Tot School 32mo Twins – Dandelion Art

An obnoxious weed, that’s what a dandelion is.  They spring up, blow seeds everywhere and thrive.  The field in front of us is covered with the things.  So last week I saw a post, I forgot where, that used dandelions for their art work.  Why not use something plentiful and free for an activity.

We started with a white piece of cardstock that I taped to the table.  I brought out the Crayola washable finger paints and I let each boy pick out the color that he wanted to use.  James picked red and Lance picked yellow.  The lighter the color, the better the overall look.  I let each boy squeeze some paint out.  They got a bit carried away with how much they squeezed.  Then I gave them a bottle of glue and had them squeeze some onto the pile of paint.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I gave them a spoon and let them smear it all around until most of the page was covered and so were they.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Earlier that day we had picked 8 dandelion heads and we took those outside with our wet paper.  I had the boys sit down in front of their papers and blow the seeds onto the paint.  Lance loved the blowing.  James wanted to tear off the seeds and sprinkle just a few on the paint and he wanted all the stems in the artwork too.  Remember the paint is washable, so those yellow and red shoes were easy to clean up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We left the papers to dry and later we had two very unique pieces of artwork that my boys are so proud of.  So I count dandelions as my mercy for the day.

Tot School 32mo Twins – Z is For Zipline

Have you ever ridden on a zipline before?  It’s great fun!  If I like them so much, I know that my boys will like it too.  I looked online yesterday to find out how to make a simple toy zipline.  Bingo, I found one that was super easy.  When I was talking to my husband about it, it surprised me to find out that he had never made a toy or real zipline before ,so the boys and I are doing something very special together.  This is not an elaborate zipline.  It’s very simple but with the way these boys are going, I wouldn’t be surprised if by high school they haven’t built a full-scale zipline in our backyard for their friends to ride.

I got a large sheet of cardstock, really any size will work.  I gave James the glue bottle and had him make a wave of glue down one side of the sheet.

 

 I rolled it up into a tube and to make sure it stayed closed, I had Lance help me staple the seam.

I took two paper plates and cut a triangle out of the plates and trimmed down the edges so I could staple them into cone shapes.  Then did a crazy job of taping them to the ends.

I took two paper clips and unwound them.  I slipped the clips through the middle and over the top of two sewing bobbins.  I made a J shape at the bottom of the clip and pushed those into the frame of my shuttle.  At least that’s what my boys said it looked like.  So a space shuttle it is.  If you wanted to make a nicer, more durable shuttle, then I would opt for something better than paper clips and sewing bobbins for this step.  Or even bending the clip with wire pliers instead of just using your fingers.

 

I blew up two colored balloons.  Well, I blew up three but I popped one in my face, to my boys’ amusement.  I gave each boy a balloon and tape and showed them where to put them.  This is not a necessary step, it’s just for wow factor with the kids.

 

We found some thin string in dad’s shop.  I tied one end to a hand weight that I sat up on the piano and I tied the other end to the arm of a rocking chair.  I just used a simple knot.  Any two points of differing heights will work.  Just make the string tight.  Look real close in the picture and you will see the string stretched across my living room.

 

Now the moment of truth, would our space shuttle fly when we set the bobbins on the string?  Yes it did!  Only one complete, flawless run though that mommy launched.

 

When the boys tried their hand at launching the shuttle, it didn’t go as smooth.  James quickly caught the concept of a gentle launch.

 

Lance never got the gentle concept and as a result, his shuttle runs usually crashed to the ground.

 

In fact, Lance was so aggressive on one launch that he bent the paper clips and mom couldn’t get them back to a good enough position to stay in the bobbins correctly.  So when that happened, I took off the bobbins and our shuttle still ran well on just the clips.  Made me feel a bit like Houston.  “Houston, we have a problem.”  I proudly rose to the occasion and found a way to make our shuttle work.  I’m sure NASA will be calling me for a job interview any day now!

Simple, basic, fun, silly, creative and engaging.  That was our Z activity for the day.  We all loved it.  Well done my little engineers.

Tot School 32mo Twins – Z is For Zoology

Zoology is the study of animals.  We study a lot of animals around here.  Yesterday was no exception.  The only thing different yesterday was I told the boys that studying animals is called zoology, since this is Z week.  We took our magnifying glass outside and looked at ants, beetles, worms, slugs, snails and rollie pollies.  I can say this, mom got a bit bored but my boys did not.  They stayed engaged the whole time.  Besides looking at the little creatures, what did we do?

We stuck our fingers in the trail left by a slug to see how it felt and watched as it crawled slowly across the patio.  I asked the boys if slugs had feet.  Both said yes, but we couldn’t find any when I turned him over.

We slithered and inched along like our snail.  Trust me, the boys can slither far better than this mom.

