Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Serval Storytime! Stripes and Spots!

Well what I should be working on is writing kids books about the animals that we have at the aquarium. 

We've had a real struggle finding our really unique animals in books appropriate for 0-4 year olds.  

Our serval is one of the hardest!  She is an awesome animal and literally the best behaved serval on the face of the planet but no one wants to write about her.  

We "read" Pinduli today, and while it's an awesome book, conceptually it's a little out of our age league and it's pretty long.  So I pretty much just made up a story.  Price you pay for meeting a look animal like Neema!


When I got home we looked at all the pictures of Neema I had on the computer and then we talked about what she likes to eat: birds, small mammals, and fish!  Then we talked about her colors and the shapes she has on her fur.  STRIPES AND SPOTS!  


When bath time came around we took a stripes and spots bath.  Foam floats and when it's wet it sticks to the wall so I just cut shapes out of the foam and threw them in the bath! 


Evin had a great time sticking them on the sides and identifying the different shapes!  


Enjoy!!!

Monday, April 1, 2013

Ocean Week

Ocean Week (X2)

This busy family is having to spread out our weeks!  Not to mention, Evin is still in full blown pirate week mode with nightly sword fights, treasure maps, sea monsters attacks, and last night he rocked his cardboard ship to make me sea sick.....

However, Ocean week was still awesome!  Especially since it included visitors from the San Diego Oceanside!

Alysha and Travis arrived from San Diego with real sand from the beach!  They also brought some other fun ocean themed toys too!


Found a great recipe for sand play dough and it was awesome.  

4 cups play sand
3 cup flour
1 1/4 cup water
1/4 cup oil
Mix all ingredients together and knead until dough forms. Add more water if it’s too dry, add more sand or flour if it’s too wetThis recipe makes up a large batch of play dough. It could be cut in half  for one child.



It took a lot of kneading but we got it to the right consistency.....maybe because we were using really beach sand?  




Toni also sent us some great shells to use for the week too!


Karl and Evin made them shark craft.....Evin glued the eyes on and then took them right off.  

Nicole and Evin made a very fun sensory ocean bottle with blue water, oil and sand.  



They used some of my leftover scrapbook stickers to decorate the bottle!



Evin had a great time shaking it up and watching it settle out!



I wanted to make sand fossils.....however Evin was more interested in just playing in the sand.  






This is one of the coolest bath toys we have, awesome paddle boat, with about 30 toys inside!


We also went to the Garden of the Gods, Manatou Springs, and of course the Aquarium!  A little mini staycation in the mix too!


Zuri the porcupine.  


Neema the serval. 


Had a great time in the bath with our shark toy too!


All tuckered out with his new sea lion and manatee.  



We made a trip to our local community pool.....a VERY cool place so we could play in some water for ocean week!


One of Evin's newest favorite snacks is his jello aquarium snacks!




I poured some blue jello in to mason jars and let it set.  




After they were all set up we put the jello in a bowl of hot water and some jelly beans in the bottom of a separate jar.  


Then we dumped the jello in to the jelly bean jar and stuck some swedish fish down inside.  






It turned in to more of a jello excavation project.......


Our other snack time was a ton of YUM!  These little fish have sliced carrots for tail fins, strawberries for a mouth, blueberry and yogurt dipped pretzel eyes, orange slice bodies, and spout blueberry bubbles!  I made them one morning before work and then again we had a bigger school of orange fish!





Say YUM!




We also made a very fun ocean themed scene. 


We're having a great time listening to Evin identify his ocean animals.  The best is the octopus which he pronounces "ocpeez!" 





Thursday, March 21, 2013

Bird watching

We took a break from ocean week today to go bird watching!



We've made binoculars at our house before and after Ox at that pair 

Ox and Evin



we made a second (less fancy) pair at the children's museum!  


They're really simple, just what I like!  

Here's what you'll need

2 toilet paper tubes
string or pipe cleaners
glue or brads
decoration materials (tissue paper, stickers, construction paper, rhinestones, etc)

1. Glue or use brads to fasten the tp tubes together (let dry if needed)
2. Decorate!!!!!

3. Tie on your string or pipe cleaners so you have a neck strap

4. Safari, bird watch, search for planes and helicopters, spy on your neighbors!