Mrs. H

Colored Rice Sensory Tray

I’m not into messes. Seriously. (I whipped out the vacuum as soon as this activity was done.) But I understand how important it is that Becca interact with a variety of textures for the proper development of her senses. And she loves sensory play. So, I made some colored rice (here’s a link over to the recipe I got from Play at Home Mom – I used about 10-15 drops of regular food coloring with the vinegar) and decided to make a tray activity for her. Live and learn – it needed to be in a MUCH larger container, and we needed to have just spread the entire plastic tablecloth out on the floor so that cleanup would be easier, and we wouldn’t waste so much rice. Now we know for next time! But, she did have a blast! Here’s the scene I set up for her using little toys she already had:

She was SO excited and immediately dug in and started playing.

Then, she got tired of the toys and set them all out and just dug her hands into the rice.

For one last fun activity before putting it away for a few days (I’ve learned that she enjoys things once and then for maximum potency, it needs to get put away for a while or she gets bored with it really quick!), I got out some cups and she loved pouring the rice back and forth!

Total Prep Time for Mommy: This one takes some forethought – which is partly why it took me so long to do it even after I had bought the rice. You’ll need to color the rice and then let it dry over night. The coloring process to do a large bag of rice and four different colors and then to spread out to dry took me maybe about 15-20 mins. Then in the morning, it was another 5-10 minutes to slide all the rice off of the wax paper into storage bags. Then to gather the toys and set up the tray took about another 20 minutes. So this isn’t a project that you’re going to just throw together in two minutes. Also note that I spent probably about another 10-20 minutes running the vacuum afterward… and ended up doing most of the hard woods downstairs simply because I had already started…

Total Play Time for Becca: This one singular occasion, she played with the rice for about 30-40 minutes (well supervised), and then it went back into the storage bag and she can play with it many, many more times.

Our Love Affair With Learning Games

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Becca LOVES to learn. In fact, in the past week or two, Cody and I have begun having to encourage her to STOP playing learning games and go play with her imagination. Which is awesome, but also overwhelming since she’s only just turned two back a couple months ago. Because Mommy (and Boo sometimes too) gets tired of doing the same learning games over and over again, I found a book on Amazon and ordered it to be sent to my mom so she could make up some file folder games to add to our repertoire. They arrived from Granny last night, and Becca has already dove in head first and done about 1/4 of them. (Would have done more if I had let her!) Here’s the book (affiliate link) so you can make your own for your preschooler! One thing mom added (thanks again, mom!!!) was small clear velcro dots so that we don’t lose pieces to our games everywhere, or have to store them in a million little baggies. Thank God for Velcro. I swear, the inventor was a genius! Here’s a couple of the games that can be found in that book:

Total Prep Time for Mommy: Well, I didn’t prep these, but I know my mom spent HOURS putting them together. The benefit to file folder games is that they are easy to pull out, they cover important skills, and they can be used over and over again for years – Grayson will use these same file folder games, and then I’m sure I’ll probably pass them along to someone else! So the prep HOURS are worth it!
Total Play Time for Becca: As mentioned above, there will be countless hours that these are played with. In the moment, she played 5 or 6 of the folder games and spent about 30 minutes.. and wanted more.

Scented Shaving Cream

Well, I have been all over the blogs I follow and Facebook trying to find the awesome post that had the idea to make scented shaving cream by mixing shaving cream and kool-aid drink mix. But to no avail. So hopefully I can find the original source soon and give her credit here! She did this activity with her daughter outside in their water table. I decided to blend her idea with the one over on Laughing Kids Learn and do this as a bath-painting activity with the kool-aid version! First, I squirted piles of shaving cream around the bath (totally unnecessary – I could have just made one pile and she would have still loved it and mixed it well). Then, I sprinkled kool-aid mix (I had orange) on top, and put her in. She mixed them all up thoroughly and had so much fun!!! Note: we used a swim diaper for this activity simply because I didn’t want her sitting directly in the shaving cream – she has very sensitive skin. She had a blast and was ready to do it again. She also really enjoyed watching the river of shaving cream as I washed the tub out, too!

Total Prep Time for Mommy: 2 mins (squirting the Barbasol took a while, and then dumping the Kool-aid in)
Total Play Time for Becca: 10-15 mins (I wasn’t watching the clock, but it was a good little chunk of time. I didn’t want her to sit in the Kool-Aid for too long, because she has very sensitive skin, so I started splashing water on her after she’d been in it for a while. She would have played much longer.

