Thanksgiving Theme Bathtime Fun



Gumby loves her baths!  It was just last year bath time was a struggle, but we worked through it and now Gumby can't wait for a nightly bath.  I *tried* to keep her out of the tub tonight to get it ready, but I couldn't!  She just couldn't wait to hop into her Thanksgiving bath.

 

 

Everything was safe and set up for Lil' Dove (9 months) to join in as she is also in love with the water, but she slept through our Thanksgiving celebration (one day early in our home as we always head to my parents house for Thanksgiving Day) and she slept through bath with a really early bed time.  I was heartbroken that she went to bed so early tonight!

 

The weather was beautiful; we went to the park and apparently Lil' Dove outdid herself. 

Here are the girls enjoying the playground :)

 

 

Anyway, here is the bath! :) 

* Orange water

* Red and yellow bubbles

* Silk fall leaves

* Red/orange/yellow toys to chew, pour, play with

* A couple of pinecones

* New bath crayons

* Foam pumpkins

* Foam cut outs that could be put together to make turkeys.

 

 I showed Gumby how to build the turkey.

 

She had other ideas.

 Isn't the tub lovely the way she lined it up. 

 

Time to open the crayons.  She was still thinking about turkeys, but she had her own ideas.

She wanted to DRAW turkeys! 

 

I can never tell for sure where things will lead as Gumby is a very creative and independent thinker.  We do our best to follow her lead.  She loved her Thanksgiving Bath!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!! 

 

Cornstarch Goo Bath

We made goo with cornstarch and water :) It is not like anything we had ever played with before and was fun.  It's hard and solid when you touch it, but it turns back to a liquid in your hands as soon as you do. Clean up was easy.  Just add lots of water and it goes right down the drain with no problem.

Gumby's First Canvas Painting

She'll be four in three days.  It's like she's a little girl now, officially.  That's another topic though.

For her fourth birthday, one of the gifts her Grammie & Grandpa got her was a stretched canvas painting kit.  It did not take long before she was ready to open it up and paint!

I could not even get ready fast enough.  She jumped right in opening up the paints and carefully pouring them onto the pallet all by herself.

Me: "You're making the tails and manes yellow."

Gumby: "That is how they were in the picture."

Me: "Do you want the picture?"

Gumby: "No, I'll be okay."

"Now, I'll paint the sky blue."

She wanted me to help.  I painted some bushes green and some of the sky blue.  Later we made strips on the dirt path together :)

"The pony will turn lighter as he grows up."

Isn't she proud :)

"I'd like to do this again sometime."

"Only with a white one so I can make whatever I want.  I want to make everyone with their animals and [Lil' Dove]."

Summer Sledding with Ice

Look at that face!! 

I saw this on one of my favorite blogs for ideas of awesome kid stuff: Play At Home Mom 

Here is the direct link to their Ice Block Sledding idea.

I didn't really set out to do this activity tonight.  We were playing ball outside and it was HOT, in the 90's.  Suddenly, I remembered reading about the ice block sledding and that I had a blue "ice skating rink" for toys/characters in the freezer that hadn't been used in a looong time. 

I pulled it out to give the sledding idea a try.  Did we have a fantastic time!

If you have a hill, you should do this. 

If that sled didn't melt, I think at 1am (the time that I am writing this) we would STILL be out there sledding.  She even caught her first lightening bug and took it down the hill :)

Once the sled was too small for her to fit on, it occured to her some friends (who would fit) may like to try it out:

 When everyone ... EVERYONE (all of her favorite critters) had a ride, it was a skating rink again!

The sled for next time will be bigger, pinker, and glittery-er:

Child-led Fun with Water!

We have a lot of impromptu sensory fun led and directed by Gumby; today was a lot of water play.  Gumby asked for water for Bert and Ernie.  Then, she said Bert wanted pink and Ernie wanted purple.  I also gave her this duck that grows in water - it's shown here as big as it grows.  It shrinks back down when dry, then will grow again.  It's fun :)  The duck wanted purple water also.  I threw in some water beads and an eye dropper, just incase ...

