ABC fishing

Magnets are such fun! We have numbers and letters so we decided to go fishing for some fun. We just put them in a giant bowl and gave the kids magnet fishing poles. It kept them entertained for quite a while and we had some fun learning with numbers and the alphabet too! I'd tell them to find a certain number or letter or color and they'd try and catch it. Lots of fun indoor play. 

Tacky Paper Pom Poms

Another fun activity with Pom Poms! Yay, can you tell how much we like them? Before the move we were staying at my parents house and my mom pulled out some tacky paper and pom poms and viola! instant fun! We taped the tacky paper to the entertainment center and the kids had a blast making pictures and designs with the pom poms. 

 Pom Poms also make great eyeballs apparently

Pom Pom Pickup

Another fun thing to do with Pom Poms is to throw them all on the floor, hand the kiddos some clothes pins and say a color for them to pick up and place in their pile. They loved it! Lil Man struggled opening them but figured out how to pick them up with the clothes pin upside down-smart little guy! We played this game a couple times and they loved every minute of it. We easily played for an hour. 

 Some deep concentration is needed apparently!

 Trying to see if he could pick up his finger. 

Counting the pile is fun too!

 Lil Lady wanted to sort hers to see how many of each color she got. 

 Lil Man wanted to make a line and after decided it was a dinosaur. 

 Then Lil Lady wanted to make them a pillow and pretend to sleep. Such creativity! 

Have I mentioned I LOVE POM POMS?

Pom Poms are quite possibly one of my favorite kid things. There is so much you can do with them. They are cheap. They are colorful. They squish and hardly take any space to store. They come in different sizes. They are awesome. Sometime last year while at IKEA I found a bunch of sand toys. One set was an ice-cream parlor kit. Initially I was going to make yarn ice-cream balls for it but that seemed like to much work so I finally pulled them out and use pom poms instead! The kids were in heaven. They literally played cream for days. I was finding them everywhere through my house and they were getting creative with their play. I loved it!

 Here's our big carton of ice-cream ready to serve!

 Of course you have to eat the ice-cream too! ;)

 See that little munchkin in the background, she desperately wanted to play too, sorry baby! Too small for you!

 Showing off their creations.

 Lil Lady wanted to have a turn taking pictures so I decided to eat a cone myself. 

Snack time

Kids love snack time right? What an easy way to add some play to their day. My cute friend posted on Facebook some fun banana snowmen that she made for her kiddos so I thought it would be a great idea for my family too! The kids loved it and got a healthy fun snack at the same time having fun eating snowmen's arms, eyes, and heads! 

Leaf Art

We went to a fun little nature center that's down the street from us and had some fun exploring. Before leaving Lil Lady announced that she wanted to gather some leaves to make leaf art. Ok fine. I told her she could bring what she could carry. A few days passed and finally we sat down and did it. She put the glue on the leaves and then stuck them to the paper and put random heavy stuff over them to make sure they stayed put to dry. Easy peasy activity and FREE! Can't get much better than that! 

St Patty's

I love holidays with the kids. I know many people now a days think we need to tune it down a notch (or five hundred) with how we celebrate but having a sensory kid it really helps me have a theme to go with for some sensory play. Yes, a tricky little leprechaun visits our house and plays tricks and leaves small fun stuff for the kids. I love it, they love it, win win in my book. I asked Lil Lady if she wanted to build a Leprechaun trap and she was thrilled to. I asked her what she wanted and she chose to get a cup and paint it green. Deal! She wanted a paintbrush but I told her I didn't know where they were (perks of moving recently...I am able to get away with "forgetting" lots!) She then happily started to finger paint! Something that a year ago she wouldn't have even dreamt of doing! Such progress!!! She did manage to paint quite cleanly though, only got a few fingers dirty but heck, I don't care, she did it and I was proud. She even had the flu bug while doing it but stayed happy!

 Here's the trap Lil Man and Daddy made! Haha, I love them. 

Sick kiddos

We've been dealing with the nasty flu bug at our house for a week now. Let's just say this momma is a bit tired of it. Two out of the three kiddos still have it, bleck! A lot has happened since I last blogged here! To begin, we had another baby and we moved 20 hours away! Crazy how time flies. We have been doing lots of sensory play still a mist all the chaos so I will try to blog them more regularly. 

Today Lil Lady was FINALLY feeling better minus a cough so to keep her entertained while the other two slept we made sock puppets! I've been holding on to several old socks for a while now and today's the day we finally used them. She loved picking through my random craft stuff to make her two puppets. Then she even named them: meet Sally and Sarah!

 Lil Man woke up right after we finished so we quickly made him one too. He didn't want to pick anything for it except a blue nose. He happily watched me make it then as soon as it was done and on his hand he remembered he didn't feel good and burst into tears. Oh well, maybe tomorrow he'll want to play with it. 

Shredded Paper...what was I thinking?

I had a HUGE garbage bag full of shredded paper that I needed to put in the recycling bin. I thought "hey, why not play with it first? It would be great fun!" Yes, it was fun, but I learned my lesson...this is NOT an outdoor activity! Especially on a slightly windy day. Oh well, the kids had fun, that's what matters right? I poured it out in my big water/sand table and gathered different scoops and let the kids loose.

I told Lil Lady to smell it and see what it smelt like. She said it was stinky-lol!

As you can see, my driveway quickly became COVERED in tiny shreds of paper. Ugh.

Lil Lady had fun making pie and cake out of paper...here she is offering me a slice.

 

Lil Man loved taking her pie and cake and stressing her out, as usual. He thinks it's his hourly job to torture her because she makes it so easy!

The magnifying glass was lots of fun to check out the paper with. 

Getting a closer look with the magnifying glass is very important!

How big of a pile can you hold at once? 

It is lots of fun to sort and move paper shreds to fun new containers. She was making me dinner here I believe...

 

 

Overall the kids loved it, I didn't. If I do it again it will be indoor, on a tarp or something that I can easily clean up and take care any leftover runaway papers with a vacuum. It took me forever to clean up my driveway after this one! 

Storm dancing

A few weeks ago we had a fun summer storm and I wanted to watch it roll through. I sat in the garage watching it come through and the kids sat by me for a while. Then they started getting brave and ran into the driveway then right back in for cover. Lil Lady up to this point DID NOT like storms. They freaked her out due to the loud thunder and lightning. She kept begging to go in so I had to think of some fun games for her.

 

I told her that the thunder was big loud drums and that she should play along and make some beautiful music with the storm. 

 

Of course she had to pick some leaves too...

Every time the lightning hit she freaked out a bit so I got creative and told her that the sky was taking her picture and she needed to pose. I amazingly got a shot of her posing and lightning in the background! Love it!

After the storm she actually talked about how much fun it was and how she loved it. Maybe we're making some progress! I sure hope so, cuz I sure love a good storm!