Indoor Water Play- a great way to keep toddlers happy indoors!
My children are all little water babies.
Usually this tendency shows in them splashing water all over the bathroom when they are supposed to be washing their hands. Finding them lingering in there playing in the sink and flooding the floor is frustrating , but I do try to give them fun opportunities to satisfy this urge to splash and pour.
One thing they love to do, when they can’t go outside to play, is set them up with some indoor water play.
I get out my humongous pot and fill it about a third of the way with water. I’ll set it on a beach towel on the kitchen floor, then throw in some cups, toy boats, funnels or other small items that will be fun to play with in the water. They can easily stay at this simple activity for the better part of an hour, especially if I switch out the toys every 15-20 minutes or so.
Sometimes I give him toy cars and it’s a “car wash”. Other times he is giving his dinosaurs or doll a bath. Get creative! That’s the whole point!
This activity works really well for my preschooler to do while I’m working with my oldest daughter on her school at the table. He’s usually very content and relatively quiet. It makes it easier for her to focus than if he’s running around being a wild child, even if she is working independently.
I have been struggling. I’m struggling with handling life’s bigger problems- like finances and relationships. I’m struggling with my self image after birthing three children and having health issues. I’m struggling with my precious unruly children, teething fussy baby and a moderate dose of post partum depression. I will be okay, but this poem flowed out of all that and more. I felt that maybe someone would benefit from my transparency, although I was hesitant to share this.
♥♥♥
Baby teething, keeps on screaming,
Must have Mommy, and it’s seeming
Like she’ll never let me put her down
Or let me stop carrying her around…
But she will.
♥♥♥
Threenager yelling out so loud,
Waking baby and feeling proud.
Leaving destruction wherever he goes
Hard to imagine he’ll get better as he grows…
But he will.
♥♥♥
Six year old asking questions galore,
When I answer, she wants to know more,
Gives me attitude when she doesn’t understand,
Will she always question every command?
Probably will.
♥♥♥
My head is pounding from the chaos and noise,
My kids drive me crazy, but they’re also such joys.
They tire me out and the work’s never done
Will I miss their neediness as much as the fun?
I think I will.
♥♥♥
Some days I’m discouraged and wonder why
Do I continue to give them my best Mommy try?
Will it matter if I do my best to raise them right,
Or just let them run wild without giving a fight?
I know it will.
♥♥♥
Why am I sharing my struggles with you?
Because I’m not alone, and know this is true.
Most parents struggle and feel they’re not enough,
Does it help to admit I love my children, but it’s tough?
Maybe it will.
♥♥♥
Are you struggling today? What helps you when you are struggling? Two things that help me are writing and shifting my focus to others.
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I wrote a series about kindness awhile back, if you are interested in some ideas on how to help others. Here’s one of the posts from that series: Share The Kindness.
If you are like me, you don’t look forward to trying to carve pumpkins into jack o’lanterns. In fact, I am totally paranoid about using sharp knives and carving instruments with my little ones. So, to satisfy their desire to decorate pumpkins while keeping my anxieties quiet, we just don’t cut, carve or otherwise mutilate our pumpkins.
Do decorate your pumpkins!
You can do so many things with them without cutting, and they should last all the way until time to decorate for Christmas! I love to do a pumpkin with a thankful theme. My children like to make pumpkins representing themselves. We have also done pumpkins that were just randomly decorated. Be inspired by what you like! I’m more about making fall decorations with my pumpkins and less about making them holiday oriented. Most Halloween themed things don’t pass my rules, anyway, since I don’t allow witches and wickedness in our décor this time of year.
Big Sister Pumpkin
Be creative and have fun!
My kids chose their pumpkins this year. They each chose a small one to represent themselves, and my oldest daughter picked a miniature one to represent their baby sister. They wanted to do their own decorating of their own pumpkins, and to give me ideas of what they wanted me to do for baby sister. 🙂
We used materials we had on hand. My deceased mother in law absolutely adored Halloween, and we wound up with some of her craft supplies. I allowed my kiddos to choose some items from those as part of their pumpkin decorating. We wound up using sequined candy corn and stars, googly eyes, ribbon and paint on the bigger munchkins’ pumpkins in the designs of their choosing and creation. I helped very little, since they were having fun and I wanted them to have pride in creating their own. We used smaller googly eyes, a real piece of candy corn for a nose, raffia and pipe cleaner for the baby’s miniature pumpkin.
Big Brother Pumpkin
Have a safe and happy autumn!!!!
We managed to decorate these with no booboos and minimal stress. My biggest concern was making sure the paint and glue stayed on the newspapers I laid out on the kitchen floor where we were working!
Need an inexpensive and easy fall craft for kids? Try my upcycled paper plate pumpkin masks!
