Project For End of May

After our last "Project Post", we hit up the dollar store and purchased hair gel and a pool noodle (along with a new pink hair brush, headbands, painting project book, 2 outdoor storage containers and sunflower seeds for daddy). Yep, luckily everything is a dollar. We still needed a magnetic alphabet set and cereal (waiting for grocery day). Or I guess I could hit up Walmart for both of these, but i'm sure I'll find 6 other things I need there as well. I just cannot win.

Projects we have completed from the Project List v.1.....
Princess Marble Races

Interest: Well, as with most activities, I tried to do this one outside. My "slide" was a bit crooked and Isabelle's marble kept flying off. After about 5 runs, the girls looked at me like, "is this it?". Agreed. We could not get our marbles going at the same time, nor could we understand what the point of the exercise was. Isabelle enjoyed taking it apart - ie removing all of the toothpicks, but it lasted us about 15 minutes.

Result: Fail. Maybe inside would have been a better idea, being outside can make my children less focused.

Sensory Bags
One for everyone. I also added clear tape at the top for fear of someone trying to open it up....

Interest: As with the directions, I allowed Isabelle to help put these together. With these, I may suggest buying to hair gels if you'd like to make two small bags. Once we got down to the last 1/4 of the bottle, I had to use my finger to get the remainder out. I wouldn't want to do that again. It got a bit messy at that point. I had to rinse off both bags, my child, myself and my table. I'd go with tossing the remainder next time. Putting it all together was very fun for Isabelle - she loves glitter which we already had on hand. What did she do with the bags? Well, making shapes or lines on the bags may be for children in between mine who have enough focus to try to draw line, but are not too advanced that their letters continue disappearing as they write them. Or maybe my bags have too much air or are too small. They were good fun for Isabelle alone for 10 minutes, but then we began wading them up and throwing them around. I am not very interested in hair gel with food coloring getting anywhere in my house.....so, mean mom has put them away until we can act more focused.

Success:Ultimately, I'd call these a success. We don't have a long attention span at this house especially alone and these bags held our interested for an extended period of time. I'll be getting them out again.


Cereal Spelling
Is Isabelle skilled enough to do her own tracing at gluing - probably not. So I tried a few first then I let her have a chance to try.
Interest: Good. Best if done at the table under your supervision. Allowing the kids to eat while playing is also the easy way to go. A two and one snack time success. I also found after my two attempts that it was best to put on the glue myself then remove it.
Success: We did make two attempts at this project, but after learning my lesson to observe it was a big success with the best buddy Alex and an eating success for Isabelle. Everyone was happy and busy.

Add On Projects:

Ice Cube Painting (this one is for Adelaide):
Just like it sounds, I'll freeze ice cubes with food coloring in them and put the kids out with paper to paint with their ice cubes. This will be a "panties only" activity to save clothing. Food coloring is not my favorite, however now that I look through the pinterest search I realize people use Kool-Aid as well. Not sure which I disapprove of more, but food coloring was on hand.

Shopping List:
Food Coloring
Ice Cube Trays*

Interest: Good. I did have to watch over this one. I don't trust food coloring and I love the new white paint on my home. After the girls were done with painting, they attempted to put the ice cubes back into the ice cube tray. This also made a great time for Adelaide to play in the dog bowls.
Success: Absolutely. I'll be going it again. Easy Peasy.


Bird Feeders
We collected pine cones in the fall and I've been moving them around the house since then. I finally purchased bird food & cheap peanut butter to get the project going, but it still took a couple weeks to get to. Thank you to Isabelle's buddy Alex for inspiring project play dates. He has told me that he enjoys taking things he's done home with him....

Shopping List:
Pine Cones
String (whoops)
Peanut butter
Bird Feed

Interest: Very fun. Everyone ate peanut butter and bird seed. Very entertaining.
Success: Absolutely. But I think Copper ate them all that afternoon...then woke in the middle of the night to "use the restroom", so i'm not sure we should try that one again.