The fun continued outside where we have our poor man's swimming pool until we go and get a new pool.  It needed pink and purple water too.  These are currently Gumby's favorite colors!  We threw in some pony beads.  Can you tell in the picture if the float or sink?  If you can't, you should give it a try yourself and find out!

Rubber duckies, Gumby's awfully fond of you!  The dogs and cats (HAHA!) got baths, but I was too busy chuckling and Gumby was nude, so I dont have any action shots of that :P  She also found if she pushed the ducks down really hard that they would sucker themselves to the bottom of the pool.

What impromptu fun things have you thrown together with the kids lately?

Rainbow Pasta and Squinkies!

I've been wanting to dye some pasta and create a new sensory bin of some type.  I had not decided on what to do, then Gumby discovered these "Squinkies" at the store the other day.  Specifically, she discovered this amusement park world for them with a working ferris wheel (among other things) that had the button available to push to test it out which turned it on, made it spin, play music, etc. You know, exciting things! It also cost over $50. 
Deeda and I looked at the Squinkies that were for sale and showed several packages to Gumby.  She loves pretend play, so a pack of these was a reasonable choice.  Gumby choose Hello Kitty with a fruit theme. 

I thought that was just begging to be put into some rainbow pasta! :)



Contents of the box:

• thin spaghetti broken into 1/2 inch to 1 inch sized pieces and dyed with a tablespoon or two of vinegar and 10-20 drops of food coloring.  Make sure it dries completely before sealing it up anywhere!  This was my first time dying pasta.  Dying rice, I use little quart zip lock bags.  Those did not have enough room to mix the colors on the pasta, so I used recycled shopping bags to have a lot of room to shake the pasta around.  It worked fine.
• containers for pouring, scooping, making food, houses, etc
• spoons
• tongs
• containers to fill, dump, pour, open, close, etc
• silicon muffin liners
• some cool spikey balls
• and of course, the Hello Kitty Squinkies

I had not quite decided when to give this to Gumby.  I usually wait for a lull in the day.  I had it sitting in the living room under a pillow, thinking she would not notice it among the rest of our lovely clutter.  But, she did.  I heard "MAMMA!" and saw a HUGE GRIN.  Since she was working on opening it, I quickly laid down our sheet that I use to help contain messy messes ... She literally DRUG the box onto the sheet in excitement!

Playtime!

The little glass canister has the same open/close mechanism as our sugar bowl.  Gumby promptly filled it with "sugar" for me.

 Time to open up those Squinkies!

The balls are as much fun as the toys themselves.  Gumby loaded them into their "boats" so they could enjoy the "water"

Gumby thinks of everone and doesn't want our dog to be left out of the fun!

Something for the Lil' Dove.  She got a muffin liner full of pasta too from Gumby :)

The pasta definitely had a different texture than the soft, smooth, and small rice that Gumby has played with on numerous occassions.
One of the first things Gumby said was "How do you scoop this?"
She found that hands and tongs worked the best.
The tongs could even be used to chop up the pasta.
The open and close containers provide practice with fine motor skills and patience.  The squinkie balls were very good for that. 

The Squinkies themselves are actually pretty neat.  They are soft and a little squishy.  Kind of addictive.
Gumby practiced counting and one-to-one correspondence.

She told stories and added more characters to the play.
She shared with her family.

Gumby loves the colors, matching, sorting and of course mixing! 



I love how Gumby lines things up!

Play Dough Extensions!

I've been trying to set up fun & unique activities that we do not do all of the time for Gumby to do somewhat quietly and independently on the floor in our bedroom while I am getting Lil' Dove to sleep for her naps. 

One thing that I have been trying is using things that we already have and use, but combining them with other things in a new way.

I wish I would have gotten a picture of the play invitation, but I did not. 

It includes:

• large white sheet for easy clean up
• several colors of play dough
• play dough tools
• small letter & number molds
• colored match sticks
• pony beads
• googly eyes
• translucent mosaic tiles

I just left everything out and let Gumby have at it! 
She also went to get her play dough cake and cookie baking set which she just loves to add to the fun.

We did these after I joined in the fun.  I made the top one, Gumby added some things to it and she did the bottom one by herself.  It was a bummer they couldn't really stand up because she was ready for some character pretend play!

Working on her play dough guy. 

