MN Children's Museum

Summer Fun

Today we went to Toddler Tuesday at the MOA. Isabel was such a trooper with her brother who is teething and not feeling good about being up & about. We didn't get to do as much as we had planned (& the ran out of movie tickets withing 15 minutes) but she did get to do the crafts they had there, go to Legoland, have lunch at Kokomo's (best Mac & Cheese!) and go meet Dora & Boots.
This was a project we did at the end of last week and still have some in the freezer to eat. It's pretty yummy!

Video of Her Summer Ballet

Here is Isabel's video of her ballet. They also did tap & jazz songs too, but it just takes so long to upload something that is a couple minutes.

Her Summer Dance Recital

This is before we left for her recital. I put a little eye makeup on her and she thought that was so special.

There are actually 5 ballet positions that they learn & did, but I didn't get my camera going fast enough, so you just get to see of them.

She received flowers from her grandparents (Thanks again for getting there so early & getting us front row seats!!!!!) and her daddy. She was more than excited to be getting flowers. With several dance recitals a year, she will have received more flower by the time she is 5 that I have in my whole life. Lucky girl.

Backyard Water Fun

More Creativity

Picture One: We put blue & purple finger paints in her hair to geive her colored streaks. She thought that was kind of neat. I thought about doing it after I saw how well it showed up when her brother grabbed her hair (he was more interested in finger painting his sister than his paper, but he did do his project.)

Picture Two: The idea for this project came from Ramblings of a Crazy Woman. She has many other projects we will attempt later. I let Isabel draw the circle & cut it out, we already owned colored popsicles sticks,so we didn't need to paint those. But everything in this project she did on her own. She even drew in lips and gave it a tongue.

PictureThree: The idea from this one came from Blissfully Domestic. We didn't use watercolors, but instead fingerpaints since I was doing it with a preschooler and an 8-month old. For now we are leaving the project as a big piece. These are what the kids are enterting in the county fair for their "flat"art. I might have the kids of some friends I am babysitting on Tuesday do this same project.

Taking the Kids to Lake Kohlemeier

Isabel had a great time practicing swimming and collecting rocks at the beach. I thought she would want to play int he sand more, but she didn't. Her brother was more interested in the sand. Yesterday we took the kids to the pool.

Fantastic Fun Giveaway! Have you Entered?

You have seen all the art work that has been inspired by the Frugal Family Fun Blog, now go to her website and try to win this awesome gift pack of summer fun including a slide&slide, tent, chalk, Melissa & Doug ice cream set, plus many more items.

I Hope I WIN!

More Crafts

We've been home a lot this week (well she still had daily swim lessons & dance class twice a week) but we didn't have day trips planned anywhere, so we had time for her to make crafts while her brother napped.

The three crafts on this page are all from Crafts by Amanda. The colored ice cubes, just our own ide to do with the drip-free popsicles on the day we had a heat index of 104.

This top one is a cute little ladybug. We tend to use washable tempura paint, so our paintings don't appear as dark/solid (you can see paper) and in lieu of fabric circles I thought I would let her sprinkle glitter on and then make black dots with paint. She has been very proud of her crafts. They have all been turning out so well.

We made pink ice cubes for her to put in her drinks on that hot, sticky day. She made flower & heart ice cubes.

Some more little ladybugs made from lids. They were pretty simple. I did have to let her use acrylic paint for these because the tempura paint would not stick. We put them on the shelf in the window facing onto the porch so people can see them right away when they come to visit.

And finally we have our paper plate owl. It turns out there is no orange construction paperin the pack I bought anddug through my craft supplies to see what I had that was orange to use as a beak and decided on a pipecleaner. Who doesn't put orange in a pack of construction paper?

Drip-Free Popsicles

This is the easiest recipe ever and they truly are drip-free. Basically, they are frozen jello.

Drip-Free Popsicles

Regular Box of Jello (flavor of your choice)
1 C Boiling Water
1 C orange juice
mashed fruit of your choice

Boil water. Mash fruit (we mashed 6 large strawberries). Stir jello into hot water until dissolved. Add fruit & juice. Pour into popsicle molds.

We ended up needing 2 popsicle molds for this recipe. If you only have one, you could put the rest in ice cube trays or small paper cups (insert popsicle sticks after a couple hours).

