Baking Cotton Balls

While scrolling through facebook, I saw an interesting link on baking cotton balls from Play Create Explore. So I figured I might as well try it with the boys!

We started by stirring up the mixture and then pouring it into a muffin tin. Then we added food coloring to color the mixture. This was a fun little mini lesson on mixing colors. John was really interested in seeing what colors were made when combining different food colors. Unfortunately, we only have blue, green, and yellow food coloring on hand so we basically had lots of different shades of green!



They had a blast dipping cotton balls into the mixture, thus making a huge mess. Matthew even liked transferring the balls with a spoon.







John can be picky sometimes so you never know when he is in the mood to get messy or when he decides he wants to be Mr. Clean. Well, this was one of those days he was fine with getting messy and ended up lathering himself in the mixture! Good thing he was in just his undies. Matthew copied him except he still had shorts on so his short were SO MESSY! So, a bath was in order while the cotton balls were baking.




Over the weekend I used a marker to write words, letters, numbers, and shapes on the cotton balls. Then we took our play hammers outside and smashed up the cotton balls as I called out which ones to find. John loved finding the words and Matthew just smooshed the balls without waiting for me. Either way, it was fun for them!









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Putting Sorting Skills to Good Use

The other day Matthew rolled off the couch (while horseplaying of course) and started to cry. To get him to stop crying I asked him 'Do you want to help Mommy empty the dishwasher?'. He amazingly said yes. What a weirdo!

So I told him to pull up a chair, handed him the silverware basket and said 'Have fun sorting!'. Obviously, I didn't give him the steak knives. He put them all away perfectly and was a happy little boy. He would sometimes put them in the wrong spot, say 'noooooo', and then correct himself. It was pretty cute and helpful!





Maybe I should put the plastic dishes on a bottom cabinet so he can put those away next!

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4th of July Tot School

So, who's excited for the 4th of July?! I have said it before, and I will say it again- it is one of my favorite holidays! I am excited to check out the parade in our new city and then we are hosting our first party at the house for the whole family. Can't wait!

Anywho, the point of the post today is to share the 4th of July activities I did with the boys last week. In no particular order... (all printables and some of the ideas were found at Oopsey Daisy and 2 Teaching Mommies).

F is for Firework Dot page: I couldn't find our dot markers (and I don't like the ones we have anyways), so we used dot stickers on this page. Matthew really impressed me because he filled every circle perfectly instead of being haphazard.





Pre-Writing Practice: Matthew loves drawing with markers, so this was great for him. John loved doing these pages too and asked to do them several times. Again, Matthew impressed me with following the lines pretty well.





Scooping Red/White/Blue balls: John didn't care for this all that much, but Matthew really liked scooping up the small balls and carrying them around the room and transfer them somewhere. I added a dice for John and he would roll to see how many balls to put in the tin. He really liked that game (even though it seemed really boring to me!)



Star Cookie Cutter Painting: The boys made paintings with cookie cutters. Matthew's was cute with red and blue stars...John's was with random shapes and didn't quite fit the theme of the week! Then they wanted to take out the easel and continue painting which was so cute! Matthew LOVES to paint, but it is hit or miss with John.



Sticker Pages: I quickly drew an F on a page for John and an S for Matthew. They then filled in the letters with the appropriate stickers. I knew John would keep his stickers in the lines, but Matthew again impressed me with how much he has improved with fine motor skills since the last time we did activities! Dad even jumped in to help Matthew (after putting away all the stickers that were dumped out on the floor!).







Firework Painting: We took the paints, small koosh balls, and paper and headed outside one afternoon. The idea was to dip the balls in the paint and then throw it on the paper to make a firework image. I think if we had bigger koosh balls (and some more powerful throws) it would have been better. The boys still liked it...in between jumps in the pool. I would not recommend doing this near the pool because it distracted the boys and the paper got so wet that we couldn't keep the artwork, but the boys had fun!





