Dec 2011 Ornament for swap

Dec 2011 Ornament for swap, Thumbprints of L, P & E
Originally uploaded by LMN and Friends

The kids participated in their first craft exchange- they made this little ornament out of craft sticks, glue, paint, yarn & felt. The snowman is made from the three kids thumbprints (and of course we made extras to give them to grandparents ;) )

We were inspired by this family fun activity: http://familyfun.go.com/magazine/familyfun-magazine-archive/familyfun-june-2011/colorful-crayon-letter-1015552/
Lillian had a great time making this for her teacher, hopefully she'll like it.

Sensory bin

Sensory bin
Originally uploaded by LMN and Friends

Welcome to the new rage- Sensory Bins. Our first indoor sensory bin is rice with all the old train set stuff and a couple random things I found. The girls absolutely love it and I see more sensory bins in the future. Here are some of my ideas:
construction (trucks, rocks, tp tube)
fishing (marbles, fishing rod & fish from swap)
holiday themed
alphabet soup filler & ?
Great ideas here: http://puppydogtails.blogspot.com/p/sensory-bins.html

Sea Shell Project

Oma sent along some beautiful sea shells from the beach and the moment Lillian saw them she exclaimed "I have to make a project!" So we talked about the different ways to hold them onto something and agreed that modeling clay would probably work best. Because I didn't have any on hand I was able to convince her to wait for a day. This morning I looked up a recipe and came across this sawdust clay Well, sawdust is something we have plenty of around here. So we whipped up a batch of sawdust clay & Lillian put her shells in it. As she started to place them we noticed that the clay color was very similar to a beach- how perfect!
The sawdust:



Ok, it sorta looks like a cookie too. But as Phoebe can tell you, it doesn't taste any good.