I had to try this recipe for myself to make sure that it was indeed was no-drip & was kid-tested & approved.

Life Jacket Day @ Swim Lessons

She had the best time and is such a good little swimmer.

Froggy Art

The idea for this top one came from Ramblings of a Crazy Woman. We did these both today and I they turned out so cute. The bottom one was an idea I saw somewhere, but for the life of me I can't remember where and I didn't bookmark it and so I can't give credit for that idea rightfully.

Right now they are hanging up with all her other summer artwork, but she plans to use them as puppets in her puppet theater.

More Art Projects

For this one she took out a coloring sheets and was painting it using up the extra paint from her "Ponyo picture". It's hard to tell because the colors are close in shades, but she was actually painting each thing on it's own and she tried to paint things next to each other a different shade.

Isabel made this collage for her daddy one morning. She was just watching a show and then went & gathered a bunch of supplies and sat down & made it while she watched.

This is a picture she drew of Cinderella for the Disney Princess magazine.

This was a fun crown pendant that we made. The idea came from the Disney Princess magazine (we checked it out from the library.)

Art Projects Inspired by Frugal Family Fun Blog

Circuit Board Pencil Holder

We have done several other art project in the past that have been inspired by the Frugal Family Fun Blog. I just love her ideas. I will link the title of each one of these to her blog post about how to make that item. You will notice that we took some artistic liberties and did some different things to our projects.

This first project is a pencil holder for daddy to take to work with him. I suppose we could have made two, but decided to hang up the other half of the painted piece. This one we followed pretty closely, but I did add some clear contact paper over the painted colored paper to make it water resistant. Daddy likes it and thinks it is pretty neat.

Fish Picture (Card)

Ok, for this one they made a card and had taped down some blue paper for the water, so it was more of an inspiration piece that inspired the fish and then she painted the seas as it was in a scene in "Ponyo". So, she calls this her Ponyo picture.

You know, I took a lot more picture of her making all this art work, but I just don't have time to make all the collages and post about them when we are so busy making the art. So, you just get to see the final projects.

Painted Orange Slice

We did a good job following the instructions, but in the end she decided that the seeds needed to be in different spots since they aren't lined up straight in a real orange and are all over in side.

Tie Dyed Sunshine Ornaments

ok - well, the idea was the same for this one, but instead we painted with food coloring thinned with water. And she had to place a flowered jewel in the center of each one "to make it pretty."

Ladybug Picture

I thought this project was so cute. Not sure where the mom from Frugal Family Fun got her leaf paint chips, otherwise I would have used them too. So, I just cut out leaves using patterned scissors on some leftover green tissue paper and I let her draw the branches and veins in the leaves.

Swim Lessons

She has been loving swim lessons this summer and is doing really well in Level 1. Tomorrow they get to bring their life jackets so that they can dive off the diving board. Isabel is VERY excited about this and has known for several days and keeps asking me if it is Tuesday yet.

Cute Camera Phone Pics from This Weekend

Cabin Vacation, July 2-4

We went to daddy's aunt's cabin. She was generous enough to let us use their cabin for the cost of some money for utilities & cleaning up. We had a great time. It's a year-round cabin, so maybe some time we will go there in the fall or winter. I think it would be really pretty to go for a weekend both of those times.

First Day of Swim Lessons

She LOVED it! She did a great job and had a lot of fun. It was cute how excited she was about 5 minutes of free time. During that time she was showing the swim teacher how she could swim under water. The teacher told her her she a really good swimmer already when she saw her doing that. Isabel was very proud of herself. Now, she has 11 more days of class. They do 12 sessions for 40-minutes each right in a row, M-F.

Chutes & Ladders Park 2010

We had a great time and lots of friends came (10 other moms with 2+ kids each and some brought friends too.) This was a playgroup that I had organized. Last year we went with one other family and this year a whole bunch of friends said they wanted to go when we do, so I let them all know and they all came. It was fun.

The next playgroup I have arranged is just for Isabel & a handful of her preschool friends. We will be touring Great Harvest Bakery and then going to Crystal Lake Beach, but this isn't until August. I will arrange a couple more playgroups before the summer is out and we will go to some other we are invited to.