Category: Activities for Kids

The boys made bird feeders this morning with their sweet neighborhood buddies, Claire and Eleanor. We tried out a different recipe than the one we used last year that worked much better (it was simpler and held together even if it was a little bit messier). It was as easy as 1, 2, 3…spread soy butter (our substitute for peanut butter) on the outside of an empty toilet paper roll, roll it in bird seed, and hang it on a bare branch to give the birds a midwinter’s treat. Here’s a picture of Roman working it out and a few pictures of the finished product.

Jonas wanted to work on the Crystal Mining Kit (that our precious friends and neighbors, The Bresnahans, got him for his birthday) when he got home from preschool this afternoon. Of course, Xander and Roman had to check it out too.

We woke up to a rainy Saturday morning, so the boys and I donned our rain gear over our pajamas after breakfast and checked it out. While Xander decided to work on his Fun to Cut book at the kitchen table and Roman enjoyed toodling around in the backyard with Petra, Jonas and I harvested all of the carrots from our garden (they made for a fun gift for a clean eating neighbor and a delicious base for some crock pot vegetable beef soup). I love slow and easy, rainy weekend mornings with the boys.

While I was pulling together pictures for Jonas and Xander’s All About Me projects at school, I realized that it has been a while since I’ve been intentional about planning fun learning activities for the boys. (I think the energy for it comes and goes in waves and lately I’ve been a little overwhelmed with our new fall routine and with the idea of trying to differentiate for three different stages and styles of learning…bless all of you homeschooling moms and teachers of every kind.) All of that to say, I thought I’d try to baby step back into it with this Letter Sounds Toy Wash that I saw on Pinterest (I’m loving my Activities for Kids board…it’s such a great way to collect and store links to ideas).
I ended up setting it up with two sets of sidewalk squares with the letters B, C, and D to try to give the big boys separate spaces to work in (I figured I’d put Roman near Jonas since Jonas doesn’t mind his toddler-ness quite as much as Xander does). They each had their own soap pump, washcloth, and bucket of water. Jonas and Xander both had fun running inside to find toys for their squares that started with a certain letter sound. They both also enjoyed being big brothers by finding toys for Roman to wash too. It’s always interesting how these sorts of activities morph…haha…but we all still had fun.

I finally found a set of tracing and cutting books for Xander (he’s totally into both right now) and a beginning math book for Jonas (he’s all about numbers lately). They were both completely engaged with them this morning at the kitchen table…and even Roman stayed in his seat (he is a tireless climber) for stickers and dot markers which are two of his current favorites. Yay for table time!!!