MOM.b.a. - Master's of my Baby Abilities: project

Showing posts with label project. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Homeschool-ish

Bugga wearing her backpack around the
house because she is "going to school to
eat pizza and read books".

Since my daughter is on the back end of the calendar as far as school start dates go (she was born in November), she gets "extra" time before she officially needs to be enrolled in school. As it is, she has been a sponge for months and months now, and I feel I really need to start teaching her some school skills since she loves what we've done so far. And maybe along the way she will use her parrot act to regurgitate some cool facts, versus just something I said when I didn't think she was listening. Oops.

As I posted recently, we started surrounding Bugga with All Things Alphabet and she loves it. I want to take advantage of this while I can, so I have been researching ways of creating age-appropriate lessons for her to learn more about what each letter looks and sounds like, and how they work with words. She's not quite ready to start using a writing device to draw the letters, but I have found a way to modify the concept to her abilities and still make it fun and educational.

My thought is to focus on one letter per week, and have 7-8 approaches to learning all about that letter. Each week we then choose 5 or so lessons to learn, allowing for a variety. After a month or two, when we have covered several letters, I hope to have lessons that focus on the combination of the previous letters learned to work on word construction.

By doing it this way, I am able to create a lot of the materials in advance so I can just print out what I need or whatever and run with it. Parenting doesn't give you a lot of time to prep, so I needed the tools for the lessons to be quick and easy. This is also useful for short attention spans - my 2-year-old will only watch me setup a project for so long before she no longer cares and would rather play with her Legos.

With regards to creating the materials, I have gathered ideas from many resources, and then ultimately I decided to create my own version so it fits the idea I have in my head. I plan to share these materials as free downloads wherever applicable, so hopefully they can be of some use to other back-of-the-calendar toddlers.

I'll post the links to the post with the printables as soon as I get them uploaded!

Happy learning!

Sunday, July 13, 2014

Nursery Room Reveal

I recently posted the ideas I used for inspiration when putting together my second daughter's nursery. Well, here is how it all turned out!

I ended up using a turquoise, white and silver palette with a baroque/damask (uhhhhyeahhhh to be honest, I don't know the difference!) and butterfly theme (I was unable to choose one or the other so just went with BOTH!). I tried to tie in the design across the different details so it ended up flowing pretty well.

Let me give you a tour!

Starting from the left of the door I put Bella's changing table and the glider that I have had since pregnant with Bugga. The glider doesn't exactly match, but I was not about to buy another glider just to get it to match the room. I toss baby blankets on it all the time anyway.

Do you know what drove the color? The curtains. I wanted (NEEDED) some quality blackout curtains, and I found an Etsy designer that offered an excessive amount of fabric patterns. This one I found is perfect for what I was looking for. Then, I spray-painted an IKEA mirror to match the turquoise color in the curtains. I also ordered a matching changing table cover and boppy cover from another Etsy store. In between the mirror and the curtains is my burst of butterflies.

Here is another view that includes the boppy cover - the fabric is super soft.

And perhaps a slightly closer view of my butterfly installation. I like calling it an installation, you know, because I'm a museum-level arteest and all.

I was going for a "just released" effect and love the multiple dimensions of the butterflies since the wings come out from the wall, and they are scattered all over multiple walls and the ceiling.

Moving to the other side of the room, you can see the crib and bookshelf. This will be the second baby to sleep in this crib that I love. I continued the butterfly theme with the butterfly mobile over the crib, and the butterfly framed rhinestone piece on the bookshelf. I found some ornate frames to match the feel of the curtains and the mirror, spray-painting them to match the room, and lucked out finding drawers/doors to work with the IKEA bookshelf, as well as some turquoise toy bins. I also purchased some silver damask decals that run up the wall over the bookshelf, as well as up the wall right next to the door. I made Bugga a pink striped pillow poof so she'd have some place to sit and play while I nurse her little sister in the glider during the day when it's just the three of us at home.

Here's a closer look at the butterfly mobile I made.

And a closer (yet blurry, sorry) picture so you can see the rhinestone detail of the framed butterfly.

Here's a straight-on view of the bookshelf and the coordinating decor. I painted the frames, and the mats, and modified some prints to fit my vision after seeing a variety all over the internet.

I forgot to take pictures of the closet and door wall, but all that's interesting from that view is the silver damask decal that is slightly different than the one over the bookshelf.

