John's First Day pictures

John started his first day of pre-school yesterday. I was pretty nervous about dropping him off. I knew that he would be totally fine but I didn't know if I would have a major breakdown in the middle of his classroom. Thankfully John had absolutely no issues with me leaving him (hmmmm...maybe he is tired of being around me?!) and I didn't cry at all. I was surprised that I held it together.

Anywho, I wanted to share his 1st day of school pictures. I saw the idea all over pinterest (to which I am totally addicted) to do the 'favorites' on the picture. I am glad I knew I wanted to do this before hand so I knew to take some pictures with John framed to the side.




I also saw lots of cute pictures of the kids holding printed signs for their age or grade. I didn't get my act together for that one and figured it would be tough to get John to take a picture holding something we would need to read. So instead I gave him a white magnetic board we had and told him to hold it. (he chose to get on the scooter that is probably too small for him!). Then I just photoshopped in the words. Much easier that way!





So, the moral of my story is, a little prep work and thought before taking important pictures goes a long way. I think we were able to get a couple cute pictures of an always-moving John!

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Winter Accessories Playtime

We are a bit behind on our 'S is for Snowman' week so I am extending it a couple days. We get so busy some mornings going out to meet friends or run errands and John has been taking long naps in the afternoon so school time sometimes is in short supply!

Instead of sharing the week's plans (check back here for the letter S lesson plan!) I am going to share our 'playing with winter clothes' activity. It turned out really cute and John played for about 20 minutes on this one.

I took out John's gloves, mittens, & hats and my gloves, hat and scarf. It is kind of funny that we had so many gloves when we live in Texas and hardly need them!

First we practiced putting the items on. John definitely needs practice with getting dressed so this was perfect for him. We even dressed up some of his bears!



Then I said 'Let's play a game with the gloves!' and John said 'matching!'. Haha! It was so cute that he knew what we were going to do before I said it! I taped a string across the back of his chairs and used clothes pins to pin one of each glove and mitten. Then I handed him the other glove/mitten and he had to pull off the match. He had so much fun and we did this two or three times. He also loved trying to get the clothes pins back on the string and has finally started to figure out how to squeeze the pins and be able to clip them onto something. That is an improvement for him since the last time we tried to use clothes pins!





If I had been more prepared, this would have been a perfect craft to go with this activity! Maybe next time...

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Dinosaur Birthday Party!!!

John had his dinosaur party last month and I am just now getting to posting about it.(I am totally blaming it on the holiday shenanigans...not that I have been lazy...) We had so much fun at his party!

I created these invitations using Photoshop Elements and then printed them at Walmart. Or was it at ArtsCow??? Either way, I printed them as photos, stuck them in envelopes, and off they went. I love being able to create unique and personal invitations rather than just picking up a pack of generic ones from the store. Plus I just enjoy using photoshop! :)



Against my better judgement, I caved and had two parties again this year. One was for John's playgroup and one for just the family. (Someone please hold me to just having one party next year!!) For the party for John's friends we had some stations set up in the backyard. We were SOOOO lucky that the weather was perfect- high 60's in the middle of December! Awesome!! I wanted something very relaxed so the kids could walk around the backyard and play as they wished rather than have games where everyone had to play at the same time. I think the kids had a blast!

Each kid got an 'adventure bag' so they could take goodies from each station. They stopped at the Dino Dig, Dino Crafts, Dino Egg Hunt, and took rides on the pet Dino.





















...some kid's ideas of goodies were interesting...

Being that the party started at 3, the food was fun snacky stuff that consisted of yummy cupcakes (with toppers that I made on photoshop), dino shaped nuggets (Tyson brand...and they were yummy too!!), chips, veggie straws, candy, juice, etc. I was going to make cute food labels but you don't really need labels when there are only 3 different foods on the table. haha!

I decided not to go crazy with decorations and just focused on preparing each station. I felt like last year I was super consumed with the airplane party so I made it easy on myself this year and used last year's bunting...and that was all! Although it wasn't as fancy as some of the parties around the blogosphere, it worked for us.

Now I just need to start thinking of a theme for Matthew's 1st birthday! I only have 7 months! ahhhhhhhh!!!!!

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Dinosaur Tot School #1

This week is John's dinosaur themed birthday party so we did a couple activities this week for tot school that were dino themed. I was going to do one big post, but that is too time consuming so I am going to share some of our favorite activities on individual posts. Here is our first one!!

Dinosaur Shape Sorting...with a Christmas twist!
I found this printable for dinosaur shapes so I printed just the first page with the dinosaurs. Then I cut them out, laminated them, and put each one on a 'present'. Then I put a bunch of plastic shapes in a stocking. John pulled out a shape from the stocking and then sorted it into the correct present.







Where did all these plastic shapes come from, you may ask? We have five shape sorter toys at our house. FIVE!! I cleaned out John's toys this past weekend to make room for Santa's new toys, but I couldn't bear to part with such great manipulatives and each sorter had a different set of shapes. I am kind of a hoarder...

John worked on this activity for about 20 or 30 minutes, which is a long time for him! He is on the verge of being obsessed with dinosaurs so he loved saying the names of each dinosaur as he put in the shapes. We also counted each type of shape as he put them in and out of the stocking.

And tonight when he went to bed, he gathered up each box and kissed each dinosaur goodnight...and took one to bed with him. How cute is he!?


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Happy Birthday John John!!

Happy 2nd Birthday to my precious John John! I love him so much and he has been such a joy in my life for the past two years. I am excited for all the big celebrations coming up- we have a full weekend of fun planned with our little family and then next weekend we have two birthday parties for him! FUN!!! Be sure to check back next week to see all the dinosaur party stuff I have been working on...

