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!

We Made it to One Year!

Patiently waiting for her party to begin. And yes,
of course I made her a tutu.  You can't resist
these things when you have a little girl,
no matter how much you think you will.

...well, I guess it's not like I thought we wouldn't make it to one year, but OH the year we had!!

And I hope you will forgive how long it has taken me to get to this post, but I wanted to make sure all the details were included (read: I had time to get the pictures off my slr).

Like all parents, I am confident that my kiddo is an overachiever so of course we had way more firsts during Year One than I ever expected, and what better way to commemorate all our learnings than with a fun birthday party.

Bugga's first initial decorated with a year's
worth of faces was hung over the main
food table.

Bugga was born in that wonky time period between holidays (well right behind Thanksgiving) so this adds a little wild card to who might be expected to attend birthday events between holiday travel, flu-season, and end-of-year budgeting.

The theme for this momentous event, was....wait for it..."Sydney is ONE!". I know, so far off topic. I saw a few fun ideas on Pinterest (of course) that got my brain churning, and it turned out to be a great way to incorporate all the fun pictures we had taken throughout her first year.

The food spread!

Cupcake "cake" decorated
with M&Ms in the shape
of a 1 (in case it isn't obvious).

We had the party at home, and I just made a handful of finger foods (including many that were toddler-friendly), barbecue sliders in the slow cooker, and a cupcake cake for the masses (seriously, we had a ton left over).

The biggest challenge was the "entertainment" for the party. It is not lost on me that a 1 year old could not care less what happens at her party as long as her basic needs are met (food and getting attention, of course). So I was torn as to what to have planned for the kids to "do" while the parents mingled and talked everything kiddo. Add to that the range of children's ages - we had 3-month-olds all the way up to 7 years. How the heck do you entertain this crowd? Off to Pinterest I went to find ideas.

I decorated with Bugga faces wearing party
hats all over the party space.

Bugga faces everywhere!

And we found the perfect one, and it was perfect for tasking my husband with so he could contribute to the party planning without getting caught up in the details he does NOT find enthralling. What was my solution? A cardboard maze! We still didn't have furniture in our dining room, so it was the perfect place to set up a giant cardboard monstrosity. And Mr. MOMba really got into it, adding skylights, and decorating with polka-dot duct tape and velvet curtains. And the kids loved it. Bugga loved it so much that we kept it in there for the next 6 months until we moved (yep, really slow to go after that dining room furniture, but I swear we will have some soon).

Anyway, enjoy some photos from the big event - maybe someone out there can use this for some planning inspiration! *OK, I really thought we had taken some photos of the cardboard tunnel setup, but I can't find them anywhere...I will update the 'ol blog with some pics should I ever dig them up. ** Update (10/6/2013): Found one!

She was very hesitant in giving her
cake a try. This is the before shot.

This is the after-shot! Not too
 much damage, actually.

Here's our "dining room" - you can see the cardboard tunnel
 around the back, with multiple doors, skylights, etc. - the kids loved it!

Project: Fabric Alphabet Magnets

I just finished a very easy project that I'm already pretty proud of, as it turned out better than I expected- fabric alphabet magnets! Right now Bugga is 21 months old, and we are focusing on her learning her letters. This project was perfect. I found a couple links to blogs via Pinterest for some DIY magnet letters using felt and even to links on Etsy that were selling a similar style. I decided to use regular fabric for mine - see below for the directions!

