Butterbees and Bumbleflies

Mini Engineering Challenges

Well, here we are – at the second Thursday of the month, and our Mini Engineering Challenges post! (That this time has a touch of Tech mixed in!) Today I have three really fun activities for you, and a few affiliate links to help you (and me) out as you plan to do these activities with your kids!!

First of all, if you don’t have a wooden train set for your preschool/elementary/middle/high children and you/hubby… well, your whole family will love having a train set! Heck, Grayson even loves the train set… (he’s head of the demolition crew after we build something!)

Here’s the set that Santa brought to the kids for Christmas this past year: KidKraft Farm Train Set and then, of course, as we’ve played with it more and more, we’ve needed a few additional things…
Maxim Enterprise Expansion Switch and Crossing Track Pack and the 56 Piece Wooden Train Track Expansion Pack with Tunnel by Orbrium Toys … and of course, we have a few things on our wish lists, too… Maxim Enterprise Over and Under Tunnel, Orbrium® Toys 6 Arches Viaduct Bridge for Wooden Railway Track, and of course a few more connectors… Orbrium Toys Male-Male Female-Female Wooden Train Track Adapters, Set of 8. I think it’s safe to say that we are hooked on the wooden train set. And I love how it’s becoming an activity our entire family can sit around and do on the floor all together. We love to build all kinds of crazy tracks…

But our real engineering challenge lately has been to try to build everyone’s name! They are sometimes more challenging than others, but we’ve really had fun making our names (and our pet’s names) in train tracks! Here are a few of the names we have completed:

Inspired by THIS POST from No Time for Flashcards, I decided it’d be fun to come up with some little Lego Challenges for Becca. We’ve done a few over time, and she has really enjoyed them! It’s super fun to come up with random little challenges for your kids – and see if they can make the item the same way you did! Here’s a couple that she has done. Keep in mind, you could also do this with Duplos for younger kids!! I simply set up the model(s) on a tray, and put the pieces she’ll need to build hers in front of the model. After she’s built her own, she typically likes to take them apart and build random things. This is a fabulous activity to keep her busy when I’m trying to cook dinner or do the dishes. 😉

Another activity that we have loved recently is the “Bridge Constructor Playground (FREE)” App that I downloaded from the Apple Store onto my MacBook. We really enjoy sitting together and trying to figure out the best materials to build a bridge that is strong and the trucks can cross. It has valuable lessons for kids on strength of materials, strength in shapes (triangle posts are stronger than straight up and down posts), and also is a good way to start introducing the concept that everything takes money… you can’t just spend and spend and spend and expect to have enough money for whatever you want! It’s a great game for young kids to play WITH an adult, or for older more tech savvy kids to play on their own. We haven’t made it past the first island yet, but there are multiple levels of play once you reach certain objectives. We haven’t made it past the first stage yet mainly because we both think it’s fun to watch the trucks/cars fall into the water when a bridge breaks… insert embarrassed Mommy grin here… 😉

What engineering/technology activities are you enjoying with your kids? PLEASE SHARE! I’m always looking for new ideas to use with Becca, and I know other readers would be interested to know what you’re doing, as well!

Did you miss last month’s Mini Engineering Challenges? Check them out here!

And, be sure to “like” my Facebook page to see more ideas shared by me and also by other bloggers!

Train Up Your Child…

I’m so excited to share our first Wednesday post from a reader! Be sure to check out the end of this post for Aly’s bio and a link to her blog!

Being pregnant is fun, especially when it’s your first. Your heart and mind fills with dreams and hopes and wishes and teddy bears and it’s just a lot of fun all around. I remember seeing the little pink plus sign and thinking “I’m having a daughter!” I started dreaming about all sorts of things. We picked a name, Amelia, when we found out my first thought was correct. We picked a color scheme for her room, yellow and green – we tried to go easy on the pink overload but that is harder to do than it sounds. We picked out sheets and curtains and a crib. We discussed sleep training methods and birth plans and eating habits and diapering options and child rearing practices. It was all very idealistic.

We she was born, the idealism stuck with us for about a year. Call it a honeymoon phase of parenthood. I won’t get into the details, but it was basically the smoothest first year a baby could possibly have. Now she’s a year an a half old, though. Now she has opinions. Now she can walk and run and make her own decisions. My little baby girl who slept through the night at 5 weeks has the ability to tell me no – and usually does it fairly respectfully. When did that happen?

When I realized this change, I adjusted my focus from basic needs like sustenance and excrement to character building. I want her to learn independence coupled with respect for authority. Turns out that’s a really hard balance. I want her to be creative and curious, to have a smile that graces her face easily, and to have a heart that is gentle and kind. Again, I have a lot of lofty idealistic goals. I’d really like to say this second year is going as smoothly as the first one did but training character is a LOT harder than training sleep apparently. So I dug into Scripture. When I don’t know, God does.

