Pony Princesses

We were recently introduced to Ponyella by Laura Numeroff.  Let me just say, Ponies + Cinderella = GENIUS!  Obviously, this book was a hit with the girls.

Then, flipping through a specialty toy store catalog, I saw a kit using ponies as paper dolls.  It came with all kinds of things to dress up your pony.  I liked the activity, so I thought I could create something similar at home.

First, I printed up some unicorn coloring pages on white cardstock.  I used the unicorn printable found here!

The girls began coloring their unicorns with markers.

I set out a plate with butterfly cut-outs, sequins, jewels, stickers, and glitter glue.

In our house, the fancier, the better!

I couldn't resist, I started decorating one too.  This one turned out to be a collaborative effort.  I took a trip down memory lane and suddenly remembered how my sister had a pony with jewel eyes that I loved.  I also remembered how my mom would let us paint our ponies with her glitter nail polish to make them fancy.  I am sure this fact also partially influenced this activity.

 The table was literally covered with art materials.  I guess judging by the level of mess, it was a very engaging activity.

 We ended up with one-of-a-kind creations!  This activity lasted for a good hour, at least, and the girls each decorated two ponies.

Sticky Seed Art

As usual, we were out enjoying the sunshine and pleasant temperatures.  We've been working on our garden and thought it would be fun to use some of our leftover seeds for an art project.

I put a piece of contact paper, sticky side up, on a little table outside.  We started going through our seed packs and enjoyed observing the differences in size, shape, and color amongst our veggie seeds.

Hello, little happy face seed man!

The girls started arranging the seeds and decided to expand the collection to include leaves, twigs, grass and flowers from the yard as well.

I think the end result is so beautiful, but I am a sucker for that medley of pink in those roses!

Playdough Strawberries in Action

One of the most beloved books around here is The Little Mouse, the Ripe Red Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear by Don and Audrey Wood.  I do not even know how many times we have read this book, but we all practically have it memorized.  The book is a little bit different from most storybooks, because the reader is actually addressing the mouse.  I consider the book to be an excellent choice for reading aloud to a child, because then the child is hearing the 'conversation', and besides, it is such a silly, fun book!

To act out this story, we first whipped up some strawberry-scented playdough.  I added 2 packets of generic fruit-flavored drink mix to the playdough as we made it and also used several drops of red food coloring.

The final product was smooth and squishy- the perfect consistency.

I let the girls experience the dough with all their senses (except taste, and even then, one of them just may have nibbled it a bit), and then we were ready to read.  The purpose of the playdough was to serve as a prop to our story.

I started reading the story, and when I got to the part where the mouse picks a strawberry, we shaped the dough into berry shapes.

The little mouse tries to hide the strawberry so the big, hungry bear cannot get it.  We hid our strawberries too.

The little mouse tries to disguise the strawberry using funny glasses, so we disguised our strawberries.  Little did I know this would prove to be the favorite activity, which is why I only have pictures of this part.  The girls spent so long disguising their berries that I had plenty of time to snap some pics.

No berries here, just some goofy friends who came to call.

The little mouse cuts his strawberry in two and shares one-half.  We did the same.

Ultimately, the strawberry in the story gets eaten...well, we didn't eat our strawberries, BUT if I find a good, edible playdough recipe, we just might do it all again and gobble it up too!

X's X-ray

We're just reviewing the letter X here.  Obviously, there aren't too many words that begin with X, but for some reason x-ray is the most popular.

We used black paper and white kid paint to create x-rays.

The girls used our foam letters as stamps to create bones for X.

I don't think it is possible in our household for paint to be used without hands getting in it.

Disney has started joining in the painting too, although he did try to taste it. (It is non-toxic, right, but still unadvisable!)

I must also be honest, I was hoping this would turn out looking all cutesy, but kids will be kids...it was not how I envisioned it, but it was how they envisioned it, which is what really matters!

Poetree In Motion

In honor of National Poetry Month as well as Earth Day, we decided to put our poetry in motion.

