First of all, I have no intention of these cookies making it until Easter. In fact, most of them were eaten by the end of the night. But We all just needed something fun to do. So we busted out some spring sprinkles, I whipped up some frosting, and some cookies, and we all just sat at the table.
I put a dab of frosting on everyone’s cookies and piled sprinkles on their plates and passed out plastic spoons. By putting the frosting in a dollop I kept from cross-contamination when my toddlers licked their spoons. Because that happened. And all the sprinkles were unceremoniously dumped on top. But I didn’t care. I wasn’t giving them to anyone but the designers, so it worked for me. I feel like usually when we make cookies, they’re going to someone and I cringe at all the sprinkles or the lumpy frosting. It was fun to just let them play. I wish I could say they ate all their cookies… But they ate the frosting and the sprinkles and I ended up throwing licked-clean cookies away after I sent them to bed.
My toddlers love coloring. like, love it! They color something about once a day. It’s a crazy juxtaposition because my preschooler loathes coloring! While they were coloring today they ploughed through all the markers in record speed! They just became strong enough to yank the lids off so it’s fun new territory to not have to bring the marker to Mom to open. Not gonna lie, my normal response is to feel overwhelmed and surges of anger (triggered by the overwhelm), but today I had an ah-hah moment! It’s the perfect time to work on sooo many skills! First, there’s the responsibility aspect; we take care of the tools we use! But there’s also matching, and practicing our colors (which has been an key interest with them lately. Suddenly they’re not calling everything green or pink). So I sat down with them and made them match the lids and the markers, and we put them away right.
I mean, I know this is something every kid needs to learn, eventually. But the more I thought about it the more intentional the activity became, even if it wasn’t planned. And you know what? They aced it.
p.s. color wonder is genius! I’m not getting rewarded for saying so, I just love that I don’t have to worry about clothes or furniture being colored on. Getting marker (especially dry erase marker) out of everything has not been my favorite mommy experience. Probably my second least-favorite right behind potty training. And that’s saying something because there are a lot of unpleasant mommy experiences…
An unspoken thing that I personally think is amazing about conference is that there are so many family traditions involved in how each household watches conference. If you feel like you need a new tradition in your family, here are are some resources I have found from the Church (while planning our FHE lesson for this week) that are totally free to you!
Print off and fill out conference notebooks (for older or for younger kids; or one of these pages one, two for in between)
color by topic pages (I personally think this one is worth it! love it). There is this one, as well, but a) it’s outdated, and b) it’s not as pretty. But it is still a good resource!
Conference Bingo! This is what our family does! we have pages my aunt made when we were kids, but the topics have shifted slightly and it’s getting harder to get bingos! So I think I’m gonna print these off, instead, this year. Before conference, I go to the dollar store and pick out little toys and party favors. I buy things that are less than a dollar (so multiple things in a pack) for bingos and then 1 dollar prize per session per kid for blackouts (I might have to make the “sustaining leaders” a free space in order to do that on this print-out). I try to pick prizes that are projects or crafts, so that my kids have some form of entertainment during conference, as opposed to a figurine, but even little figurines have value while entertaining kids for so long. Here is another page, but it has President Monson represented for “prophet,” so it’s a little outdated.
There are a lot of picture searches within the church’s website, but these two (one, two) deal particularly with General Conference.
Same thing goes for coloring pages. I found 5 in particular that are about conference (but I bet there are more hidden in the “internet cracks.” Some of these have President Monson, but he was still a prophet (one, two, three, four, five). And here is one about King Benjamin teaching his people, in case you’re following along with our FHE lessons.
Here’s a poster with kids coloring for conference.
This page has a blank bingo sheet, but I like the idea of drawing the ties given on the bottom.
If you told your family about King Benjamin teaching his people, this activity about his people pitching his tents toward the temple will have deeper meaning.
This one seems fun, too. Color in a square for each clue you see or hear.
assign a small treat to key words and each time that word is heard, the hearer can get a treat.
Here is a dot-to-dot of the prophet (and a picture story).
There is nothing to print here, but this story talks about watching conference via a tent, like King Benjamin. You could build a fort like they do in the story or a real tent. If it’s stable enough, you could even allow your family to sleep in it one night!