Fabric Alphabet Magnets

What You Will Need:

• Fabric that you like (I used part of a Hobby Lobby pack of whimsical quilting squares that I picked up a year ago with the primary intention to stuff them into a tissue box for Bugga to pull out over and over again. She still enjoys this; fortunately this project only used about a third of the fabric squares.)
• Coordinating cross-stitch thread
• Needle
• Scissors
• Quilt batting, cut into 1" strips, and then lengths relevant to your letter sizes (by some miracle I had some lying around from my one attempt at making a quilt)
• Computer with a printer/paper
• Magnets (I picked up a pack of 50 from Michael's)
• Elmer's (or any basic) glue
• Pencil

How to Make the Letters:

1. Determine what you want your letters to look like by finding a font in any basic program (Word, Publisher, etc.). Size the letters in your software program so they are big enough for your liking, then print out each letter you would like to create. I did the entire alphabet, but you could also make numbers, extra vowels, etc. Tip: When thinking about what size you want your letters, consider the size of your magnets. Depending on where they are placed inside your fabric, the letters need to be big enough for the fabric to be sewn around them. Print all of the letters/numbers and cut out each one.
2. Trace the letters using a pencil onto the back side of the fabric. You will need two of each letter/number to serve as the front and back. If your fabric is the same on both sides, then this is not as important. Mine was not, so I was careful to just leave pencil marks on what would serve as the inside of the letter. Tip: To save cutting time, and to help with lining everything up when you sew, you can fold the fabric in half and cut the fabric along the folded edge so you don't need to have two separate pieces.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. Lay out your fabric letters and divide the magnets up between each one. Because fabric is not as thick as felt, not as much magnetic strength is needed, so I used 1-2 magnets for each letter, depending on the size (I only used 1 magnet for letters like "I", "J" and "Y"). Use the glue to affix the magnets to the fabric letters, being careful to glue the magnets to the inside of the back piece of the fabric. Let the glue dry.
   
4. Start sewing! I used half of each piece of cross-stitch thread (3 of the 6 pieces) to do my sewing. I found that I have zero skill in guestimating how long my thread should be for each letter, but due to how they are sewn, it doesn't matter if you run out and need to start up with new thread. As advised on the blog mentioned above, I also used the Blanket stitch, which worked great, and was very easy for me (and I don't sew all that much). Personally, if a letter had an inner area (like "A", "B", "R", etc.) I would stitch this first, which helped keep the two pieces of fabric aligned. I also stitched all the way around the letters for consistency, even if one of the edges was part of the original fold of the fabric.
   
   
   
   
5. As each part of the letter being stitched is enclosed, use a pencil to stuff the strips of quilt batting inside the letter. Be careful to work around the magnets.
6. That's it! Start the fun! For more info on the process I went through to decide on a magnetic board for these magnets, click here!
   
   
   

   

   Fabric Alphabet Magnets in Action!

Splash Pad Throw Down!

OK, well, my first born made it to 17 months until her mommy got into a verbal fight with another mom. Should I be proud of that? I've thought through this confrontation over and over, and I'm confident that in hindsight I still handled it the way I believe I should have.

So here we are, kicking off a fantastic family vacation in Florida with a stop at Busch Gardens in Tampa. We pretty much stuck to the kiddo area with our toddler, which meant splash pad fun! Woohoo! Bugga loves these things, having just discovered them at home - she doesn't have to stress over blowing bubbles or not touching the bottom when she wants to.

Bugga and I were walking around the large splash pad area looking at all the fun water obstacles, as I noticed the posted rules included "Yield to small children." Perfect - that is us indeed!

There is an area that essentially has water "guns" that can be aimed at each other in 90 degree circles and directed to a variety of heights. As we walked past this with another mom and her stroller, a 5-year-old boy turned and aimed right at me and my 1 year old. He drenched me (and I was wearing street clothes) and hosed my daughter down in the face. His expression stated that he clearly knew what he was doing. The mom with the stroller was apparently his mother, said something to him along the lines of, "Play niiiiiiiiice" and then kept on walking, turning her back on her misbehaving son. He then turned right around, aimed at my daughter's face again, and sprayed her with the water while squealing, "Got you!!!!"

Oh it was on.

I gave the mother a stern, "Ma'am!" call, and she froze, as she clearly knew this had to do with her child. She turned around with attitude on her face and a "Yeah?" where I promptly told her that her son was out of hand and needed a parent to help him out. She immediately got all defensive and said, "Well you ARE at a water park, you should expect to get wet!"

