Painting with Yogurt

I saw this on several blogs and thought I'd give it a try. We used a bit of plain unflavored yogurt and food coloring and went to work on our paper plates. It was really fun! The boys love plain yogurt, so they did a lot of licking. I intended to have them work on forming some letters with their 'finger paint' to work on how a letter is made. After a couple frustrating encounters with my firstborn, I just let them have fun.

Of course, the little scientist he is, John Paul mixed the colors together gleefully and told me all about what new colors were appearing. Easy to make, easy clean up, and good pre-writing practice (in theory).

Patterns and Matching

This is a take off of another product made by Melissa and Doug--a pattern matching bead game. I decided I could mimic it with drawing patterns on card stock. It took a little longer than I thought it would, but the boys still enjoyed it. It was little easy for John Paul and a little tough for Joey, so I'll bring it out again for Joey later and maybe make a harder variation for John Paul when I get around to it.


I started with the lacing bead set made by Melissa and Doug that I got from my sister in law a couple of years ago. But if I didn't have this, I think this activity could be done with candy or household items. Some ideas would be forks and spoons, or Runts candies, or even paper shapes. The idea is to just get kids to match up the picture with the pattern given. They have to use visual discrimination to get the correct shape and the correct color.

John Paul is nearly four and has troubles with blue and purple. We have some color blindness in the family, but I'm wondering if it's just a skill he hasn't mastered yet. Anyone else out there with boys (or girls) have trouble with colors at this age?

Overall, this activity was good, although the prep time took longer than the lesson, which I'm not usually a fan of! But I can use the cards again, until the boys start noticing my less than stellar art skills...

Our Virgin Mary Painting

Our topic at our Schoenstatt couples group this week was Mary. Sometimes people misunderstand the Catholic devotion to Mary. So just to clear it up--here is the scoop. We do NOT worship Mary--we honor her and ask her to pray for us. Because she was chosen to be the Mother of God, we believe she is God's most perfect creation. Honoring her does not take away from the glory of God--instead, it gives Him MORE glory because we honor His creation because He obviously did such an awesome job. ;) It's like looking at a Picasso painting and praising Picasso for how wonderfully he painted it. This does not "take away" from the praise to Picasso, it adds to it!

Speaking of Picasso, I've been wanting to let the boys paint for awhile, but I'm always SO afraid of painting with them, because let's face it--they can be walking disasters. (I mean that in the most loving way possible.) So I was just waiting for inspiration to strike, and our couple's group was it! We were encouraged to invite Our Blessed Mother into our house--not as a guest, but TO LIVE HERE with us! And she would be delighted to intercede (pray) for us and help us accomplish (through Christ--don't get nervous) anything we need to get done.

I LOVE Mary, but I often forget to keep her very close to me, especially in my day to day life--things like paying the bills, making supper, cleaning the house, and raising my children, etc. BUT she wants to help with all of that! So I decided to have the boys help me paint a picture of our Blessed Mother to help remind all of us how much she loves us. The boys have a special love for her too, so they were delighted to use the paints, especially "Blessed Mother Blue." :) It was a great time, and I really didn't lose my patience much with the boys....must have been Mary!

Pizza Friday

On Friday, we try to have "Friends and Family" Day, an idea I'm sure I copied from somewhere else. We were going to try and write some letters, but unfortunately it didn't happen. So I combined learning with our family supper, and the boys were able to assemble our homemade pizzas. They loved it! We made a mushroom pizza for the boys, and a bell pepper and onion pizza for the parents. :)

We have really been trying to work on colors with Joey, and every time you ask him a color, he still says white or orange. :) Funny. So the bell peppers were a lesson in themselves. He really liked the red ones. Daddy helped him spread them out.

Making homemade pizza was very nostalgic for me...I remember how my Mom used to roll out the dough and let us help spread the sauce and sprinkle the cheese. I hope that this is a tradition that I can keep up with my family. I love traditions!!!

Stringing Beads

I wasn't sure what kind of educational endeavors we'd end up with yesterday. It was a busy day, full of doctor visits and music classes. So I pulled out some stringing beads, made by Melissa and Doug and thought I'd let the boys play with them.

It turned out great! They were able to do their "own thing" at their own levels and both of them benefitted. John Paul really enjoyed stringing the beads onto the cord, which is good because sometimes I worry he doesn't get enough hand-eye coordination activities. But he did really well, and especially enjoyed swinging his finished product around like a weapon. It became his "lucky letter lasso" like on Super Why, his favorite cartoon. Then he insisted I call him WonderPig for a while. I had no problem with that. :)

Joey enjoyed sorting the shapes and colors, although every time I ask him a color, he responds with "White!" Unless it's orange...that seems to be his favorite color and he associates it with the fruit. He is really getting his one to one ratio down...which means that he can count objects and actually attach one number to each object, instead of randomly spouting off the numbers. He can get up to four or five before he starts to get a little crazy.

I would have taken more pictures, but my dear sweet sons were both pantless. It was one of those days...