Counting With Clothespins

I made these number cards a while ago, and we found a new way to play with them this week.

I had a package of clothespins left over from a craft we did ages ago, and I pulled them out.

Then we clipped the corresponding number of them onto the cards.

Quick, and a fun way to change up the cards a bit.

Snow Painting

We had done this once earlier in the season at Joy School, but we've had so much beautiful snow lately that it was definitely time to pull this activity back out and do it again!

I bought three squirt bottles at our local dollar store (I love dollar stores!). I planned on filling them up with the primary colours of red, yellow, and blue, and then we could make other colours on the snow as we played. But - the kids didn't want yellow. They wanted green. I tried to convince them, but they weren't interested, so yellow was out, and green was in.

Come to think of it - colouring the snow yellow is a little distasteful!


To make the coloured squirters, I just filled them with water and added food colouring drop by drop until I thought it was dark enough to contrast easily on the white snow.

Just a warning here - the food colouring can stain, so make sure that if they do get some on their winter clothes you wash it right away!

My husband built a snowpig with the kids a few days ago and we used our squirters to paint him pink. How cool is that? We actually got a few comments on him from our smiling neighbours!

Family Literacy Day

January 27th is Family Literacy Day in Canada. It is a day for parents and children to enjoy books together. And since that is one of my favourite things to do, I was totally on board!

The night before, I chose a few books from my kids' shelves, and came up with some activities to do with them that related back to the story. I wanted to vary my activities too, and not just have everything be a craft or everything be a game. I thought it would be great to have a craft for one, a learning activity for one, a just-for-fun one, and a cooking one. I got all my preparations ready and supplies gathered, and then I was set.

This was my first book. And no, actually, this wasn't the book that I planned a cooking activity. Ha! No, in the book the moose makes sock puppets, and I had found a sock puppet kit at a book store for $2 and snatched it up, so this was the perfect chance to break it open.

It came with quite a few supplies, but I added in a few of my own materials to round it out.

So first I gathered my middle two kids (I had the baby down for a nap, and my oldest was still at school) and we read the book. Then I brought them up to the table where I had all the supplies out and waiting.

They were so enthusiastic about this idea! My boy snatched up a green sock and instantly declared he was going to make a snake.

And my daughter quickly set about turning a pink sock into, what else, a piggy.

After some felt, buttons, googly eyes, pompoms, and pipe cleaners were added on, these were their creations. I love what they came up with! I had to help them cut out their felt pieces, but the design and the rest of the construction was all their own.

When the glue was finally dry, they slid their arms into their puppets and gave me a show!

This was a library book we happened to have checked out earlier in the week. We own the first book, "Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type" and when I saw another of Doreen Cronin's books I thought we'd give it a try. I really liked Click, Clack, Moo. I thought this one fell short, but my kids enjoyed it, which was good.

For this activity, I did a little number worksheet. Down one side of the paper I wrote the numbers from 1-5, and then made swirly lines all over the center of the page and had them come out at the other side. The kids had to use their markers to trace my lines and find where each number comes out, then write the number at the end of the path.

Our third book was The Balloon Tree by Phoebe Gilman. We have all her Jillian Jiggs stories, and I bought this book at a used book sale because I loved the author's other works. Again, not my favourite, but it was a fun, cute story, and had Phoebe Gilman's sweet illustrations.

After we finished the story, we of course, played with BALLOONS! We did three games: The first one was just a simple 'see who can keep their balloon in the air the longest' game.

For the second, we sandwiched a balloon in between the kids and then they had to squeeze and hug as tight as they could until it popped. It was sure a shock when it finally did!

Our last game was a race around the living room with a balloon held tightly between our legs so we kind of had to waddle. So funny to watch them try!

Our final book was this lesser-known Seuss.

Then we made scrambled eggs together. Basic I know, but this guy here loves scrambled eggs.

It was such a fun afternoon. And at bedtime they asked me if it would be Family Literacy Day again soon. So great.

Joy School - Healthy Living

Well, I forgot to bring my camera with me to Joy School this week, so I know my recap will be less fun to read, and that I will miss things, but I'll do my best. (Arg!)

Lesson Time: The unit we were learning was Healthy Living. The host mom did a great job of covering lots of different aspects of the topic. She spent most of the time teaching ways to keep our bodies strong and healthy, but she also touched on emotional health.

Each child was givena chart of faces expressing different emotions, and they got to go through and find the one that showed the way they were feeling that day. I have plans for mine that I am sure I will share when I am done.

Art Time: Here, I thought she had a great idea. Instead of teaching everything and then moving on to the art, she passed out some dental health colouring pages, (I couldn't find where she found hers, but here is a link to some dental colouring pages if you are looking) and while the kids were colouring, we talked about the ways to keep our teeth healthy such as brushing, flossing, and eating the right foods.

