Adventures of Evie

    This week is GLOW week. We are learning about what makes things glow and also talking about UV light. Today I set up a little bin for Evie with some neon foam alive and a black light bar. She had a ton of fun playing with the sand and was really excited about how much it glowed under the light. While she played we talked about phosphors and the color spectrum. She was really excited about being able to see the "magic" ultra-violet light that she can't see without the black light! After she finished playing I challenged her to hold things up to the light to see if they would glow or not. Even when they didn't she loved seeing how they look different in the black light vs just regular. This project was definitely a hit and I can't wait to see how she likes what I have planned for the rest of the week! :)

  Today Evie got to stay home from school since it's Indigenous People's Day. We did spend a little bit of time this morning talking about what that means and why we observe it, but since i've been working a ton recently we also just wanted to have some fun today. We have been learning about the origins of Halloween this month and about how some of the original Pagan traditions of the day have turned into the things we still do to have fun. We also played with this super fluffy foam bin! She had tons of fun fishing out spiders and eyeballs and other creepy crawly things with the skeleton hands. I'm still working the season into her lunches here and there as well! Today she asked for a snack plate, which is essentially a lunchable and we mixed it up by adding some fun fall shaped chips and salsa. It's supposed to stay warm for the first half of this week so hopefully we can make the most of it and spend lots of time outside before it turns cold again! :)

  Today I set up a little creation station for Evie. I found some trinkets at the dollar store for this and also some tiny scented play doh's. Then I added eyeballs and beads and some things we had around from last year to help fill it in. Evie was really excited to make some monsters when she found it today although she was not the hugest fan of the scents of dough. She made me several witches and also this rendition of Anna from Frozen (notice her streak)! It was fun to watch her create and since the doh was only $1 for 6 I didn't have to worry about if she mixed them up or let them dry out which is always a win! Today was also Golden Slothtato day! We have a little Toca Boca capsule dispensing machine and once a week if she has completed all her chores INCLUDING the optional ones she gets to put a coin in and get out a Golden Slothtato. This week her prize from the box was an art kit!  Typically her golden slothtato prizes are activities or outings but I managed to snag thi...

  Today we did some fun experimenting with "ghosts"! Since Evie was a baby we have been dissolving packing peanuts in water and its something she has always loved to do. I frequently get boxes of nail polish full of these dissolving peanuts because of my nail blogging so today since I had a whole box sitting around, I decided to set up a Halloween themed one! During her lunch break today I had her draw faces on some of the ghosts. She had a lot of fun making different expressions on them and coloring them in various ways. Then when she got home from dance class I gave her the box of them and let her dissolve them into this pumpkin full of water. She had a ton of fun with this and also with dumping the pumpkin bucket over and letting the peanuts splash around everywhere while she stomped and smashed them! It was a fun and free project! :)

  It's finally October!! Evie and I kicked off the new season by decorating the house and today I started weaving Halloween into her bins and activities. Mondays are always rough for her so I mixed up a fun sensory bin for her today with colored (and regular) kinetic sand and some molds and cutters. She thought the cat cutter was Santa Claus which I thought was hilarious. We also picked out a Halloween outfit to wear to school today. She loves showing off her dresses so it gives her something to look forward to when she sees her teacher. She also got to wear these little bat bows we've been saving for this month. After that we did a few "games" on her Chrome Book (they are math lessons in disguise!) and then we played some princess games before she had to catch the bus. I'm so grateful that the weather has stayed pretty sunny and cool these last few weeks. Once it gets rainy and cold we're going to have to spend or lunches inside and while I have plenty of gam...

  So it's not October yet but we are sooo close so I've been weaving Halloween things into Evie's day. Usually it's creepy lunches but today I made her a little sensory box and it was a pretty big hit. I ended up making the slimes since I intended to get some floam and whatnot from the dollar store but mine had none today. So I just made her some crunchy, standard, and butter slime and then added some scented playdoh to one of the compartments as well. She loved it but then asked me toward the end if we could fill ALL the holes with slime. So we made some fluffy slime and some cloud slime and she filled the remaining holes with kinetic sand. Evie had a tough time getting off to school today. I'm not sure if it was because it's a Monday or because of some things that happened over the weekend but in either event she cried all the way to the bus stop and all the way onto the bus. So when she got home we spent some extra time playing together before we went to make...

  Today we did some science to learn about how storms form. We used red warm water and blue ice cubes in a bin so that we could see how they would react when they hit each other.  We put the red in first so it spread pretty quickly and then we added the blue ice cubes. While the reaction was happening I explained to Evie that when warm, moist air hits the cooler air it gets pushed upward. Once the warm air cools down it starts to form clouds and when the clouds are too heavy it will start to rain. When it's really hot out the clouds can get very tall and sometimes, the movement of air can even cause tornadoes! During the experiment, Evie got to see how the blue cold water pushes the red warm water up to the top corner. You can also do this experiment by adding warm and cold water to a bin of room temperature water to watch the blue water sink under the red! It was fun to watch and we recreated it a few times! We had a lot of fun this week learning about climates and the weathe...

  We are still talking about climates and today we focused on tides. We did a little experiment with water to demonstrate how the tides work. First we filled her bin with acrylic ice in varying levels. Then we added water slowly and I let her tell me which parts would go underwater first and last as the tide rose. Then we took water out slowly to demonstrate low tide. Evie has experienced the tide many a time at various beaches and she was really interested in what makes the water move futher and closer to our chairs so this was a great opportunity to show her how it works. Of course you can't talk about tides with out talking about the moon so we also did a little art project today. She got to wrap and decorate this little moon while we talked about how it affects the tides. It was a fun project and it turned out so cute. The information she is learning is really sticking with her as well. Today we played a few games before school and she let me know that I needed to bundle up sin...