Water Beads

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“Ooo they’re cold and swippery!” I knew she’d love water beads. I’ve read about them LOTS of places, I’ve had friends recommend them, and she even played with them several months ago, but her hand coordination wasn’t good and they went everywhere and I just gave up and sort of forgot I even had any. So, today during her nap I pulled them out, hydrated them, and when she woke up, it was time to discover!! I had the water beads in a container with a good lid – for storage later – and pulled out my set of 11 circle cookie cutters for her to explore as well. (This is the set I have…affiliate link) Here is how I presented the tray. The only instruction I gave was to remind her that all items must always stay inside our tray – they don’t go on the table or the floor.

She had so much fun playing with them. She started by putting one bead into each circle. Then, she started experimenting with their abilities to bounce. I had a ton of fun playing with her, and I actually bounced more out onto the floor than she did! She had such fun, that I went and got Cody to join us… and then we all three had fun together playing with them. (He’s to thank for the totally awesome photo at the top of this post). The cool thing we discovered was that the blue beads looked green on the yellow tray… so I went and got the red tray, and all three of us sat in amazement as they suddenly became purple! And then, they were blue again when we put them back in the storage container!

She also became fascinated with stacking the nesting cookie cutters, so we ended up having a short impromptu assessment of her “largest” and “smallest” skills. She’s definitely got those concepts down solidly. Always good to know where you stand on various skills!

I’m looking forward to letting her play with the water beads again soon – and finding something new to do with them. You can bet I’ll be reading up on my favorite blogs to get ideas, and of course, I’ll share what I finally come up with. 🙂

Total Prep Time for Mommy: To hydrate the beads, I dumped them in a container and added water (total time there, about 20 seconds), then they sat for about 3-4 hours while I did other things. To gather the cookie cutters, container, and tray, my total time was about 1 minute.
Total Play Time for Becca: We played for a good 45-50 minutes, and could have gone longer, but she decided to be disrespectful and we had to put them away.

Real Life

I sometimes feel like I’m the only person feeling what I’m feeling, but I KNOW that’s not true, so I plan to make this post “sticky” – so that this is the post that someone reads first when stumbling across my blog. Because I want you to know what real life is like around here. I have said before that Pinterest is for people with lots of time, an only child (or no kids at all), and a live-in maid. I still believe that. Because many of the picture perfect projects, hairstyles, and fashion ideas on Pinterest are impossible for someone like me. And while I know that I am a unique individual, and I KNOW noone has my exact set of circumstances, I know moms. Lots of them. And I see the competitions and the pain, and I KNOW the feeling. Ya know, that one that says “If I don’t do what that mom is doing with her kids, with my own, then I’m not as good as she is.”

THAT COULDN’T BE A BIGGER LIE.

I read this post from The Artful Parent a while back, and it made me really sit up and take notice. We all (even our idols) have someone that we idolize and want to be just like. I would love to be like Jean Van’t Hul. I would love to be willing to let my kids get paint all over themselves to end up with a fabulous piece of art when they are done. I was even so proud of myself when I bought sponges and cut them into shapes for Becca to stamp on paper with finger paints. Have we done it yet? No. BUT THAT’S OK.

You see, you might look through my blog, or any other mom’s blog, and see things that you want to do with your kids, that you can easily do in just a couple minutes and work great for your family. Or, you might look through with different eyes and see all the things you AREN’T doing with your kids, and begin to feel guilty. PLEASE DON’T!

As moms, we have these things called “Mommy Wars” – Do you cloth diaper or use disposable? Do you breast feed or formula feed? Pacifier or not? Circumcision or not? Baby wearing or stroller using? Regular baby food or homemade? Fast food or organic at home? Homeschool or public school? Private Christian or Montessori? TV or not? Sleepovers with friends or not? Homework before play or after? All these issues are put in front of us on an almost DAILY basis, and we are often made to feel that OUR WAY is WRONG. Because who ever we are talking to or reading about firmly believes that they are right. AND THEY ARE.

