Today we made apples on an apple tree using… apple stamps. I mean, of course! The hardest part of this activity was wandering around Walmart looking for the darn paper rolls! For the record, the white paper is down the craft aisle, by the poster boards. And the brown paper was in the paint aisle. There was paper in the packing aisle, but it was a huge roll for a lot more money. I didn’t figure I needed anything heavy duty, so cheaper definitely wins.
The second hardest thing was carving the apple and ***REMEMBERING TO DO IT BACKWARDS*** yeah, don’t forget that. Ahem… Lucky I had a bad apple I could carve into.
Anyway, after reading day 3 of Teach Your Child to Read and lesson 1 of Learn to Read, I made a large plateful of paint and let her stamp the tree we had drawn up together (Maybe cut the trunk out ahead of time, but honestly it wasn’t too time consuming that she got antsy). Then I handed her a white piece of construction paper for her to stamp on for our book of sounds.
I found these little counting muffins on Zulily and I’ve had my eye on them for a while so I couldn’t resist getting them for $10 cheaper, so I splurged. You’ll probably be seeing them a lot because there are lots of ways to use them. Since this was my girls first time seeing them I mostly just let them play with them, but since my toddlers are getting pretty excited about colors lately (it’s starting to click), we also used the time to focus on colors! I asked them to sort the muffins by colors. “Can we find all the red muffins? Let’s put the red muffins in this tin.”
They’re also a good size for little fingers to pincer grasp practice. And they’re are enough of them that my girls don’t fight over them, which is definitely a thing lately.
I mean, you can use anything and a muffin tin to sort colors (and we have), but these little muffins were fun, too. And they spark imaginative play, too because they’re muffins! There was lots of pretend eating happening while we sorted the colors (make sure your kids stick to pretend eating! They definitely don’t pass the toilet-paper-tube-test).
Okay, so this was on the fly… And it was a lot of work and mess so I probably won’t do it much in order to perfect it… so this is a super rough and casual draft.
Today, we made smoothies! Rainbow smoothies. Because I have been asked every day for a month if we could try it.
Purple: it was still way too red, but there wasn’t any fixing it. I started with my base of liquid, banana and pear. Then I added blueberries and huckleberries. I added 2 raspberries and that was a bad choice. Don’t do that. But honestly it was too red even without the raspberries because the huckleberries are pretty red. I added a blue little Gatorade powder and it made it good but tart. Not much purple-er.
Blue: let’s be honest, this blue is purple. It is almond milk, baby cereal and fresh blueberries because I hate frozen blueberries. And the pear and banana again. I can’t explain why, it is a texture thing. So the cereal is there to thicken it. If you like frozen blueberries you could skip the cereal. Or if you wanted to add oatmeal powder, that works too.
Alternative blue: I googled how to actually get a blue smoothie and there is something called spirulina powder. I might try that. My husband wouldn’t though. He’s not an adventurous foodie. Especially if it’s deemed healthful.
Green: by now everyone knows how to make green smoothies. Spinach is great for color and doesn’t have much flavor. Then I added lime juice (go light on that… I added too much), banana and pear.
Yellow: the easiest. Lemonade, mangoes, banana, and pear again.
Orange: I’m not sold on the orange. I did pineapple juice, mangoes, bananas, pear, and 2 strawberries. It was too light. But I wasnt about to open another juice with so many in the fridge. maybe no pear this time? Or no banana but I need bananas in my smoothies. I’m pretty picky. In a mango smoothie I probably wouldn’t notice it missing as much. I thought about adding peaches but tried to stick to few ingredients instead of opening everything.
Red: the juice from the can of pears, strawberries, raspberries banana, and the last pear. I though it was too pink so maybe no pear next time. I could have done straight raspberry but I don’t like all the raspberry seeds, lol. See? picky. Actually, one year when I had extra raspberries I made myself smoothie ice cubes that I’d strained all the seeds out of. That was when I was consistent at making smoothies for breakfast.
I made her fill her own cup with droppers to strengthen her pincer grasp. She got bored so maybe next time I’ll use the turkey baster? And it kept the smoothies separated by color instead of mixing together.
It tasted good, so there’s that. A little too tangy with the blue Gatorade and too much lime juice, but the flavors blended well together. The little girls liked it, too. They drank all of mine! And since their throats are pretty sore (sister gave everyone her cold because she hasn’t figured out how to cover her mouth…), They haven’t wanted much else to eat.
Guess what I’ve been doing this week? Except I refused to rush this process so I’ve actually been doing this for a couple of weeks, but we’re kinda in the thick of it right now. Send a soda and a carpet cleaner!
