What Can You Do With a One Year Old Take 2

Time for Part 2 of What You Can Do With a One Year Old! :) Here's a few more crafty type things we've done in the last several months...in no particular order! :)

Do-A-Dot Art

My mom gave me these great paint-markers in a little set called "Do-A-Dot Art" and they're SUPER easy and fun for Liddy to use! All she has to do is press them to the paper and they make circles! It came with a little book of pages where you can add the dots to different drawings (trees, bubble gum machine, etc) though she's not quite old enough to get that yet. She really enjoyed this and it was not nearly as messy as I expected it to be! It was more like stamping then painting, really. Big thumbs up from me! :)

Making a birthday card for her cousin Laina :)

 

Very intent on her artwork :)

 Scrap-Apple

I made that title up myself. Hehe. :) This is another idea from Pinterest, of course! And it was pretty easy, though a little messy with the glue. :) I drew a shape of an apple on the paper, and cut up a bunch of squares from red construction paper. I then put down small patches of elmer's glue and told Liddy to press the squares on the glue. She didn't always follow my instructions (typical toddler!!) but for the most part it worked ok and doing small patches of glue at a time helped keep the mess to a minimum. :) At the end we dipper her hand in green paint to make the leaf and stem! She thought it was pretty cool :)

"Where does this one go, Mom??"

I can't figure out how to rotate this at the moment, but you get the idea!

 Pumpkin Carving!

Every kid has to experience carving a pumpkin at least one in their life! :) We had received a few free pumpkins with our purchases at our local grocery store, and so we had to come up with a project for them!! We decided to carve a cross in our pumpkin and thought Liddy might enjoy doing this project with Daddy. He tried to start this project without telling me so he wouldn't get his picture taken, but I was on to him! ;)

"I'm not so sure about this, Mom..."

Mr. Studly who got to deal with all the slimyness :)

She kept saying, "Gwoss" or "Eewww..." Such a girl :)

 

Checkin' out the "guts" - I forgot to take a picture of the finished product!!

Jumpin' in Leaves!

This is a MUST fall activity! :) We did this with my parents at their home too, but they have the pictures, so I can't share them here. :) Another good daddy-daughter activity here, too! :) Lydia didn't mind being in the leaves, but she was seriously avoiding touching them with her hands! It cracked us up!

"As long as my hands don't touch the leaves I'm fine!"

 

I love this one!

Joe looks scary, but check out her face!! :)

And of course, we had to practice a little child labor... ;)

Are you workin' hard or hardly working?? ;)

 Pumpkin Painting!

We just did this project today, so I'm really on top of things by posting about it so soon! (Aren't you impressed?? hehe) We used washable tempera paint (which I don't think worked as well as other kinds) to do this project. Again, we had to do something with our other pumpkin we had! So we broke out our paint. :) Liddy enjoyed having me turn the pumpkin so she could paint all over it. At first she was grossed out whenever her hand touched the paint (did I mention I have a GIRLY girl?? ;) but then she got used to it and really enjoyed it, as you can see below. Again, no picture of the finished project! I'm so silly!!

Painting Away

Color Mixing!

Miss Picasso! :)

 That sums up our activities so far! Hopefully now I can put them in individual posts! :)

What Can You Do With a One Year Old??

I wanted to share about a few toddler activities I've tried out with my Liddy-Diddy. After she turned about 14 months, I became desperate for some activities to keep her busy and/or distracted for short (or long!) periods of time. :) Some have worked GREAT! Others...not so much. Let's just say I have a very active toddler who has a hard time sitting still at times, unless it really GRABS her attention!! :) So, in no particular order, here are a few projects we've tried in the last year!

Paint In A Bag

This one was pretty simple: You squeeze a few different colors of paint (I used tempera paint) into a Ziploc bag, seal, and tap to the table. I know it looks like Liddy was having fun here, but to be honest, she didn't care all that much about it. I had more fun mixing the colors and drawing shapes with my finger or a non-sharpened pencil! :)

"I'm bored with this, Mom. What's next??" ;)

  

 Jell-O Play Dough

Where else do I turn for brilliant toddler activity ideas? Why Pinterest, of course! I found this link here and boy was it great! I unfortunately didn't have any Jell-o at the time, so I just used sugar (since that's basically what Jell-O is, right??) and some food coloring and it turned out perfectly soft and moldable. Apparently when you actually use Jell-O it smells yummy too!! This was a hit with Liddy! She loved picking up the pieces with a spoon and pushing shapes into the dough. She didn't quite understand rolling it out yet, but that will come. We'll definitely do this again! The only thing is, you do have to let the dough cool for a while, so make sure you allow for that extra time!

Rollin' in the dough ;)

 Pom-Pom Push Through

Another big hit with my girl! This was a super simple task - all it required was that I stop at Hobby Lobby to purchase some pom-poms! I bought the large bag with varying sizes cuz I'm fun like that. :) All I did was cut holes into the lid of an old butter tub and then we pushed the pom-poms through! I made one a circle, one a square (sorta) and one a triangle. I figure we can use them for shape learning later. I've also heard of people making colored borders around the shapes to match the color of pom-poms to help with learning colors. The only problem with this is that pom-poms end up E.V.E.R.Y.W.H.E.R.E and with Quincy, that doesn't work so well since he eats them. Hehe. :) Otherwise - fabulous!

