Toddler Activities: 33 Months Old

One of the challenges of being a stay at home mom is finding activities for your little one to keep them  engaged, entertained, and learning throughout the day. These are a few of our current favorite activities:

Homemade Crayon Rubbing Cards: Bryson's birthday left us with an abundance of cardboard packaging, so I finally got to finish a craft I've been wanting to do for a while. I found the idea here, and I loved it because it is very simple and cheap to make, and would make a wonderful quiet busy bag activity. Plus, you can customize it to make any design you want. I am planning to make a set of alphabet and number cards for Emma to use. 

Simply cut some thick cardboard into whatever size card you want, then draw the shapes that you desire on the cards with hot glue. Once the hot glue is dry, go ahead and do some crayon rubbings!

Paintsicles: My kids love to paint, and now that it's getting hotter outside, I wanted to try frozen paintsicles! We used washable finger paint, and froze it in an ice cube tray with craft sticks for handles. I popped ours into the freezer overnight, and it was perfect for the activity the next day. 

We did some painting on paper and some outside on the sidewalk. The kids loved both! 

And, of course...

Read: Reading is one of the best activities you can do with your child at any age!

A few of Emma and Bryson's current favorites are:

• The Kiss Box by Bonnie Verburg 
• The Farmer's Away! Baa! Neigh! by Anne Vittur Kennedy
• The Cow Loves Cookies by Karma Wilson

 

 

We did an activity with one of our books, The Kiss Box. In the book, Mama Bear has to go away for a little while, so Little Bear and Mama Bear make "kiss boxes" for each other filled with 100 kisses so they will have plenty to share while they are apart. Derek has had four business trips in the month of May, so when we read The Kiss Box, I thought it would be a great activity for us to do. 

I made two origami paper boxes out of red cardstock and Emma decorated both of them with markers. Now we have a kiss box for Emma to keep at home full of kisses from Daddy when he is away and Derek has one that he can take on trips with him.

My 3 good things for today are:

1. I have a hot glue gun.
2. We have bright, cheery sunshine outside.
3. My wonderful hubby will be home soon!!

 

Bryson's First Birthday Airplane Party

My, oh my, how time does fly! I can't believe we just celebrated Bryson's first birthday!

The party theme was Up, Up and Away for Bryson's 1st Birthday! All of the food, decorations, and games were airplane themed.

Since it was such a nice day, we held the party at the local park. We decorated the picnic shelter with garlands of flying paper airplanes. 

In addition to a variety of "in flight snacks" we served peanuts and pretzels, "jet fuel" juice and "cumulous cupcakes" with propellers and toy airplanes.

 

We had a Planes book that guests could sign and write a little birthday message for Bryson, a Baggage Check where guests could drop off presents, an in-flight movie of Bryson's first year, and Baggage Claim where guests could pick up little toy planes, bubbles or a chocolate treat - because our little boy is just plane sweet!

All of the guests played Pin the Propeller on the Airplane, and also a very competitive Paper Airplane Throwing Contest.

We had a little photo booth between two trees and Bryson's amazing Auntie B found a fantastic airplane costume that made for some really adorable pictures!

It was a great day with friends and family, and I know Bryson had fun!

 

 

DIY Mother's Day Gift

We made a simple and cute gift for the Grandmas for Mother's Day.

I had planned on letting the kids finger paint outside, but we had so much rainy weather leading up to Mother's Day and we ended up doing the project on the kitchen floor instead. I just rolled out a large section of butcher paper and let the kids go crazy. We did use washable paint, because I knew that there would be paint on the floor and probably on the cabinets as well.

They had a lot of fun painting and I snapped a few pictures while they were doing it... a few being around 70, just to make sure that we got a good photo. We picked up a pair of two-photo picture frames at Michael's and put in a picture of them fingerpainting as well as a piece of the painted paper.

The project turned out great and the grandmas both loved them!

We spend Mother's Day at the Minnesota Zoo, and had a great time!

Thanks to Macy's, mothers get into the zoo for free during Mother's Day weekend, which made it a fun and affordable outing for our family.

 

The kids enjoyed seeing the fish, farm animals, and the prairie dogs were an unexpected favorite!

 

Happy Mother's Day from my family to yours!