Anyway, I was sitting on the edge of the tub and musing on how potty-training twins is just different than potty-training singletons. I mean, in a lot of ways, it’s the exact same, but some things caught me off guard and I figured I’d post what I’ve learned. I’m not claiming to be an expert! I stink at potty-training! But if you have twins, and come across this post, I hope you get the advice you’re looking for.
first of all, there is someone to fight over your toddler’s underpants selection. Seriously, I let each girl pick out a character on their training pants, so I thought we’d be fine. But somehow, we get home, get into the potty-training process, and one twin suddenly wants the Cocomelon underpants that the other twin picked. Needless to say, we now have 2 sets of Cocomelon training underwear.
Also, you will need 2 training potties. with my older kids, I hardly ever used the little potties. It just seemed like 1 more step to get to independence. Besides, there is soooo much more cleaning involved! Invest in a good step and maybe a little potty seat, and you’re good to go! But with twins, you need 2. Not just 1. I’m sure you can guess why you need one… guaranteed your toddlers will have to go to the bathroom at the same time! But let me enlighten you on why you need 2: Both will want the toddler potty! Then you have two kids crying and peeing on your floor and pushing each other off the little potty, and … yeah. You get the idea. You need 2. And, in case you didn’t read the paragraph before this one, they need to look the EXACT SAME!
Another learning curve I didn’t expect involves rewards. I’ve always had the rule that anyone that celebrates in the potty victory gets a treat. So if big sister sees them go, she can get a treat. This is the way my mom always did it, and it worked! It gets the older kids to encourage the process. But there was an unexpected snag with twins… When everyone gets a treat for going potty, the twin that didn’t go doesn’t think they need to. They get the reward for zero effort. Ugh, I had so many puddles in my life until I changed that rule. Now, you only get a treat if you’re the one to go. Big sister doesn’t seem too offended by the change; but still, do yourself a favor and just not make it a thing that needs to break. Besides, with twins, you have a built-in cheerleader without the reward system.
And that built-in cheerleader is a special joy. I love watching my twins remind each other to go potty. I mean, sometimes it’s that one had an accident and so the other realized they had to go, but they’re so happy for the other kid’s success! And when one gets candy the other one decides they want candy, too, so they hurry to the potty for their own treat.
Something else that I wouldn’t say caught me by surprise, but was definitely highlighted is the fact that twins are two different people. I know, that sounds obvious. But each kid has their own way of doing things, so when you potty train individually, you tweak the system to fit what that kid needs. But when you’re potty training 2 at once, you have to use a little more finesse. For instance, my twin A is very go-getter. She’s bold. She goes potty for the success of being a big kid. She likes “special” underwear (i.e. not the training pants) and so having an accident in her special panties is so sad and worth staying clean and dry. Twin B could care less about special underwear. She totally goes potty to get the treat. Also, twin A has a stronger bladder. She needs to run to the bathroom less frequently. But twin B drinks a ton and runs potty a ton. I mean: All. The. Time! So, a potty timer just wont cut it! In fact, the potty timer really annoys twin A. She’s gonna go when she wants to go! So, twin A has special underwear, is reminded less frequently, and often would rather quickly go back to play instead of demanding her piece of candy. She’s methodical in the entire process. Twin B demands her candy every time, loves the praise for staying clean and dry, and has to go about 4 times as often. She also needs watched closer on washing her hands because she’ll try to take shortcuts.
Lastly, I never realized how much free time I had before I spent so much time in a bathroom! I mean, for REAL! I barely get anything done in its entirety in one sitting right now. Case in point: I am just plain typing this from sitting outside the bathroom, because I got sick of the walk from my regular writing spot all the way to the bathroom and back, just to repeat the process after one sentence. I am greatly looking forward to the day they’ll be self-sufficient enough to go on their own.
I am so giddy at how well these little mini lessons are going! I always told myself that “someday,” I’d do fun letter activities but I just never felt good enough or like I had the time to do such fun things. But I made a goal to spend more time with my kids, and then I made the goal to focus on letters. And it’s been so rewarding.
This activity was about the /s/ sound. And squishy slimy rainbow-colored spaghetti was just so fun to make! My kids wished I would have let them help, but I was the mean mom that did not feel like cleaning up food-colored clothes or kids or carpet.
To make rainbow spaghetti, just cook the spaghetti to done, add 20 drops of coloring and 2 tbs of water into a sandwich bag. mix it up and then add some spaghetti into the bag. It was about 2 pinches full of spaghetti, but really it’ll depend on how much spaghetti you cook.
For red, I simply did 20 drops of red.
For orange, I did 15 drops of yellow and 5 of red (and I could have favored the yellow even more than I did.
For yellow, it was easy peasy. 20 drops of yellow.
