Playhouse Extravaganza

I don't really consider myself a creative person. I am a pattern person instead. I like to do things that have complete instructions for me to follow. I am not one to visualize a crafty project and make it up as I go. With that said, this latest project has been a real stretch for me, and I think it came out ok, and is at least functional! In the last couple months, we've been working together on a new project for our girl. Logan designed and built the frame out of PVC pipe, and I sewed the house to go over the frame. We saw lots of different play houses online, and decided that most were too expensive for us, and that we could make our own. I really liked the idea of using felt for the walls, because then it is like a huge flannel board type situation. We were able to get the large bolt type felt for the big pieces, and used the little sheets for the details. I thought about putting velcro on some of the outside features, but it turns out the small felt pieces stick pretty good on the big felt structure, and big details could be sewn on pretty easily. We got one wall done, the back one. That is why the pictures are a bit sideways...it is against the wall. I haven't decided what to put on the other walls yet, but my girl is REALLY enjoying her play house. The kitchen set Elise received for Christmas, as well as her small couch and all her doll accessories fit inside the structure. One of her favorite activities is called "apple hiding". When she asks to do this she really means she wants to take all the small felt pieces off the wall, including her apples, fish, turtle, sun, rainbow, clouds, flowers, and Clifford the small red puppy, and put them in a basket. Then we take the pieces inside and lay them all out. We separate them all, then take them back out and put them on the house. Elise does this a lot. Sometimes she just picks the flowers and brings them inside to put in a vase on her kitchen counter. She is also enjoying having her own space to take care of her baby doll (that was another recent new thing...we'll talk about that later too). She loves being the mom and being in charge of her space. And she loves getting mail in her mailbox and ringing her door bell. Sometimes we pretend her house is a train we are riding on, or just her special place for us to have picnics. The windows out are another favorite feature, especially the heart shaped one on the door. I ended up reinforcing the door and heart window with a second layer to keep the felt from stretching (that's the one draw back to using felt, it stretches). All in all, it has been a lot of fun. I sometimes wonder what we'll do with this when the day comes that we move and no longer have this kind of space in our front room (it ended up being bigger than we thought it would. It measures 6 feet by 6 feet, and the roof peak is about 6 foot 10 inches high. Logan can stand up inside without hitting his head!), but for now, we're all enjoying it tremendously!
Hooray for a fun playhouse!!! Any suggestions for the other outside walls?

Tot Books

As we are now in the stage of being 3 years old (we'll post on the birthday another day), we have been looking for activities we can do together to be learning some fun new things. We aren't really looking for formal preschool, but just some activities that are more geared toward learning stuff to be ready for school. After some research on my part, and lots of help from those with more experience/ideas, we found some really cool things. My sister-in-law found a great book with ideas for doing activities to learn letters and other such fun things. My older sister had lots of ideas from things she'd done with her kids, and suggested looking on the web for some specific preschool activities. After trying lots of different things, some that worked and some that didn't, we found this website:

1+1+1=1...Tot Books & Tot Packs

There are things called tot books, which are similar to the lap books sometimes used in home schooling (although the lap books look to be more advanced and are more a unit summary of a specific topic like history or science). These incredible women have put together some really neat tools for doing preschool type activities at home. For instance, there is a Cinderella tot book that includes a coloring book, a shape booklet, a name accordion, and number cards. The pages are all free to download and print out. I printed them, cut them out, laminated them with my YOURSTORY machine (a truly wonderful thing if you don't have a store that laminates for you), and made our first couple tot books, which means putting the activities together in pockets inside a file folder. They have all different kinds of tot books, mostly with similar types of activities, like learning letters, shapes, colors, numbers, and putting things in order according to size, but are different characters or themes. We have put together the dinosaur one, which includes a 'Dinosaur Train' color matching game, and the 'Curious George' one. Elise LOVES her special books. Mostly I have laminated them so she can color on them over and over, and they just wipe off with a napkin. This is especially helpful with the name cards. We started with her putting the letters in order to spell her name, and are working on tracing the letters (which usually gets pretty interesting, but she's getting better!). She loves having some special time to sit down and work on her special books together, or even 'all by herself' if she's feeling independent. Some of the activities I left just how they suggested on the website, but some I tweaked to make it a matching game. I am working on putting together some more, and when she gets to the point where she's ready for a new activity or would be more willing to 'work' on her learning activities with a new book, we can pull one out. I have some other work book type books, but they are the kind you can only do once, and the tot books, being laminated, we can enjoy and practice doing again and again. There are so many great homeschooling websites with free downloadable/printable activities, and I am way impressed with the people who are coming up with these things. I just don't seem to have the background/experience/skills for teaching preschool stuff that can come from just me, so I'm way grateful for those who have done the work, and I can use their tools to have some fun and educational time with my kiddo. So, that said, here are some pictures of my attempts at tot books (I learned that permanent double sided sticky tape works WAY better than the temporary kind, and that the pockets for the cards should be just shorter than the cards so the kid can get them out), and of my girl enjoying them.
This is the Cinderella Tot Book:


And here is the Dinosaur Tot Book, which had puzzles too, and they are included in another book:

A Love of Nature

We are somewhat in the middle of the wilderness, living here in Alaska. I admit that I am not a very 'outdoorsy' type person, and would prefer to enjoy our time inside rather than battle the icy winter conditions outside. My girl and I do lots of fun things, and are exploring many different activities lately. Even though we have many events to update our blog about (including Christmas, and birthdays), we're going to skip most of them and move on to one that is an adventurous part of our lives lately, because we took this video today, and just had to share it. We discovered a new cartoon on PBS recently, called 'Dinosaur Train'. Elise LOVES this show. She is learning so much about dinosaurs and all their different features. The show is centered around a family of flying dinosaurs, called Pteranodons. The children, including the adopted son who is a Tyrannosaurus Rex, learn all about the other dinosaur species by visiting them on the dinosaur train. It is a great show that explores the world of dinosaurs in a fun way, and is in no way scary. My girl is learning tons of things about all the different dinosaurs, some animals today who share similar characteristics with dinosaurs, and even some family values as well. She LOVES this show, and will frequently amaze her Daddy by telling him all about these animals with multiple syllable names. Frequently during our pretending time at home, Elise will pretend that we are the Pteranodon family, doing various activites like collecting shells, examining dinosaur footprints in a track way, riding the dinosaur train, or looking for new dinosaurs. She also likes to act like all the different dinosaurs and tells me what makes each one special. We found the website for the Dinosaur Train show, which has a field guide section where they tell about each dinosaur and have a picture. We printed them out, and put them together in a ring/flip book for her to use during our playtime, and so we as parents can help her learn some more facts about these animals, and learn how to say the names correctly. We got it done yesterday, and she has really enjoyed going through it and telling us all about her dinosaur friends. And the good news is: we got a video! The first few pages are characters in the Pteranodon family from the show, and the rest are the dinosaurs they learn about and meet during their travels. I tried to get a view of the names while filming, but Elise just recognizes the pictures and tells us who is who. Someday she'll probably move up to actually reading the names, but for now, it is just recognizing the pictures. So, here she is, our little 3 year old dinosaur expert. We hope you enjoy 'exploring nature' with us!

a little suggestion...

I have gone back and added pictures to some of our previous posts from October/November times, since our computer is now working. If you'd like to see those pictures...feel free to go back to those posts...
Hope you enjoy!

Grandma Parker's Visit Re-visited

Yes, I know I already posted about how much fun we had in November when my mom came for a fun visit. We had a great time, but my computer was acting up, has had several issues, and now, months later, seems to be acting more normal. SO I am taking advantage of this to share some pictures and stories from the last several months....It'll take a few days, but we'll get it all in there...slow and steady to win the race, right? or at least to get all our memories documented while they are still somewhat fresh.

So, my mom visited. Elise loved having tons of play time with Grandma. They did so many things, it is hard to describe all of them, so we'll let the pictures tell how wide ranging their experiences were.

They played with dancing scarves....

They worked on some activity pages my mom was making for Elise...She (Elise) loves using these for quiet time during church.

We had a birthday party for my mom which involved balloons and a cool table cloth....


They played with the fishing puzzles...


And we were extra crafty and brave with the glue gun and made snowman necklaces. It was a blast, even if they didn't quite stay together how I pictured they might....


Elise read stories to anyone who would listen....


And helped make special treats...


We also got a family picture (well, of the three of us...next time we'll get one with Grandma in it too!)

We love Grandma Parker!!! Her only wonder was why everything had to be so far away? When Elise would ask Grandma to play something with her, like pretending to go to the park or something similar, and Grandma would agree, Elise would declare joyfully, "Good, let's go, its very far." And proceed to try to drag Grandma all over the house to look for her various pretend destinations....its a good thing we don't live in a bigger house!

The New Coat

I found this way cute pattern and was inspired to make a coat for my girl. It was a fun project, and she looks so cute and so grown up for going out in the snowy winter weather. We finished it in November, and even though she wasn't so thrilled with posing for the camera at first.....

she finally came to agree that it is a great addition to her wardrobe. She has really enjoyed having something special that her Mama made "just for me". And I admit, I am enjoying it too, making things special for my girl.

Hoopa Hoop Funny Show

We know we haven't updated in a while, and that's partly due to being busy, and partly due to the computer problems we've had. We're glad to report that the computer problems, we think, have been solved....at least for the moment. In celebration of this, we're going to try to post a video for now, and then work over the next week on updating the blog with the events of the last several months. So here is a video (if it works) of our grown up girl having some fun with her 'hoopa hoop'. She's wanted one for a long time, and finally earned it and has been enjoying it loads and loads!