Toddler Art Tuesday- Fish

Last week I had the idea to make a fish using colored scraps from magazines. I thought maybe if the different colors were layered across a piece of paper, it would look like fish scales. Well, when asking a 2 year old to do this project, it doesn't quite come out like fish scales. So, instead, we glued...



...and mommy helped glue some more...



...and cut into a fish shape.




Are we impressed yet??

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Best Artist in the Ocean

We kind of did some more ocean activities this week (continuing last week's theme). Nothing just super amazing, but I will share what we did anyway. :)

I think my favorite activity of the week was an art project that was connected to the book "I'm The Best Artist in the Ocean". This book is about a giant squid who is painting in the ocean. It turns out he is panting on a giant whale the whole time. So after we read that book for the millionth time, I cut out a whale and had John paint with his water colors. It was realy cute!







We also did an art project with my niece Bella which I will explain more during my weekly Toddler Art Tuesday post.



While Bella was over, they played with the Melissa and Doug magnetic fishing puzzle. John loves this puzzle.



I printed out some octopus puzzles from Confessions of a Homeschooler. John did really well on this one- I think it was too easy for him. It is amazing how he is all of a sudden able to do full jigsaw puzzles on his own now. I guess things just 'click', huh?!



Also from COAH, John sorted lower case and upper case F's.



So like I said, nothing just mind shattering, but at least we did something slightly productive during the week. I just finished setting up this week's activities. I am going with T is for Transportation since I know I have TONS of toys for that theme.

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Toddler Art Tuesday

In honor of our Ocean week, my sister planned an ocean themed art activity for John and Bella last week. She cut out sea weed and a starfish before we got there. The kiddos glued their pieces to the paper. Then they made hand prints for an octopus. After the pictures dried, they added googely eyes. And who doesn't love googely eyes!? :)

Here is Miss Bella's picture...and her painted hands.






We have another ocean project planned for later today and I am really excited!

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O is for Ocean - tot school

Last week we worked on 'O is for Ocean' in tot school. We didn't get to all of the activities, but I thought I would share some of our favorites from the week.

I wanted John to practice his pouring and transferring skills, but I am always worried to bring out the pinto beans for fear of Matthew choking on the beans. I remembered that I once made a sensory bin of Rice Krispies for John for the very same reason, and thought using Cheerios would be perfect for our O week! The goal was for John to scoop up his O's with the shovel and put them in the bucket without any dropping. He actually did REALLY well for the first 3 or 4 scoops and then went straight to eating the cereal. :) Matthew loved eating the cereal too!



When Brad and I went to Charleston, one of the souveniers for the boys was the book 'Good Night Ocean'. We read the page about sea urchins and then made our own sea urchins with play-doh and tooth picks. We counted out different numbers of toothpicks to make the different sea urchins. At the end, John just put all the toothpicks in one sea urchin. He thought it was really fun to touch the end of the toothpick and then say 'OUCH!'. I only had pointed toothpicks so it made me nervous that Matthew would get hurt, so if I did this again, I would use rounded toothpicks.





Before it go hot, (so at 8 am!), we went to the backyard and 'fished' for numbers, letters, and sea creatures. The boys loved playing with the water and John even gave his animals a ride in the car. I just let the boys play how they wanted with this and didn't even get into asking 'which letter did you just catch?!'. I was lazy I guess! :)







Check back later this week when I share the arts and crafts project mys sister planned for the kiddos!

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