I really enjoyed decorating this room, and I truly enjoy just being in it now - it is so relaxing. I'm also proud of how everything turned out! After all is said and done, I made/customized so much of it myself:

the mirror
the butterfly installation
the striped pillow poof
the butterfly mobile
the frames, mats and prints
the butterfly framed rhinestone art

I hope to post additional details on how I made each of my crafts and will link from here as they become available. And now that we have moved 4 months into Bella's life and I've had to recreate this room in an entirely new house, I will also post updated photos on the variation of the design once I get all of it set back up (and reordered where applicable - darn non-reusable decals!). I hope you enjoyed your tour!

Also, if you want to check out Bugga's 2-year-old room, click here!

Sunday, April 20, 2014

Easter Egg-tivities

I had great plans for Easter this year as far as toddler activities go. Then my newborn started sleeping (or rather NOT sleeping) even more horribly, and my husband needed to go out of town for work for the third time in four weeks. So basically most of this past week leading up to the Easter Bunny's visit is now a bit of a blur.

Somewhere in there I managed to put together two brain cells on occasion to find some activities for Bugga to do that were Easter-related. I found some great printable activities online that were both Easter-relevant as well as educational, but not too old for her as a lot of Preschool printables tend to be.

Here's Bugga working on the Egg Matching Activity, which she shocked me by immediately being a whiz at. This explains why her strongest skill with folding laundry is matching her socks!

Here's the Carrot Activity that involves Bugga trying to figure out which big letter matches which little letter. This was a new way of thinking about the letters, as we have not really introduced "little" letters yet. This was our introduction.

These printable activities can be found here.

And of course, I planned to get in some egg decorating. We had a great time last year when Bugga was 15 months old so of course I was optimistic. I saw an adorable idea online that involved rolling the eggs in polenta - I had planned on using colored coconut - but that was a massive fail. The "egg wash glue" was not at all a glue so it was just a big mess. Apparently I forgot the sugar, which, logically is the sticky part. Oops.

While we were waiting for the eggs to dry to see if the coconut would stick, my toddler got impatient with the waiting, so I improvised with some plastic eggs and a glue gun.

Once I knew that the textured eggs weren't happening this year, I washed off the remaining coconut, and just went with the infamous drop-in-the-colored-water coloring. Then I just used my glue gun to attach the googly eyes and bunny/chick appendages. What I learned: If you use a glue gun on an egg that just came out of the refrigerator, the glue will be chilled and dry before you attach whatever it is you're trying to glue to the egg. Another oops. So here is the motley crew of eggs that we ended up with.

Let's just say I am looking forward to making egg salad tomorrow.

I hope everyone had a nice Easter!

Thursday, April 10, 2014

Toddler Project: Spring Tissue Paper Duck

I've been scrounging Pinterest for toddler-appropriate Easter and Spring crafts. Have I mentioned my apprehension with glue and my 2-year-old? I think she's not quite ready for that responsibility yet. But I still want her to get in on the crafting fun as much as she can. She has already had enough experience that she is quick to eagerly ask me, "Are you making me a project?" every time I go near my craft shelves. Yep, no question she is my kid.

Incidentally, here was some dialog during our project:
Me: "What does a duck say?"
Bugga: "Quack! What does a duckie say?"
Me: "I don't know, what does a duckie say?"
Bugga: "SQUEAK!"
Can't argue with that.

Tissue Paper Duck for Spring

Our first easy project required the following items:

thick craft paper
scissors
yellow, orange and black tissue paper
contact paper

Draw a duck shape on the craft paper. You can find images online, but I just eye-balled it. Cut out the duck.
Cut your tissue paper into small pieces. Ask your toddler to help crumple each piece into a teeny, tiny ball.
Add contact paper behind your duck cut-out, sticky side up.
Start sticking the tissue paper to the contact paper.
Show off your finished product!

Monday, March 17, 2014

Toddler Crafts & Fun for St. Patrick's Day

Our family isn't Irish (except maybe a teensy bit on my husband's side) but I love celebrating St. Patrick's Day. In college this meant heading to Savannah for parades and green beer. Nowadays it's more about crafts, cookies and some creative meal planning.

I actually put more effort into celebrating than I had planned. Aside from the themed mantle, Bugga and I made Shamrock Suncatchers to decorate our windows. She is very proud of the result and was excited to tell her dad repeatedly, "I made that!", pointing at her masterpieces.

