Rainbow Bathtub Puzzle

This RAINBOW puzzle is made from foam sheets.  Did you know that they will stick to bathtub walls when wet?  FUN!  The rainbow theme is also a great way to get into the St. Patrick's Day spirit!

I started by tracing one of our mixing bowls onto regular white paper. 

Then I drew the arcs of the rainbow.

{This is where having a compass would have been handy!}

Next I used the template to cut out the rainbow colors from the foam sheets.

RED  ORANGE  YELLOW  GREEN  BLUE  PURPLE

OK - so a true rainbow has 7 colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet) but the foam sheets I found were pretty close and simply saying 'purple' is so much easier for kids!

The kids were excited for bathtime tonight knowing they had a rainbow puzzle to complete!

But they were especially excited when I told them that they could spray on some shaving cream clouds once they finished their rainbow!

Have fun!

Linking up to SunScholars

Linking up to It's a Hodgepodge Life, PetiteHermine

Linking up to Make and Takes, Somewhat Simple, RedTedArt

Matthew's Birthday!

Our sweet little Matthew turned 3 yesterday!

We had a fun and relaxing family day.

Here he is all excited to open his presents.

He loved his wooden blocks, real bug discovery kit, and a 'big boy' piggy bank.

All the kids loved his presents and played so nicely with them while the waffles Matthew requested where being made.

Then we went off to the aquarium to Touch a Shark!

Matthew actually ended up being a little too scared to touch the shark once we were there, but enjoyed watching the rest of us!

Here are the sharks......

.....and here are the boys of the family.

On the way home from the aquarium we stopped off at CRUMBS and everyone got to pick out their own cupcake.  If you know us well do you think you can guess which cupcake belongs to which person?

{the cupcake in the top right corner was an extra}

 Start guessing!

OK so here is what we all picked......

Matthew - Candy {with the mini M&M's since he loves chocolate candy}

Sarah - Grasshopper {for her love of mint}

Jillian - Cotton Candy {loves all things pink}

Chris - Brownie {loves Brownies}

Me - White Hot Chocolate {for my love of white chocolate and hot chocolate}

Did you guess right?

YUMMY!

Matthew had such a hard time blowing out the last candle!  It was so funny and we were all laughing - he was such a good sport and just kept on trying.  He finally did blow it out.

Jillian had no trouble devouring her half!

{Crumbs cupcakes are so huge everyone got 1/2}

Finally, a sweet picture of our oldest and youngest.

Happy Birthday Matthew!

We love you so much!

Spin Painting

Here was a GREAT activity from The Artful Parent!

Spin painting with your salad spinner!

First, I cut out white cardstock so that it fit into the bottom of the salad spinner.

{I found a mixing bowl that was just about the right size and used that to trace the circles on paper}

Then the kids picked out the colors they wanted to spin and squeezed out drops of paint {washable, non toxic} on to the paper.

Spin, spin, spin!

Wow!

So pretty!

Let's do more!

{good thing I anticipated this and had pre-cut a bunch of cardstock!}

We all loved this activity!

The kids loved squirting on the paint, spinning, and lifting the lid to see their creation and I loved that the paint mess was contained!

Now, off to wash my salad spinner!

Food Fun

Here is an easy activity to throw together that uses things you already have around the house.

I took a big plastic bin and filled it with funnels, spoons, little bowls, scoops, jars, small cars and trucks and lots of beans! 

The beans were too big for the funnels we have, and the kids really wanted to use the funnels, so I also took out rice and couscous.  This was a little risky considering the potential mess I could have had to deal with!  But I asked the kids to 'please be very careful' and had a broom and dustbin close by. 

Matthew gave the funnels a work out!

Jillian was very proud of her jar of rice and 'soup'.

Jillian has a wonderful imagination and Matthew will do just about anything Jillian asks him to do, so they had a great time mixing, pouring and stirring together.

