Another month has (almost) come to an end...

I feel like it was just yesterday that I was writing a post about how June was coming to and end and July was starting. And now July is ending soon and it will be August!! Where has this summer gone? I feel like we've done so much this summer but there are still so many things I would like to do!! Here are a few:

1. Get ice cream from the ice cream truck!!

2. Visit my husband's aunt and spend the weekend there. (She has a pool!)

3. Go to a carnival!

4. Hangout with my 17 year old cousin.

5. Enjoy more time outside.

Last summer I said that we would be spending so much more time outside this year than we did last year. Last year we couldn't be outside that much because Little E was only a few months old and couldn't be out in the sun for very long. But now that he's a year and is walking and as long as we lather us all up in sunscreen, we're good to hangout outside a lot more!!

But I'll admit, we haven't been outside as much as we should be. I am limiting the amount of time that I let Big E watch. She's definitely watching less than she used to. She either gets to watch it in the morning before lunch for a little bit or right before dinner. If we don't have anyone coming over to our house or if we don't go anywhere, then we have been playing with the wooden princess dress up sets, our play-doh made with essential oils, doll house, or coloring, just to name a few activities.

I'm going to get into doing some learning activities with Big E in September. I'll give her one more month of just play and then school will be in session! I've decided that I'm going to go back to substitute teaching but only 2 days a week. So that still gives me 3 days a week to do learning activities with Big E. And unlike last year, I'm going to dedicate more time to it. Now that Little E isn't as little as he was a year ago, he doesn't need my attention as much as he did then so I'll be able to take some time out of the day to focus on doing school stuff with Big E!

Have a great week everyone! Look for my post on my Home Chef experience coming soon!

Let's Learn

Here are the activities that Big E did this week. We had lots of fun!

Monday- So this past weekend I made my own play-doh. You can read this post here to read all about that. I am so happy with how this turned out and I think Big E enjoyed it as well! She played with the Stress Away green and Lemon yellow! They sure do smell yummy!

We also did a puddle jump activity. This didn't turn out how I thought it would, but I'm going to put this activity away for another time. I don't think she understand what she was supposed to do with it.

Tuesday- Last week I received an order from Amazon and this was one of the things I received. This is a great resource because I will be able to come up with a ton of different activities for Big E. She will be able to practice so many different concepts with this! And she seemed to enjoy playing with it!

Wednesday- Big E absolutely loves this activity! I took toilet paper rolls and painted them different colors. Then she takes pom poms and sorts them into the correct tube. When I first started this activity with her, she used her hands but now she is able to use the tongs (great fine motor practice!!)

The next activity she did on Wednesday was just a old Parmesan cheese container and pipe cleaners. This one also works with fine motor skills but at the same time I can ask her to find a certain color so we can work on that as well.

Thursday- This was a busy day for us. We had to take my sister-in-law to the dentist that morning and then we had a play date in the afternoon so we never got to our activities planned for the day.

Friday- We got back on track the next day with another color sorting activity, this time with cups and buttons. She's doing really good with her colors, so I think I may do less activities with colors and focus more on counting and ABC's.

I also let her play with her tablet for a little bit. We got this for her for Christmas and she used it a lot right after Christmas, but this was actually the first time she used it in a few months. When we got Big E's tablet, it came with a year subscription that gives her access to every single app possible for her tablet. That has been really nice so we are definitely enjoying it while it lasts!

It's awesome because every day a little after I got both kiddos from their nap, Big E would ask for her activities! And how she says "activities" is so cute! The first time she said it though, I had no idea what she was saying! I'm so glad that she enjoys learning! It's more of a game to her right now so I think that's why she enjoys it so much. She's learning and she doesn't even realize it!! But like I said before, now we have to focus more on counting and the ABC's. She can count to 10 (when she wants to) but now I want her to start being able to recognize the numbers. The same with the alphabet. I may have to order some more supplies on Amazon! The teacher side of me is definitely coming out!!!

Have a great Saturday everyone!!!

It's Play-Doh time again!

So in my last post, I wrote about how Big E played with Play-Doh on Friday. Well...Saturday I decided to make my own using essential oils and it worked out amazingly! And it was quicker to make it than the instructions said. It said to stir continuously over the heat for 5 minutes and it took about half that time. It turned into a dough super fast. I may have had the heat on a little high, but oh well. It still turned out great! I used food coloring to color it and Young Living essential oils to make them smell wonderful! You can find the recipe I used here.

If you'd like more information about how you can get these wonderful oils for yourself, just comment below or send me a message!

Play-Doh fun!

Friday we went to a friends' house for a play date and Big E and her friend played with Play-doh. We have some Play-doh at home but we hardly ever play with it. And I'm not too sure why we don't because Big E loves playing with it! One thing that does drive me a little nuts though, is that she only plays with the same color for what seems like 30 seconds! I don't like her having more than one color at a time because I don't want her to mix them. It's a great activity for her to do at the kitchen table while I try to get some cleaning or cooking done.

We even turned it into a little learning activity by practicing cutting! I've never given her kid-safe scissors and she never played with the Play-doh ones so she didn't know how to use them. After showing her how to use them and placing them on her hand the right way, she was starting to get it!

She also had me make little snakes with the Play-doh and then I had her practice counting with them. I definitely think that Play-doh time needs to be added to our daily schedule because it can be very educational. Plus it lets her use her imagination and create things! I'm going to look into getting her a Play-doh activity set for her birthday, maybe a Frozen one since she loves that movie!

I also think I'm going to look into making my own Play-doh. I can't remember if it was on Facebook or Pinterest, but I recently found a recipe for Play-doh that uses cream of tarter and having just baked my rainbow cupcakes for the March cupcakes in my A Year of Cupcakes series, I now have that ingredient! I think I may try adding essential oils to my homemade Play-doh to add a lovely scent to them! Be tuned on a post about that in the future!! Have a great weekend!!