Poking the pom-pom's through!

 Pipe Cleaners & A Colander

This is super simple - all you need is a colander and some pipe cleaners! Then your kiddo(s) can poke them through the holes. Alas, Liddy didn't care much about this one. Funny since she loved the pom-pom one! I haven't tried it again recently, though, so she might enjoy it now that she's a little older...

"Right here, Mom?"

Rice Bin

Another super simple activity. Empty a bag of rice into a tub or 9x13 pan. Toss in a bunch of kitchen spoons, measuring cups, bowls, and other little toys. The end. :) Lydia loved this one too!! She especially loved filling cups with rice and then dumping it all over the floor. So fun for Mommy... ;) We did take this outside a few times over the summer too, and that seemed to work better since all I did was sweep up the bigger piles of rice, and left the rest for the birds! :) I think this would have worked better in a larger tub that would be more difficult for her to tip over (another problem we had...hehe). But it did keep her busy for quite a while! The clean-up was really the only negative. I've also heard you can do this with dried beans, though I haven't tried it due to it being a choking hazard at the time. Now that she's better about not putting things in her mouth, it'd probably work better. :)

Puttin' the rice in the measuring cup

Digging for toys!

There were a few other projects we tried, but they're still on my camera! Once I get them uploaded I'll have to post about them too. :)

Since I've Been Gone...

First of all, thank you to everyone who piped in regarding my posts in the future! It really did help me organize my thoughts a little bit more. :) And it only took me over a month to formulate my thoughts enough for a post. Hehe...oops!

So...since I haven't posted since JANUARY (I can't even believe that myself!), I have quite a bit of catching up to do! So here's the basics of our year in one big whirlwind post...cuz I know y'all LOVE those kind of posts...haha.

After celebrating Liddy's first birthday, the remaining few months were spent chasing after her! She started walking shortly after she turned one, and since then I don't think she's stopped!! :) We had our first "Red Dinner" for Valentine's Day, following the tradition my family put in place. Everything we ate was red....and I made the Jello jigglers just for Liddy. And of course, she didn't like them. Go figure. :) But it was fun anyway! Until she had a little run-in with the coffee table. A run-in that "helped" one of her teeth pop through the gums. That was a sad day, but she recovered quickly!!

Showing off the pink popcorn we made! 

As we got into springtime and summer, we spent lots of time outdoors (when the weather allowed!) Lydia LOVES to be outside...here's a few snapshots of our spring/summer...

Walkin' up the sidewalk...

Fun with Mommy!

For Easter, and as a gift for my MIL, we gathered all the grandkids together to take their picture. Let's just say that was a real "labor of love" as we had 7 kiddos age 8 and under to get to look at the camera and smile! And 3 of them were 2 yrs old or  younger! Eep! But we got some very cute ones, and my sister-in-law (who is amazing at photography!!) took a few singles of  Liddy as well. :)

Photography by MEL
She's just so darn cute! :)

 

As the weather got hotter (and boy was it HOT this summer!!) We spent lots of time outside in our little kiddie pool that my mom (also known as "Gobby" around here) gave us. Sometimes I wonder if Liddy is part fish because she loves the water SO much - and has absolutely NO fear of it!! Which is both good and bad... :)

Dipping her toes in...and LOVIN' it!

Cousin Jack-Jack came over to play - he was much more apprehensive about the water!
Liddy tried to warm him up to the idea of being splashed... ;)

Rockin' the shades!

Our 4th of July plans weren't too exciting - we decided that since Lydia was usually in bed by 7/7:30, and a fairly light sleeper, it wasn't worth it to drag her out to see the fireworks - especially since she probably would have screamed the whole time. :) Next year!! But we were very patriotic that day!! I only got a pic of Joe and Liddy, so that will have to suffice. ;)

Red, White and Blue! :)

 The rest of July and August was spent prepping for our annual Youth Carnival that we put on at our church! Joe is the mastermind behind it, and this year it was set up a bit differently - the youth group was supposed to help run the games, and all funds raised would go towards our youth group account (to help kids go to camp and other activities). Joe does such a great job of creating games and putting it all together!! He spent many, many, many hours working on his projects. So Liddy had a chance to help him out some as you can see here:

"Mark riiiight here, Dad..." :)

The Fishing game was especially popular this year!

PLINKO!

Concession Stand helpers :)
(L-R Ella Russell, Jessica Russell (her mom), and Marta Bo Barta ;)

 Liddy joined the rest of the "babies" as we call them (though they're really toddlers!!) at a nearby friend's house, but they did get to join in on some of the fun for a little bit!! They loved the mini-golf hole-in-one game due to all of the obstacles! haha...

Jack & Ethan check out the deer they can ride on...

Then Liddy joins in the fun!

Bodie choose a gentler ride on a rabbit :)

 And that brings us to September!! I don't even have those pics uploaded to my computer yet...sheesh!! 

Stay tuned for a post about the fun projects/crafts I've done with Liddy over the summer (some have worked to hold her interest and some not so much... ;)!