Sunday, January 12, 2014

Activities for 3 year old kids

My twins are now 4, I often find myself taking pictures to document the things we do.  I am amazed at the activities we have done ever since they have started to discover what their hands are able to do.

Pouring activities which teaches concentration.  Place items on a tray so you won't mind the spills.

Rainbow painting activities with milk, dishwashing detergent, some food coloring, and chopsticks

Handpainting, cutting and taping, puzzles, painting, tracing and beading activities which are relevantly common in our little homeschool.  The materials are readily available for them to grab from our shelf.

We do letter matching (using letter puzzles), clay, coloring and pattern blocks just so often!

This is one important random activity we do even after dinner.  It is just making use of any toy with the alphabets and a letter flash card.

One of their favorite and which improved their motor-skills is beading.

This was taken at 9PM where my girls just grabbed this lacing activity from our shelf which was just collecting dust since they were 1.5.

A letter punching activity using a paper with a letter to punch (I traced the letter of the week on it) then clipped on a mouse pad which they will punch either with a small screwdriver (precision screwdriver), or a pen would also work. 

For art, we did these pipecleaners and googly eyes puppets.

Cutting - my twins have mastered this at age 2.5.  I allow them to use scissors at 1.5 but with my supervision.  At 3.5, they can handle even sharper school scissors without my help.

We learn letters through Handwriting without Tears and Starfall.com on the iPad. 
Some of our other activities:

Letter tracing with clay!

Letter tracing with sticks!

Doing Kumon tracing.

She can do 3 pages a day of Kumon tracing.

Kumon is one of our weekly thing.

Actual writing activity by my 3.5 year old.

Hooked on Phonics flash cards!

Boggle Jr.!

Trinkets to make a letter!

There are times that they don't feel like doing anything.  So, we would take a snack break or completely stop school if they are not into it for the day or days or even weeks! I am not in a hurry anyway.

Wet-Dry-Try on the iPad and the real thing using Handwriting Without Tears.

During our letter B day!

These are some of our math, art and other sensorial activities.

We do a lot of read-alouds.  But, for younger kids, I usually allow them to do building activities as I read to them.

Lego will always be part of their lives.

Telephone!

Manila paper indoor play.  Simple drawings of star, sad face and happy faces and some coins to throw.  Even my 8 year old had fun with this activity.

Thee did clay especially during the Bible story "The Creation".  The one on the right is Eve! :D

We made snakes out of construction paper during our Bible story.

Lining up sticks is a favorite activity.

Color matching activity


They love Mighty Mind.  This is one of their favorite things to do when they wake up.  Callie here went to her room and played with it.

Still on Mighty Mind

They leave me with this after a painting session.

Melissa and Doug painting is less messy!


Sometimes, I see them doing this with the Mighty Mind can! They keep on saying "I am a robot, mom!"

To teach proper table manners, we do a tea party!

A giant craft paper makes a good tool to learn parts of the body!

Many times, my girls play dress-up.  They would pretend to be going into a snowy place or even travelling to the moon!
Most importantly, I let them experience being a kid who ca appreciate nature!  They are able to catch fireflies, touch a butterfly, play with snails, be messy and just enjoy being a kid.
These may be a lot, but we don't really have a structure.  I just follow their cue and see what they like to do.  We sing songs a lot and read books a WHOLE lot!  We memorize our memory verse each day and read the Bible too.

Manners and values are more important for them now.  It is what they will need a whole lot besides knowing how to read, count and write.  Part of their life is knowing that they are loved and that they are safe with us.

We are on Instagram and most of our activities are there too!

Instagram

Saturday, January 11, 2014

A girly racing Sugar Rush party for the twins' 4th birthday


Best sisters forever! I made their headpiece to match their themed name (Cotton Candy for Dashielle and Lollipop for Callista).

When we saw the movie - Wreck it Ralph, I was instantly in loved with Sugar Rush! The twins' loved it so much too and I thought, this is the next theme for my girls' party. It is not the usual too girly thing, but it has everything my girls love - speed and racing, pink and green and all the sweetness it has!

My desire is to make the day different and memorable the very least.  I don't give huge and expensive parties to my kids.  I just want them and their guests to remember that day they did something different!

I didn't bother much on the venue and food by hiring a caterer and paying for venue rental - a Mcdonald's party will be just as awesome for this kind of party.  So, we had the venue at Mcdonald's and we were really surprised that the party area of the branch we have chosen is the most spacious venue I have seen from other Mcdonald's play area.

Here are some pictures of my twins' Sugar Rush racing party!
Colorful and oh so sweet! These were designed by my sister!

A sweet friend and godmother of the twins, decorated the dessert table which became the centerpiece of the stage.
I bought tiny cupcakes, melted some white chocolate and sprinkled candy sprinkles then topped them with these cupcake toppers (also designed by my sister).
This is the other dessert table. :)
Candies here were ordered online together with the giant lollipops!



Callista's cake

Dashie's cake
I bought the green petit skirt and the tutu was from Erin et Vivien!
My favorite cake baker just never fail to surprise me - Nikko of Baked Twinkles did these and the birthday cakes!
The night before, which took me roughly 6 hours to make, these were parked on our kitchen.

My husband had a different layout for the Racing Kart station for the kids.  It was placed in the center of the venue so that kids together with their parents can build them.

We included a Build your own Candy Racing Kart for each of the kids.
This was such a big hit!
I built different karts without designs and the kids freely designed it with candies and sprinkles!  I packed them individually with their extra candies.

The cute labels, invites and all themed printed materials were designed by my sister and I just printed them on our home printer.   I just repacked the candies and cookies on small individual plastic wrapper.




It was a hit!



I did not spend anything on lootbags which usually becomes clutter anyway after the party.  But, the Make a Racing Kart the kids made, the much nicer prizes from Mcdonald's, the giant lollipops and the grab-all-you-can candies from the dessert table.

Everybody had fun including my kiddos.  I will be posting more details on the kart racing icing recipe soon!