September 23: Weigh In!

I found this fabulously simple idea in The Preschooler's Busy Book by Trish Kuffner.  I pulled the bathroom scale downstairs for Ty and Brielle.  They love standing on it and watching the number pop up.  Tysen weighed 38.8 lbs. and Brielle was 23.2 lbs.  We talked about that Ty's number was bigger because he's a bigger boy that Brielle and that makes him heavier. 

The idea from the book was to find items around the house to weigh and figure out what weighed more, less, or the same as the kids.  Ty just wanted to weigh his favorite toys, though, and none of them are even close to his weight.  Nor were they heavy enough register on the bathroom scale.  Fortunately, I have a kitchen scale, so I pulled that out and Ty was unbelievably excited to weigh all of his favorite things.  We tried to line them up lightest to heaviest, but many of them weighed the same.  I did ask Tysen a bunch of questions as we were playing around with the scale: 

• Why did Ferdinand weigh more than Thomas (Ferdinand has a tender!)
• Before we weigh Sally and Mater, hold them in your hands and guess who will be heavier (Mater because he's bigger!)
• Will Bash and Dash weigh the same? (Yes!  They're twin trains.). 

He created his own hypothesis when he brought Cranky the Crane to the scale and said, "Maybe Cranky is the heaviest!"  (He was right!)  When he placed 3 Bob the Builder machines on the scale at the same time he said, "Three are the betterest!" (meaning heaviest). 

He weighed toys for over 30 minutes!  We'll have to do this again someday...maybe we can branch out from die-cast toys and compare books, tools, and other household items.

The lineup:  lightest to heaviest.



May 1: Baby Treasure Basket



Oooo!  What's this?



In the past few days I have spent hours online reading other blogs and gathering ideas to do with the kids.  I am so excited to have found some ideas for Brielle!  I spend tons of time with Ty and Koen and am sad that I've "neglected" her when it comes to activities and projects.  Now that she's one-year-old I'm going to try to include her more often (though it's often just plain easier to do things with the boys while she sleeps).

Her first activity:  The Baby Treasure Basket (original idea found HERE at "The Imagination Tree").  Of course, there are themed basket ideas, but I just went through the house and found 20 interesting items.  Maybe I'll be organized enough in the future to do a themed basket, but for now this works just fine.  In Brielle's Treasure Basket is a:

• Funnel
• Spatula
• Rice in a Tupperware container to shake
• Stuffed animal
• Play-doh shape
• Clapper
• Cup
• Duplo block
• Toy giraffe
• Textured ball
• Little People pig
• Soft football
• Toy eye glasses
• Wooden goose
• Truck
• Plastic pot
• Wooden play cheese
• Pez
• Teaspoon
• Enclosed bead game (garage sale freebie)

I placed these items in a basked we already owned and let her begin exploring.  She played with the items and the basket for a good half-hour, with the spatula and the rice container being her two personal favorites. 

Koen was intrigued by the idea of a treasure basket and thought he should have one, too!  Personally, I think he was excited about the "treasure" prospect.  He found another basket and begin filling it with some of his favorite things:  his stuffed puppy, a rubber band, a musical toy, etc.  He may not need to discover, explore, and experience things like his little sister, but I thought it was cute that he created his own.

Big Brother helps take everything out of the basket...inspecting everything as he goes.



The spatula:  a perfect teething toy!