Me: "What I don't expect is for my daughter to be attacked by such a mean kid that is 5 times her size."
Her: "Well you don't know what it's like to have a 5 year old boy and another child. We are working with him."
Me: "What I do know is that it is my job to protect my own child, and that I am responsible for what happens to her. As you should be for your children."
Her: "You don't know what it's like! He is a five year old boy!"
Me: "Then you need to not turn your back on him. Otherwise you need some help!"
I walked away with my daughter, as clearly this mom was missing the point.

Look, I get that kids have to learn things. And I also don't believe anyone at 5 years old can be that evil. But seriously, turning your back on your child's bad behavior? All I heard from this mom's reasoning was, "I can't handle being a parent." Honestly - if you can't be somewhere and be responsible for BOTH of your children, you either should not have left the house, or you need to bring another adult with you to help. There is no excuse for not being aware of (or worse, IGNORING) what your children are doing, especially when out in public.

About 5 minutes later the little boy came up to us and apologized for spraying us in the face with the water. I guess Mom thought I was right after all. I thanked him, left my daughter with my husband, and went to smooth things over.

I walked back up to the mom, told her I appreciated her sending her son over, and I was sorry I raised my voice. She then got back on her defensive soapbox and starting moaning about how "I don't know what it's like" and then I knew I shouldn't have bothered. Poor little boy - it's going to be a rough ride with that woman.

So - would you have handled it any differently? I would love to hear it!

Activity: Coloring Eggs

"Hey Mom, I think this might
actually be fun."

My husband is currently out of the country on business, so I've been busy planning activities and trips around town to keep Bugga and I busy while he's gone. He left early Easter weekend, so we were unable to officially celebrate. Sad face. Perhaps she wasn't old enough for that egg hunt anyway...

However, I still thought we should color some eggs, because I was curious to see what my toddler would think about it all. Well, it was pretty hilarious for starters.

She had a lot of fun piling as many eggs as possible into one bowl at a time, and then only using the next bowl when she ran out of space. And then she'd start again, piling the eggs into the next container, including the ones that were already bathing in a different color. Amazingly, the eggs still came out beautiful (and delicious, as I am in the process of consuming them).


She had a lot of fun with the spoons, but used them more as musical instruments against each other, versus to scoop out any of the eggs. Why would you use a spoon for scooping when you can just reach right in there? And hey look! Your hand is purple! And your legs are multicolored! How cool! Ha.

I think she made an attempt at tasting some of the colored water (apparently the yellow looked tasty?) but didn't do that twice. (Thank you, vinegar taste.)

All in all, this was a ton of fun, and I can't wait to do this each year and see how her creativity evolves.

Want to try it with your toddler? Here are my recommendations:

1. Prepare everything ahead of time before your toddler comes on the scene. I set everything up on the back patio and she watched me from just inside the windows.
2. Oh yeah - you're going to need to do this outside. I supposed you could do it inside, but at this age (~16 months) - don't say I didn't warn you!

   

   My original setup.
   Not recommended! (See #3)

3. Set up the activity with the bowls very close together. Nope, that's not what I did to begin with (see photo). I saw very quickly that once we started with one bowl, Bugga wasn't getting up but instead was just going to stretch as far as she could - which ended up with some cracked eggs and spilled colored water.
4. Use old dishes. This is perfect for the takeout containers that I currently have stashed in a bottom cabinet for Bugga to play with in the kitchen.
5. Don't overwhelm with too many colors. I stuck to 4 basics, and honestly she just took the eggs in and out of each dish, so after awhile, all 4 colors were strikingly similar. Go figure.
6. Premix the colors. I used a tablespoon of vinegar in each dish, along with a LOT of coloring to make the colors sharp. I used the old-school drops as well as some gels, and both worked fine.

   

   "AND I get to use a spoon? YES!"