Snack Time: Again, instead of teaching then doing the activity, she taught as they snacked. She pulled out the snacks one at a time, and we learned what food group they were in, and how that food group helps our bodies. She served carrots and apples and we learned they were from the fruits and vegetables group, which have lots of vitamins and are good for keeping our tissues healthy. She passed out cheese, from the milk group, and it has calcium which helps your bones and teeth. The grains group was represented by crackers and by mini muffins (oh, so good!) and she taught that grains were good for giving us energy to play. She also served little cubes of ham for the meat and alternatives group and we reviewed that meat has protein and helps us build muscles. To drink she served water and taught us that staying hydrated was important for our health too.

Craft Time: We made popsicle stick puppets. She had prepared supplies for many different animals for us to choose from: pigs, lions, sloths, giraffes, cats, monkeys, mice.... We coloured the pictures, and glued on the sticks. Then while the kids were playing with them, she taught the importance of sleep and how it is when we are sleeping that our bodies can focus on growing and healing. Then we guessed which of the animals we had made slept the most and which slept the least. Did you know a giraffe only sleeps for half an hour per day??? CRAZY! The animal that slept the most was the sloth. Twenty-one hours per day.

We also learned the stages of the sleep cycle, and ways to help us fall asleep at night. These included having a routine before bed, not eating a big meal right before it is time to lay down, and getting lots of exercise during the day.

Story Time: She shared two books.

The first was about the going to bed routine, since we need to get rest to stay healthy.

The second was so cute. The two animals played together, tired themselves out, and fell to sleep all snuggled up together.

Wiggle Time: This was so fun. She taught us that we needed to be active to stay healthy. She started by asking the kids what kind of activities the kids liked to do. Their answers included going to the park, running, kicking balls, and swimming. We learned that all of these things were exercise. Then we did some yoga posses to do some exercise. This was my guy's favourite part. She chose poses that were all the names of animals and as we did them we made the animal sounds. It is killing me that I didn't bring my camera for the tiger and the lion. Oh my!

Play Time: We had a little extra time at the end so the kids got to have some toy time. This was actually great since it was this mom's first time hosting, and none of the children, (except her own, obviously) had been there before and they were all dying to check out all the new toys they could see, and it let them get to know each other a little bit better since we have a couple of new-ish kids that have joined the group.

Felt Cookies

I am not a real seamstress. I muddle my way through Halloween costumes, and each year wonder why I am putting myself through this again. I might be able to hem my store-bought curtains to the right length, and I can put a button back onto a shirt, but I don't know the jargon for sewing. I've never sewn my daughter a dress, I don't spend time oohing over fabric online. It just isn't my own personal creative outlet.

But every now and then, a project (a small, very easy project) will catch my eye and I'll dig out my hand-me-down sewing machine and I'll give it a try. Last year I was at a birthday party for one of my little son's friends, and one of the moms had sewn some adorable felt food for the gift for her child to bring to the party. Oh, it was so cute! Now, it must be said that this mom is a very accomplished seamstress and makes a-m-a-z-i-n-g fabric masterpieces all the time, so I knew I'd never be able to duplicate what she made.

But I remembered them.

Then when I was getting ready for the Sesame Street party, and thought of doing a cookie relay race, I knew this was the perfect opportunity to try making some felt goodies of my own. I'm sure there is a right way to do this. There are probably patterns out there that would give a perfect result, but this is what I came up with.

I had two tones of brown in my fabric scraps bag, which was handy.

I used the lid from a large spices jar to trace circles on the light brown fabric.

Then I cut around with pinking shears for that cute zig-zag look.

To make the chocolate chips, I just free-handed some small circles with my regular fabric scissors. They are not perfectly round, but they were good enough.

Using a needle and some dark brown thread, I hand-sewed the chocolate chips to the light brown circles, (on the side without the circle tracing marks) with a large X in the middle of each chip. I did my best to scatter the chocolate chips, rather than have them in an even pattern, because that just isn't the way cookies look. I also did different numbers of chips on the cookies. Some had 3, some 4, and some 5, just to give them some variety.

Using the same spice-jar lid, I traced the shape on a bit of batting, and cut them out. Then I put a circle of batting on a piece of light brown, and layered the chocolate chip circle on the top.

Then I pinned the stack together.

And sewed around the edge, trying my best to keep the seam just inside of the zigzag edge.

The last thing I did was to get out the pinking shears again, and cut around the bottom fabric, matching it up with the top circle.

Repeat, repeat, repeat...

Here is my plate of felt chocolate chip cookies. I made 8 of them, and it took me about two hours from start (digging out the fabric) to finish, (sweeping up the threads on the floor) so it wasn't a huge undertaking. And really, for me, it was a very successful sewing project.

I just might try making more felt food. Who knows.

Sesame Street Birthday - The Main Event

The invitations had been sent, the banner and the decorations were up, the hats waited patiently by the cake, and the treat bags were all filled and ready to be passed out.

It was time to party!

My son has really enjoyed playing the games on sesamestreet.org, and loves the music from the show, so I tried to model the games and activities from those. The first game we played was based on a Big Bird game on the Sesame website, where Big Bird matches letters to different objects.