Projects Next up:
Shaving Cream Slip and Slide
Shopping List:
Cheap Table Cloth*
Shaving Cream (lots o colors) *

Spring Flowers

Shopping List:
Coffee Filters *
Sissors
Dot a Dot Art Paint *

Checkout this fun list of stuff....
Dollar Tree (my personal favorite dollar store) Ideas

Mother's Day 2013

Blessed doesn't begin to express how fortunate I am to have my loving husband and beautiful little girls. They mean the world to me. They are my life and everything I live for. So, mother's day is a wonderful celebration of my life and I would love for it to be more about me, but it's about all of us.

Happy Mother's Day!
Love, AKI&A

6 Inches

Last week I decided I was fed up with brushing Isabelle's hair. It was constantly messy and tangled. I loved her hair, but I think it had been nearly 6 months since it had been cut and it was starting to get very unhealthy.
During bath time and in Daddy's presence, I asked if Isabelle wanted to get her hair cut. She exclaimed, "YES! Up to here" and she positioned her hand just ABOVE her ear. I suggested shoulder length and Isabelle, said "Sure, that would be good." Daddy looked a little left out of the discussion and asked if he could have an opinion. He liked it long, just as it was, but I told him that we could get it cut now and try to trim it more often in the hopes that it wouldn't get so difficult to brush. We also decided that using Shampoo and Conditioner instead of a 2 in 1 was a much better idea for Isabelle's fairly thick hair. I'm pretty sure Isabelle has more hair that I do.
It was so much fun to see a cute new hair do on our little girl. She looks just darling!!! Love it!!!
Love, Mommy & Daddy











The Cheering Squad


The New Do

"Mommy, can we do a project"

Isabelle's most famous words on a daily basis....

So, yes Isabelle. We can do a project. Thanks to the wonderful world of pinterest.com, we have more information at our finger tips that we know what to do with. Here is the project list for the next week or month, however long it will last or I will take to get each project setup. I do attempt to select projects that have the least amount of setup time just in case they are epic fails. Sometime they last us hours, sometimes minutes. The votes will be in shortly, as for now, here is the "Project List".

Squishy Bag from PlayatHomeMom

Shopping List:
Gallon size Ziploc bag
Glitter(optional)
Food Coloring
Hair Gel (dollar store)**

Cookie Sheet Alphabet Matching Lower Case to Upper Case Letters from We can do all things

Shopping List:
Cookie Tray
Sharpie
Magnet Letters **

Marble Races by HomeSpunThreads

Shopping List:
Marbles
Pool Noodle **
Shoe Box

Cereal Writing by The Skains Family



Shopping List:
Cereal **
Glue
Construction Paper

Hopefully a few of these will be successful....more successful than me trying to save the photos from the internet and repost them here. Oh well.

Other Projects we've tried:
Number Match - failed in frustration, we tried too young, I should bring this one back
Spider Web Toss = failed because we used masking tape but was a big success with Isabelle's interest
Nature Scavenger Hunt - big success, Isabelle learned quite a bit of vocabulary and had lots of fun doing it
The Quiet Book - epic fail, TONS of work went into this and it is already falling a part and has never brought much interest for very long

Besides these great project ideas, we have library LeapFrog Movies and recommended 6 by 6 books have been reserved at the library. We could also get the library lists for both kiddos.
Welcome to summer Isabelle & Adelaide! Come fall, Isabelle will be in Preschool and Adelaide will have to develop a more specific vocabulary because Isabelle won't be around to articulate exactly what you need! Love you both dearly!

Love, Mama

Failed Photo Shoot

Things were looking up. It was overcast and the girls hair was done early.
We went on a walk with the camera.....

and we could not get together.....

and then someone peed their pants....

and then it got too cold....

awesome.
Hope next time goes better!
Love, Mom

Happy May Day!

Happy May Day!!!!



Love, AKI&A