Spooky Tot Play: Spiders, Ghosts and Glow Sticks!

I'm linking up with @playandlearneveryday on Instagram, as well as several other parents of toddlers for a Spooky Play Every Day photo challenge for October! Follow us on Instagram to see all of our daily spooky activities, or even join us in our spooky, silly fun :)

Here are my favorites of the spooky activities we've done so far.

Spooky Sensory Bottles

After much searching through our storage closet I managed to pull out the Halloween sensory bottles I made for the boys last year! For more details, here's the original post from our Halloween Countdown: Spooky Sensory Bottles

Icy Spiders

Calvin has this strange fascination with spiders at the moment. He's a little afraid of them, and he's obsessed with finding them both in real life and in books.So I thought he might enjoy this spider-infested ice, and sure enough - since they weren't real spiders after all - he loved this activity!

And it could hardly have been easier! That morning while he was at school, I filled up an ice tray and stuck a plastic spider into each well. They floated, but I didn't mind them sticking out of the ice a little. That afternoon when Calvin was home from school, I set out a big bowl of water and we started plopping our spidery ice into it. I gave him a scoop and some tongs and just let him explore. 

After a while he yelled, "Oh no!! The Spiders!!" And I said, "What about the spiders??" 

The ice had melted enough that the spiders were getting free! I thought maybe he was freaking out because he was afraid of the plastic spiders, but then I realized that it was more like he thought his toy had broken. I explained that the ice is supposed to melt, as ice will in a bowl of water at room temperature... and then we had a little science-y discussion about solids and liquids, freezing and melting. 

Meanwhile, I gave Henry a small bowl with just two ice cubes and no water (because he would have just poured it all over himself in an attempt to drink the water). He licked the ice a bit, but was generally displeased that what I had given him was not, in fact, a snack. 

Glow Stick Bath

We had a busy weekend, particularly Sunday which we spent first at a pumpkin farm, and then at the beach. We ended our Sunday Funday with this awesome, eerie glow stick bath! I had a bunch of glow bracelets that I got at a party store, but you could do this with any kind of glow sticks, glow necklaces, etc. Henry was too pooped from our big day to enjoy the bath, so he went to bed early. Calvin loved it and would only get out when I agreed to let him take the glow bracelets to bed. He went to bed with them stacked up both arms like Rainbow Brite!

Boo-nanas!

For a spooky after-school snack, I used raisins to make ghost faces on Calvin's favorite fruit. The cookies are Halloween Joe-Joe's from Trader Joes. Super cute and super yummy!!

More spooky tot play to come! #spookyplayeveryday

Tot Play Tuesday: 3 Fall Art Ideas

The first official day of fall is tomorrow and while I am still basking in Indian Summer here in California, I know lots of my friends are already starting to enjoy cooler weather, leggings and scarves, pumpkin spice lattes, and soon, gorgeous fall foliage.

So here are three art ideas from last year's fall blog posts to get you and your little ones in the spirit of the season (even if it is Indian Summer where you are too!). 

These are three art projects that I did with Calvin and Henry last year, and I'm thinking I'm going to bring them back and do them again this fall. It will be neat to compare their art from last year with this year. All three of these projects are pretty easy if you've got a few art supplies on hand. 

Fall Fingerpaint Trees

All you need for this gorgeous artwork are some paints, paper, and any kind of marker or pen. I used a brown sharpie. The paints I used were a mix of fingerpaints and tempera paint. You could do the same thing with watercolors, draw the tree trunk and let them paint away! I bet watercolors would be so pretty. If you're not up for freehanding a tree trunk, print one out! 

Pumpkin & Apple Stamping

I did this project with the boys after Halloween to use up the little bitty pumpkins we had. And then we did it again with apples. What I love about this art project is that you can throw it together as a last minute idea with whatever you have on hand. Any kind of paint or even ink stamp pads would work for this, and just about any kind of fruit or veggie. 

Torn Paper Collage

I've always enjoyed making collage art. In high school and college I used to make lots of magazine collages. When working with little kids, I like torn paper collage because then they don't have to worry about being skilled with scissors. For Calvin, I did what I would have done for my first graders: I cut the paper into strips first so that he could (in theory) tear small pieces off. (If you read the post, you'll see that the project did not go over as well as I'd dreamed it would!). For collage art, of course, you don't need to draw anything, you could just go for it with the paper or you can start with a shape or the start of a picture like my tree trunk and turkey head.



Happy Fall Y'all!!

Ocean Themed Tot Play

Yesterday we watched the first installment of a 3-night TV documentary series by PBS and BBC called Big Blue Live. Big Blue Live is celebrating and exploring a huge gathering of marine animals in nearby Monterey Bay. They are filming live from Monterey Bay Aquarium, as well as from helicopters and boats out on the bay to see the animals: humpback whales, blue whales, elephant seals, sea otters, sharks and more. It's like a huge ocean animal party that apparently happens every year in Monterey Bay. I so wish we could drop everything and take the boys down there today! We were just there a few months ago for a visit.

