Butterfly Mobile

The other day I needed something to distract my kids from wanting to watch more TV.  So I scoured all my pins for toddler things and on the website for one of those pins for something like a gazillion toddler activities I saw something for a butterfly mobile.  I didn't bother following instructions.  I just cut out a bunch of butterflies from old scrapbook paper, let them color them and then hung them from string on two hangers. 

Nothing too exciting, but we did manage to avoid more TV.

Iron-On Flannel Board Scripture Stories

This project has been about 8 months in the making.  Ever since a neighbor shared with me this idea for making flannel board scripture stories I have been anxious to put this together.  It's so easy, but did take me some time to save up for the supplies.

List of supplies:

• Iron on transfers.  I got mine on Amazon.  It was the cheapest I could find without driving all over town, which I hate.
• Pelon.  This you get at a fabric store.  It's the stuff you use to reinforce fabric and comes in about a zillion thicknesses.  I chose one that was mid range.  Sturdy but not too expensive.
• Ink for your ink jet printer in both black and color.  I add this to the list because I used about 2/3-3/4 of a color cartridge for 24 sheets printed.
• Downloaded files of scripture stories already colored.  Get them here (this woman went to a lot of trouble so we can all benefit.)
• Iron.
• Hard surface.
• A pillow case or fabric to cover hard surface.  

Here is my ironing station for this project.  You need hard surface in place of an ironing board which isn't flat enough and might not take the kind of pressure you'll need to apply.  You'll also need to get your iron HOT as in as-hot-as-it-will-go.  So you can let this heat while you move on to the printing part.

Here is the basic procedure.  Go and get the files for the scripture stories here.  Then print each one in "mirror image" on an iron on transfer sheet.  This means that you are printing it backwards.  It doesn't matter much for the pictures, but some have captions like the picture below.  You can see that I printed it backwards.

Next you will need to iron the transfer sheet to the Pelon.  The iron should be really hot and you have to apply the heat while slowing moving the iron for 3 minutes.  It feels like an eternity.  It's best to but a timer on.

After that, let it cool and peel off the backing from the transfer paper and cut out the figures.

Here are my kids watching the printer go.  I'm not sure why this is entertaining.

Each group of figures has a story with scriptures you can print too.  I did this on regular paper and then placed it with the figures in a folder.  And the folder goes into a hanging file box.  I printed 24 sheets.  I think there are twice that if you do all the Old and New Testament, Book of Mormon and Church history.  It might be a while before I can purchase enough stuff to do this again.  So I was selective on the stories I choose.

I haven't made a flannel board yet.  I'm just draping the flannel over our easel.  (Do you you think I should iron it?)

This has been a really fun project because the kids love it.  They like the scripture stories and love putting the pictures up.  Now if I can just get them to stop fighting over them.

This post is linked up at House of Hepworths, Momnivore's Dilemma, and Something Swanky.

Pet Monster Rocks

A few weeks ago we took a drive up Little Cottonwood Canyon.  We found the river and let the kids choose rocks to bring home.

The next day we painted them.  I think this was Stan's first time painting.  He loved it.

The following morning we glued eyes on them and sprayed them with a clear varnish.

I love projects that take days, it means I don't have to come up with something new to keep them entertained.

Dinosaur Footprint Cookies

A little while ago I saw this blog post with dinosaur footprint cookies.  I knew this was the perfect activity for my dino obsessed three-year-old.  I didn't want to use the recipe on the site because it used and entire cup of butter.  Somehow I got it in my head that I needed cream cheese in the cookie dough.  I gave a shout out on FB looking for a good sugar cookie recipe with cream cheese.  My friend Ginger came through.  The recipe I used can be found here.

So we set about making the cookies and I let the boys stamp them with their dinosaurs (after we washed them, of course.)

You can tell Stan's work because his dinos had a tendency to stomp while Kimball's were a little more artistic.

I didn't take a picture of the final cookies because they spread out and you couldn't really see the footprints.  Kimball just pretended to be a paleontologist and used a discerning eye.  The other recipe might have produced a better footprints but these were DELICIOUS!  I ate most of them for breakfast the next day.  :)

Road Tripping with Toddlers

On Sunday we returned from our family vacation to Montana.  We had a great time.  It was our first long road trip with the kids and I might have gotten a little frantic preparing.  Might have.

