Becca – Page 16 – Butterbees and Bumbleflies

Rock Box

Becca frequently gets little obsessions, and when she has an obsession about something, she MUST follow it through to its end. She really, really, really loves rocks. The bigger, the better. Maybe it’s because she’s living in a home surrounded by them. Who knows? But anyway, she has been collecting rocks for a while now, and they’ve just been gathering random places. So a while back, I told her we’d decorate a box for her rocks. But I kept forgetting. She wouldn’t let me forget for long, though. And finally, I found a shoe box, and we got busy. We used decorative contact paper, and then I did something I have a hard time doing – I let her go. I let her decorate the box how ever she wanted. She had me help some (I cut the pieces of tape, and did the front of the box), but she did the top pretty much by herself. And she is SO proud of her rock box!! (Of course we had to go outside after we made the box to attempt to fill it up! HA!)

Recycling Rocks!

I’ve had a lot going on lately… to say the least. So just this week I finally picked up all the signs of Halloween around the house and got them tucked away for next year. I wanted to do one more sensory bin for Becca before putting the water table up in the attic for the Christmas season (way too much stuff will be in our living room…), but WHAT? I wanted something fallish, but different from her pumpkin center. So I looked around and found some items that have long since been forgotten… her fall leaves number tree, her box of beans (minus the pom poms), and her tub of beans, leaves, and pumpkins. And I’m pretty pleased with what I came up with! (And she was, too!)

I emptied all of the beans, leaves, and pumpkins I could find into the main part of the water table, put her rake and shovel with the number tree in the top, and then put the Indian corn in a festive pumpkin basket that she can’t seem to get enough of (she hauls the thing all over the house at least twice a day). She loved digging around using her tools, and just running her fingers through the beans again. “This is fun, Mommy! I like it better in here than that other place.” So see, part of my problem before had been not enough space to dig in! Now we know. The container really DOES make a difference, and this water table (affiliate link – thank you!) is FABULOUS for way more than just water play!

I also showed her how she can pull the silks off the Indian corn and make fun strings, and how to pop the corn kernels off (into the table), which she had a blast doing! Once she tired of it, she immediately pulled the fall number tree out, and we did that together. Such fun to revisit old favorites – in a new format! Recycling really does rock, ya’ll. No need to throw out those activities because she was seemingly done with them! Just gotta find a way to make things new!

What activities do you have around your house that could stand to be recycled or “up cycled” into something new and different?

Wacky Wednesday

I know this was the post you missed most last week!

Well, here you go! From the mouth of our lil babe:

-Twirling around on the floor, she then fell down, and said- “That’s a dance move, Mommy.”

– Doing more twirling… “I’m getting so dizzy!” Ya think? It happens to the best of us!

-“That’s not a dance move- that’s a door!” Wow. Good observation. Too bad you ran into it while doing your dance move!

– “Hey! I have an idea! I can dance with Dorge!” Again with the dancing. She loves to dance!

– After dancing with George…”I have a nother one idea- maybe my piwow would want a dance!” I’m sure her pillow loved dancing with her. When she fell on it in the end might have been a tad painful for the poor pillow, but it seems to have survived.

– “I jump for Joy and I’m Becca Joy!”

– “Are you not appeared?” (Disappeared)

– “I have another one idea. I’ll be right back.”

– Then, in case I decided to “appeared” when she left, “Don’t go anywhere else. I’ll be right back.”

– Before saying our prayer at dinner one night, I was cutting her food so it would cool. She looked at her Daddy, who had folded his hands, she had folded her hands, and I was still cutting… “Calm your hands, Mommy.” (This is what we used to have to tell her before a prayer when she would be franticly flapping her wings…)

– “That’s the best idea ever!!” Thanks for your approval! Glad you liked my idea. 🙂

Microwave Puff Paint

Well, I’ve mentioned before how much I love the ideas from Jean over at The Artful Parent… and THIS idea for Microwave Puffy Paint is no exception! What a super fun way to tie in cooking with art! Becca really loved this one. We made the puffy paint (recipe below), and then used Duple blocks to make prints on cardstock paper. Then, we watched them puff up. It was amazing. And super, super fun. I think we’ll have to do it again soon. Note: this recipe makes a LOT of paint! We had some left over, which I’m attempting to keep in the fridge. We’ll let you know how that works out.

We also added colored glitter to ours… which added some sparkle to our pictures, but not as much as I would have thought. Live and learn. Probably not a real great idea to add glitter to this paint… it doesn’t really show up, and just wastes glitter.

The recipe:

Microwave Puffy Paint

1 cup flour
1 tsp salt
1 cup water
Food coloring

Whisk your flour, salt, and water together really, really well – so there are no clumps. Then divide, and add your food coloring.

You can put it into squeeze bottles, or dip items like we did. Do your painting, then stick the cardstock, cardboard, or paper plate into the microwave for about 30 seconds. Watch it puff up! If you don’t have much paint on your page, it won’t take the whole 30 seconds. If you have a lot more, it might take a little longer.

Enjoy!!! It’s SOOOO much fun!

Making an Impression

All this month, I’ll be sharing a variety of art activity ideas for you on Mondays… this week, I wanted to share an impromptu lesson on impressions that we both had a whole lot of fun with!

Becca LOVES playing with play dough, and she’s finally starting to get good at pushing cookie cutters down into the dough and coming out with shapes of dough. Amazing how difficult that is when your fine and gross motor skills are still developing! So the other day when she was playing, I thought I’d throw something new her way… and handed her a fork. I loved her immediate response when I pressed the fork into the dough. “WOW, Mommy! You made ridges!” And so it began.

First it was the fork, then a little pumpkin bead, then her spiky ball, then a food pouch lid, then a play apple… she took time to press each thing into the play dough to see what response she got from the item, and from the dough. She noticed that the play dough wanted to stick to the spiky ball, but the plastic bead came right out… both left neat impressions. The food pouch lid was just a mess. It left a neat impression, but brought back a bunch of play dough stuck inside. The apple was most disappointing to her – because she did it last, and it’s smooth surface “wiped away my holes!” The spiky ball had left such a neat pattern, and then suddenly it was gone!

It was such a fun lesson, I know she’ll be wanting to do this again soon, so I’m already trying to think of things we can use to make impressions on play dough.