Adventures of Evie

Well we aren't back to 100% today but there has definitely been an improvement in Evie's illness so we did some easy science today! We have these fun little Mr. Bubble bath potions I picked up awhile back so I put two of them into her sensory bin table with some bottles of water. She had a ton of fun pouring the water in and watching it fizz and then when she finished both potions she spent a while pouring the colored water back and forth to make new colors. The potions were on sale when I bought them and they're a little more pricey now but since the bottles are reusable it will be really easy to pop some new bath bomb dust in there for future play time! We made it to family night as well which was nice. I was worried we'd miss it this week since we were both so sick but she was very happy she was feeling good enough to go play with her cousins again! :)

  This week I decided to set Evie up with some various stations she could play/learn at. I was pretty sure she'd gravitate toward the STEM and art tables but she is also huge into sensory play so I wasn't surprised when the learning table was the only one untouched at the end of the day. She started at her chem table. I set up this little chemistry set for her to run some color experiments at and she had a lot of fun mixing them in the tray and watching them bubble and fizz.  But once she saw her sensory station science was off the table. She spent the rest of her hour right here playing with her slime! Last night I prepped this by making a double batch of fluffy slime and then I put a variety of mix ins in the little jars for her to open and mix into her slime. Unsurprisingly they all went in at some point. It was fun to watch her mix them into the slime though. She was very excited at the end to see how her creation would look all mixed together and then she spent a ton of t...

  Today we had art day and worked on some fun projects together. I told Evie this morning that it was arts and crafts day and she was SUPER excited because other than STEM day, arts and crafts are her favorite. We started off this afternoon with some potato stamping. I set this up while Evie was doing her quiet time and when I presented her with the paint, canvas, and potato she said to me "Mama I thought that potato was my snack!" 😂😂 She was definitely relieved to find out it wasn't for eating.  She had a lot of fun smashing it around and combining the colors to make her picture. After we finished our potato painting we had some free play and made chalk houses for her LOL dolls for awhile. We also made use of the sunny day (the first in awhile!) to plant a tree in the yard together. But as the evening wore on and dinnertime came around she told me  "Mama you said it was arts AND crafts day and we did art but we didn't do a craft!!" So we broke out some pe...

  On Mothers Day this year, Evie and I went up to Carillon Park in Dayton with my parents. There is a building there which depicts the 1913 Great Flood of Dayton and I'm not sure if it was seeing the images life sized or sitting in a boat from the floods or what did it but it really didn't sit well with Evie. Since then she has been consistently asking me if we are going to have a flood or a hurricane at our house. Even though I've explained to her many times that we don't live close enough to water for a flood (or a hurricane!) she just didn't seem comforted. Then her great grandfathers house flooded (not badly) and that just made matters worse! So today I decided to do a hands on activity for her to show her what causes a flood and why we aren't in danger of one. First we made a little land mass in a bin filled with water and then we used princesses to act as the houses. I let her fill it up a little and then I showed her how the sun typically lowers the level...

  Today we made a "boat" and sailed out to sea! Evie gathered up her trolls and had Poppy be the captain of the ship. She spent most of her time rescuing Branch and Chenille when they fell overboard. We had some choppy waters with sharks and octopi circling so it was a much needed job! After she found a good spot to put her anchor down she started her treasure hunt! We used a treasure map as a scavenger hunt and hid diamonds, shells, and other small trinkets all over the house. When she reached the end of the map she found the treasure box and was VERY excited to find that her treasure was a bag of cotton candy! When we finished sailing, eating, and treasure hunting we updated Evie's routine chart to add a few new tasks. She is doing a great job with her chores lately and with her fifth birthday looming on the near horizon it seemed like a good time to give her just a bit more responsibility. We spent our afternoon at dance class. Only a few more classes til the recital! ...

Today is the day! This morning I got up a little early to set up this "jungle" for Evie to navigate. It was super easy to throw together...I used leftover crepe paper from her last birthday party to make vines and construction paper to make leaves. I also used some feathers we had to make a little pathway because the path is meant to lead to a little bird she will have to rescue. But first she will have to creep past a jaguar... ...navigate a snake pit... ...run through a meadow... ...avoid a nest of spiders... ...cross a river filled with crocodiles...AND of course for extra fun we used her costume accessories to dress up as animals and jump out at each other while moving through the maze of traps and vines... She LOVED this game and we ended up playing it for HOURS. She had a ton of fun finding the bird and also hiding it so I could run through and find it too. It was a fun way to spend a morning and the cleanup was almost easier than the set up! She was already asking if w...