What? They are right? YES. They are perfectly right. They know exactly what their family needs. The problem comes in because our mind then wants to take that information and say that we are wrong. And thats where you ARE wrong. Because they ARE right. They know what’s right for them, but you are wrong to thing that what you do in your home is wrong. Lots of negatives. Lots of positives. Let me break it down more clearly for you:

Your real life is your real life.
And it’s exactly what your family needs it to be.

Their real life is their real life.
And it’s exactly what their family needs it to be.

You are you, she is she. There’s no way around it. Somehow we as moms have to break out of this lock that seems to be on our brains that says that we are not “good enough” if we don’t do what others do. Honey, noone else has your kids, your husband, your house, your personality, your physical abilities or lack their of. Noone else is you. SO STOP COMPARING YOURSELF!

I started recording the activities I’m doing with Becca on more of a regular basis because I’m prone to forget, and I don’t want to. I want to remember her cute little replies, the fun stuff we’ve done, and all that, so I can share it with her when she’s older. And so that I can replicate some of these fun things when little brother comes along in a couple years. I DO NOT BLOG TO UPSET ANYONE. I DO NOT BLOG TO PUT ANYONE DOWN. I DO NOT BLOG TO MAKE YOU FEEL BAD ABOUT YOURSELF OR YOUR PARENTING ABILITIES.

And now, here’s the hardest truth of all – I DO NOT BLOG TO PUT MYSELF DOWN WHEN I HAVE A BAD DAY. Because you see, despite all the other moms out there that can make us feel bad about ourselves, it’s our own mind that is our worst enemy. Days like I had yesterday are miserable because my own mind plays tricks on me and tells me I can do better and that I’m being a bad mom – I’m not living up to the standards I have set for myself.

But I’ve never lived yesterday before, and I’ll never live it again (THANK GOD!). I won’t ever wake up with exactly the same issues on my mind, or have exactly the same tasks to complete. The kids will never be that exact age again. Because yesterday was a singular event. And the fact that it didn’t go real well… well, that’s just life. It’s ok that we were way off of our nap schedule. It’s ok that I felt like crap. It’s ok that I forgot several things I was supposed to do until well after they should have been done. It’s ok that Becca didn’t have a fun new activity to do after nap. It’s ok that the only pictures I took of the kids were at the church yesterday morning while we did stuff for MOPS. It’s ok that Grayson’s morning nap was finally taken when he simply couldn’t stay awake anymore and fell asleep in the bouncy chair.

Seriously… isn’t he adorable?

It’s ok that I fed Becca a crappy meal from Whataburger in the car because our timing was so far off that anything else just wasn’t gonna happen. It’s ok that when I went to bed the sink was still full of dishes because after I unloaded and loaded the dishwasher I just couldn’t stand and hand wash the leftovers. It’s ok that there’s laundry piled high in our room because I just couldn’t bear to stand and hang it up before bed.

Because despite all the negative feelings I had TOWARD MYSELF because my brain was telling me I wasn’t living up to my standards, GOOD THINGS DID HAPPEN YESTERDAY! The MOPS closet at the church is cleaned out and organized, and moms were able to do that because I watched their children. Becca was sweet and caring and played well with her friends. We snuggled under the blanket on the couch and watched Super Why together after nap time, and I was once again amazed at how her reading abilities are growing. And yesterday’s biggest victory – she went pee pee in the potty at bedtime!!

Ladies, Mommies, PLEASE. Please don’t read the posts on this blog and feel guilty. Please know that I’m happy to share these ideas with folks who have the desire and ability to make them work in their own families, but these are NOT meant to hurt anyone. They are not meant to make you put yourself down. Heck, I know how hard life is. I have Rheumatoid Arthritis. I have two kids. I work from home several hours a day. I have more plates spinning than should even be possible – causing my head to spin on quite a regular basis. I KNOW WHAT IT IS TO BE BUSY. I KNOW WHAT IT IS TO FEEL CRAZY. Please know that real life DOES happen around here. We do not live in a bubble of perfection. We are FAR from it.

You are not alone. You are not an island. If the activities here are helpful, then read them. If they aren’t, then please, don’t compare yourself to me. You aren’t me, and God didn’t make you to be. Find your happy place. Find the place where you are content to be the woman and wife and mommy that God created YOU to be. Because you are the only one He created to be exactly like you. And you are the only one that can be you to your husband and your kids. Be the YOU that God created you to be, and be PROUD of that person!