One of the first poems I remember my mother teaching me is this stanza from Trees by Joyce Kilmer:

I think that I shall never see

A poem as lovely as a tree....

Poems are made by fools like me

But only God can make a tree.

The poem is absolutely lovely and has more content than what I posted, but this first bit is the part that has stayed with me all these years.  (I found the whole poem here!)

So, how does Earth Day tie in???  Years ago I subscribed to Keep America Beautiful and read an article about artists who knit scarves for trees as a message against spraying grafitti or carving initials into the trees.  Since I don't knit, I thought we could temporarily adorn our favorite tree with some vibrant painting.

In our yard we have a great, huge maple.  We named it Majesty.  We love it, because it seriously shades a large portion of the yard and provides a cool spot for us to play even when the mercury rises.

For this activity, I taped a roll of paper around the tree.

Then I squirted washable paint on a little plastic play table and added a few utensils for painting.  The girls mixed and swirled with their hands, then started decorating.

They made handprints on the paper and stuck on heart stickers.  They used the cardboard tubes from the paper rolls to stamp circles and we even tried putting stickers on the tube to use as a print roller.  The texture from the tree also added to the artistic effect.

Here is the end result.  I don't think I have ever seen a poem as lovely as our tree!

Kitchen Kids: Shake and Toss Snack Mix

I love having a plan, yet when it comes to having fun with my kids, I have learned to expect and enjoy the unexpected.  Such was the case with this snack we concocted today.

I invited Emmy to assist in the kitchen with dinner this evening and she was more than excited to lend a hand.  I was going to have her help assemble ingredients for a salad, but she had other plans.  She told me she wanted to make marshmallows.

I thought maybe we could use marshmallows to whip up some trail mix.  So I dug out a few supplies- mini marshmallows, chocolate chips, and pretzel goldfish.  She measured out the amounts with a generous cupful, eating several along the way, of course!

I was going to let her stir it up with a wooden spoon, but I realized I had given her a bowl that was too shallow to really contain everything, so I got out a gallon-sized Ziploc bag.  We poured it all inside and started shaking up the goods.

Then we started tossing the bag back and forth to each other.  I pretended that the bag knocked me down backwards and Emmy dissolved in a fit of giggles.  Then she had to throw it the same way again for another crazy reaction, for which I obliged her.  We played catch for quite awhile, laughing the whole time.

 I treasured this goofy, giggly time with my daughter in the kitchen and even though we didn't eat marshmallow mixture for dinner, she was proud of her work and was all smiles for the evening.

Ye Dear Olde Tree Stump

We have a tree in our yard that once was two connected trees.  Now it is one tree and a stump.  We love our tree for the shade and crannies it brings us, but who knew a stump could be just as inviting?

Ally has claimed the stump-tree as her own.  Hours and hours have been spent in play involving the stump.

First, it was Rapunzel's tower.  Ally climbed up on the stump and pretended to be locked away.  She graciously let me play the part of the witch, and then later I was the horse that she rode to safety.

Then the stump was a secret hide-out, with access only to Ally.  In her words, "This is my special place where I can come and hang out and do things and have play-dates with Mom."  Ally and Emmy are fairly close in age, and they spend a great portion of the day together.  The stump is an important possession in her mind because it allows her to have someplace that is hers to control and set the rules.

Ally used the stump as a stage for building a bird house.  To the untrained eye, this birdhouse looks like a pile of sticks and sand, but to a mind with greater imagination it is a bird mansion.

To hear Ally explain the birdhouse would practically take a book.  She told me how she had to mix the cement (sand and water, in this case) and then she poured it on the carefully arranged twigs and it hardened and held them together.  Then she explained a great deal more, but I must admit I have forgotten all that she had to say on the topic.

We discovered a hole in the ground by Ally's tree stump.  I asked what she thought made the hole, thinking that this would lead into a nice discussion of burrowing animals.

Ally had her own plans in mind though.  This is how our conversation went.

Ally:  My dog dug that hole.
Me:  Was he looking for a bone?
Ally:  No, we are going to build a great, huge skyscraper so he dug the hole so we can start building.  It is going to be soooo tall.