Sorting Colored Balls: We took out the ball pit balls and sorted them into three buckets: red, blue, neither. We did this by throwing the balls into the buckets which was a fun gross motor activity.



US Icons cards: We played with these US icon cards for a little while. Matthew and I did matching with them (which was too boring and easy for John). John didn't want to play memory with them, but I gave them the cards to hide around the room and then go find them to match them up. They REALLY liked that game (even though they hid ALL the cards in the toy kitchen!).



Counting Clip Cards: This was the first time for John to do clip cards. I wasn't sure if he would be able to do it, but it was as if he had done this 100 times! He loved this activity so I will be sure to add more clip activities for him to do.



I think we may have a couple more activities to do this week, but mostly it will be baking and making desserts for Wednesday! Hope everyone has a fabulous 4th of July!




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4th of July Tot School resource

Today the boys will be starting their 4th of July tot school activities. I am so excited because we haven't done anything in months. (I am such a bad mom, right!?). Now that we are more settled we are ready to get our butts back in gear!

I will share exactly what we did later but I wanted to tell you where I have found the BEST ideas. Have you been to Oopsey Daisy? Love that site! She has 'Mommy School' packets (she is a former teacher) and they list out the cutest little activities to do with toddlers. I found the 'U is for USA' packet yesterday when I was planning and it was perfect!



So, go over to her Mommy School page where she is so kind to share her materials with us. And be sure to say 'hi' and 'thank you' while you are there!

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Duck! Rabbit!

Last week I took the boys to the Coppell Library. I love their toddler story time. The lady does a great job of keeping the kids entertained, it is a small group of kiddos (not like other libraries where it is SUPER crowded!), and they always end with a craft that relates to theme that week. Love it!

So, last week's theme was ducks so it tied into the theme of spring. One of the books we read was Duck! Rabbit! by Rosenthal and Lichtenheld. It was a cute book of an argument whether an animal is a duck or rabbit.



The craft was to make our own duck/rabbit. Each kid got a cut out that we colored as a duck on one side and a rabbit on the other. Then we glue it to a popsicle stick so we could flip it back and forth. It would be so cute to use that as we read the book at home (if I had the book at home, that is!).

Here is the one I made with Matthew.





John's didn't quite look like a duck or rabbit, but at least he colored it!

They also had this hand out for us with several duck songs and books.



I love having something to take home with me to do with the boys. I would even be happy with handouts being online to save paper but I don't like when we go to libraries and I have nothing to take home with me. I can't remember all the things we do but the boys love it when we can do the songs and rhymes at home! Maybe I am being picky...

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Toddler Art Tuesday - Painting with Eggs

Yes, we finally have another installment of 'Toddler Art Tuesday'! As the boys were watching a TV show, I quickly went to Pinterest to find a fun Easter themed activity to do with the boys. I found this egg painting activity from Hands On: As We Grow. I thought the boys would love it!

I taped construction paper onto the boys' slides. Each kiddo got 4 containers with paint and 4 plastic Easter eggs. The idea was for the boys to dip the eggs in the paint and then roll the egg down the paper. They did pretty well with it but honestly they didn't love it as much as I thought they would. However they still played outside with this set-up for about 20 minutes because Matthew was happy just playing with the paint (and thus covering his big 'ol belly with paint!) and John liked driving the trucks down the paint.









You can see this is not a clean and neat project. I am totally fine with that though!





Even the bath afterwards was messy as Matthew decided to use the left over paint on his hands to paint the bathtub. Thank goodness for washable paints!



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Want to be a Guest Blogger?!

First things first, I saw Hunger Games this weekend and was actually impressed! I thought I would be disappointed since I liked the books so much, but I enjoyed the movie. However, if I didn't read the books, I don't think I would have gotten as much out of the movie. I got a different feel reading the book compared to watching the movie since there is so much in the book that Katniss is thinking, or motives for what she does, that doesn't come out that well in the movie. But, I guess that isn't my problem since I read the books!