Halloween Shirt #2

Well, Halloween is this weekend and I never bought John a Halloween shirt! I made this one but he has only worn it once or twice. Is it just me or is it hard to match a grey shirt with shorts? (...assuming you are like me and don't have black shorts for your kid right now!) It is too hot to wear jeans, and quite frankly it is hot to wear long sleeves past 10 am!

So, I decided he need something a little snazzier for Friday when we are going to Brad's work where they have a HUGE Halloween celebration. The office is just short of shut down for most of the day as they put on skits, play games, and entertain. It is so fun! So, I had a black shirt from Walmart (still long sleeves, but oh well!) and I made a Halloween version of the 4th of July shirt.



If you kind of squint so that the white lines don't look so wavy, it is a pretty cute little shirt! I can't wait for John to wear it Friday and it is perfect because it will match Matthew's outfit which is also a black shirt.

So, which shirt do we like better? The graphic...



...or the argyle?



I can't decide which to put him in at the Halloween party on Sunday before he dons the pirate costume! I need your advice!


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Mr. Pumpkin Head

As part of our body parts themed activities, I made a Mr. Pumpkin Head game for John to play with. It was really easy to make! I printed a picture of a pumpkin (just did a google search!) and found printable Mr. Potato Head parts from 2 Teaching Mommies. I also found funny faces from Missie Krissie and printed those out. After cutting out the body parts and laminating them (thanks to my $5 laminator I found at a garage sale! so exciting!!!), I attached them to magnets.



What type of magnets you might ask? These bad boys.



Yep- I used advertising magnets. Free! Awesome!

And ta da...a magnetic Mr. Pumpkin Head game! Easy and green to boot! Since these magnets won't scratch up my fridge, John can play on the fridge or he can play in the living room using a baking pan. Think of all the creative possibilities John has!






If I was super motivated, I could find more pictures to make different faces (more arms, feet, etc)...but I am not that motivated when I stop and think about it! :)

And PS, since John is young, I decided against the traditional pumpkin face pieces (triangles, etc) because I didn't know if he would know where to put those. But that would be cute for older kids too!



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Halloween Tot School

John is 22 months!

This past week we started our month of Halloween/Fall activities that will review shapes, letters, numbers, etc and work on naming different body parts. Kind of a random month! I am basically do lots of Halloween crafts and games and making them fit into some category. :)

Here is what we did!

Cat Shapes
I made these cat shape printables and made three copies of them. I taped each type of cat to the back of a tuperware container and put the rest in a stack. John then sorted them into the correct containers. He really liked it, but it took all of 30 seconds for him to do and then he started trying to tear off the taped cats! So, it seems I needed to make it more challenging for him!


(once again, blogger is rotating my pictures! sorry that you have to tilt your head for this one!)


Candy Corn Letters
I also made these candy corn letter printables for this week. After getting great ideas from The Activity Mom, I made two copies and taped each letter to a paper 'trick or treat' bag. John then had to put the matching letter in the correct bag. He REALLY enjoyed this new way of matching. Some the bags even had treats in them (a little snack!) which was cute. One thing I was really impressed with was John would take the card in his hand and put it up against the cards on the bag to compare to see if it was a match. I also was impressed that after doing this game about two times he could say all the letters from A - I and easily match up all the cards to the correct bag. I now have to go back and make the candy corn letters from J - Z! I am always amazed at what John can do and how quickly he learns. It is so exciting!





Halloween Eraser Sorting
I saw cute Halloween erasers at the Dollar Store. I loved them for John because they are big enough that I am not worried about him choking on them and there were 2 sets of 6 different erasers in each package. So, I bought two packs for John to sort using my pumpkin shaped cupcake pan. (At the Dollar Store I also saw cute Halloween ice cube trays that would be cute to sort into but figured I didn't need to spend more money!) John sorted them twice and seemed to enjoy it. Then I would put some in the wrong spots and he had to fix my mistakes.





Handprint Bats
We made bats using a tracing of his handprints. Well, a close enough tracing- he wasn't really wanting to let me trace his hand so I got it wet from a damp cloth and put his hand on the construction paper. Then I quickly cut that out! As we made the bat we talked about where his hands, belly, head, eyes, ears, and teeth were and where we should put the construction paper on the bat. We also made a second bat picture using Matthew's hands- so cute! John LOVED the googly eyes! He even tried to eat one...after it had glue on it...gross!




Fall Sensory Bin
I saw someone's fall sensory bin (and of course I didn't save the blog but this certainly wasn't my idea!) and bought the material at the Dollar Store: acorns, leaves, pinecones, & gords. I mixed in beans and different pouring containers. He loves playing with the beans! I was so excited because while we were cooking tonight I heard some noise in the dining room- John had pulled the bin off the dining room table and wanted to play with it! Yeah!




Math Midway
Well, this doesn't really have anything to do with Halloween or the fall, but I took John to the Frisco Discovery Center where the Math Midway was on display. We went with some of the other moms and kiddos from our playgroup and everyone loved it! John played with one game the majority of the time and since I had to nurse Matthew while I was there (ugh...not ideal for taking John out!) we didn't see everything. I am going to take him back for sure because it wasn't too expensive and he loved playing with everything. Lots of problem solving activities were there so it was awesome! If you are close to Frisco, TX, you should take your kids there!







So, as usual, we ran out of time for all the things I wanted to do. Here is what was on my schedule but we didn't get around to:

-making foot print ghosts
-making hand print spiders
-making hand print owls.

Time flies when we all take 2+ hour naps in the afternoon! :0



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