I was worried about the kids having to be in the car for a 12 hour road trip to Glacier National Park.  That was our original plan.  Our trip, however, was delayed after my husband's great-uncle passed away.  We stayed in town for the funeral and skipped Glacier.  The rest of the trip was spent in Bozeman and Missoula. So the driving part was a little shorter than expected.

In any event, I spent a lot of time preparing and I do believe that my efforts payed off.  I reviewed a few blog posts for ideas.  Like this one and this one.  Here's what worked:

1.  How to avoid the "Are we there yet?" syndrome.

Toddlers have no concept of time.  Maybe you've noticed.  Saying that we are three hours away or even a half hour means nothing.  So I made this felt road and little stuffed van.  We advanced the car according to travel time.  When we were half way there the car was half way down the road.  I just used pins to tack the road and the car to the ceiling above the sun visors.  Kimball loved it.  He might not let me take it down.  Of course instead of asking "Are we there yet?" he just kept telling me to "Move the van" as if that would get us to our destination faster.

2.  Presents and baskets.

I took the advice of one blogger and bought dollar store presents for the kids and wrapped them.  (Of course if I had called my sister she would have given me the same idea because she's smart like that.)  I used the presents as incentives for good behavior and to keep the kids occupied so Bryce and I could listen to our book on tape.

That same blogger also suggested using baskets to keep things handy.  I bought three baskets at the dollar store.  Two had treats and one held the presents.  The baskets may actually become a permanent fixture in my van because they were great at keeping things tidy and accessible.

3.  Be willing to make unplanned stops.

This piece of advice is my own.  My husband and I like checking out stuff we happen to see as we are driving.  It makes for a bit of an adventure.  On our way up, we stopped at Bear World outside Rigby, Idaho.  It wasn't on the itinerary, but it was one of the funnest things we did.  They had kiddie rides, a petting zoo and, of course, a drive though a bear park.  I totally recommend it!

Any other useful ideas for road trips?

Egg Carton Spiders

Lately my two boys have been into spiders and bugs.  It might be the enjoyable fact that we have 50 gajillion boxelder bugs outside our front steps which they love to smoosh.  I have thought about teaching them to have a greater respect for God's creatures but I hate boxelder bugs.  

In any event, I thought they might have fun making their own spiders so I saved up some egg cartons and grabbed some pipe cleaners at the dollar store.  Hooray for the dollar store!  I used eyes that are craft eyes for stuffed animals because I had them on hand but you could use googly eyes, which are also available at the dollar store.  

We made baby ones and Daddy ones.  We also made Mommy ones but I took the pictures before that happened.

The kids loved it!

More Fun with Baking Soda

So, here is another pin I made an effort to replicate recently.  (Ok, not really recently, this was back in April.  I'm just a little behind on my posting.)

You would think that we have had enough of baking soda and vinegar based on the volcanoes and our cabbage experiment.  Fortunately, toddlers never find the chemical reaction dull.

Source: Uploaded by user via Katherine on Pinterest

I'd say it was pretty successful.  And easy, which is my standard for any entertainment.

The Blankie Jar

From the time Kimball was 6 months old (or so) he has had a blanket named Blue.  It was a small piece of blue fleece with knotted tassels around the edges.  It became pretty ratty and occasionally lost one of the tassels, which was cause for extreme trauma.  On these occasions I would perform the necessary repair surgery to reattach the missing tassel.

Sadly, Blue was lost this last December when we took the boys on a trip to ride TRAX.  I suppose it was inevitable.  Although we had been successful on various recovery missions in the past--no such luck this time.

I thought it would be more tragic than it was for Kimball to lose his Blue.  But he handled it well enough.  He refused all attempts at making replacement, and even the backup Blue we had on hand for just such an occasion was insufficient in his toddler eyes.  I thought the days of the blankie had passed.  I was wrong.

A few months later Kimball adopted a new blanket.  I suppose such bonds take time and cannot be artificially created.  This new blanket is two pieces of yellow flannel that is tied together in tassels around the edges.  