We also attempted the Fruit Loop Rainbow craft that you see all over Pinterest. I think she had fun, but the glue concept was new to Bugga, and she preferred to glue the cereal pretty much all over the page. Oh, and by the way, there are no blue Fruit Loops, so I think that just threw us off anyway.

I tried some new recipes for our St. Patrick's Day Dinner (which I actually made last night because all bets are off on Mondays) - corned beef, colcannon and shamrock chips. It was actually all pretty good, and my husband ate every bite (which is saying something).

Bugga helped me make shamrock sugar cookies - everything from helping me bake them (she mixed the ingredients together and helped with the cookie cutter) to decorating, to of course EATING the cookies.

We had a lot of fun - Happy St. Patrick's Day to everyone!

Sunday, February 16, 2014

Project: Homemade Valentine Picture Frame

I've been chomping at the bit waiting for Bugga to be old enough to do arts and crafts. Yes, I know, even babies can start pretty much from the womb with the art projects. We even tackled finger (body!) painting last year when Bugga was 10 months old; I'm sure many moms jump on it far earlier than that.

Another point to note: I am not a huge fan of messiness on purpose. Let's be honest, kids are a lot of work and mess without TRYING to make a mess. So painting with a toddler kind of scared me.

With Bella still so small at 7 weeks, she still hasn't had her vaccinations yet so we aren't leaving the house for much more than Bugga's once-a-week gymnastics class. And a bored kid is hard on everyone (all you parents on the East Coast know exactly what I'm talking about right now since you've all been stuck inside for days due to the snow with school cancelled). So I bit the bullet and pulled out the paint.

Grandma had gifted Bugga some fingerpaints and a smock for Christmas, so this was as good a time as any to try them out. Plus with Valentine's Day fast approaching Bugga could make a homemade gift for Daddy on behalf of her and her sister. I even managed to stretch this into a TWO DAY PROJECT which is always good.

So I dressed Bugga in clothes I don't like (we all get those gifts) and her new smock, and taped down some newspaper to our kitchen counter. She climbed up into her learning tower (best invention ever) and we proceeded to go to work.

I squirted some of the paint into paper cups left over from her 1st birthday (we are slowly and finally getting through those) in Valentine colors. Since the Crayola Fingerpaints only come in red, blue, yellow, and green I had to incorporate some white from my collection to make pink. Oh, and trying to make purple with the red and the blue was a bust so nevermind that.

I used several sponge brushes (yep, still not in the mood to handle more painting with our hands) I had left over from another project of mine, and we went to work.

I purchased a simple wood heart frame from Michael's for barely $1.00 and Bugga had a blast painting it with the various colors.

She also seemed to love the different effects she could make with the brushes, taking advantage of the sponginess (huh, that's actually a word).

Once she was done we let it dry overnight. in the meantime, the other colors had grabbed her attention so I found some paper and let her create another masterpiece.

She had a blast and it wasn't too difficult to clean up.

Oh, and meanwhile, the baby hung out in the bouncer next to us and watched.

The next day I pulled out a bag of foam heart stickers and the frame so we could decorate. Bugga quickly figured out how to use her fingernails to peel of the backings, and we were in business. I had a giant flat foam heart she could also decorate as well.

Seriously, she decorated this all by herself with no guidance from me whatsoever. Such style.

And here is the final result, all ready for Daddy!

Saturday, February 1, 2014

Project: Personalized Alphabet Book

If you've read a couple other posts, you know I am trying to expose Bugga to the alphabet as much as possible. Right before her 2nd birthday I thought it would be a great occasion to gift her with her very own Alphabet Book! Since I knew she loved her books so much and read them over and over, combined with knowing that she loves looking at our pictures of her on our phones, an Alphabet book using pictures of HER would be perfect.

I used Blurb.com, which is my go-to company for making photo books. You can pretty much set the layout to ANY design you want, versus the other companies that have very rigid templates that I used to get so frustrated with.

Some examples I saw online used just one word for each letter, but I noticed Bugga latching on to that one example and not letting go. (For example, "H is for Horse" is what she calls "H".) Therefore, I used several examples wherever I could (there are some very difficult letters to find photos for) so she knew that MANY words started with that letter.