I try to do a craft of some sort at least once or twice a week with my children, mostly using items we have on hand or that will cost me very little to get the supplies for. This was one of our recent projects, using only items I already had in my cabinets. These masks were pretty quick to pull together, as well as lots of fun for my little ones to help make and play with when they were finished. If you need a simple and cheap autumn craft for children, this is for you!
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Want to know how to make your own paper plate pumpkin mask? Keep reading!
Pumpkin Mask Supplies
First, gather your supplies. In case the photo isn’t enough explanation, here’s your crazy long list of things you need:
Next, let your kiddos color the middle round part of the plate orange (or another color, if they’re feeling funky). Cut the round center part of the plate out.
Hold the cut out near your child’s face and put a dot on the plate where the eyes and mouth should go, then draw the shapes they want them to be. I scored the lines with my scissors and then went back over them with a knife to cut them the rest of the way out.
Poke a hole in each side of the pumpkin mask for the ribbon to go through. Have your child hold the mask up and then wrap the ribbon around from hole to hole to figure the length. You can do the strap one of two ways. Either two pieces of ribbon you tie on (my choice) or one solid piece they slide on and off their heads. I wrapped it behind and added enough length to tie through the holes as well as tying a bow in the back, which was a few extra inches. Cut and tie the ribbon through the holes.
Paper Plate Pumpkin Mask
Your child will be ready to go crazy as a walking jack o’lantern!
Anyone else find the weirdest things coming out of your mouth when speaking to the crazy cute beings known as your children? I often pause after saying something to one of my children and think “Wow, that would sound completely crazy if someone wasn’t in this scenario to understand!”. I thought I’d share a few random quotes and the adult side of conversations from the mouth of this weird mommy, free of the context they were responding to. 😉
“Did you really just fill your teacup from the toilet?!? Don’t drink that! Give it to me!! Wash your hands! Because people poop where that water came from! Yes, yuck!”
“Peanut butter is not paint! I don’t care if it makes your room smell good!”
“You would scratch someone, too, if she picked you up by the tail and spun you in circles! No, I am not putting the cat in timeout! I’d put you there if he hadn’t scratched you already, though! I’m mean? Ummm…thanks!”
“Get your foot out of my hair!”
“You can’t fly. No, you can’t! Not even if you’re wearing a cape. Don’t climb up there. Stop! GET DOWN NOWWWW!!!”
Say What??
“Don’t put your toes in your mouth. Because they are dirty, that’s why!”
“No, you can’t drive my van to the park! You’re five years old! I’m glad you watched Daddy drive lots of times, but that doesn’t mean you can drive yourself! I know you drive your power wheel, but that’s different.”
“The closet is not a toilet!!!”
“Daddy doesn’t make milk. Yes, I know he has nipples, but only mommies make milk. Yeah, it probably would taste funny with all that hair on them, anyway.”
“That’s sweet of you, but I really don’t want the biggest booger ever.”
This is just a small sample of the odd things I’ve heard come out of my own mouth in response to my children, if this gives you any hint into the tee-total lunacy of my household. Anyone else have some doozies you’ve caught yourself saying?
As a homeschool graduate currently homeschooling my own munchkins, I’m always looking for creative and inexpensive educational activities. I absolutely love dollar stores of all kinds for bargain educational supplies to use! They cost so little, and can cover so many different topics. One of my nifty finds has been these color sorting cubes. Being creative with them, I can come up with bunches of different ways to use these little boogers to keep my little smarty pants entertained and educated at the same time. I’ve used them for lots of different things, but I thought that I would share some of what we have done with them as fun & stimulating preschool projects.
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We started off the day simply. Since I’m a penny pincher from way back, I took two styrofoam plates we had used for our lunch, wiped them off, grabbed some colored markers, outlined and filled in half of each plate in the four different colors of her sorting cubes. I then asked her to put all of the cubes on the matching color section. As you can see, she did great. 🙂 She did this a few times before she was ready to move on to something else, so then I came up with a couple of more fun educational games for her…
Pattern and Varied Numbers
I flipped the two styrofoam plates over, and drew out the new projects with my trusty markers again. What, you thought mrs frugal was gonna use new plates? LOL On the left in this photo, I told her to follow the color pattern using two blocks in each rectangle. On the right, I asked her what each number and color was, then requested that she put the correct number and color of blocks in each rectangle. She really enjoyed this one, since it was a little more challenging. After a little while, she was ready to do something new with her color cubes, so Mommy had to come up with another challenge…
Counting and Sorting
For her last color cube project of the day, I asked her to put 4 blue cubes on the blue side, 5 green cubes on the green side, 6 orange cubes on the orange and 7 red cubes on the red. We did this same “game” with several different series of numbers. She really enjoyed the challenge of remembering how many went on which color, since it wasn’t written down.