  This week we're learning about climates and the different types of climates around the world. We talked a little about Polar, Temperate, Tropical, Dry, and Continental climates today and how the type of climate a place has can affect the weather, types of plants and animals living there, and so much more!  She got to play with this sensory bin filled with purple ice and snow and some polar animals. We talked a little bit about how small shifts in the global temperature can very seriously affect the climate and how the polar animals are currently being very affected by this. Then we talked about how weather is different to climate but also how each one can affect the other. Evie was very concerned to know that global shifts can affect how severe the weather in each climate can be! But we also talked about how there are things we can do to prevent the shifts and help make things better. She had a lot of fun mixing these little foam weather slimes together and adding rainbows,...

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! :)

  Today we had a messy play day. Evie had a slime table last week and really loved it so this week I decided to try chia seed slime. I figured it would go one of two ways; either she'd love it, like she loved the slime one, or she'd hate it like the spaghetti one she had last Halloween. It ended up being a huge hit though. Recently she's been watching me play Animal Crossing on the Switch and one of her favorite places on the island is the museum. She always has a ton of questions about dinosaurs and fish and everything else in there. We've been talking a lot about evolution and the extinction of the dinosaurs so for this table I did half chia slime and made it green to create a sort of swap situation. Then the other half I added baking soda and vinegar and her little volcano we made ages ago and she had a lot of fun moving the dinosaurs out of the swamp and into the line of fire of the volcano! One thing I will say about chia slime is that it is MESSY. We did this in t...

  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 played with MEGA beads! I got these mega water beads and I've been waiting for a good time to use them. So I set them up last night and they really did get huge! We took them outside between breaks in the rain to play with them. Evie mostly wanted to crush them up and pretend they were a slushie which was fine with me! They are actually really fun to squish into a bunch of tiny pieces and it was cool to mix them in the cups and make layers of color. It took her about an hour to crush up all of the beads and then she spent some time just playing with the mashed up mess! This definitely is an outdoor project though because they got EVERYWHERE!  Later we went up to my moms house for family night. Evie has been looking everywhere for "blow flowers" and there aren't many in our neighborhood but there were TONS of them at nana's and she loved picking them and blowing them all over. She also really loved playing with her cousins. It was a really fun day! :)

  Today was a gorgeous day! It was actually almost hot outside and since it was so pretty there was no way we were staying inside. Evie has been really asking lately when we are going back to the beach so today I decided to make a little beach for her barbies and while she was playing with them I surprised her with a can of silly string. We spent some time blasting each other with it (and we saved a little for surprising people later ;P) and when we ran out we spent some time making up stories with her dolls. The sand is made out of Cocoa Wheats and while it worked really well it did leave some brown powder on our clothes. After we finished making a huge mess of chalk, "sand", and silly string it was time to clean up. I started hosing off the driveway and of course Evie wanted to play in the hose. Since it was so hot and she was covered in chalk anyway when I finished up the driveway I let her run through the spray for awhile. It was a super fun day and a really nice reminder...

It's been so nice out this week! Today I decided to brighten things up a bit and made this rainbow sensory box for her to play with. The sand was $1 at the Target dollar spot over the summer and they are also scented which is really fun. I broke them up into chunks but as she played with them and they warmed up they turned back into soft sand. She had a ton of fun making them into ice cream and other foods and bringing them to me to eat. She also really loved guessing the scents of each of the colors. It was a fun activity and she played with it for close to two hours. After we finished up with the box today we had a lunch picnic and then when I got off work we went outside to play before dance class.  Two days left this week and tomorrow is kindergarten registration! :)

  Today we are having a bit of a repeat theme but when we last made this box of fake snow and ice water it was a HUGE hit. The snow is super easy to make and it melts into the water so it's easy to dispose of too. I threw some of her arctic animals in there but she decided to improvise a bit. She threw some barbies in there and made up stories about how they were at the beach and dolphin watching and had a lot of fun just letting her imagination run wild. I dyed one third of the snow blue this time to make it a little more interesting but it ended up being a lot more blue than I intended so Evie said it looked like it was really icy. We can't get outside right now because of the weather so it wasn't total destruction like the last time but since the snow will hold up for a week or so we will get a lot of use out of this bin! :)

  It's day two of B is for week and today we had our princess day. We played with a Belle sensory bin which Evie loved. It's hard to tell from the photograph but the rice in this bin is gold and sparkly. She also loved playing with all the little gems and guessing what color they'd be when she flipped them over from their silver side. We colored a lot today and practiced writing letters again. We also worked some on the number 2. Her numbers up to about 15 are pretty solid so we're not doing a super in depth review of them until after 10. But we are talking about them and also working more on her counting in general. In the afternoon we made a berry crumble that we could eat after dinner.  Today is usually our family dinner night but everyone was sick this week so we decided to post pone it! Tomorrow we are learning about a new place so stay tuned to see what it will be! :)

  This week is woodland creature week! December is going to be a shorter month for us with preschool since I have a week of paid leave at the end and we have a short week almost every single week as well so I decided to weave a few fun themes in with some letter review. This week we are reviewing D, E, and F while we learn about animals that live in the woods. Her sensory bin this week was free which is always a plus! It's just leaves I cleaned up from the yard and some pinecones, foam pumpkins and Wizard Tom and Barb from her Sago boxes for some color.  It's getting harder to take nice photos since it's so dreary outside so you'll have to bear with me on some of these "action" shots but for our fun activity today we made play-doh hedgehogs. Evie had a lot of fun sticking in the toothpicks and eyes and we talked about what hedgehogs are and how they use their quills to protect themselves from predators. When she was done making her hedgehog we got Barb from he...