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!



May 9: Taco Munch and Ty's Seed Munch

It's birthday week over here with a birthday party this past weekend and two birthday parties coming up this next weekend.  Needless to say, we have half of a cake left over and will be making cupcakes for the upcoming festivities.  I did not want to make any more sweet snacks for our kitchen activity today.  I searched and searched for another snack idea that we could easily make with the ingredients we already have at home.  This was tough as I need to do some grocery shopping.  Finally, I landed on Taco Munch from familyfun.com.  It didn't come together quite as planned, but I think it still turned out OK.  For starters, we made a half-batch, we didn't have the Corn Chex so substituted Cheerios, and didn't read the directions 100% accurately so we mixed the Parmesan cheese in with the taco seasoning and butter instead of sprinkling it on, nor did we add the cheddar cheese...yet.

Taco Munch
6 cups popped, unsalted popcorn
3 cups toasted corn cereal squares

1 cup mini-pretzels

2 Tbs. butter, melted

2-3 tsp. dry taco seasoning
2 Tbs. grated Parmesan cheese
4 oz. cheddar cheese, cut into 1/2 inch cubes (we only have shredded cheese so we'll be adding that)

Combine the popcorn, cereal, and pretzels in a large bowl.  Combine butter and taco seasoning in another bowl and drizzle over the popcorn mixture.  Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and toss to coat.  Store in an airtight container.  Toss with cheddar cheese before serving.  Makes 10 servings.

Since I'm back on my restricted food diet I can't try it, but Ty did.  The first bite was popcorn that had TONS of seasoning on it...he ended up spitting it out.  I was actually surprised he went back for more, but he tried a pretzel and a Cheerio and deemed them OK.

Let's add water!!!

After we finished the Taco Munch was when it got really fun!  I was cleaning up and Ty was eating the left over popcorn when he came across some unpopped seeds.  He found a bowl, put the seeds in, grabbed a spoon and stated mixing them.  Tysen told me he was making Seed Munch!  He decided to add popcorn, pretzels, and the proceeded to the fridge to find more ingredients for his recipe.  I probably should have let him use more food, but not knowing when he would stop I told him he wasn't going to get ingredients from the fridge, so he assured me it was just pretend.  He added pretend brown sugar and pretend cheese to the mix.  Then he asked for water.  I figured that couldn't hurt anything, so he dumped a cup of water in...and we watched the popcorn shrink before our eyes, accompanied by muted fizzing sounds.  And then he noticed the pretzels were getting puffy.  After more mixing, he wanted to heat it up on the stove top, so using our pretend skills again, he made it "hot, hot, hot!"  Naturally, he had to taste it...and thought it was wonderful!  I've included his recipe --I had him retell it to me -- for your enjoyment! :)



Adding the water.



Seed Munch

Mix using 3 spoons.



unpopped popcorn seeds

popcorn

pretzels

pretend brown sugar

pretend cheese

water



Taste test.



Mix with 3 big spoons.  Eat.  Put on top of the stove to make it hot, hot, hot!  Eat again.



Seed Munch after 30 minutes.  Of course,
we had to keep it to show Dad so the pretzels kept
growing and growing.



 P.S.  When Koen got home from school he did try Taco Munch and wasn't impressed, though he did qualify it and say he just doesn't like things mixed up like that.  Once he heard about Seed Munch, though, he had to make his own version. :)



May 6: Animal ABC Book -- part 3

We spent 15 minutes gluing some animal pictures in Ty's ABC book so we're not near finished.  He's sick of the project, though, so I suppose we'll take a break from it for a while and finish it another day.

Brielle had a fantastic time playing with the (unopened) glue sticks!

May 5: Back to Gymnastics!

As far as the boys were concerned, we couldn't get out the door fast enough to return to gymnastics class!!!  We're back at For the Kidz with Mr. Randy and loving it!  There are only six-weeks left in the school year session, though, and once the summer hits there's not a 3-4-5 year-old class.  So the plan is to enjoy another few weeks of class and then spend some time burning energy outside this summer.  We'll see what the fall brings...

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!

April 29: Ty's Animal ABC Book - part one and two

When Koen was 3-years-old we made an ABC book for him.  We took each letter and had a scavenger hunt around the house looking for items beginning with each letter.  Then we took pictures of the group of items (Koen was really interested in photography at this time) and labeled each item (A is for...etc.)  We place each photo and card in a 4x6 photo book and still look at it once in a while.  This book took a l-o-n-g time to construct as Koen would lose interest in it after a letter or two.  I think we took a whole summer to complete it. 

Koen's ABC Book



I decided it was Ty's turn to create an ABC book of his own, but I didn't want to do the same thing with him.  Enter the HUGE stack of magazines sitting on bookshelf in the boys' room.  They have subscriptions to My Big Backyard and National Geographic for Kids, and I've been saving them.  For one, I'm too Dutch to just recycle them, and also they have beautiful pictures and great activities for the kids.  Of course, the boys don't look through them like I thought they would, so I decided to use them to create an animal ABC book for Ty.  He L-O-V-E-S animals so I'm hoping he loves this book!  



Ty's Animal ABC Book



My scrapbook supplies provided us with different color cardstock for each page as well as animal print letters for each page.  Part one of this project was simply pasting the letters on the pages.  Tysen sang the ABC song at least 40 times while we did this...no joke!  I'm now 100% confident he knows his alphabet!!!  Not only does he know the song, but he was able to identify the letter needed and glue it on the page.  I have a surplus of page protectors in my home office, so we used those as our pages, placing each piece of cardstock in its own sleeve.  Learning from my experience with Koen I knew this wasn't going to be a one-day project so we just glued the letters on the pages.



Creating the cover.




Gluing letters on the cardstock.



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When Koen learned that Ty was making an animal ABC book, he naturally wanted his own.  Fortunately, we have enough magazines that I'm pretty sure we'll be able to find enough animal examples for each of their books.  On Sunday afternoon we worked on part two of the project...just paging through the magazines and finding animal examples.  The National Geographic magazines even have tear-out cards in each issue which provided a number of examples for us to use. 

I'm pretty sure I'm more excited about this project than either Koen or Tysen.  I thoroughly enjoy researching, and I actually learned a number of things about animals while searching for animal pictures to use.  Tysen liked looking at the pictures but wasn't too excited about cutting them out.  I ended up cutting most of them out, but I did rip some pages out with the hope that he'll be more in the mood to practice his cutting during part 3 of the project later this week. 



Koen searches for his next animal.




Ty browses a National Geographic for Kids.





April 28: Garage Sales!

Today's fun event?  Our neighborhood GARAGE SALES!  The boys really do enjoy going around hunting for "treasures" (aka "FREE" boxes = junk!).  Unfortunately, it was still quite cold and Koen got sick of it shortly after we began because his hand were cold.  His attitude improved greatly, though, when Grandma Smits found this Thomas and the Magic Railroad game for him and Ty.  While Grandma did show them how to play the game according to the directions, they are much happier to play their own way, and why not?  I love their creativity!  They've played this game everyday since owning it...by far the best find of the day. :)