This morning Miss D and I found a rainbow out the window.

She was so interested in it and kept talking about it for the rest of the morning. Luckily I remembered that I had found a kit with rainbow activities over at Confessions of a Homeschooler. I printed off a few of the activities, laminated them and cut them out. She had lots of fun playing with them all! And I was impressed with how quickly she figured them out, especially matching the letters.

With this activity I read the colours out to Miss D and she matched them to the pictures. After doing it a couple of times I just handed her the words and she matched the colours without me saying anything!

And with this one, Miss D had to match the letters with the word rainbow. There were lots of letters, but I took out the ones that didn’t match. Next time I’ll leave in all of the letters and see if she can find the right ones out of a bunch!

Maybe later we will have to make our own rainbows!

I haven’t yet gotten back into doing any “teaching” with Miss Delightful… in fact we haven’t ventured too far from the house since last week. But in our quiet times I have been doing some research into fun activities we can do. I have Miss D down on the waiting list at the local kindy, I was first told that she could start at 2, but the other day I was informed they wont even consider her until she is 2 and 1/2! It’s not really a big deal but it would have been nice for her to get to interact with other kids without me around, and for me to get a bit of a break. But anyway… we will just keep plodding along. I just need to re-energize myself and put more effort into our at home activities!

So here are a few things I have found that we might look at doing over the next few months… (all of these were found on Pinterest aka my new addiction, but I have included a direct link to each one!).

Paint in a bag:

Shaving cream paint for in the bath:

Toilet Paper Roll painting:

Alphabet Soup:

and Bubble Wrap Art:

Looks like we are going to be busy, when I finally get my act together!

Opps… I have already failed in my own new plan! Today is supposed to be Teaching Tuesday… but we haven’t done the activity I had planned.

I knew exactly what we were going to do, but the concret men turned up to finish off the job which included cutting the patio… this meant there was lots of activity and noise and Miss Delightful was glued to the window! I didn’t want to interrupt this as she seemed to be enjoying it so much.

And then we went to Spotlight to the 40% off sale… I have decided that this year I am going to make all our Christmas presents! I have 20 weeks to make 15 items… hmmm! Miss D and I had fun choosing lots of different fabric and colours, she offered some great advice too!

Here is my Spotlight stash:

So now I need to get my craft on! I’m so excited for all the creations.

And even though I said I failed… Miss D still learnt new things yesterday, just not what I had planned!

Balloons!!!

Today while Miss D was eating breakfast she looked out the window and saw not one, but four hot air balloons flying past our house! She was incredibly excited by this sight! This week is Balloons Over Waikato Week here in Hamilton, where lots of hot air balloons come and fly over the city. There are many events, early morning take offs, a parade down the main street and on Saturday night they have a night glow party where balloons light up in the dark and there are fireworks! Last year we went to the night glow party and it was lots of fun, so we will be going again this year. We had planned to take Miss D to one of the early morning take offs but unfortunately something more important has come up. But there is always next year!

Anyway… that explains why there were balloons. So since we had a doctor imposed day at home I decided we would do some crafts related to balloons. This morning I used my awesome (not) drawing skills to draw an outline of a balloon which Miss D then painted (with some help):

Then after her sleep we looked at shapes inside a balloon that I made during her sleep. Miss D coloured the balloon in and then together we glued the shapes into the correct place. We also talked about the letter B, but by this stage Miss D was a bit over colouring in

I’m hoping that we will see more balloons flying past our house over the next few days! And I hope the weather is nice on Saturday, we planning on taking a picnic with friends and staying for the fireworks!

We got Miss D a wooden mailbox for Christmas. It came with some letters and a bag… but Miss D doesn’t know what to do with them!

So we have been playing with it together, but the letters just were not cutting it, they are too advanced for her. So I have put them away and I created my own felt mail for her to play with. I finished them today and she had so much fun posting them into the box, taking them out and deciding who the letters were for!

I used this tutorial as a starting point, but changed it up a little bit. I didn’t make the postcards as I thought she would find the envelopes and letters fun enough for now. But I guess as she grows I can add to it!

Here is a closer look at what I created. She now has 4 envelopes, with a stamp and an address (i.e. To Mum) and 4 letters that fit inside the envelopes! The envelopes have velcro on the back to stick them down, which is fun enough to play with on its own!

At this stage the mail bag tate came with it is a bit boring so I’d like to make it more exciting somehow. Even if all I do is sew the word “Mail” on to it in bright letters! But that is just another thing to add to my long list of to-do’s

The other day I was stuck at home with Miss Delightful for a whole day without a car. So we decided to do some finger painting. Miss D is a bit funny about having things on her hands, so it sort of turned into normal painting, but she still made a mess

Here is the recipe for the finger paint:

• 2 cups of whatever flour you have
• Cold water
• Hot water
• food dye in the colors desired

Into a bowl put the flour, mix in the cold water until smooth with no big lumps, next slowly add in just-off-the-boil hot water while stirring constantly to get the correct finger paint consistency. Finger paints are thinker than brush paints so leave it thicker and not so thin.

Divide up the mixture into containers, one per color. Into each mixture stir in a few drops of food dye to yield the best child safe paint you ever allowed them to squish between their little fingers (and taste).

Miss D had lots of fun playing with the paint. I love watching her little brain figure things out! Here is a photo of her exploring what happened when she held the paint brush up in the air… the paint shirt definitely needed a wash after this activity!