On the deck at Monterey Bay Aquarium

Big Blue Live reminded me of this ocean animal theme week we did a while back. Calvin LOVES marine animals. They are probably his favorites, maybe even more than dinosaurs! Here are a few ways we brought ocean wildlife into our home :)

Ocean Sensory Bin

I bought a set of small aquatic animal toys from Target and we made them a little ocean habitat with water and blue food coloring. I don't have a photo of it, but later we even added some small seashells. Calvin liked to pretend the crab was a hermit crab and he would try to stuff it into the seashells. 

Squishy Ocean Sensory Bag

This is a zip-lock bag full of blue hair gel with some of the animal toys from our set. So squishy and fun! Henry later destroyed this by biting it... so just be careful! 

Ocean Bed

Looks suspiciously like our Space Bed, doesn't it? Yup, we just left the blue sheet on and swapped out the rocket ship and astronaut toys for some ocean animal stuffies.

Some sensory play and some pretend play. We also have a few favorite songs about ocean animals: Slippery Fish, Baby Beluga, and Under the Sea!

Check out Big Blue Live if you have any interest in marine widlife. It's on live tonight and tomorrow on PBS!

Tot School/Tot Play Tuesday: Letter N

I was looking back through my Tot School posts and I realized that I never wrote about the week we did the letter N! It was back around the time of Calvin's surgery in March. I didn't do the whole alphabet in letters-of-the-week, but we did all the letters in Calvin's name, plus just a couple more.

Here are the other posts on the letters in his name:

C    A     L     V     I


And here's how we played with the letter N!



Words that begin with N

I had to get a little creative to come up with enough items around the house that started with N. Hence the nametag ;)

Neon Noodles

I picked out some big fat rigatoni noodles because I knew they'd be easy to string onto a necklace. Then we colored them using rubbing alcohol and gel food coloring.

I put a handful of rigatoni into each plastic bag with a few drops of food coloring and a couple of tablespoons of rubbing alcohol. Then the kids helped me shake up the bags!

Once the noodles were covered in color, I spread them out on wax paper and let them dry overnight. The colors did run a little. 

Noodle Necklaces

With our colorful noodles, we did a little fine motor practice with stringing to make some pretty neon noodle necklaces!

Making the Letter N

We also used the neon noodles to decorate a big letter N. 

And to practice making the shape of the letter N, we used a little playdough. We used a cookie cutter to imprint an N onto the dough, and then I asked Calvin to line up some marbles following the zig-zaggy shape of the letter N. Also fine motor practice :)

So now we have Calvin's whole name! And it's been hanging in our kitchen since March!
#catchingup #betterlatethannever

D is for DISNEYLAND!!

We're going to DISNEYLAND!!!

I might be more excited than Calvin. But that's only because I already know how awesome it's going to be. 

Calvin can't wait to go to "Mickey Mouse's House" and he's also really excited about going "Under the Sea" with the Little Mermaid. He hasn't seen the movie - way too scary! - but we sometimes watch just the song Under the Sea on YouTube because it's so fun and we have ocean animal musical instruments to play along :) Plus, Calvin loves ocean animals and all things water. 

Henry, obviously, has no idea what he's in for. I'm anticipating that some things will be hard for Henry, but as long as we can strap him in the Ergo for a little break from the bright sun and noisy crowd, I think he'll be OK. Now if we could just get an Ergo for James to give him a break from the crowd... ;) But one type of sensory play that Henry really, really loves is vestibular stimulation. That is a kind of sciency-way of saying he loves to spin and swing and bounce and roll. He loves activities that let his body do big movements. So I think the actual rides are going to be really fun for him. Spinning on the teacups, flying in circles with Dumbo... sounds like his cup of tea! James on the other hand... well, James might need some Dramamine. 

I found this amazing website called DLR (Disneyland Resort) Prep School with tons of really useful advice and information about travelling to Disneyland. The writer is a mom of 3 living in southern California and she has lots of experience with touring Disneyland with kids of all ages. I used her 6 steps for planning the trip and the most helpful things for me were her sample Disneyland and California Adventure trip itineraries. I used the ones for two days at Disney, one day at CA Adventure for toddlers and adapted them for our family. It was great to find a list of the toddler rides organized by area of the park, and helpful to have someone else's take on how to budget our time.

To get the boys excited, and to give them an idea of what to expect, we watched some YouTube videos of Disneyland rides and characters and I found this old Disneyland Fun Sing-Along movie which they love. I remember my little brother watching this on VHS about 20 years ago!

