Needles are Flying

The sewing machines have finally made their way out of storage since our move.  They have recently become somewhat permanent fixtures on a table at the side of the living room.  I love being able to create things.  There's a sense of satisfaction when a sewing project turns out like the vision you had. Since having the girls it has been so much fun to visualize different styles of outfits and make them a reality.  Here are a couple of my favorites so far.

I have made the girls many blankets and sleep sacs but recently I have become more interested in making new outfits.  My girls are pretty petite so it's an added bonus that I usually meld together the different sizes of patterns to make it fit them perfectly.

I have met a few friends locally who are also interested and sewing and we have started getting together weekly to work on projects.  It has been great to have the adult conversation and friends to work through a part of a pattern if one of us gets stuck.  It has really inspired me to start creating more and more fun outfits.  Can't wait to start showing you guys some of the stuff I have been working on!  

For now I can only offer a sneak peak of a project I am excited to start!

Colour Sorting

For special occasions I try to add to the mix one thing for each kid that I have personally made.  This Easter I made the girls a wooden colour sorter that I had first seen on a blog from another montessori mom.  It honestly was super easy and has been a hit with all of the kids.  (I even see the big boys over there setting it up sometimes while they are watching TV haha).  It's basically just a solid board with pin holders glue to it.  I decided to not paint the entire wooden clothespin to make it a little more tricky for the girls.  This would be great for identifying colours, sorting colours and you could actually create different hues of the same colour if you preferred.

Even with things being pretty busy on Easter morning and lot's of other new toys, chocolates and books, they were still really interested and played with it.  We then left it in our living room and they still choose to play with it often.

The Giant Bear

Yes we were at Costco last summer and they had giant bears for sale.  The kids loved it so we bought one.  Costco sells a bigger bear then him but this bear is big enough that he takes up more room then most people hahaha.  We bought it on a whim and thought ahhh the kids will play for it a big and then we will get rid of it.  To our surprise that thing is lied on, climbed on and played with daily.  We have found every single one of the kids climbing on him at some point.  He has held many jobs from protector of their pretend cave walls to giant who carried them from adventure to adventure but I think I have to say that I think he has recently been in my favorite job.  A few months ago he got moved to beside the bookshelf when the toy room was getting tidied up and since then he has held the job of big comfy place to rest and read a book.  So when I guess this giant bear proved me wrong.  I had saw him several times before and wondered what the heck anyone would even do with something like that and laughed about how much room he would take up.

Streamer Obstacle Course

I wrote this post a few months ago but just got around to finishing it now.


The kids were off school one day and I finally got to doing an activity I had planned for awhile.  We had left over streamers from the kids birthday party and the kids use tape ALL THE TIME for crafts so we always have it on hand.  Literally you just use a hallway and set up a 'laser type' looking obstacle course with the streamers and the kids take turns going through avoiding the streamers.  I had made some easier paths for the younger ones and for the older ones we did different things like having to alternate under/over each streamer.  Tons of fun, lot's of laughs and our 10 year old dog even gave it a try.  Something we will definitely be doing again soon!

The kids enjoyed it so much that the boys both requested to try it again next week if we have a rainy day :)  

Music in the Park

Last week I met up with a friend and we took the kidlets to our local 'Music in the Park'. It's a free event that happens weekly.  A local musician plays all different types of kids/regular music and you can just hang out, sing, dance, listen or whatever you want.  We had a little picnic and drank milkshakes and spent just over an hour there.  The weather was beautiful, kids had fun and company was great.  The kids and I walked around a little bit downtown and explored the area.

Of course all the kids loved some baby time

There are so many free events that are available in towns and cities?  What are some of your favorites?

Sense of Smell

This week we read a book about the sense of smell.  We talked about how different things have different smells and we spent a lot of time smelling flowers.  A few weeks ago I was scouring online for some activities to do that involved the sense of smell and came across something called smell jars.  I loved that the activity isolated all the other aspects of each item except for it's smell but disliked the hefty price tags that I was finding of $100+.  I then started to look up do-it-yourself similar projects.  Again came to a road block because we had gotten rid of our old spice rack before moving here and didn't have identical glass jars all the same size.  Then a friend that is also moving this summer told me that she had a spice rack that they hadn't used for a long time and she was looking to get rid of it. Score!!  As they say - one man's trash is another man's treasure.

I took all the old spices out, washed the containers and took off all stickers so basically just had identical jars.

 I then took strips of construction paper and cut them so they filled the inside of the glass so the kids couldn't use any visual clues to tell the different items.  One set was blue and one set is red.

 I added cotton balls into the jar to hold the spices up closer to the top and this allows you to put certain liquids like lemon juice, vanilla extract etc in without it running all over the place.  You put a set of smells into each colour ie. garlic in a red jar and in a blue jar.

 I put stickers on the bottoms of the jars for each of the matching smells for me to be able to do quick checks if they are matched correctly.

 I put the shaker covers on so that nobody could use visual clues to tip them off.  The kids had fun working together sorting through all the different smells.

Super simple and now that I have it all set up I can just change up the smells in the containers quite easy.  It would be fun to change them to all spices, then all flowers etc when working on different subjects.

Sizes

Gosh we have been really enjoying this super easy activity amid our regular activities.  For valentines day we had purchased a set of hearts in different sizes from Walmart.  The kids used them for hunts and I spy etc.  When I spotted a set of egg cookie cutters I thought 'hey why not we enjoyed it last time'.  This time we have been using them to work on organizing things by sizes, identifying biggest and smallest etc...  We have also used them for Play Doh as well as tracing.  Another super easy thing that we have used in many ways.