Found another one!

Another great website I just found today for preschool activities. I can't wait to try out some of these ideas with Aidan! I just added the button to the sidebar. Check it out!

Another great website

Again, this is more for those of you with young children. If you enjoy the Jan Brett's children's books (The Mitten, The Hat, Gingerbread Baby, etc.) you should really check out her website. She has thousands of activities, coloring pages and projects you can do to go along with the books.

We had just read The Mitten so I found the activity that went along with that. I printed out three pages, one for each side of the mitten, and one with a picture of all the animals on it. Aidan colored the animals (and the mitten, even though the mittens are white in the story), then I cut them all out, stapled the two sides of the mitten together, and we read the story again. Aidan really enjoyed getting to put his animals into his mitten as we read along with the book.

I am excited to get out some of the other Jan Brett books that we have and see what fun activities we can find for them.

Fun with Paint

Nan and Kim will be so proud of me. This art project was inspired by something they did with the toddlers at the center many years ago. Granted, I only had two kids and I did it outside, but we still had lots of fun!

I had read somewhere that newspapers always have extra rolls of paper because when they finish a printing and they don't have enough left on the roll to complete the next day's paper, they will change to a new roll. Then they don't have to bother with it in the middle of a printing. Now I happen to have an inside source (my sister works at a newspaper) but apparently you could call your local paper and see if they sell the rolls for a buck or two. It is a ton of paper and so fun because it is wider than anything you can get at the store, plus you can make it as long as you want. Anyway, that is my frugal paper tip for the day. :) Now to the project!

I just rolled out the paper on the driveway, taped it down with masking tape, had Aidan choose 3 colors of paint, put the paint on paper plates, and let them go to town! Ella of course wasn't sure what to do and slipped a little bit with the paint on her feet (she just started walking) but Aidan was having a blast! As Ella kept wandering off to try to put rocks in her mouth, Aidan kept getting out different paint colors, walking around, painting with his hands, totally loving the whole experience. Ella at one point picked a plate up and put it upside down on her head, so if you notice in the bottom right hand picture her hair is red and orange. Even though I knew it was washable paint I still started to worry I had made a bad decision, as we are having our pictures taken on Saturday! I started having visions of taking paint stained kids to the photo shoot. No worries, one bath later, all paint gone.

Parting shot of Ella. So cute!