So, back to the point of today's post. As you know, we are in the middle of selling our house. We actually sold it, but I am crossing my fingers everything follows through with this sale (inspections, appraisals, etc). I am a little skeptical so I don't want to get my hopes up. So, combine that with being sick for two weeks and you can see why my crafting has been put on hold for a bit, as well as most of our tot school stuff.

So this is why I need YOU! If anyone wants to be a guest blogger at lil Mop Top, I would love to have you! Just send me an email at jfj8935 at gmail.com to let me know you are interested. You can post about anything (crafts, cooking, baking, activities for kids, date night ideas, gardening, house decorating...you get the point) and I don't even mind if you have already posted about it on your blog. This can be super easy for you! All I need is the html version of your post in an email and you are set. Be sure to put links back to your blog so everyone can find you later!

And just to make sure you don't think I am just having the boys watch movies all day (only half the day), here are a couple cute pics of my sweet big boys painting on the driveway last week. The sidewalk paint was so easy to make and kept the boys entertained for about 20-30 minutes. If you want to make your own sidewalk paint, mix a little bit of cornstarch with water (should be slightly thicker than consistency of water) and use food coloring to dye it. Easy, right?!







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Tot School - Easter

Hey everyone! I am actually posting again today. Are we impressed?! Well, don't be. I am posting a couple tot school activities I did with the boys LAST YEAR for Easter. Way to be on the ball, right?! So, after going through my pictures from a year ago with a little smile on my face, this is what we apparently did...

Nest and Egg Matching:
I used the printables from Confessions of a Homeschooler and had John match plastic Easter eggs to each picture. It was great practice in counting on the picture and counting out the physical eggs. There are more great printable activities from COAH and if I am not too lazy, I will try some more of them out next week with the boys.





One-to-one Correspondence:
I put out a bucket of eggs and had John fill an old egg carton with eggs. This is practicing one-to-one correspondence. Then it quickly turned into throwing practice as John just started chunking eggs across the dining room.





Number Matching:
I revised the egg carton activity. I numbered the spaces in the carton and numbered the eggs. John practice putting the eggs in the correct spot. I was glad to have him practice numbers higher than 10, although he really had been a pro at numbers for a LONG time. If I had to guess, this was probably easy for him, but he liked it!



Egg Shakers:
For Mr. Matty B (look how cute he was in his little helmet!), I made him some egg shakers. I filled eggs with small items like beans, beads, etc. Then I hot glued the eggs shut AND taped around the seam to make sure those bad boys didn't open. He liked shaking them and hearing the noise. Even though it isn't picture, I also gave him a bucket of themed toys to play with on the floor: soft bunnies, Easter books, egg carton, etc.



Shape Matching:
I bought a set of Easter cookie cutters. I probably had good intentions of making sugar cookies or cute lunches. I doubt that actually happened. However, I did turn it into a matching activity. John matched the cookie cutter to the picture. Very simple!



Egg Decorating:
John is VERY allergic to eggs. So I was wondering how I would have the boys dye eggs without him being able to touch them. Thankfully I found a cute decorating set that had little foam roller brushes. So Brad helped hold up the egg and John could paint it without touching the egg. I even found another set this year and it is in the closet ready to go! I also saw online that you can put an egg in the middle of a whisk and dip that into the dye. I will try that one too!





However, I didn't trust Matthew to handle the eggs (he was so young still!) so he played with his egg rattles and watched us have the fun. I am so excited for him to be able to participate this year!



Of course we did all the traditional Easter festivities: tons of egg hunts, presents, making Easter Bread (YUM!), and of course wearing bunny ears Easter morning.



I am getting excited for Easter after writing this post so I am going to force myself to plan activities this week so we can get back into gear. This whole 'keep the house clean to sell it' thing is cramping our style! :)

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