "I would like to play Thomas trains." OK. Not quite the "game" I had in mind, but it's a new way of life, so to speak, and there's no reason to quibble about the definition of a game, so we played Thomas the Train Engine and Friends for the afternoon. He was so excited!

As much as I don't like how the trains in the Thomas stories are rude and revengeful toward each other, I admire Koen's passion for his trains. I'm continually impressed by his story retelling/reenacting as well as his creativity with his own stories or revisions of stories he knows. If you ever want to hear a good Thomas story, give Koen a call and he'd be happy to share one with you (but first be sure you have plenty of time...you never know how detailed/long the story might be).

He's also recently branched out and begun using Duplo blocks to build sheds and the Sodor Steamworks for the engines. I've also rediscovered my enjoyment for building. Building with blocks in and of itself is a great activity...learning how to balance, how to fit together, how to work with structures so they are strong and lasting.

Koen & Tysen have plenty of opportunities to learn the joy of sharing while playing with their treasured trains -- sharing trains, sharing blocks, sharing tracks, sharing Mom's attention.

So our first game day wasn't what I had pictured, but maybe this flexible schedule will teach me a thing or two, too. Knowing this was the "game" I was going to play with my boys that day, I took a deep breath and actually enjoyed playing Thomas the Tank Engine rather than simply enduring it.

P.S. Tysen was napping most of the time we were playing trains, but was able to join us for some of the time after waking up. Koen graciously shared with Ty when he joined the "game"...I loved that part!