We also did the letter D for our Tot School Letter of the Week! We have continued to do some Tot School theme weeks since I last posted about it, though not every week. But we haven't done a Letter of the Week since we finished the letters of Calvin's name. This was partly because I started questioning whether I should have done lower case letters instead of capital letters. In the end I decided to go ahead and introduce the concept of lower case letters, since we see them in print all the time, but to focus on capital letters for Letter of the Week and for our letter recognition play.

So here are some ways we played around with the letter D

Words that start with D. Find the letter D.

Dot painting. This ended up being a bit of motor skill work for Calvin. He had to work hard to get the dot right on the D.

D for Dinosaur! Of course! These are foam stickers.

We did a little driving on "D Street" :) The delivery van delivered "donuts" (Cheerios) to Donald. Now that I look back at this, I feel like I should have written "Doughnut." *shrug*

And D is for Donuts!! We took a trip over to Krispy Kreme for some D-licious treats.

I did make a countdown paper chain like we did at Christmas, but we started it pretty late, so it's really short!

And in anticipation of our Disneyland vacay, for our toy rotation this week I included toys that I thought vaguely had to do with Disneyland.

Our Disney stuffies, of course!

We even built a swing set for Mickey and friends!

Our "Under the Sea" instruments

Next stop... the Happiest Place on Earth!

Have you done Disneyland with toddlers? Any tips/advice for us? I'm all ears!

Happy Henry and Calvin-tines Day

Last week for Tot School we did all Valentine's Day themed play. In fact, we were having so much fun with all our pink and red and hearts and sparkles that we didn't even do a letter of the week! The letter N will just have to wait.

We started out the week by painting some Valentine cards for the boys' grandparents & great-grandparents. Calvin, Henry & I also painted cards for James. 

I picked up these Valentine gel window clings from Target and Calvin LOVED them. We did some letter matching with them too. Only problem was that he often wanted to carry them around the room and they kept getting all linty from his clothes and the couch! 

I included the gel clings in a Valentine sensory bin along with a few other Target dollar section items: the mini "koosh" balls, some heart-shaped "slinkys," the necklaces, and some heart buttons. I also added heart confetti and conversation heart stickers which I had leftover from last year and some red, pink, and white pom poms. The boys both enjoyed playing with all these goodies :)

After a while, Calvin took all the pom poms and koosh balls out and made "rain" with the confetti and stickers and buttons. (The stickers have paper backings so they are not sticky.)

Then we pulled out our Valentine mail box (also from last year) and Calvin played with posting the little items through the slot. 

I took some of the heart confetti and buttons along with some pink glitter and made two Valentine sensory bottles. At first I had made the sensory bottles in baby food jars, but they leaked so I switched to these little plastic jars that used to hold sprinkles for baking. 

And speaking of baking, on Friday Calvin helped me bake a very Valentine "funfetti" cake! 

The night before Valentine's Day, Hartley babysat for us and James and I went out for a Valentine's date night :) I love date night! 

For breakfast on Valentine's Day, James treated us all to heart pancakes. So cute! He thought about bringing them to me in bed, but decided that the babies are not ready for Pancakes in Bed just yet :P

He made them by pouring the pancake batter into a plastic bag and piping it like icing onto the pan. 

Our original plan for Valentine's day was centered around getting Henry's hair cut. We were going to make a day of it and ride the train down to San Bruno, where there's a nice kids' salon, take Henry for his hair cut, have lunch there in the downtown area, and maybe treat ourselves to ice cream or something. 

But the weather that weekend was so warm and sunny we couldn't resist the urge to do something outdoors instead. Still, Henry. Needed. A. Haircut. His long curls were always in his face. So I decided I could just do it myself really quick and then we could head out for a picnic instead of a train ride. 

In true second child fashion, Henry's first haircut was much less ceremonious (and also much less stressful)  than Calvin's first haircut. I was still nervous. And he wouldn't keep his head still! But once I got started it was actually easy. Snip snip here, snip ship there... and Voila!

Not too bad. We actually thought it would still curl, even though it was shorter, so we were surprised to see it stay straight even after being washed. Oh well. Bye bye baby curls. Henry is a big boy and deserves a big boy hair cut! 

With Henry's haircut done, we packed up and headed to Park Chalet for a sort of cheating picnic. I say cheating because it's a restaurant, so we get to have our picnic served to us, but that's what makes it so nice! It was pretty crowded, as it always is on such nice warm days, but we got a spot on the lawn and spread out our blanket. Calvin had fun playing with other kids there and we all got to relax and enjoy the gorgeous day. 

We headed home for naptime and dinner. Last year I wanted to do a fancy family dinner at home, complete with special Valentine's attire (pink bow ties!). This year we kept it low key: homemade pizza in our pajamas :)

I love Valentine's Day, as I'm sure you can tell, and I think Calvin really loved it too! Here's a cute video of him talking about the garland of hearts that we had strung up in our kitchen, and showing off the Valentine sensory jars. 

Hope you had a happy Valentine's Day! XOXO <3