  This week we are starting the letter "B" for our review. Today we did some practice writing the letter and then we made some paper tear butterflys. Evie had a lot of fun putting this together and gluing on the pom balls. She also had fun doing the worksheets even though she doesn't love sitting still to do them! We did one today where she had to choose the items that started with the letter "B" and it was a good opportunity to talk about letter sounds and how we can sound things out to see how to spell them. We've worked a little bit on spelling and reading and she can recognize a few words but she spent a good half hour today trying to guess (and mostly succeeding!) what letter certain words started with by sounding out the first syllable. These weeks aren't quite as fun as the themed ones we've done in the past but she's learning so much and that's the important thing. ;)

  We are still talking about the letter "A" today and our theme for the day was Australia. We started with this fun project where we made some paper plates into the Sydney Opera House. Then I gave Evie a map of Australia and let her color it in with some markers. She got some scented ones for Christmas and she is OBSESSED with coloring with them and then making me smell all her art work so they've gotten a ton of use this week already. Btw this map of Australia now smells like jelly. 😂 After she finished coloring it in she got to use some stickers* I printed up on the computer to put some animals in. We had koalas, wallabies, kangaroos, kiwis, emus, echidnas, Tasmanian devils, and frill neck lizards.  It's extra cold today and it's bath day so for our sensory play I ran Evie a warm bath and we dropped in an Uluru bath bomb from Lush. We talked about Uluru while we watched the water turn pink, gold, and orange and then we put on our swimsuits, got some "bath ...

  Day two of A week is here and today we had an Ariel themed day. Evie colored several photos of Ariel and then we did some letter tracing practice for the letter A. We also did a massive mermaid art project today... Basically I had Evie lay on a piece of paper and then I traced her, but instead of feet I gave her a mermaid tail. Then she got to use mixed media to decorate her mermaid. She had the most fun sticking on gem stickers and pouring glitter on it but she had a lot of fun choosing which of her art supplies she wanted to put where. It was pretty fun to watch the process! After that we did a tear paper A. I had planned for her to use ocean themed water paper to do it but she was very insistent that we should do it with galaxy paper so we changed it up and made a galaxy A instead. It was a messy and really fun art day!  After we finished up our art projects and had some lunch we went to an indoor playground for awhile and then headed to nana's for family night. She got t...

  It's crunch time! It's officially our first week of at home preschool for 2022 and we have only about nine months at this point to be fully ready for kindergarten! Which feels crazy. Based on the current guidelines for her school district she's actually already where she needs to be but better safe than sorry so we are focusing on review of letters for the next several months.  This week our focus is on the letter "A" and the number "1". We practiced writing both the letter and the number and did a few worksheets for recognizing each. Then we made this fun alligator out of the letter. She really loved putting on his teeth! I had an unexpected short day today and we decided to use it to go to the museum. Originally we intended to use it to see an Omnimax presentation they have going on about underwater caves but the showtimes were weird so we skipped it and just focused on the museum.  We made the most of it and had a ton of fun but today was not withou...

  Today we decided to take a break from playing and review and do some crafting. Tomorrow we are going to have a little spa day so I decided to make some things to go along with that. The holes in these are large and the needles we used are plastic so it was pretty easy for Evie to make them with help. :) She also got to design the faces however she wanted to which she loved.  First, we made the sleep mask and then we started on the slippers. It got tricky for her to do the slippers since there are so many layers to go through so I had to complete the assembly on one of them, but she did really well helping out where she could! Everything turned out really cute! You can tell which shoe Evie did and which one I did BUT they both looked really cute at the end. They're really fuzzy inside too which is nice. It was super pretty out today so after we finished making our slippers we went to the park to play... I had her choose some books to donate today and we left them in the littl...

The cups were back again today! Since we learned about smell today Evie got to smell a bunch of different things and see if she could tell me what they were and also how they smelled (sweet, spicy, etc). I used cotton and paper to dab things on for the most part since I was worried about her inhaling spices. This was another fun learning experience as well since it helped me understand what scents and profiles she likes and which she doesn't. We also practiced more of her letters today. Then this evening we played a fun ocean cleanup game and she got to wear a snorkel mask and fish for trash which she loved. It wasn't a super busy day, but it was a pretty fun one! :)

  Today Evie is learning about touch! We had a lot of fun with this one and I even set up a temporary table to do the activities on which she was super excited about. We started with these little touch cards. We bought these at Micheals but you could make them SUPER easily with swatches of different fabrics or material, glue, and cardboard. I dropped two of them into individual tissue boxes so she could touch them but not see them and then she had to guess if they were the same or different. I also made her a large "mystery box" to put her hands into and try to tell me what was inside. She really had a lot of fun telling me how the things in the box felt and what she thought they might be. She did try to peek a few times!! She was also super impressed with how well I was able to guess the things that SHE put into the box for me to guess. This activity was fun for her for a few hours so we didn't do our letter review today but we'll double up another day and make up fo...