This activity involves 1 word for each letter of the alphabet and suggests writing notes about each word.
Here is a rope code game that has a hidden answer at the bottom of the page.
For kids that can read, they could cover these words as they hear them.
The second page of this story from the friend gives a nice way to take notes on a talk. If your note-taker can read but isn’t ready to take that thorough of notes, they might be able to follow this outline.
Here is a 2-week countdown of activities to prepare for conference.
If you want to update the pictures, this is a fun mini-conference setup with chairs and a pulpit that you can have the speakers walk to. But it’s from 2012.
This coloring page is similar to some others already listed, but a little bit simpler. It would still require reading, though. Or there is this one, tied to the talk before it.
A few weeks ago, when I was looking at color activities, I came across the book Every Color Soup. I decided it’d make a good activity for St. Patrick’s Day, so we checked the book out from our local library. Then I went ahead and cut all the vegetables and made my kids go wash their hands (I’m so over sicknesses this winter! I’m being a huge stickler on handwashing. No free passes!)
I read them the book, as well as one called Too Many Leprechauns (saw it as we were walking in and it was perfect!), and then said we were gonna make a rainbow for dinner. (*ps, not an amazon affiliate. I don’t get paid anything for sending you to them. Buy the book if and where you want! Maybe shop locally!).
I put the pot in the middle of the table, and we added the ingredients as they came up (note, not all of them are pictured below. They’re not in the rainbow, lol).
By the way, I bought French lentils from Amazon and they didn’t even stay blue! The recipe called for lentils du puy but a) I couldn’t find anything but orangey red or green lentils in the store, and b) google said French lentils were the ones considered blue. Shoulda trusted the book, I guess.
Either way, this activity was perfect! First because it talked about colors (something my toddlers are extremely interested in right now), and secondly, because one of my toddlers is very into “I cook like Mom,” right now.
I know playdough is not super-pricey, but I’m still a cheapskate. My girls would go through a million tubes if I’d let them. Playdough is not my favorite activity, honestly. Kids+playdough≠neatness. Plus, I figure that if they’re gonna make such a mess of the playdough, they can take care of it, too. It’s called responsibility!
Between that and the fact that I’ve been in a decluttering mood lately, it was time to go through the playdough. That bug seems to hit the second the sun comes out in spring and when my life feels out of balance. For me, my brain is all tied to my house; when my brain feels cluttered, the easiest solution is to declutter my house, and then somehow my brain seems less scattered.
years and years ago, I came across this site. This person is a GENIUS! I’ve used this hack so many times.
She advises you to break the play doh into pea-sized pieces (if I bother at all, we used the extruder. Much less time-consuming. Or if it was too hard to go through the extruder, we just crumbled it. 2 of ours were that far gone.) Then we sprayed a spray bottle of water into the bag and shook the bag up to evenly coat. Then we waited a few minutes (more like a few hours, I got distracted), and then I hand the bag to my toddlers (and watch them! No exploded playdough bags, please. Also, make sure they’re not full of a lot of air). It’s a good sensory activity for them, plus it builds hand strength.
Sometimes I spray them again and shake them up, but most of the time, they’re as good as new by the end.
And if you accidentally add too much water (done that) either mix more dry dough in or leave the bag open and check it about once an hour.
And to think, Play Doh says it can’t be done and you’ll have to buy another tub…
I think we are gonna have a lot of toddlers-want-to-be-like-sisters posts in our future. This one, included. When they say sister using paint for apples, they wanted to paint, too. I wasn’t in the mood to deal with that huge of a mess, even if I made sure to buy the washable paint, so I filled a few quart bags with the same red paint, taped them shut, and handed them to the twins.
They liked the squishy aspect, and kinda drew with the paint, but their favorite thing to do was to squish their handprints into the paint bag. It was a really good sensory experience for them, actually! And I totally just came up with it on the fly, since I was in the middle of helping big sister with /a/ apples.
And naturally, since sister was using an apple to stamp with, we had to eat apples at the same time. Since my toddlers are learning colors, it was also a good time to reiterate that their apple was red and their paint was red.
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).
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.
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.
**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.
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