One thing we both enjoy is to relate her favorite books to her real life. If we are eating strawberries or pears or any number of items, we talk about how The Very Hungry Caterpillar also ate these items. Then we count how many we are eating. Or, if I happen to find turkey that will soon go bad in my fridge, some pesto in the same state and a few eggs - we can turn breakfast into a fun reminder of a book!
Green eggs and "ham"! She couldn't tell it was turkey because the pesto was really the overriding flavor. I used 3 eggs, a slice of cheese, a couple spoons of pesto and about half of the turkey I had left and it was absolutely delicious. I gave Kaitlyn a third of it and she really loved it. She kept chanting Thank you Thank you Ham Ham Ham, which is what she says when we get to the last page of the book. (I do so like green eggs and ham. Thank you, thank you, Sam I Am. Oops, spoilers!!!)
I get asked a lot how I can stand to let Kaitlyn paint so often, sometimes 3 sessions in one day! The kid is an addict. My neighbors can see when we have painted because I hang her pieces on the easel to dry and open the windows to speed the process on nice days, at least pulling the curtains open so they don't brush on the paint (the easel is by the window for natural light). One of my neighbors is a grandmother and often watches the little ones at her house, and she just boggles that we paint everyday because she hates it.
It doesn't really bother me hugely, honestly, the clean up. It does get a bit annoying at times with how often we do it, but I just start each session with set up, which includes running a clean sink halfway full of warm soapy water. At the end, everything gets tossed into the sink until I can deal with it and I wipe Kaitlyn's hands enough to get her to the bathroom where I wash her well and use the nail brush (she loves to help brush her fingernails, which actually causes me to have to clean paint off the sink, mirror and walls - but they have to learn so I let her). Crayola washable paints are a life saver for me, as well. It has even come out of my carpet when we've had a mishap. It's old terrible carpet though, so who really cares if it stained at this point.
I'm sure if Kaitlyn were a wild child, things would be different. Peyton may cause problems, who knows. Or maybe having 2 painting at once will be mind-numbingly difficult! I keep thinking to myself how much I would love to finish off our utility room, reorganize and use a certain corner as an "art studio" so to speak. Somewhere they could really have fun and the mess could just wait until I could get to it, basically. There are so many things to be done to this house, however, that an art studio just isn't in the works.
One of our recent projects was a ball run. Not a marble run as I have a four month old and thus, no marbles shall cross my threshold. It's a larger ball so I couldn't use the normal paper towel tube combo. I picked out a piece of cardboard and taped the sides that I cut to remove it from its parent box. If you've ever sliced yourself on cardboard, you understand why I did that. Then I folded, cut and glued some recyclables and made sure everything would fit on the main cardboard piece.
With older children, they can help with that part. Kaitlyn will not be cutting cardboard for awhile though, so this was a mommy moment with the project. Notice I taped the plastic bottle that got cut down, you don't want those little fingers sliced open! You can't really see, but I took a cereal box and cut the front mostly off, taped some ramps in it and then covered it with wax paper to keep the ball from tumbling off the front. I cut some holes in the cardboard pieces so that she could see the ball racing along even from straight on. This was a wasted effort since she has to stand to put the ball in so isn't watching from a low angle.
Anyhow, I took all the smaller pieces and put them away. The next day, Kaitlyn was able to paint her main cardboard piece. She should have some part in it! I also let her use markers on the other cardboard pieces, but she pushed them away pretty quickly in favor of coloring the paper underneath, which is perfectly acceptable. After the paint dried, we went out front and mod-podged the pieces on. Kaitlyn decided to "paint" the entire cardboard with mod-podge and I think we may have inspired the neighborhood kids to build their own ball runs with the spectacle.
I wish I had pictures of it because it was a fun process, but trying to keep a one-year-old from stepping all over a sticky glue surface while she "paints" it with more glue... well, you try taking pictures of that without help! It was great fun though. I'm not sure if mod-podge fumes are really a problem, from what I read they are not, but since it was nice out and the baby was napping, we just made an outside activity of it.
She really covered the whole surface pretty thoroughly, so it didn't dry in time for her to play that night. In this photo you can see some white spots that still were not dry and also the cereal box triple ramp.
She really loves it. It's great entertainment for her while I am cooking and I love to hear her run around yelling MY PAINT! BALLS GO! MY PAINT! BALLS GO! after she drops the balls down it (normally all 3 at once hah!). I have had to make some minor repairs to it since she uses it so often, but it's a throw away item anyhow. We'll just recycle it when it's finished.
We'll have so much fun when she's older and can help more and then I'm sure she'll enjoy this when she is old enough to plan it out, build it herself and really make larger scale runs!
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