Now that I’ve shared a few of the educational games we do with our color cubes, what are some inexpensive items you use to help kiddos learn? What do you wish you could find an educational use for?
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My kids give a whole new definition to the term “homewrecker”. There are times when the little varmints seem intent upon destroying our home and everything in it, nailed down or not. Take the first couple of days of last week, for instance. We had just returned from a short vacation, and our kiddos were excited to be home again. Their response to their joy at being back in their home sweet home? My little darlings turned into a two tot demolition derby!
The first full day at home was the beginning of the madness. My sweet little Peanut, who just turned a year old, pulled the leg off of our coffee table and then did his new-walker “monster run” around the living room trying to whack anything that couldn’t skedaddle. Princess Peach strewed every book she could find all over her bedroom floor while I thought she was nicely reading on her bed, and her baby brother thought the books were perfect for one of his favorite games, Shred The Paper. (I should’ve known better than to think the fact she was on her bed quietly looking at a book and baby was on the living room floor with a toy meant it was safe to go to the bathroom alone, for once.) While trying to fix a quick supper, with them right behind me, Peanut dumped out the trash can and was frantically trying to dig through it before I could grab him out of the mess. After supper, I thought I could do dishes with them in the kitchen with me. Nope! Baby Peanut was pulling them out and throwing them as quickly as I could set them in, and my daredevil Princess was stacking empty boxes to try to climb on the counters to get at things she wasn’t supposed to have. AVALANCHE!!! They both fought sleep until the bitter end that night, and since I didn’t even begin to detail everything the little boogers got into that day, it took me about an hour of clean-up once they finally lost their battle with the snooze monster for me to be able to go to bed that night. This is even after making my daughter pick up every single book and all the toys she had scattered hither and thither across our humble abode.
She colored her face with blue crayon
I figured by the second day that the gruesome twosome would’ve settled down a bit. They were pretty good while I took them to church and a fundraiser spaghetti dinner afterwards. Apparently, that was merely to lull their dear ol’ mom into a false sense of security.
The madness began again as soon as they got home. They found an open bag of potato chips, which they both proceeded to try to cram into their jowls as quickly as possible before I could deprive them of their prize. The result? Well, chips & crumbs from head to toe to floor….everywhere! They pulled out just about every toy they owned, and a few I didn’t even know existed anymore. When I attempted another ill-fated attempt at relieving my bladder, this time taking Peanut in there with me while I thought Princess was watching a cartoon, she climbed the counter and got into some chocolate. She had it half eaten and smeared all over by the time I got out. I even heard her opening the wrapper and hollered from the potty. Did that deter my determined diva? Nosirreebob!! It just made her gobble faster. This went on and on all day long, one thing after another.
Cut to the grand finale of that lovely day…
The Princess’ Potty
At one point I thought I could keep an eye on them and check my messages online, since I hadn’t been on a computer for a few days. Princess Peach took off for the potty as I was logging on. I gave her a minute to do her business before I followed. BIG MISTAKE!! By the time I got in there, she had crammed a ton of toilet paper into the toilet and repeatedly tried flushing it. Can we say FLOOD??? Yep, it was an overflowing mess! Did I mention that my husband was on duty at the fire department? But of course he was! 😉 As yours truly was hurriedly turning off the water and ordering the incorrigibly cute culprit to timeout, Peanut was trying to swim in the mess. Once I got the floodwaters to shop rushing, I had to strip him down to a diaper and toss him into the playpen. Picture this: Screaming Peanut, ringing phone, whining Princess and mumbling Mommy rushing back and forth with a bucket tossing water outside, plunging, hauling buckets of water, plunging again, yadayadayada. It took about a dozen cycles of plunging and water hauling to get the toilet fixed up. After that I had to remove everything from the bathroom, clean everything, put back what I could and explain to Princess Peach exactly why Mommy was so far beyond irritated with her at the moment and why she should never do that again. Of course, next it was baths all around and off to beddy bye. Also, of course, they fought sleep yet another night to the bitter, nerve wrecking end!
Now, I don’t think any of these things are all that unusual in a day of life with munchkins. They just went on an absolute homewrecking spree there for a few days! This wasn’t even the end, since the next week included another flooding of the toilet, painting the bathroom with pink toothpaste, many more raids of forbidden snack stashes, destroying of items they shouldn’t touch, etc. My nerves have yet to settle down, since both of my kiddos are in some high maintenance stages right about now. Why am I sharing this? Maybe ’cause I’m a mess of a mom sometimes, and am too tired to care that everyone knows. Maybe to let other mommies who want to go outside and howl at the moon in frustration know that they aren’t alone in loving life with their precious children at the same time as wanting to crawl into a hole and cry. Maybe ’cause life is crazy, but it’s meant to be shared. Maybe so these little lunatics I am raising can look at this later when their own progeny are driving them up the walls and see that it’s just the way things are sometimes.