We used the same basic idea, but to make it more of a party game, I turned it into a treasure hunt. I used the stuffy alphabet from our Joy School letters day, and I gathered toys that began with each letter. Then I hid groups of letters and toys around the house, and before they could get the clue for the next location, they had to figure out which letter went with each toy. The clues led us all over the house; from the living room to the basement to the kitchen to the bedrooms...everywhere. The kids were wild about running to the next spot and searching for more letters. It was great to see their enthusiasm.


At the end of the hunt, the treasure was a large plate full of warm chocolate chip cookies, (Cookie Monster's favourite). Each child got to choose one, and then we had a race to see who could gobble their cookie the fastest, just like Cookie Monster.


When they had finished up their treats, I pretended to be worried, because we had eaten up all of Cookie Monster's cookies! It was a good thing I had some more, 'right out of the oven.'

Then I pulled out this tray of felt cookies, a child's oven mitt, and a spatula from my daughter's play kitchen and we had a race to feed these cookies to Cookie Monster .

The kids all lined up and the first child had to put on the oven mitt, pick up the tray of cookies, and dash to the other side of the room.

Then, using the spatula, they had to scoop up one of the cookies from off the tray and feed it to Cookie. If they dropped it, they had to scoop it back up and try again until we all had a turn and Cookie's tummy was nice and full. Then they had to rush back and pass of the tray and mitt to the next child.

Our next game was with Ernie's favourite toys: Rubber Duckies!

I bought a new yellow ducky for each child at the dollar store, and came home and made a loop out of pipe-cleaners to go on each one . Just before the party I filled up the tub with water and set them floating.

At game time, the kids came into the bathroom, stood on the rubber ducky bathmat, and tried to catch one of the ducks. My husband engineered the fishing rod for me. He used a piece of doweling for the rod, a string for the line, and, this was the brilliant part, cut off the top of a wire hanger for the hook. It worked so well, and the hook was just the right size for the kids to maneuver to their ducks.

I borrowed an old-school metal garbage can for the party, since it looked just right next to Oscar, and we used it for a target toss game. I saved up some of my actual trash, washed it out of course, and then the kids threw the trash into the can. Loved it!

Our next game was Elmo Says, which is played exactly like Simon Says. But this way, it matched the theme! I was the first 'Elmo' and taught the kids how to play, and then we gave the Birthday Boy a turn. He had such fun with it. So much that I don't have a single in-focus picture of this game because the kids are stomping, jumping, and spinning so fast.

This last game was The Count's Number Guessing Game. Each jar (1/child) was filled with different candies, and I wrote the number of treats on the bottom of the jar. Then each child guessed how many were in each, and whoever was closest won that jar; We played it so that once you won, you were done and didn't win more than one jar so all the kids would get a prize. The kids had such funny answers! Some of them guessed tiny numbers like 3, or 5, and then others went straight to a billion-hundred-infinity-and-seven. Ha!

My guy was very happy to have won his favourites: Reese's Pieces!

One more fun thing we did during the games was to play a Sesame Street song that went with that game during each activity. For the treasure hunt, we played Big Bird's "ABC-DEF-GHI-" song, for the Cookie Monster race we played "C is for Cookie," for the ducks we listened to "Rubber Ducky, You're the One," (alternatively, we could have listened to 'Do De Duck') for Oscar's game it was "I Love Trash," Elmo says was "Elmo's Song" and the guessing game was "Lambada." Just a little touch to make it special. The rest of the party we just had the regular play list of Sesame Street songs going in the background.

After our games we moved on to treats. I made some character cupcakes that I thought turned out very cute indeed. I wish that I had a better picture since this one doesn't really show Big Bird's beak, which I made from yellow Mike and Ike candies. The other mouths were made by twisting open an Oreo and cutting the black cookie part in half.

While I was looking online for ideas for a cake, I saw one like this that I just loved, and I thought my version turned out pretty well. I would have liked to have used a little more red food colouring to darken it up a bit, but on the whole I was happy. I made the corkscrew curls of icing by rolling out the fondant and cutting it in thin strips, then wrapping it around a thin doweling rod and letting it get hard overnight. The yellow squares on the top layer were to add letters. You could write ABC, the child's intials, their name, whatever. Or you could just leave them blank and have them be simple like that.

I borrowed some little figurines that I put around the cake to make it more 'Sesame.'

After cake and ice cream, we moved to the basement to break open the Oscar pinata. I even got a picture right when the candy started to spill. Lucky! It seems like I never get the timing on that right.

Then while the guests munched on pinata treats, the Birthday Boy attacked this pile of gifts!

The guests (and their moms, I'm sure!) were very thoughtful, and there were many on-theme gifts, toys, cards and even wrapping paper that complimented the party and thrilled my boy.

It was a wonderful, happy party and he is so proud to be four. Happy Birthday, my dear!