This is the only photo I could find of the new blanket.

One night, soon after the adoption of the new blankie, Kimball began to cry in bed.  This was not a normal cry of I'm bored and don't want to go to bed.  He sounded genuinely upset.  Bryce rushed to his aid and I heard a cute conversation wherein Kimball sniffled that a piece had come off of his new blankie.  Bryce resolved this issue like any good Dad and told him that Mom would fix it in the morning.  They put the piece in a "special" place on the book shelf.

In the morning I was up before Bryce and Kimball bounded upstairs to tell me that his blankie needed to be fixed.  I got out my suturing kit (i.e. needle and thread) and we went to retrieve the missing piece.  We hunted and hunted but I couldn't find a thing.  I told Kimball that he would need to wait until Dad got up because I didn't know where the piece was.

Soon enough Bryce was up and brought me the missing piece of Kimball's precious blanket.  It was a thread!  That's right a measly piece of thread.  You know how flannel frays a bit with wash?  Well, Kimball's blanket is flannel and quiet frayed where the pieces have been tied together.  One of the threads had come off and he wanted me to sew it back on.  

What did I do?  I sewed it back on.

The problem?  This new flannel blanket is frayed everywhere!  Do you know how often one of those silly threads comes off?  Almost daily.  And you have another thing coming if you think that I will be sewing threads back onto fraying flannel for the next  . . . whenever! 

That's when I came up with the blankie jar.

It's an old pimento jar that Kimball gets to collect pieces of his blankie (i.e. threads) in.  He often finds random threads and declares them "pieces of my blankie".  What do I care.  At least I don't have to sew them back on.

Not 2 Minutes After I Cleaned the Floor . . .

That's shredded cheese and chocolate milk in case you were wondering.  He looks so pleased with himself.

What's the right kind of soap for making bubbles?

I decided to do a post on whether you could make a good bubble mixture from an ordinary store brand dish soap or whether you needed to use Dawn.  I had two large jars of bubbles mixed up--one of each kind.  I went to go find my camera and returned to the above.

Yup, Toddler #2 dumped both jars out.  That's nearly a quart of bubble mixture that is now on my steps.

Perhaps this will explain why I haven't blogged in nearly a week.

I'm in! I'm in! I'm in the Dino Squad!

My three year old is really into Dino Squad.  If you don't know what that is, it's a TV show from about 5 years ago in which some teenagers turn into dinosaurs.  Recently, my little guy has picked up the theme song.  Here he is singing it (please ignore all my laundry in the background):

And, just so you can compare the original.

Twisty Ties in a Jar

Source: pre-schoolplay.blogspot.com via Katherine on Pinterest

So this is the latest pin that I attempted to replicate in a desperate effort to entertain my children while simultaneously trying to get something done.

Since I didn't have any pipe cleaners I used twisty ties (see there is more than one use for these things!).  I put them in a mason jar and let the kids have at it.

 

Unfortunately the graham crackers were more entertaining.  Then I realized that part of the problem with the jar was too thick.  You'll notice that the original pin looks like a plastic jar.  Well, we'll have to try that tomorrow.  But I still have my doubts that it will keep them occupied for hours.  But hey, I'd take five minutes.


UPDATE: I just linked this post to Project Pinterest.

Purple Cabbage Experiment

My husband likes to listen to books on tape.  He often listens to whole college courses on various subjects, like nano technology, greek history, genetics.  He likes to know a little bit about everything.  But he's not a know-it-all.  He's a really cool guy.  

Anyway, after listening to the genetics course he called me and told me to buy purple cabbage.  I complied and then we had some fun.  I boiled the cabbage and we put the juice in 7 jars.

Then we added vinegar (acid) and baking soda (base) in various quantities.  I should have blogged this closer to when we did it because I don't remember the exact amounts.  We have a ways to go before we are real scientists.  Here is the basic idea from left to right: the control, about 1 c. baking soda with some water, a few tablespoons of baking soda with water, about 2 c. vinegar, 1 c. vinegar, I don't remember and a tablespoon or so of vinegar.

The basic idea is that color can change based on the pH level.  I think it might have something to do with how color is manifest in nature. In any event, we had fun.  Especially when we started mixing!