December 5 - 9th: Getting Christmassy

I didn;t prepare as many trays this week as, being completely honest, I did not have the energy or inclination to put them together. I had a lot of ideas, but with a 6 week old baby, trays dropped significantly on my priority list. We still managed some fun activities including playgroup and the Please Touch Museum. I did, however, have a crying breakdown on Sunday, and I'm convinced that I'm trying to do too much on not a lot of sleep. So, I'm going to go easy on myself and I'm posting a small slice of our week - the moments I remembered to grab the camera and some stuff I was able to capture after the fact.

R. helped decorate the tree this year.  We took a trip to meet Santa with some friends and bought a red bauble. R. is thrilled with it.

This is our homemade magazine wreath; a project more for me than R! She did love using the stapler, but searching for the red and green magazine pages was soon dull for her.

While I glued on all those magazine petals, R. created this berry M and M collage with the glue. For a couple of weeks, R. has been collected berries on our dog walks. We are slowly deberrying the entire neighborhood.

On Friday, I was so exhausted that I had a pajama day and we failed to make it to playgroup. Instead we made some cookies using a wonderful, simple  snickerdoodle recipe from my mother-in-law. Rose rolled the dough balls in a mixture of red and green sprinkles with cinnamon. She enjoyed the process, but it doesn't come close to the enjoyment of eating the results.

I found a packet of glitter glue "pens" in the office and got R. working on some homemade christmas cards. I cut out the christmas tree shapes and rose squeezed on the glitter glue and added round stickers. Big success!

November 28th - December 3rd 2011: Pouring, lacing and stickers

My first week of actively planning activities and taking photos. T turned 5 weeks old, so I am very proud of myself for managing to put anything together at all. It does, however, make life at home feel so much more control if I know I have one or two things planned for the day. Hopefully I can continue this.

So...this is a selection of  activities we did. Many of these ideas are adapted and down-right stolen from some excellent blogs I have found recently.

R, like all toddlers, adores stickers, so I gave her a sheet of simple round stickers and a balloon shape and let her create. I attached a string after she had finished and she ran around the house with it flying behind her. The balloon is now proudly displayed in the playroom. I'm going to adapt this next week with a more christmassy theme. Yay stickers!

This was a huge success.  Our dollar store has a aisle full of beads used for hair accessories in every colour imaginable that are the perfect size for toddler fingers and a dollar a piece. I set up a tray with different coloured pipe cleaners and a small bowl of beads. R. immediately started lacing and created "necklaces" she has been wearing for days. I will definitely keep this tray in rotation and change the color of the beads and string item.

I attempted to get R. interested in bread making and baking, but instead she gravitated towards the sink. She spent a wonderful thirty minutes perfecting her pouring skills with jugs in the sink (she also insisted on washing her brother's pacifiers). This was a perfect teaching moment for me: I am understanding more and more that I cannot push her into anything, her interests are going to guide her. Plus, while she was pouring, I was able to make a fantastic loaf of bread!

Another thing I started this week was letting R choose her own snacks. This has been a huge success. I put the usual suspects (crackers, cheese sticker, fruit) into individual tupperware containers and let Rose choose what she wanted. She seems to love this freedom of choice. So simple, but so effective.