I’m convinced that God made children adorable and innocent so that at times like this, when they make their parents want to scream, howl and have a toddler sized meltdown from frustration….we look at the source of our frustration and think “You’re lucky you’re so stinkin’ cute, kid!”. LOL
My messmakers
Off to make sure Princess Peach isn’t wrecking havoc in the temporary silence of a napping Peanut. If your kids are at home and quiet….CHECK ON THEM!!!! 😉 I have to add that the little booger was yet again brushing the walls with pink toothpaste, as well as dumping water all over the floor and squirting pink toothpaste into the sink to use for her painting. I shouldn’t have left her alone, because she’s rarely behaving if she’s quiet lately. What’s a mommy to do??? Gotta laugh or cry! *laughing now that I’ve cleaned the bathroom and let her out of timeout* LOL! AHHHHHH!!!!
Anyone else had fun times like this?? Tell me I’m not alone, y’all, pleeeeeeease!!! 🙂
I was given a gift card to The Bird & Elephant Etsy store as a prize in an amazing contest I won awhile back. I was excited looking through the shop, because she has a wide assortment of gorgeous prints and reasonable prices for custom products. She makes a variety of adorable items, such as reversible custom bibs, wooden teething rings, soft blocks to play with, burp cloths and more! I wound up using my gift card on a whole slew of bibs, since that’s something I actually need even for a third child. I also got a masculine- yet oh-so-cute– moustache camo bandana style bib for my toddler.
Not only are these reversible bibs adorable, available in multiple sizes & shapes, and come in a large selection of awesome custom prints and colors, but they are a great quality! Even my husband- who is not easily impressed- was surprised at how well made these bibs were. Our little guy loves his bandana bib, and looks pretty doggone handsome in it, too! I’m really looking forward to putting our newest addition in her bibs and seeing how adorable she’ll look while keeping clean!
Which pattern is your favorite? I think the butterflies and the moustache camo are my personal loves, but I have a hard time choosing. They’re just all so vibrant! 🙂
Click the link below to shop for the cutiepies in your life! 🙂
My little guy loves activities that require hand/eye coordination and concentration. I am constantly coming up with quietly stimulating little things for him to do while my daughter is doing her kindergarten, and that’s one category I focus on. This activity is perfect for keeping him engaged for a good period of time, at least until he picks up every single pompom. He’s very goal oriented, and cannot stand to quit before every pompom is conquered! 😉
You don’t need much for this. A container (a plastic jar or a clean empty apple juice container works well for me), a bunch of pompoms Pepperell Assorted Pom Poms, Standard Colors, 300 Per Package
(cotton balls would work, but colorful pompoms are more fun) and a pair of tongs of some sort will do it.
Give your munchkin the pompoms and container, then demonstrate how to pick up a pompom with the tongs and place it in the container. Watch him try until he succeeds, and praise him profusely, then challenge him to see if he can get all of the pompoms into the container all by himself.
My son loves this activity so much, he asks for it. He’s so very proud of himself when he gets all of those pompoms in the container, he goes charging around the house bragging about it. 🙂
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This is one of my go to easy peasy portable activities for toddlers! I often pack a kit for these in my busy bag!
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Does anyone remember those candy necklaces like these Candy Necklace (24 Count) that were so much fun as kids?
I loved those, and they gave me the inspiration for this idea after my husband bought one for our daughter awhile back and I saw how much she enjoyed it, just like I did. 🙂
My kiddos love to create things, and to play dress up.
After a few incidents with little miss curious putting beads where they did not belong, like….say….her nose and ear….beads are banned from our house for the undetermined future of little kidliness. They absolutely love stringing things and making jewelry, though, so I came up with a safer alternative for them.
I give them each a bowl full of dry cereal, like multigrain Cheerios (preferred over regular because of the multi colors that go along with the multigrain) or Fruit Loops (which we never have, because of the dyes and sugars, but are much prettier for the purpose…LOL). I make a loop on the end of a pipe cleaner Chenille Kraft Big Box Of Pipe Cleaners – Jumbo Stems Assortment Idea Book, 150-Piece for each of them to string their cereal on. They then proceed to make patterns to their little hearts content, until they pretty much fill their pipe cleaner and I tie it off to the loop for them.
For my portable bracelet making kits, I grab a sandwich bag, throw in a big handful of Cheerios and a pipe cleaner with the loop already in it. Tada! Quick and easy busy bag!
When finished, my little ones have cute little bracelets they can wear, and they can eat them, too!
My five year old rarely eats hers, to be honest, but my two year old absolutely LOVES to nibble on his creation. He thinks edible jewelry is awesome, because he made it and because it’s edible. 🙂
Penny Pinching Peach 