For green, I did 12 drops of neon green, and 3 drops of true green. it was such a pretty color!
For blue I did 15 drops of my cyan from the neon set and 5 drops of straight blue.
Purple was made by 12 drops of the neon purple, 5 drops blue, and 3 drops red. Honestly it was dark, so maybe it doesn’t need all 20 drops?
I had extra spaghetti so I decided to make some teal (12 drops cyan, 2 drops blue, and 5 drops of green) and some magenta (I only did 10 drops on this one because I wanted it to be more of a pink than a red. 7 drops neon purple and 3 drops red). You can look for them in the picture above if you want.
You’re supposed to only leave the spaghetti in for a minute… but I have kids. Yeahhhh, that spaghetti was in there for more like 5. And it didn’t end up all evenly colored, because ideally I would have at least mixed that spaghetti around every so often. But eh, my kids didn’t care and honestly, I didn’t either.
After it’s been in for the “minute,” rinse each color individually. after rinsing, I dumped them all back into the pan, and I’m telling you not to do that. Keep them all in their own bowl until right before serving/giving to your kids, them to keep the blues from dying the yellows.
Now that that is done, time for our little mini-school! We read the second lesson in our Teach your Child book, the letter S from the activity book, and then we made s shapes and traced them with our fingers. then I just let her and her toddler sisters play in the spaghetti (after they washed their hands… because I totally intended to count the munching I knew would happen as lunch)! Sensory play for the win.
I pulled out a few noodle colors and let them dry in S shapes so she can have something to trace throughout the week. I tried to dry them onto the paper so they’d just glue themselves to the paper but the noodles shrink as they dry and the paper got all curly. So before they ruined the paper and their shapes, I pulled them off and flipped them over to dry the rest of the way. As the lessons progress I’ll have her trace them with her fingers to include kinetic input into learning.
As I said in my post on Saturday, my preschooler and I made mmm monsters this week. Of course her sisters wanted to help, but my preschooler was excited about the one-on-one time with Mom and did *not* want to share her craft. Understandable, really. So I divided the eyeballs in half and my preschooler had half and my toddlers played with the other half. I was thinking later, I would make some kind of sensory bin with the eyes and actually keep them entertained, but they were so content the whole time we were working, I didn’t need to bother!
I would say it was a surprisingly good pincer grasp activity, because the eyes weren’t that easy to pick up off the table. because of their semi-spherical shape, they required extra focus to grasp onto. They focused pretty hard on being able to pick them up. Like I said, it kept them way more entertained than I thought it would to just sprinkle the eyes on the table, but I’m not complaining one bit. Sister and I got done with our activity long before they were bored of playing with googly eyes. They even figured out how to hold them up to their own eyes and make silly faces and get their co-conspirators to giggle.
I guess it’s a good idea to remind you that googly eyes are definitely a choking hazard, so watch your littles. Mine were sitting right next to me, so they were within my sight at all times.
My preschooler is great at counting! Numbers just click in her head. Letters, however… they might as well be some ancient Hebrew text. They just don’t compute. Although I am definitely an advocate for children learning at their pace, I was curious if we couldn’t aide her a little bit better just by doing a set of activities that were more 3d than just the standard color/cut/glue paper activities. My Family has a history of Dyslexia, and reading is so 2d! So, we made it tactile! And we are focusing on sound and not letter names. Starting with /m/.
I started with /m/ mostly because I’m using Teach Your Child To Read as our baseline. We do the lesson out of that, then we do the Learn to Read Activity Book of the same letter, because they involve movement. Then it’s onto the fun!
This week, we glued pipe cleaners and googly eyes onto our monster! And “teeth” that ended up being horns because they’re above where she put the eyes. When I called to talk to my mom this afternoon, she asked if we used M&M’s and I’m kinda kicking myself for not thinking about that! What a missed opportunity! So if you’re reading this, remember that M&M’s are totally an option.
After the pipe cleaner dried, I had her trace the letters with her fingers. With the pipe cleaners, she’s getting a sensory input while saying “mmmmmm.” Then I kept it handy because we review the sounds throughout the week.
Next lesson will be on the /s/ sound.
only involved because of the story. could be free play
**I wanna add a little disclaimer here that I was in no way gifted or rewarded for this post. Crayola doesn’t know I exist. **
When we were Christmas browsing last December, we passed these kits with animals to color and I wasn’t sure how I felt about them but I knew my preschooler would just love them! And getting her to color anything is a huge accomplishment (seriously! How many kids do you know of that hate coloring!? But she does). And then I just kept going back to them. So I decided to buy a set for each of my kids. I figured I just wouldn’t tell my toddlers that they could color on them (yeah, that didn’t happen. My preschooler is too smart, and she showed her too-smart little sisters). Then I figured I just wouldn’t let them know that they could wash the animals off. It just sounded like a huge wet mess.
