Boredom Busters

Ohmygoodness I have such a newfound respect for stay at home moms that have been doing it for awhile.  Winter brings some nasty weather and it can make everyone ca-razy to stay inside for days on end.  Anyone who can manage through it has my respect.  Even Charlotte has been climbing the walls.  Ok, not actually climbing walls, but any piece of furniture she can shimmy her round body onto (which a surprising number of pieces).  And, Cate is only so happy to boost her up onto anything out of reach when my back is turned.

We get outside whenever we can for however long everyone can stand it.  Today at least there was sunshine, so Cate and I raced around our tiny back porch.  The neighbors must think I'm nuts...and, at this point, I sort of am!

Cate craves novelty, so here are the things I've done to switch up our regular routine and activities:

Art
Art is an obvious attention-getter for preschoolers and Cate especially loves to paint, glue, and cut.  What is the crazy attraction for preschoolers to scissors, by the way?  She took the three pairs of plastic scissors Santa gave her and has been cutting up a storm.  Fantastic investment of $4.

I also found a good idea to create Mondrian art on the No Time for Flashcards blog.  We bought some canvases at the craft store and rummaged around the house for painter's tape, acrylic paint, and brushes.  And voila...

This is fine art, my friends.

For the another canvas, Cate had the idea to paint monsters with, what else, googly eyes.  

Pop quiz: which one isn't a monster?  Answer: the blue one in the top right corner.  That is a duck, OBVIOUSLY.

Science

Some desperate googling for something to do inside that didn't involve a plastic toy with some awful, high-pitched music coming out of it led me to the ivory soap trick.  Tons of websites and blogs have it but I had never heard of this.  Have you seen it?  You put ivory soap in the microwave for a couple of minutes and it expands like crazy.  Cate was wowed--so was I!

Cate said it felt like tissue paper and I agreed.

Trash to Treasure

We fished a couple of items out of our recycle bin and came up with ways to use them.  First, we rescued a couple of shoe boxes.  I cut a slot in the top of one and gave Charlotte a deck of cards to slide in one at a time--big hit.  Cate took the other and made it into a mailbox.  This was an idea from the Unplugged Play book I mentioned a week or two ago.  She used construction paper to make "mail" complete with sticker stamps and addresses.

I hope the USPS accepts Dora and Diego stamps because we've got some mail to send.

I also took a rinsed out coffee can from Costco, cut a slot, and gathered some things for Charlotte to push into it.  Another hit.  This is probably mainly because Charlotte is a good baby and generally content no matter what, not because any of this is actually cool.

Getting ready to make those markers disappear.

Singing and Dancing

We've done a ton of dancing and singing lately.  Charlotte observed at first, but has joined in lately and it is hilarious to watch her start to dance.  None of us have any rhythm, in fact, Charlotte probably has the best moves of any of us.

And then Cate has staged some very elaborate storytelling escapades.  Below is a shot of her story set-up when she was talking all about Major and his "babies."  The girl has an entertaining imagination and I can't help but giggle at her.