J is for Jedi

This week we did a Star Wars theme with our letter theme being J is for Jedi.  For more tot school ideas check out the gathering.  Our big exciting development is a portable desk to allow with more flexibility with our location.  Patrick loves his new desk!  Most of this week focused on this pack from Homeschool Creations.  He particularly enjoyed making the book about the star fighter.

 

 

I put a highlighter into his desk and he's been really into using it for completing his activities this week.  He pretty much did no writing with anything but the highlighter.

 

We also did some shaving cream play this week.  He was supposed to write his letters in it but he wasn't interested in that so we just played with it.  He really enjoyed the sensory experience.  It didn't go so well for my daughter though and we had to call poison control because she ate a handful of it super quickly.  Luckily she was fine.

H is for Halloween

We've been busy and I forgot to post our Halloween activities.  There aren't a ton of pictures since my delightful son has decided that he doesn't want his picture taken a lot recently.

We did candy corn math.  Last year Patrick struggled with this activity but this year he did great with it.  He did have some trouble lining up the candy corn correctly and I should have gotten him some candy corn for a reward/to see it since I don't think he knew what I was talking about with it.

I found these skeletons last year they're kind of bendy and he LOVED sorting them by color.  I think he must have sorted them over twenty times during the week.  He had so much fun doing it and we've reached the point that sorting colors is super easy.  He also used the chip dip bowl to sort, which I think was more fun then just piles or last year putting them on the correct color construction paper. 

We got out the sensory bin I made last year for Halloween.  It was fun for him.

Sensory Play with Half the Mess

I love giving my kids a chance for sensory play.  And I understand there will be mess.  However we don't really have a good place for them to create a mess. Our kitchen is fairly tiny and narrow with no good spaces for the kids to play so that's out.  Our deck needs to be power washed and the kids come in covered in dirt if they even go out here little less if I let them sit on the ground out there.  I think it's so dirty because of my husband's beloved charcoal grill.  Out front there are steps that my daughter loves to go up and down limiting her already limited baby attention span. 
That leaves our carpeted basement, bathroom and the rest of the house that has hard wood floors.  So nowhere really ideal for something like rice.  I wouldn't mind the basement but it's been out of commission for six months due to some flooding and if I vacuum afterwards then most of the rice might get sucked up leaving less for next time.  I really like to reuse the sensory bins I create not have to add new rice each time.  So I've come up with a couple short cuts to cut down on the mess.

I first tried putting down a blanket.  It worked pretty well but pieces of rice inevitably fell off of it and since it had little areas where rice could get it stuck it was difficult to really get it 100% cleaned off.  Here the kids are using a St. Patrick's Day bin on it.

Next I tried a sheet.  I thought a Queen size sheet would give more space so less would end up off it and it would allow me to gather it up easily.  It did work fine for something things like the coffee beans my son is playing with in the picture.  But it was still tricky to clean up and stuff ended going off accidentally especially with rice.

Then I got a Kusiner toy box from IKEA.  I love it!  It's just big enough for both kids to sit together with a small bin.  Or they could use it independently with a larger one.  Stuff does still come out especially when they are getting in and out or if my daughter throws a handful or two.  But I feel like I have it more contained.  Plus the box folds up when we're done for easy storage.  Makes it a lot easier then a small baby pool, which was another idea I had at one point.  Now the downside is rice will get stuck in the grooves.  But that's not too big of an issues since we only get it out for sensory play.  Being able to clean up quickly and easily lets us do sensory play more often.  Also for really messy play like shaving cream then I just put them in the tub.