We called out words that rhymed with slug: bug & tug; snail: nail & pail; rollie -pollie: Mollie & Wallie

I knew I’d be refereeing my boys, so I didn’t take my camera outside with us today.  So no fun pics of that stuff.  When it was time for dinner, the boys brought a few friends in to eat with us, because sharing and hospitality is big in our family.  Have you ever dined with a rollie-pollie?  It’s quite the experience.  As my boys learned, snails do not taste good & the crunching of the shell rather kills the creature inside.  They also learned that rolli-pollies don’t eat bread or roast beef or cheese, rather they can hang on to the side of the table with their many legs.

This wasn’t any special kind of lesson today.  It was boys just being curious about the small animals moving around in the world.  Curiosity, what a great characteristic to encourage in young children.

Bob Woodruff Park

 2601 San Gabriel – Plano, TX

(corner of Shiloh & Park)

Overall view

 

 

Unique ring climber

Finger maze

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lots of little seats to sit or stand

 

 

ABC, shapes & 1-2-3 board

Multiple slides, nothing too scary big

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Suspension steps

 

Lots of small step climbing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mountain climber

Triangle climber

 

 

Double curvy slides

 

Double crawling short tunnels

Helix climber

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Climbing/sliding soft wall

Great sticks on the ground

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dock, but not so clean

 

Chasing ducks in the field

Chasing ducks at the pond

Tot School 32mo Twins – Z is For Zoomin, Movin Colors

This is our last letter of the alphabet for this series.  The first activity for Z turned out to be really neat.  I told the boys that we were going to create colors that zoomed and moved all above the place.  This got their attention.  It’s a very easy science experiment to do with kids.  Gather up 1 round, shallow pan, half & half, food coloring and dish washing soap.

 

I wanted this to be an experiment that the boys got to do mostly by themselves.  So I handed the half & half to James and asked him to take the cap off and pour it into the pan.

 

 

 

Then I gave each boy a small bottle of food coloring and told them to squeeze a few drops into the cream.  Beware, they might get messy and now Lance has red stained hands for the next day or so.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then I helped them gently stir the colors into a swirl.

 

Next I held the dish soap bottle and James helped me pour a few drops into the center of the pan.

 

Then we just sat and watched what happened.  The colors amazingly shot out and zoomed across the cream.  Then it started to bubble and swirl around.  It kept doing this for about 5 min while the boys said Oh!  Awe!  Look mommy!  bubbles!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

At this age, I didn’t try to explain the science behind this.  I’m just tickled to death that these two boys are curious and like to see cool stuff.  It gives me some encouragement that maybe they will love science when they get older.  This was our easy zoomin project.

Custer Park

 

699 Renner Rd - Richardson, TX

(corner of Custer & Renner)

Lots of baby swings

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Climbing up the big slide

 

 

 

Climbing throught the level tunnel

 

Arched climbing bars

Climbing up the straight bars

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tic Tac Toe

Two mini slides

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Steering wheel

 

Squigly curved climber

Bouncy bridge

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Metal stairs make for great banging

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The 3 of us together

Tot School 32mo Twins – Y is for Yellow Yogurt Painting

The last activity of the penultimate letter in the alphabet.  I knew knowing that word would come in handy some day!  Since the crazy weather here has turned its face to winter again instead of marching forward into spring, we stayed inside and worked on painting since we haven’t done much of that lately.  I pulled out yellow paper and we talked about the word yellow beginning with the Y sound.  Next I took plain yogurt and divided it into 3 bowls.  I put in sage to make one green, paprika to make one red and curry to make the other one yellow.  I also added two drops of food coloring to each bowl.  What a great activity for all the senses.  It smelled yummy while we painted.

 

 

 

This doesn’t produce the prettiest paintings, but the boys had a good time making a mess.  They drew circles, squares and I drew a few letter Ys in the yogurt too.  Just make sure your little ones don’t splat their hands in it.  I can testify, the yogurt can really fly!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Later during the day, we did another yellow paper painting.  I had several paint chips all in different colors of yellow.  I let the boys pick out what yellow card they wanted to use.

 

Then I taped a stencil of flowers onto the card and I taped both of those onto a piece of scratch paper.

 

I poured out a small amount of red, blue and green Washable Crayola paint onto 3 saucers.  I gave each boy a small piece of sponge and told them to stamp to their heart’s content.  Stamp they did and had a marvelous time!  This was a messy project for my boys.  With stamping, they did the stencil, the rest of the paper, their hands, their arms, the table and even the chair.  It’s crazy how much these two boys like stamping, just like their momma.  It’s so much fun to see the differences in the two boys.  Lance smears more and likes to stamp himself  while James is much more neat on the page but gets rather wild on the table and chairs, everywhere except his paper.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When they were done stamping, we washed up and I peeled the stencil, paper and card apart.  What was left was a cute picture of a mini garden.  They are hanging on my fridge as sort of an early mother’s day present.  I just adore pretty gardens.

 

 

 

 

 

 

That my friends is how we got through a cold day inside when we all really wanted to be outside and playing in the sunshine.  Painting is my mercy for the day.  What kinds of things do you like to do when it’s cold or rainy?