old activities : new fun!

How's everyone doing with their New Year's Resolutions? I'm loving this one I made to be more hands on with my kids! It has brought a lot of fun to the house - along with more resolutions. 

Most of the activities that we do around here take no longer than 15 minutes (what toddler has a longer attention span?) and the prep work I do doesn't take much longer than that either. As long as I have the materials - we're good to go! 

Here's what's been going on around here:

1) Magnetic Snowman! I thought this looked so cool over at No Time For Flash Cards. So I found some sticky foam and cut out some circles and made the snowman. I had a large magnet that I got for free from the library a long time ago that I stuck the foam to - and its a 'build your own snowman'! Henry helped with the buttons - he chose green (is there another color?). 

The snowman ended up with 3 feet because I made the first two facing the same way - and then Henry just thought it was necessary to have three. 

 2) Making things outta boxes! This isn't anything new in our house... and we really don't MAKE anything out of it - we just label it as something and that's what it becomes to Henry for the day. Its usually a Garage... He took his tools in for the day and worked inside.

 3) Stacking canned food! I thought this could be SO much fun!! I found this in the Toddler's Activities book -- Henry stacked a lot of them up himself, as long as they weren't the same size he did great (he made a very tall tower at first, but it fell and he got very frustrated). However, when they're the same size, they have no 'nesting' part on the bottom, so they have to be perfectly aligned. So, I built the 'castle' - Henry used it as a garage (what else?) to park things.

The most fun for Henry in this activity was hauling ALL the canned food in my pantry to the toy room table. Henry used his new dump truck he got at Christmas and hauled away!

4) Cooking with Mom. This is also nothing new around here - but I've learned to embrace it a little more and find more jobs for him to help out with. He loves helping make dinner with me.



(look at my fridge in the background! - see the Wrapping Paper Stocking from Christmas? The Marshmallow Snowman? And the new Magnetic Snowman!! LOVE!)