Saturday, March 03, 2012

Afternoon Activities~Pinterest Inspired!

We've discovered that Wren is a *much* happier girl if we're able to do an activity of any sort to entertain her throughout the day. She loves spending time in her playroom and is becoming quite the little craftaholic, which makes for one proud Momma!

She's really into anything having to do with painting, drawing, coloring, etc. We had several unexpected hours of free time this afternoon, so I turned to Pinterest and came up with a few fun activities for she and I to do together.

It's really amazing to see how cranky and unhappy Wren can be when we're downstairs, versus the happy-go-lucky little thing you see in these pictures. And thankfully, the happy girl stayed the entire rest of the day! I'm convinced she just needs a little bit of creative stimulation each day, which I'm happy to try to provide.
Check out that little tongue! This girl is very serious about her art, apparently.

First up, we tackled this fun little activity, which, honestly, as simple as it is, I would NEVER have thought of on my own. Thank the great Lord above for Pinterest, I tell ya!

Nothing beats quick, easy and FREE when it comes to entertaining your child!
Wren absolutely loved this activity. She did pretty well with keeping the water on the chalkboard, but she did venture over to one of her Little People sets once, and she decided to "paint" the wall and the large roll of paper on the back of her chalkboard, but the great thing is it's JUST water! Clean-up was a breeze.
She did get a little wet, but that's because I was encouraging her to dip her fingers in and make handprints on the chalkboard.
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After a quick sweatshirt change, we headed downstairs to prepare our next activity.
While donwstairs for just a few minutes, we had no less than 2 meltdowns and one boo-boo on the forehead.
Like I said, she prefers to be up in her playroom!

But I quickly gathered the supplies for our next project, which were some colored balls and some food containers. I cut holes of different sizes in the top of the containers and we were ready to go. 
This activity occupied Wren for probably 30 minutes, maybe more. 
*I will say that close supervision IS needed for this one. Wren still likes to "taste" anything she has, so she didn't ever keep anything in her mouth, but I had to tell her a few times that it wasn't for her to eat. I wouldn't let her do this without being right there with her.*

She would pop them in all the different holes, then pick it up and shake-shake-shake-it, 
then we'd dump it out and start again... 
Repeat, Repeat, Repeat.
You can see how much she loved it: 
I also like that there is a learning component to this one. We're really trying to work on colors, so this was a great activity for that. As we do it more, we'll work harder at separating the colors out. But it was also good for having her put the larger pieces in the larger holes, and vice versa.

This silly little thing loved her this activity so much that she needed to rock with it. She has this quirky little habit of wanting to "hoard" any small items that she really likes. She'll shove them behind her while in a chair, so I knew she loved this activity when she decided that it was "hoard-worthy."
 
Happy Little Hoarder: 
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Our final activity didn't go over quite as well. 
The plan was to lace pipe cleaners through the colander, but not only was Wren disinterested because she was busy hoarding her colored balls, but I also think this was a little bit advanced for her. I couldn't find my colored pipe cleaners,so maybe that would have made it more interesting. They're not hard to get in the holes, but Wren just wasn't catching on to the concept of putting them IN the holes. She was great about taking them OUT of the holes! So I think we'll hold off for a few weeks/months and revisit this one.

All in all, Pinterest wins again.
Happy Kid=Happy Mommy.