Letter sandwiches.  Gumby stamped the play dough with the letters, cut them out with her scissors, then put a mosaic shape on the bottom and top for the 'bread' :)

Sleeping baby ;)

Aquarium Sensory Box

We had some gravel and decorations left over from building Gumby's first fish tank, so I thought it would be fun for her to have an aquarium that she could get her hands in and play pretend. 

We had a box from a grocery store with the front already open for display, but any box could be used and cut to have the openings you want.  I originally had the contents set up in a tray, but I thought using a box with walls would really give it more of an aquarium feel.  We glued blue construction paper to the three sides of the box to look like water.  The animals are from our recent zoo trip.  They remind me a lot of the Toob kits.  The kit came with an octopus ... "Gumby the Octopus" to be exact ;)

Gumby played with this off and on all day today.  She found some containers to give some of the critters their own homes.  Gumby the Octopus was the first to get her own home.  We added in some foam sea critters.  They are stickers which we later stuck to the blue construction paper. 

Until I discovered the foam stickers, I thought we could decorate with construction paper plants, fish, etc.

I am also thinking of a way to affix a mobile over the top and hang some fish or something as well.

Gardening with Gumby: First Starter Seeds

I am finally getting around to posting pictures of our seeds that we have started for the garden!  We are having a lot of fun with this project.  We haven't had a garden for several years and are looking forward to it now that I will have more time because I stay home with Gumby.  This is also something we think she will enjoy and we are sure she will learn a lot.
We have never started any garden veggies from seeds before, ever.  This, like anything else in life, is a learning experience for the whole family.

We went to a couple of stores and let Gumby pick out the seeds herself.  She had a lot of fun doing this.  It gives her ownership on the project and lets her know she is a contributing member of the family.  We didn't worry about the few things she picked out that we don't really care for - we're going to grow them and try them and let her try them.  We try not to limit her tastes and preferences because of our own.  She was so excited.

We also picked some neat looking plants such as the Carnival Peppers (purple, white, yellow, orange) and Chili Peppers.

To start the plants, we got a couple of those seed starting kits with the pods. They are cute and Gumby had fun investigating the pods while they were little dry disks. We all enjoyed pouring warm water on them and watching them expand.

We started planting around the end of March and did maybe 18 plants each evening once every few days or a week.  It was the right amount of time that Gumby would enjoy planting before getting bored.

Choosing a spot to place the next two pepper seeds.

 Carefully placing 2 pepper seeds.

Covering the seeds.

What we have so far: Eggplant (which has mostly died :( by the time I am writing this), Celery (tiny, TINY seeds so we have way more than the suggested 2-4 per pod), Carnival Peppers, Tomatoes and Cayenne Peppers.

The first thing we planted was celery and this is how it looked as it started to come up.
Gumby likes checking in on the plants and seeing their progress :)

This is how the seedlings are coming along today.

The first column on the left are the tomatoes.
The next 4 and a half are the 2 types of peppers. You'll notice they have tan soil. Peppers took the longest by far to come up. And, before they sprouted, the pods were encased in this fuzzy white stuff I had never seen before. Thanks to the internet, I learned it was called "dampening off" and is a fungus that grows if the pods are too moist from having the lid on, etc. I found a few natural remedies that did the trick: a strong batch of chamomile tea and cinammon, which not only gave it the tan color and got rid of the fungus, but it made it smell great too! The fungus is mostly harmless as long as it doesn't overtake the seedlings. And, as a side note to "getting rid" of it, I don't think you ever really get rid of it once it's there (bummer), but you can easily control it.
The next 2 and a half are what remains of the eggplants :( I don't know what went wrong here. They came up just fine. You'll notice a couple of the pods are missing. I gave them to my mom. I think hers are still doing okay.
The final 4 rows are the celery which seem to be doing okay. I should probably thin them out. Mom got 2 of these also.

In exchange, Mom gave me 2 wonderful little basil starts with a clever plant marker made with a plastic spoon and marker :) My mom is clever like that :)

As shown below, Gumby is having a rockin' good time with the family garden! :)
I can't wait until we give her a garden sensory box ... but that is a post for another day! :)

Are you starting a garden?  What did you plant?
Do you have any tips for involving toddlers?