color & shape theme for toddlers: beads and pipe cleaners.

sometimes i make blogging complicated.

i follow tons of bloggers that i love and admire, who do fairly elaborate posts 5 days a week and i wonder when they ever get sleep. or when they play with their kids. they must be way more efficient that i am!

i always want to post, but have been telling myself i can't right now because i have 2 kids that take up 90% of my day. They will ALWAYS be a priority over blogging, but i do love blogging. the 5 days a week of elaborate posting is not what's best for me and my family. it's not what works for me, but for some reason i've had it in my head that it's what i wanted to strive for.

silly me.

epiphany of the week: do what i have time for. this doesn't need to be an all or nothing thing. if i don't have time for an 80 page tutorial, blog anyway. 

+  +  +  +  +

so here's a little something emery loves to do every few days:

color bead sorting. she sorts them onto pipe cleaners, she sorts them in muffin tins, she sorts them in piles on the floor. the girl has found a way to combine her OCD personality with her love colors.

// i kid you not, she really is OCD. when she cleans her toys and puts her 2 baskets away on the shelf, the baskets have to be lined up evenly. the shelf we use has no back to it, so last night she went back and forth between the two baskets, pushing them a little to get them even with the other one, until the baskets finally hit the wall and were perfectly lined up. she would push one, start to run off, and then realize they still weren't even and come back to push the other one a little. it took her 5 tries. i love her. //

{she normally sorts them by color...
i think this was the very first time
she did beads with a mini muffin tin,
so she didn't care what color went where}

so that's that. super simple, super easy, super fun for the toddler in your life.

love and OCD two year olds, 

amber.

facial features + discussing emotions with toddlers.

emery has always loved pointing out and naming facial features when snuggling up with people. she likes to count people's eyes, nose, ears, chin, mouth, and eyebrows. just in the last few months though, she's been loving imitating emotions and facial expressions. 

i wanted to help her explore emotions more, so i dug up some fun things i pinned on my toddler and preK boards awhile back. i printed off the goods and got them laminated for 25 cents/foot at mardel! she's LoViNg it!

playdough faces:

Planet of the Apels has printable pages for playdough books! most of them are above emery's level right now, so i just printed off the 2 blank face pages. emery is definitely not to the stage of rolling a "snake" and bending it into a smile, or rolling up balls for eyes, but she pinched off chunks and put them in each spot, telling me which feature they were. she gave the girl a bunch of tiny balls for teeth instead of lips :-)

to discuss emotions, i plan to create the faces for her and chat with her from the dialog described below.

paper faces:

i found the idea at The Iowa Farmer's Wife and tweaked it a little bit to fit our needs. 

• she found her features in magazines - i couldn't, for the life of me, find enough that were big enough and the same general size, so i gave up and got them off the internet. i didn't want to use the same features from the same people, so i copied each picture into paint, cropped off a different feature, pasted it into word, resized it to fit my preference. it took awhile and sure did pull up some gross faces. if anyone is interested in the word document i created, let me know and i'll email it to you!
• all of her mouths were smiles - because i wanted to specifically talk with emery about emotions, i chose puckered lips, a tongue sticking out, a baby crying, and a smile. she loves imitating each one! (i also chose a nose with a nose ring because she loves touching mine and ears with earrings.)
• she attached hers to a cookie sheet - i love this idea for things like the car, but for some reason i'm addicted to sticking things on our fridge! {see here and here} i love that the activity stays off my floor!
• i taped heads onto the fridge for her to use as a guide on where to put the features. i found them here!

am i the only one with a toddler that likes
to dress herself like a goober? i sent her upstairs
 to get panties on and she came downstairs with an
extra headband on her head and
a head band around her waist like a belt!

discussing emotions with toddlers:

right now we're at a very basic level of talking about emotions. emery doesn't usually dialog about theoretical stuff, she mostly just answers black and white questions. here are some examples of how we chat:

with the sad face:

• Is the boy crying? can you frown too? what do you think made him sad - do you think he got hurt? could it also make him sad if a friend took his toy? could he be sad if his mommy said "no more TV today"?

then we dialog about biblical responses:

• if he got hurt, how can you make him feel better? if you hurt him, what should you say?
• if you took his toy, should you give it back? should you say sorry? is it ok to take people's toys? no, it's not because God tells us to think of others as more important than our selves. You're thinking of your self as more important when you take a toy from someone. God wants us to love our friends and we can do that by sharing!
• if his mommy said "no more TV," is it ok to throw a fit? no, he needs to respect his mommy! if his mommy says something, he needs to obey and say "yes, mommy!" God teaches us in the bible that we're supposed to be joyful in all things and to have self-control. Self-control is choosing not to throw a fit even if you're sad and joy is being happy even if you don't get what you want. i bet his mommy can help him find something else fun to do when he gets control, and stops crying!

with the happy face:

• is the girl happy? can you smile like she is? what makes emery happy? are you happy when you ride your bike? are you happy when daddy tickles you? are you happy when you're holding cooper?

dialog with a biblical tie-in:

• do you know what makes mommy and daddy happy? we're happy when we snuggle emery and cooper! we're happy when people come over to our house! we're happy when we're cooking with you in the kitchen! but what makes us happy more than anything is knowing that when we disobey God and ask him to forgive us, He does. that makes mommy and daddy so happy - we're so thankful God loves us!

with the kiss face:

• what's he doing with his lips? can you make a kissing face? who can emery give kisses to?

with the silly face:

• what's she doing with her tongue? can you stick your tongue out? what's another silly face you can make?
• emery's not to the point of knowing that sticking your tongue out can be an attitude issue, but once she gets there i'll definitely address it! it would probably sound super similar to the chat above about a good response when mommy says no more tv :-)

she's mastering the silly faces with daddy!

i love when emery plays with this while i'm making dinner and being able to talk with her while i cook. she has fun mixing and matching all the features to create new "people!"

what are some ways you teach your toddler emotions??

love and silliness,

amber.

fridge magnet christmas tree.

i'm back in the land of the living! first trimester is over and i'm pretty much functioning like a normal person again :-) SUCH a good feeling! for anyone interested, the accupuncture and magnesium pills saved me - for anyone that deals with Hyperemesis Gravidarum {aka extreme, extreme "morning" sickness}, i beg you to try these 2 things out! i was better several weeks sooner this time than last time!

ok, now onto my reason for posting!

i'm having a blast making emery a part of christmas this year - she's been having so much fun with all the decorating and DiY projects going on at our house right now! this fridge magnet christmas tree is right up her toddler alley...

if you missed it, the tutorial is pretty much the same as the fall magnet tree. 

• i taped green paper on the fridge, free-handed the tree shape, and cut it out. 
• printed off ornament and star clipart on cardstock and cut them out.
• and laminated it all for 25 cents a foot at Mardel. easy peasy.

{while i was sick on the couch,
emery developed an obsession with being naked.
i hear this is normal, but i don't how she
isn't freezing!}

this is perfect for her to play with while i'm cooking dinner or cleaning the kitchen, especially because the ornaments on our real tree are no-nos :-)

what are some fun ways you make christmas decor kid-friendly??


love and happy toddlers,
amber.

letter R sensory bucket.

i love looking back on my life and seeing all the ways God directed me exactly where i needed to be, even before i was a believer. working at the preschool taught me so much and prepared me in so many ways for being a mom. the biggest bonus - all the stuff i bought for my classroom when i was single and had the cash to do it. i saved all of it for my future kids and am sooo thankful to have activities on hand! 

whenever we get bored, i tell emery we're going to pick something out of the super secret special activity room {also known as a closet in the basement}. i think it's her favorite room in the house!

toddler/preschooler activity: Letter R Sound Box

at the preschool, every week was devoted to a different letter. we would read a book specific to that letter, do an art project about the letter, and i would create centers themed around the letter. One of my centers for letter R was an R Sound Box...

Tools:

• small rubbermaid container {i got this at the dollar store, but they also have them in sets of 5 at target.}
• rice {or if you  do a different letter, pick something else, like confetti for C, pebbles for P, sand for S, etc.}
• a few objects that start with your letter. i choose a ruler, rose, red ribbon, race car, ring, rooster, and rock. most of these i got at the dollar store.

obviously emery isn't learning what starts with what yet, but it's a fun sensory bucket just the same. I still talked with her about everything like she was 4, but she mostly just wanted to throw rice on the floor. all in all, it was a good day!

she loved finding all the treasures and she loved making a mess! 
i don't mind her doing it, as long as it's supervised and structured!

burying mommy's hand in the rice

love and the alphabet, 

amber.

PS - this post was featured on Creative Christian Mama's Linky Party! i'm more than a little pumped!