   
7. Dress your child in clothing you aren't worried about. I stuck Bugga in a dark-colored $10 Carter's outfit, and it didn't stain at all! (Those white dots are painted on so the color didn't adhere whatsoever!)
8. Decide how you feel about spoons. I know this sounds funny. But to me, spoons + toddler = catapult. Bugga was very intrigued that I let her use spoons for this activity, and they really stole the show for awhile there until I pointed other things out. I think if we did this again (at least at this age) I would leave the spoons in the drawer. She has plenty of plastic ones to play with during meals and with her tea set.
   
9. Have fun! AKA, don't expect to have any control over how the eggs get colored, as your toddler is not interested in the LEAST about your creative opinion. Point out the colors, what happens when you mix them, etc. - they won't understand a lot of it, but they will see that it is fun.
10. Don't worry, the rainbow child isn't permanent. We went straight into the bathtub when we were finished, and it probably took two baths until the dye under her fingernails disappeared. But it was worth it!

The finished product! AMAZING!

Activity: Mirror, Mirror

We have interacted with mirrors for months and months, starting with the bathroom mirror during bath time when Bugga was still using the baby bathtub. She had a great time making faces in the mirror.

Since we are in a new house, we have been decorating some of the rooms we didn't have before, and I keep finding new ways to entertain my toddler with things related to the new decor. Yesterday's was no different. We have two giant (and heavy, so they aren't going anywhere) mirrored stands in our front hall.

Bugga and I spent some time hanging out in front of them on accident during playtime, and she quickly discovered how much fun that kiddo is in the mirror. I'm not sure she truly realized that there are not two of us, since she kept looking around the corner for Mommy #2.

She had a blast sitting next to "Bugga #2" and talking to her, sharing her toys - and failing at trying to steal her playmate's toys (maybe this might teach a lesson??), and other fun. The two even had a dance party with some fast stepping moves.

I shared the fun with my husband and he was quick to suggest that Bugga give her new friend a high five, which she did - and this person NEVER misses on high five! Perfect!

Activity: Bubble Wrap

I am a closet "green" person hiding inside a parent's body. What I mean by that is before I became a mom, I cringed at the concept of waste and excess. However, since birthing my daughter I have at times let a lot of things go (we use a LOT of baby wipes in this house) and had to cope with the ridiculous amounts of product packaging that now enter our house wrapped children's goods.

I recently purchased a giant vase that the store wrapped in matching giant bubble wrap so I could get it home safely. Not the throw-in-your-recycling-bin kind that Crate & Barrel would give you (darn right I provided that link - they have great stuff and you can recycle ALL of their shipping materials), but the awful landfill-clogging kind.

So we were at least going to use it again after my vase safely made it to my house. Enter my toddler!!

Once she figured out where the crazy popping noise was coming from, she was hooked. Her little fingers and lack of upper body strength prevented her from being able to pop each bubble on her own, but that didn't stop her from trying. She was fascinated with touching each one as I popped it for her. And then she quickly ran away so she could bring back some of her little dishes, and before I knew it we were having a bubble wrap picnic. And her little heels and tailbone would surprise us here and there by popping bubbles on their own, which made her giggle. 

Anything to make my kid giggle!

Obviously, this is a supervised activity - but have fun with it if you have some bubble wrap crammed in a corner somewhere!

Activity: Stacking Cups

My 14-month-old daughter is currently fascinated with containers, and things that she can put in them, while just as fast taking them right out. So we found a great way to make more fun with this.

Of course I spend a lot of my day in the kitchen, whether cooking and prepping meals, cleaning up the results, or racking my brain (seriously just had to look up whether 'racking' or 'wracking' is appropriate here and apparently the jury is still out) trying to come up with some food ideas my picky-ish toddler will tolerate. So Bugga spends a lot of time at my feet, and I wanted her to be entertained so I could still be productive.

