Category Game

While Arin was asleep today, I looked through catalogs and cut out pictures in the following categories: People, Plants, Animals, Food. Then, I glued each picture on a piece of cardstock (mostly to make them more sturdy, but the colored border was nice too). Then, I wrote one category on the top of each new, full sheet of cardstock. When Arin woke up from her nap, we played the game. I had her put the pictures into the correct category. Since she can't read yet, she needed a little help to get started, but once each category had a picture or two, she did great with this project with very little help. She did have a little trouble with the "plants" category. I should have made it only "flowers" or only "trees". Also, there was some confusion to Arin as to why the animal chicken and the food chicken didn't go in the same category! Other than that, she did great. She wanted to play this game about a dozen times!

Visitors

Today, Arin had company. Ms. Pokey and Jamie came to visit. They brought Arin a birthday gift and they also brought some magazines and catalogs that we plan to use for projects in the future. Here is some pictures of Arin modeling her new clothes and new shoes. Arin has an obsession with shoes! What a great gift!

Charlotte's Web

Arin loves animals. She has two animal movies: Brainy Babies Animals and Baby Einstein Animals. From the time she wakes up in the morning, until she goes to bed, she is always asking for Animals. So today I took her to the free summer movie at Regal Cinemas. Charlotte's Web was playing. We got there about 10 minutes before the show was scheduled to start. It was about 10 minutes late starting, so Arin was pretty ansy by this time. When the movie came on, she was glued. She absolutely loved it, for about 40 minutes and then she was ready to go home. As soon as we walked out of the theatre, she started asking for animals again!


I went on this site and found Charlotte's Web Bingo. I printed out a game board for each of us. Instead of printing the spinner, I printed three more gameboards and I cut these into individual cards. We took turns drawing a card, finding the match on our gameboard, and placing a penny on that square. Arin liked the pennies best!




Next, we took the game cards and matched them up. As soon as Arin would get a match, she would put the penny on top! I think the card matching game was a little more on her level, but we'll play both games again later when it isn't so close to naptime.

Graham Crackers

Arin loves to snack. Of course, she loves potato chips and candy, but those are only very special occassion treats. Sometimes it is a challenge to find a variety of healthy snacks. I found this recipe for graham crackers about a year ago. I only made them one other time and she loved them then, so I decided to make them again. I like that there is honey and molasses instead of sugar as the sweeteners.

Arin loves to help me bake, so she had a great time pouring and mixing the ingredients.

(scooping the wheat so we can make flour)

Then, I thought we'd try cutting these out with cookie cutters. That idea didn't work out so well. She did enjoy playing with the cookie cutters, but once the graham crackers were baked, they broke in pieces other than what we had cut out with the cutters. Arin didn't mind though. She still enjoyed the graham crackers!

Handprint Puzzle

My parents and little sister are leaving tomorrow to go to NY for five weeks to visit relatives.


So tonight, Arin made a puzzle to send to NY to her Great-Grandmother. My grandmother is 93 years old, but she still enjoys puzzles and such. Arin had a good time painting this puzzle. When she was finished covering it in paint, we put her handprint in the middle.

This picture of Arin & her Great Grandma was taken in April 2008

Red Light, Green Light

Arin has an obsession with traffic lights. Everytime we are in the car and she sees a red light, she says "Stop, Mama!" and when she sees a green light, she says "Go, Mama!" So today we made our own traffic light.


First, I had Arin color a piece of paper with different shades of yellow, a second piece of paper with different shades of green, and a third paper with different shades of red. I let Arin pick the order that she wanted to color.




Next, I cut circles out of those colored papers and I drew three circles on a white paper. In the first cirle, I wrote RED, the second I wrote YELLOW and the third I wrote GREEN. Then I attached a magnet to each cut out circle and a magnet to each drawn circle. I had Arin match the correct colored circle to the correct drawn circle. She was less than impressed with this game!



So I decided to pull the magnets back off the papers (to save these for a better project) and we glued the circles instead. This was the first time that Arin had used regular white glue.

Tackle It Tuesday

I wanted to participate in Tackle It Tuesday this week, but didn't have a lot of time today. So I tackled a small project - My casserole dish cabinet. Looks so nice now that it is organized, so I will have to make sure I keep it this way!

BEFORE (Yikes!)

AFTER

Summer Matching Cards

Today, I had to work half a day, so Arin went to play at Aunt T's house. They had a lot of fun. They spent a long time outside together, where they played, blew bubbles, and colored with sidewalk chalk.


This evening, I printed out some Summer Matching Cards. I thought this activity might be a little difficult for Arin since there were several cards and she had never done this activity before. I was wrong, this was a simple activity for Arin, but she seemed to have a great time with it. She was really proud of herself when she matched all of the cards right. She did a little dance and twirled around because she was so excited!

Menu Plan Monday

Sunday: Pesto-Mozzarella Stuffed Chicken/Sauteed Yellow Squash/Seasoned Baked Sweet Potato Slices

Monday: Spaghetti/Baked Seasoned Asparagus

Tuesday: Seashells Con Broccoli (didn't make this last week because I was sick)/Garlic Chicken/Carrots

Wednesday: Sheppard's Pie

Thursday: Chicken with Apricots

Friday: Tarragon Chicken Bundles/Rice

Baking for the Week: Bread, Graham Crackers, Pumpkin Pie, Blueberry Muffins, Peanutbutter Cookies

Unplug Your Kids: FLAT

This week's Unplug Your Kids theme is Flat. We decided to make this a cooking lesson as well.

First, Arin helped me to pound some chicken flat for Pesto-Mozzarella Stuffed Chicken Breasts. This was the first time we had made this recipe and it was delicious!

Next, we made peanut butter cookies. Arin helped me to flatten these before we baked them.

Arin has always loved to help me cook/bake, so we had a great time with this week's project!

Cereal Necklace

Uncle Todd has bought Arin a few candy necklaces and she loves them. So I thought it would be fun for her to make her own edible necklace using Fruit Loops. This was a great project. We used a plastic needle tied to thick string. This was the first time that she had ever "threaded" anything. She did great with this project - except that it was more fun to eat the Fruit Loops than to string them!