{this post contains affiliate links}While Halloween may be over for most, today Miss G and I celebrated once again with the wonderful mamas and munchkins of our play school co-op. Now, while she very easily could have worn the mermaid costume I made just a couple of days back, I couldn’t help but make Grae another one… A paper bag princess costume based on one of my favourite Robert Munsch books, The Paper Bag Princess!
Grae and I absolutely love putting together fun play kits as gifts, especially when they involve sensory play materials. While we’ve made a very simple homemade play dough kit previously, time around we decided to make the birthday boy a colourful kit filled with a rainbow of play dough and a bunch of fun tools and loose parts to up its play possibilities.
While Miss G may have decided that she wanted to dress-up like a mermaid months ago, in true Jen fashion, I started the costume last night – the night before Halloween {like I did last year, and the year before that}. Honestly – I wanted to start it weeks ago, but I just didn’t have any clue how I was going to pull it off. I’d scoured the internet for clever ideas, but the combination of Miss G needing to be able to walk down flights upon flights of stairs while trick-or-treating and my not having a sewing machine really didn’t turn up any viable options.
By now, I think it’s pretty obvious that Miss G and I love to make and give homemade gifts. I love giving something unique that can’t just be purchased at a store, and I think we both love the process of coming up with an idea, collecting the materials, and putting it all together in a fun way. Our gifts are never overly involved {okay, with the exception of the portable activity packs maybe}, but they’re fun and normally aim to inspire play and creativity, which is very much us.
Not going to lie, this week’s preschool book club was a bit of a tough one… Tough because firstly, we couldn’t find the book anywhere. We visited bookshops, we visited grocery stores with book sections, we visited our school’s library, and we asked pretty much all of our friends. No book! Brad eventually scrounged up a digital version for us to see on the iPad, but after a friend suggested it this morning, I’m guessing that one of Kuwait’s many Instagram shops would have had it! I hadn’t thought of that. {Is this an around the world thing, or a Kuwait specific thing? Here you can order almost anything via Instagram and Whatsapp and have the items delivered to your door.} The second thing that made this week’s PBC challenging was that without the book physically in my hands, I had no inspiration. For the life of me, I couldn’t think of a fun activity to go with it. It was frustrating. Eventually though, I thought of something {a very simple math game focused on addition and subtraction} and it’s pretty awesome. Not awesome because it was crazy cool or unique, but awesome because Gracen did not want to stop playing. In fact, we played from about 9:00 to 10:45 a.m. yesterday morning. One round after the next – non-stop! I love when something that was initially challenging turns out so well.
Today was one of those days were you roll out of bed, do nothing all morning, and then when lunchtime rolls around, realize you’ve done nothing all morning and kick it into high gear for the rest of the day. Despite a very emotional couple of hours in the afternoon, it was exactly what we needed. Our morning was filled with books, cuddles, manicures, pretend play, and Miss G’s first ever taste of {dark} chocolate chip pancakes, while the afternoon took us into tear-apart-the-house-and-clean-and-reorganize-everything mode. Gracen was the best little helper and kept saying, ‘Sure! Of course I’ll do that for you, Mama. I’ll always help you.’ It pretty much melted my heart. Then there were a couple very emotional hours that were soothed by a candlelit lavender bath, followed by a comfort food dinner and bedtime. Ahhh…
manicure station // mama’s turn
surprise pancakes // chocolate chip!
organized // clean, finally
lavender bath // deconstructed lasagna
This afternoon we headed down to Fahaheel for some fun around the fish market and fountains before sitting down to an outdoor dinner at Paul….
With Halloween just a couple of weeks away, Miss G and I have been talking a lot about what kinds of treats she wants to handout to her friends this year… Of course since she’s a sugar-free kid, we stick to sugar-free treats, which means we have to be a little more creative. This week, we’ve been having fun coming up with all sorts of cute non-candy Halloween treats and we figure that these five snacks would be perfect to share with classmates or friends. They’re all simple to make, they’re all healthy {or at least relatively healthy}, and in the words of Grae, they’re all ‘SOOO CUTE!’
You know those projects that seem to sit on your to do list for ages and ages without actually getting done? That’s these cute little wooden cherries! In fact, if I’m being completely truthful, they’re almost a year in the making… Oy.
Early this morning Miss G asked me if we could play an adding game {the girl loves addition currently}. Not having anything prepared, I quickly scanned the room for something that could be turned into a math game without much fuss. Our ever-growing LEGO collection caught my attention first and I knew it had potential. I grabbed several bricks as well as a couple of just-purchased wooden dice {in coordinating colours, obviously ☺}. I figured we could use the dice to generate our addition questions and the LEGO bricks as counters, then added in the plastic serving tray just to give the game a defined playing area and surface.
The fact that it’s fall doesn’t rule out ice cream shop pretend play, does it? Because today when Miss G realized that it had been a looong time since we last played with cloud dough {the last time probably would have been when we had our indoor beach kicking around}, ice cream play is what came to mind.
Gosh, I love setting out fun play invitations for my girl. This one, set out today for our Thanksgiving celebration is nothing new, but the classics are classics for a reason, right? My kindergarten students used to love creating colourful feathered play dough turkeys at our play dough station and Miss G loved it just as much too!
Today, we celebrated Thanksgiving with our Kuwait family. We hosted a traditional turkey dinner for 30+ people which meant our apartment was loud and busting at the seams, but in the very best way possible. I’m beyond grateful to have so many wonderful people in our lives. People that make being away from home on a typically very family-filled weekend less hard and more fun. I didn’t manage to take all that many photos throughout the day as I was kept fairly busy with my hosting duties, but here’s a little peek at what this year’s Thanksgiving in Kuwait looked like…
Truth be told, I’ve never loved the name ‘busy box’. Or ‘busy bag’ for that matter. It’s ridiculous, I know, but I think I associate both with the term ‘busy work’ from my teaching days, which to me, is basically work {often of very little value} that keeps kids busy and out of the teacher’s hair. Not my cup of tea. I figure that if a teacher is going to expect her students to engage in some sort of activity or work, it shouldn’t simply keep them busy {that’s a waste of time} – it should engage them, challenge them, and teach them something worthwhile along the way – right?? Well, after looking at many, many activities labeled as busy boxes or bags, I learned that most of them do all of those things. Most of them are fun, playful, and help little ones build on some sort of skill {or multiple skills at once}. And yes, they are easy to pull out during times when you’d like your little one to play quietly and/or independently {while you shower, during restaurant and doctor’s office waits, during quiet time, etc.}, but that’s only because you’ve taken the time to prep the fun in advance – not because they’re anything like boring busy work. And so, because I’ve finally made peace with the term, here’s our first busy box – a LEGO patterns busy box. ☺
Yay! Another week means another instalment of preschool book club with our online friends, which Miss G and I both just love.