Sensory Bin-Water Beads

I bought a few packs of water beads months ago, but we finally just got around to it.

The other night before Olivia went to bed she helped me "prep" the beads.

I bought blue, purple and pink beads.  She poured a large cup of water in, and then we just ended up taking it into the bathroom.  She used the cup to fill it up.  Then she went to bed.

A few hours later before I went to bed I checked on them.  They were starting to plump up.  I added a lot more water.

When I woke up it looked like this.  I added even more water.

Then before it was time to play, I had to rinse them off.  The purple water would dye what it touched, but after it was rinsed off there wasn't any problem.

She wanted to play with it right when she woke up--hence the bed head! :)

She said, "There are hundreds of them!"

We talked about how they went from tiny little beads to big beads.  Also, how they were different colors, but when all together in the bucket they look black (to her).

We tried to come up with every adjective we could to describe how they felt.

She kept popping them in her hand.

We ended up with a few more than I had intended, so they spilled out over the sides some.  We found out that they bounce.

She had a great time playing with them, exploring, and making all sorts of observations.

She couldn't wait until Boppa came home to show him her beads.

They played for a little bit, and Logan even got in on the sensory action.  I stood his feet in it.  He wasn't quite sure what to think.  Then Olivia had to stand it in too, of course.  :)

There are tons of fun ideas on how to use these little guys, so this probably won't be the last you have seen of them.

Wordless Wednesday--Mum Mums

He won't eat baby food, but he will slam a mum mum.

Kids Say the Darndest Things....

Olivia is constantly saying things that either make us stop and laugh out loud, or take us back with how old/mature she sounds.  I'm trying to be better about keeping notes of the things she says...

A friend of mine was at our house and said, "She's so verbal!" and Olivia said, "I am not so purple!"

She has super girl pajamas that she got from Miss Laurie for her birthday.  When I put them on her she was running around saying how she was super girl and she was going to save the day.  The next morning we needed to get her dressed so we could go somewhere.  She said, "Wait! I won't be able to save the day without my jammies on!"

She was running around in our family room.  Her toy broom was on the floor and she was kind of running around it.  Instead of saying she was running around in circles, she just kept singing, "I'm running around in ovals! I'm running around in ovals". Which was the shape she was making when running around the long broom. :)

I started mixing almond milk with cows milk.  She was doing well having half and half.  One day I gave her a glass of all cows milk. She said, "What kind of milk is this?  Is this white milk?  Because white is not my favorite color!"  We are back to half and half....

"I am so excited about ballet class. I'm going to wear a pink tutu.  I'm so excited to meet new friends.  There are going to be so many fun girls there.  And my teacher is going to show me how to shake my booty."  Ummm... ???  I don't think so little girl.

After months of having a table that sits six, I finally got matching place mats.  At lunch one day Olivia said, "Mommy, look at these mats! They are amazing! I justlove them."

Olivia is into carrying around random piece of paper and pretending she is reading them.  One of the papers got ripped one day.  She holds it up to me and says, "Look, mommy!"  I asked her what happened to my paper and she said, "I think somebody damaged it!"  Hmm. Wonder who could have done that?

No matter how many times I tell her that Logan watches Praise Baby, she insists on calling it Craze Baby.  I think she does it to spite me. ;)

"Can I use colored pencils?" Me: Sure "Thanks. That would be lovely."

"Mommy, are these two crayons similar?" Trying to quiz me on if I know what similar means--the day after Michael taught her. :) "How aboooooout these two crayons?  Are they similar?"

Sidewalk Paint

The weather was beautiful towards the end of last week.  We took the opportunity to play outside after naps, and since Olivia has really been into all things drawing/coloring/painting I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to use some sidewalk paint for the first time.

We have tons of sidewalk chalk, but I thought painting would be a fun little twist.  I saw a few moms mention it in one of my mom groups, and it is all over pinterest.  So we gave it a try.  There are two different ways to do it (that I've seen).  One way that is suppose to be brighter and bolder is to crush up some sidewalk chalk and add water.  I was looking for ease, though.  So I went with the traditional method of mixing 1 part water to 1 part cornstarch and adding drops of food coloring.

The driveway was too hot for Olivia.  She decided she wanted to be able to sit in the grass, so she painted on our front sidewalk.

I laid Logan down while I was getting everything organized for Olivia..

and within minutes he had rolled off of his blanket onto the grass and was not happy about it!

Since "favorite colors" is a hot topic around our house (and I had some neon food coloring that happened to be all 4 of our favorite colors), those are the colors she got--blue, green, pink and purple.

She had a great time choosing what color to use for each drawing

 Logan ended up hanging out on my lap for a bit.  He was just chewing away at his keys and enjoying the breeze in his face.

Olivia wanted to paint a huge rock that is in our neighbors yard. I told her it wasn't ours, but that she could paint the rocks in our yard.  (Excuse the tall grass and weeds!  I was gone every single night this week,so Michael didn't have a chance to get to the yard work!)

Trying to stay in the shade

 She went around the circle until she had painted 4 different rocks the 4 different colors

Painting is intense ;)

She eventually moved to the front sidewalk

and not  long after that the neighbor girls joined in

Michael got home and I had to head to work, but I'm told the painting continued for quite some time--until most of it was gone or had started to dry up from being out in the sun for so long.  Success!

Sorting

Olivia has been able to sort by color for quite a while now, and I was pretty confident that she could sort by shape and by size but wanted to make sure.

I dumped out the buttons and told her to sort them by shapes.  She really wanted to sort them by color.  She loves sorting by color and does it for fun with lots of items around the house and toys that she plays with. (What can I say? She may have a mom who color codes the closets...)

After explaining that I already knew she knew how to sort by color and I wanted to see if she could sort by shapes, she complied.

I told her to just make piles with the different shapes.  Nope.  She couldn't.  She had to make "towers".

So what was suppose to be a 5 minute activity before napped turned into a tedious 20 minute activity.  Had I anticipated this (and I should have!) I wouldn't have dumped out the entire bag!

Eventually she finished the task and had no problems with the sorting.

We did it another day with beads.  This time I got smart and only gave her a handful!

She started sorting by shape, but she would still pick up two of the same shape and say, "Do these match?"  I would say yes and she would say, "No.  They don't match!"  Meaning they weren't the same color, even though she knew they were the same shape.

Even though her inner self desperately wanted them to "match", she did the activity with ease. ;)

We've also practiced sorting items by size, and she does well with that too.  I think we can check sorting off our list!

Photo Dump Friday

Drinking her soup with a straw