4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates. Deuteronomy 6:4-9

Alright, I need to love God with everything that I am. Tell my children about God and His commandments at every opportunity. Keep reminders of God’s commandments all over the place.

I gotta come clean here, I don’t love God with everything that I am. I love God but with all my heart, with all my soul, with all my strength? That’s a tall order. Sometimes, my heart is a little focused on other things, like my schedule or my responsibilities or pizza. Let me be clear, these things are not bad. In fact, they are good things and they often need my attention, particularly the pizza, but there is a difference between having my attention and having my soul. What is my heart, soul, and strength focused on?

So how do I make that transition from pizza to God? Let’s look back at Deuteronomy. Scripture says to impress the Lord’s commandments on my heart and on my children. I need to talk about them everywhere we are, wherever we go. Write them all over the place, keep them close by to know and to read over and over. Basically, Philippians 4:8

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

I love how practical the Bible is. It doesn’t just tell me to

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6

but it tells me how to do that. In case you missed it, I’ll give you some bullet points. Here’s how to train up a child.

Love God with everything you are
Tell your children about God
Tell your children about God’s commandments
Talk about God everywhere you go
Write God’s commandments all over the place
Focus on good thing
Pray (we didn’t discuss this one in this post but when all else fails, run to God. Actually, run to God even if nothing is failing because He’s the one in control of it all either way)

Aly lives in San Antonio where she is a stay at home mom and wife. She has 4 children. Amelia is a year and a half. Her second two children, Leonard and Sam, are at home with the Lord due to miscarriages. Her fourth child is currently unnamed and will make his or her appearance in October. Aly loves Jesus and hopes to be a missionary in Madagascar one day. You can read more from her at www.MomsGoing.com

Strawberry White Chocolate Chip Cookies

I apologize, but today’s post is a bit short. After being sick several days, I’m behind on pre-posting, and still trying to re-coop…

These cookies are so so so heavenly! All I did to modify the recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction (found here) was we used white chocolate chips instead of regular chocolate chips. 🙂 SUPER easy cookies and super super moist and yummy. We’ll definitely be making them again – SOON! They were awesome for getting Becca to help because they came together super quick.

Mess-Free Painting with Your Baby Bee

I do so much painting and art stuff with Becca, but really wasn’t doing anything in the way of art with Grayson. Then I read this blog post by CanDo Kiddo… and was like – WOW! I can do that! That’s as easy as falling off a log! Grayson doesn’t have trouble with Tummy Time at all (she suggests it would be fabulous for encouraging a baby who doesn’t like Tummy Time… a fabulous idea!!!) – he’s crawling everywhere, but I still found that he loved seeing something new on the floor and got right in there with squishing the paint! The end products turned out really fun, and definitely worth keeping as his first works of art! And of course the bonus was – he wasn’t messy when it was done… and neither was I!

So how do you do it? It’s simple. Just trim the ends of some sheets of card stock so that they’ll easily fit in a Ziploc freezer bag. Then squirt a few drops of squishy finger paint onto the paper, and slip it carefully into the Ziploc bag. Then get the air out and seal the bag. Tape it to the floor with painter’s tape, and present the activity to your Baby Bee! Watch them explore and have so much fun! Then, when they are done, just cut both sides of the bag off, unzip, and peel it back to reveal the finished art! Let it dry and then display!

I can’t wait to do this activity with him again sometime soon and use different colors. He really enjoyed it so so much – and it kept him occupied for a good ten minutes!!

As recommended in the CanDo Kiddo article, you could also tape it to the table, or to a high chair tray if you need an activity off of the floor for your child to do while you do dishes, etc.

Bell Pepper Shamrocks

In our house, we do a lot of abstract-type art… more just art to be creating art instead of a “craft” with a specific end-product in mind. Today’s activity is sort of in between the two – because I had a definite picture in my mind of how it would look in the end… so my own paintings conformed to that set “craft” end product. And Becca’s? Well, thankfully I didn’t share my end product vision with her. Because that would have spoiled her fun, and her learning experience.

With St. Patty’s day coming up soon, we decided to welcome in the month by stamping shamrocks on paper… using bell peppers. I had carefully selected both a four and a three chamber bell pepper at the store so that we’d have three and four leaf clovers. We pulled up Google images and looked at shamrock pictures and then dove in. She ended up mainly creating “bushes” and “trees” – and of course, painting her hands. (What use is finger paint if you don’t paint all of your fingers? I mean, that’s what it means to call it finger paint, right? HA!)

So – whether you are planning (and end up actually creating) a great shamrock printed paper to turn into greeting cards, or perhaps to use as a background for your March page in your 2016 calendar, this is a super fun activity that only involves a little bit of preparation (add two bell peppers to your grocery trip… at $.50 a piece, it’s a pretty cheap activity, too!) and you and your kids are guaranteed to have some more… Fun with Art. 🙂