Here is an example of 4 of our pages from the book:

To help you out, here are the words we used for each letter:

A - Airplane, Art, Asleep

B - Ball, Beans, Beam, Bath, Bunnies, Bucket, Beach

C - Chicks,Climb, Cuddle, Crying

D - Dig, Dress, Dog

E - Eggs, Eye, Elephant

F - Family, Fingers

G - Giraffe

H - Hat, Helmet, Hiking, Horse, Happy

I - Ice

J - Jeans

K - Kicking, Kiss, Kitchen, Kitty

L - Laugh, Letters

M - Messy, Mommy, Mirror, Motorcycle

N - Naptime, Nose

O - Ocean

P - Phone, Play, Puzzle

Q - Quack

R - Read, Relax, Ring

S - Shoes, Slide, Stripes, Sunglasses

T - Toes, Tongue, Toys, Tunnel, Tutu

U - Up

V - Valentine

W - Water, Window, Watermelon

X - Xylophone

Y - Yogurt

Z - Zipper

Friday, December 6, 2013

Project: No-Sew Toddler Quiet Book Page Idea - Grocery Shopping

Quiet Books for Toddlers are truly genius ideas and are sure to be well worth your time! I created a no-sew version for my daughter that you can find here. Below is one of my page ideas. For other ideas, scroll to the list at the bottom of the post!

Grocery Shopping Page

This one just came to me when I was brainstorming ideas for pages my daughter would like. She is my Grocery Shopping Assistant, and she loves to play with all the fruits and vegetables in her play kitchen. I made it so you can still see the items when they are in the grocery cart (like in real life). I ended up using Velcro for holding down the cart, which turned out to be a good idea - it is easier to get the items out of the cart by just removing the cart itself.

Other Quiet Book Page Ideas:

Go Team!
Match Shapes

Project: No-Sew Toddler Quiet Book Page Idea - Counting Train

Counting Train Page

I found a great counting train at And Then Comes L. And since Bugga is pretty much obsessed with trains (er, "choo-choo"s) AND just learned how to count to 10, this was a perfect fit.

Other Quiet Book Page Ideas:

Match Big & Small
Grocery Shopping

Go Team!
Match Shapes

Project: No-Sew Toddler Quiet Book Page Idea - Go Team!

Go Team! Page

This page is near and dear to our family's hearts - we are huge college sports fans! For undergrad, my husband went to Auburn, and I went to Georgia Tech. So of course there is a lot of emphasis on our school's mascots, football, and anything related...like this page! Obviously, your version can use any teams or sports that are important to you and your family!

Other Quiet Book Page Ideas:

Project: No-Sew Toddler Quiet Book Page Idea - Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas! Page

After making the Let's Get Dressed page, I noticed on the same site that has the dress-up dolls (Babalisme) also has some Christmas-themed outfits for the dolls. With Christmas coming, it was perfect timing. I also added a Christmas Tree and decorations to prepare Bugga for her first year of helping out with our family tree.

Other Quiet Book Page Ideas:

Go Team!
Match Shapes

Project: No-Sew Toddler Quiet Book Page Idea - Make A Face

Make A Face Page

While searching for clip art online I came across a lot of facial features, so I thought it would be fun to do a Potato-Head-style page where Bugga could make different faces. I actually ended up not using a lot of the accessories I created because I ran out of space on the two pages (head- and hair-pieces sucked up all my space!). If you want to use more than I have, make your face shape smaller so the accessories don't take over.

Other Quiet Book Page Ideas:

Go Team!
Match Shapes

Project: No-Sew Toddler Quiet Book Page Idea - Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! Page

I started this book right before Halloween, so I couldn't NOT have a jack-o-lantern page (I LOVE Halloween). I tried to keep this from being remotely scary, but I'm not quite sure if I succeeded? No complaints from Bugga anyhow.

(Sorry about the blurriness - I just noticed!)

Other Quiet Book Page Ideas:

Go Team!
Match Shapes

Project: No-Sew Toddler Quiet Book Page Idea - Apple Picking

Apple Picking Page

I found the idea for this page on Intentional By Grace. It's a pretty basic page, but is more like a game than some of the other pages I made. It is also great for counting and basic math, once your kiddo is ready.

Other Quiet Book Page Ideas:

Go Team!
Match Shapes

Project: No-Sew Toddler Quiet Book Page Idea - Let's Get Dressed

Let's Get Dressed Page

I found a dress up page at Playing House. This is something new to my daughter so I renamed it "Let's Get Dressed", but I'm sure the dress up days are coming! The doll and clothing printables are available at Babalisme and they are super cute. There are a few different dolls available, and fortunately one had similar features to Bugga so I used that one specifically.

Other Quiet Book Page Ideas:

Go Team!
Match Shapes