felt balls

we've been making felt balls like crazy. today, we dyed some in kool-aid.

you put a little water in the bottom of a pot. colander goes in the pot, balls with dye on them go in the colander. steam for 20 minutes.

red, blue, purple and yellow
they are all koolaid except the blue. the blue is regular food coloring. it didn't dye as well as the koolaid.

our new collection on handmade wool balls.
(now we can get rid of some plastic ones!)

noah discovering that some balls make noise and some don't.

fun with wool

today's muffin tin lunch was on a mozz cheese, golden grahams, crunchy granola thingies, baby carrots, and a turkey and cheese roll-up on a homemade tortilla.


this afternoon i got a pound of wool roving from my friend kellie at mindful life shop. first, we watched a few videos on youtube of sheep being sheared. then we watched a video showing how to make a felt ball (part 1 and part 2). we made the inner core the same as in the video. we don't have any felting needles so we used regular wool yarn and big needles.

ran out of yarn!

felting the yarn.

felting the yarn didn't really work but that's ok! we can still play with them!

activities!

The last few days nicholas has been asking to do activities. so we have been.

Steven's mom gave us a wetlands and an underwater nature search book. they were steven's when he was young. They are like where's waldo of nature. on each page there are little pictures to look for with the magnifying glass. nicholas likes them a lot.



while nicholas was playing with them, Noah read a colors book that i made him for christmas.



Later on, we clipped clothespins around the outside of stockpot. (fine motor skills!)



we stood noah up inside the pot. he thought it was so funny. he sat down and started pulling the pins off and putting them in a cup.



this morning, we did some marble painting. Noah was very interested. haha he was so frustrated that he couldn't stick his hands in the paint. fingerpainting is for another day.





finished painting to be hung up when they are dry.



for a while i've been trying to explain patterns to nicholas. we tried the mancala board. we tried using worksheets. we tried all kinds of things. he just wasn't getting it. we read through the Bob books: Set 1 and that was all it took. he is finding patterns everywhere! He made this pattern with jumbling tower pieces.



I've been obsessed with My Montessori Journey for a few days. nicholas and i looked at it for like an hour this morning finding fun activity ideas. so i decided that we are going to start coffee table games. hopefully, a new one everyday. here's today's:



It's a tin of bead blocks and a jar with pipe cleaners that have small stopper beads attached to the end.

noah went right over and started playing. he couldn't thread the beads on the pipe cleaner but he liked playing with it anyway.

Yesterday for life skills we did a perler beads project.

he practiced his fine motor skills. those little beads are really tough to get on the pegs.



he practiced following directions. i would point out what beads we needed next and he'd put them on. he finished almost the entire thing himself. i did the last 3 columns because he was starting to get bored.



he also iron for the first time. he was really nervous about burning himself. he only did it for long enough for me to take the picture.



We also did a 1-20 activity. he clothes-pinned the numbers in order.



Noah played with the ones on the floor waiting to be hung up.



he did some painting today. he's showing how beautiful the paint looks on his brush. haha



They got a busy zoo from steven's grandparents for christmas. Noah was playing with it while nicholas was painting. opening and closing the doors is his favorite.

We also did more about bulls for science since last week was a short school week. Nicholas cracks up at slurping up water like the bulls do. :)