But here I am. Writing a whole post about my kids washing these toys off. And honestly, it wasn’t so bad. They loved it. Yes, water got everywhere. It spilled more than once. But I had towels handy. And Crayola did a really good job about having these markers be very washable. So even though the water was colored after washing the toys, it didn’t stain my towels. When my toddlers got carried away with the markers, I just threw the shirts in the wash and took a washcloth to the colored stuffed animal and the colored marks came right out. I’ll make the disclaimer that the toys are rated ages 3+ and I think that’s a good benchmark. Which would mean this toddler activity is technically disqualified on that alone; but the toddlers had so much fun! And I didn’t feel crazy afterwards.
I don’t think I would trust this activity with younger toddlers, but you could easily modify this activity to involve plastic toys and little scrub brushes and bowls. The toys don’t have to be colored, or even dirty. Just have them give their toy pets a bath! The scrubbing itself is great for fine motor skills and hand/eye coordination. But it’s also good for imaginary play (especially when they’re little “pets”) and sensory (wet) play. Plus, *bonus*, you get some toys clean without having to do the work! I would still keep an eye on them, with multiple towels handy; But we will definitely do this again.
Remember the color paddles we borrowed? We are almost on our way to take them back, but when my preschooler saw me set them down by the door so I didn’t forget them, she asked to play with them again. There was still time, so I figured it was a good thing to take up time this morning! Today, I told her to go on a color hunt!
I told her to go find a matching color to all her paddles and set them next to the color. Super not planned, but totally counting it as intentional learning. She had a blast! She turned it into a race to see how fast she could put all the colors next to something.
The yellow went next to flounder. The purple matched up with this book. Blue ended up in a shoe. Green went on sister’s blanket. Her coat was red, and the farm toy was orange. She already knows her colors so this activity was definitely easy for her. If you have a younger preschooler, this activity would be perfect. But it made her think, all the same; it’ll still be fun for an older preschooler just because it involves thinking outside of the “what color is this, what color is this?” concept as toddlers are learning colors. And matching is still fun for preschool aged kids.
One of my toddlers has really been making me feel like pulling my hair out lately! Everything she gets her hands on, if it crumbles, she crumbles it. Bread. Crackers. Noodles. Her sister’s slow-rising squishy toys. It has been such a struggle.
And then, in a rare moment of enlightenment, it hit me! She needs some sensory input. You’d think with a quote unquote neurodivergent preschooler, I’d get that by now. And I’m constantly left in awe at how new a concept sensory seeking is when it is suddenly so prevalent in my own family. I look back on my own habits, and quirks and I realize I have my own sensory needs, but without parenting my kids, I’d never have recognized them in myself. Really, who doesn’t just need to compulsively do something sometime?
So I broke out the sand dough. It’s perfect for “crumbling.” and squishing. And running it through little fingers. I have had this sand dough for a while and honestly if I had to choose between sand dough and playdough, I choose sand dough, hands down. First, it’s way easier to clean up compared to playdough. Plus, from a sensory input, I think you cover a broader spectrum of textures and muscle movements. it squishes but it also crumbles.
Whenever I buy sand dough, I always either buy the tan (not colored?), pink/red, purple, or blue dough so that when it mixes together it’s still purple. Because I know it’s gonna get mixed in. And that way I can keep it all in one big tub. Our sand dough has some cosmic moon and star confetti in it too! Because when my preschooler dumped it in, I was not in the mood to pull it out, lol. We have quite a few different sets of toys for the dough, but if you don’t have any, I recommend getting a scoop, a slicer and a little bucket. A cookie scoop, a dough slicer, and your smallest measuring cup will work just fine. A knife will work for a slicer but it isn’t nearly as satisfying.
I had packed all the sand and playdough up and stuffed it in the top of my closet because I was so sick of the chaos spread far and wide. This time, I gave each kid a metal cake pan in hopes that it’d help corral the mess and I was pretty happy with that choice! I put all our toys in the middle of the table and kids could use any toy that was not in their siblings’ pan. If a kid was still playing with their toy, it was safe as long as they kept it in the pan. I was surprised at how well it worked.
ugh, I’m looking at this picture and there’s a hair in the scoop! gross. If you saw it, please pretend you didn’t. And if you didn’t, please don’t read this caption and then be disgusted.
I was really glad I listened to my intuition and pulled the sand dough back out. I gave my crumbly-loving toddler a few crackers with lunch, just to test the theory, and she ate them instead of playing with them! I don’t know if it’ll really stick, but it was definitely an improvement! And if we go back to crumbling, I can pull out the sand dough again!
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