I designated two lower cabinets to my less-valuable storage containers, all plastic. All other cabinets are of course locked (and she is fascinated by the locks, by the way, but anyway...), but these two contain two large blue tubs of fun. Though it's no Tupperware, the little plastic bowls you get with your Chinese takeout have made for the most fun. I somehow have an assortment of sizes and they all fit perfectly inside each other in any order.

Bugga loves to take these containers, fill them with her little toys, and then stack them up. Then she takes them apart, drags them to the living room, stacks them up again, and puts more toys in them. Then back to the kitchen for the game to begin again. She loves it, and I'm glad that she gets to practice her dexterity, her spacial reasoning, and will even listen to directions if I ask her to "please put that bowl back in the blue bin" or whatever.

I can't wait until she's big enough to help me mix ingredients!

Activity: Baby Safe Finger Painting

Finger painting is a great way for kiddos to learn about textures, colors and their creativity. We tried this when my daughter was just around 10 months, so every activity had to be baby-safe. With regards to an activity like painting, this meant that anything she could possible put in her mouth would not hurt her.

Here is an "edible" fingerpaint recipe that I found online and decided to try. The quotes are because it only uses ingredients that are safe to digest, but I avoided any sets of instructions that included sugar - the last thing I want to do is encourage Bugga to eat the paint. I can only imagine that retraining I will have to do down the road when she's older! So this is safe to eat, but certainly not tasty.

Ingredients:
2 cups of cornstarch
1 cup of cold water
4.5 cups of hot water
Food coloring

Instructions:
Mix the cornstarch and cold water together, then add the hot water, constantly stirring the mixture. Separate mixture into smaller containers. Add food coloring as desired and mix thoroughly.

Some comments: OK, I'll admit my knowledge of cornstarch is pretty limited. So stirring this mixture was kind of fun - it acted like flour, but then all of a sudden it became this wild translucent gel-like goo. The colors came out a lot brighter then I expected once mixed. As far as using this for painting...because it is a gel-like consistency, it doesn't paint like regular paint, but it still works for this activity. It's probably also good to know that it will dry pretty thick on the paper you use, and in our case at least, the painting cracked and wasn't really something to save in Bugga's brand new art archive.

The Actual Painting Part
If older children are doing this activity, you can easily incorporate brushes, but for us, it was not question that we would be using our fingers (and feet and elbows and behinds...you get the idea).

I cut open a kitchen trash bag so I could cover as much space as possible. Then I used packing tape to tape the trash bag to my floors. I don't recommend doing this over carpet - anything that somehow gets off the trash bag might be difficult to get out of carpet (but I'm sure it's possible...I just have no advice on this!).

Then I grabbed a couple pieces of paper, the paints, and my child and started experimenting! 

She was definitely hesitant at first trying to figure out what this colorful stuff was, and what she could do with it. And oh yes, a couple handfuls went into her mouth. But it was also a great teaching opportunity for me to say, "Hey, that's not food!" and teach her not to put it in her mouth and instead, put it on the paper. We had a great time!

Here's something that was somewhat important: as expected, this makes a MESS. I kept a roll of paper towels and a wet washcloth very close to this activity. I recommend either clothes that are colorful and/or old, or just a diaper-only situation. And of course, she went straight into the bathtub once we were done.

Activity: Rainbow Rice Sensory Box

After creating a rainbow's worth of colored rice, we had a lot of fun putting it into action. I purchased a large plastic bin (don't forget the lid - this is very important!) that would allow for enough space for my daughter to literally sit inside of it, but not too big for my living room. We added a plastic scoop, some measuring cups and spoons, and a couple toys, and we had a great time.

Yes, there were times when Bugga would try to stuff a handful of rice in her mouth. This is a safe way to teach her not to do this; if she happens to eat some of the rice then there is minimal harm. I'm hoping this is great practice before we head to the beach and have to play this game with sand - blechhh.

When we are done, we can just snap the lid on and put the bin away until next time. (Or leave it closed on the floor - my kiddo likes to bang on the top of the bin when she's playing nearby.)

Here are some pictures from our activity - let me know if you decide to try this!