Play Makeup

This is such a sweet and simple little activity for the girly girl in your house {that would be Jillian in our house}.  Jillian loves all things dress-up, make-up and jewelry.  This is a change from our Sarah who does not like jewelry and thinks make-up is gross.  So it is fun to indulge Jillian a little bit!

Gather up some old make-up containers.......

.....and then fill them with some fun and bright nail polish!

{fill the container higher than you think because it will dry to about half the height}

Now here is the tough part......you have to tell your little girl that she will have to wait at least 24 hrs for the play makeup to dry {depending on how deep your containers are}.  Patience is a virtue right?

I had Jillian wait about 5 days!

I wanted to be sure the smell was out of the nailpolish.

Let the containers dry in a well ventilated area {I set them out in the garage}.

Jillian was SOOOO excited to finally play with her new makeup!

Idea for Play Makeup Not so Idle Hands via Meet the Dubiens.

Domino Parking Lot

This is a cute little way to work on counting and number recognition and only requires dominoes and some paper.  I thought that this would be appropriate for Jillian, but Matthew showed more interest moving the domino 'cars' into their parking spaces.

We would count the dots on the dominoes and then look for the corresponding parking space/number on the paper.

I need to try this activity with Jillian again so she can work on number recognition and with Sarah so she can work on her addition skills.

Matthew really likes driving the dominoes into the wrong spaces so that Chris or I will say,

'Move that car!  You're in the wrong space!'. 

Idea from Mathwire.

Presidents Day

So I wasn't going to do anything really special for Presidents' Day.  At first, I thought my 'Shiny Pennies' post could be considered a Presidents' Day activity and I would just leave it at that.  But, last night I started thinking we should have a little theme to the day and this is what I came up with.

{our day was biased towards Abraham Lincoln - sorry George}

Abraham Lincoln's Beard

I had seen this craft at Almost Unschoolers and thought it was cute so we gave it a try.  I cut a paper plate in half and cut out space for the kids faces.  Once colored I punched a hole on each side and tied them on with yarn.

Sadly, it held their attention for all of 1 second.  Sarah colored and then didn't even bother to try her beard on.  Jillian at least tried hers on and checked out how she looked in the mirror.  Thankfully, it was my boys who appreciated my crafting efforts.  Matthew thought it was pretty fun and so did little Nathan who just looked too cute.

A Cereal Box Log Cabin - where Lincoln was born

I emptied a granola cereal box and started prepping it much the same way as the Valentine Mailbox.  I took the box apart and cut it so that when put back together {inside out} it would look like a cabin.  I took out my trusty gluegun {wow! once you start using a glue gun it's hard to go back to regular glue!} and glued the little cabin together.  I had to do some trimming because apparently my measuring was off.

Since this cardboard was pretty stiff I scored all the parts I was going to fold with the sharp edge of my scissors.  This made a nice crisp fold in the cardboard.

I also cut out a little chimney and scored along the folding lines.  It should look something like this.

Once folded and glued it will look like this.

Finally we got to the popsicle stick part.  The kids glued on popsicle sticks with white glue, but again when it didn't hold well {or fast enough for me} I took out the hot glue.  I have to admit that I ended up helping out a lot with this craft!

The last step was to paint it all brown and stuff a cotton ball into the chimney.  Done! 
Now I hope the kids play with it!  Actually, I told Matthew he can add it to his Lincoln Logs set.  He was very excited about that so I'm sure it will get some playtime.

Lincoln's Hat Snack

My little Snowman Hats were such a hit I thought we could try Lincoln Hats!  I opened up the oreos and took off the icing so that the brim of the hat would be thin.  Then used some bananas to get the height {they required a little trimming to look right} and then poured melted chocolate over them and set them in the fridge. 

They were not as popular as the Snowman Hats since I swapped out the marshmallow for banana but they were still gobbled up by most of the family.

Happy Presidents' Day!

and

Happy Family Day!

to all our friends and family in Canada.

Me on the Map - Update

Here is the book to go along with the Me on the Map activity we did yesterday.

Happy Mapping!