Today Gracen’s autumn nature shelf got a much needed makeover…
Gone are the crunchy leaves, dried out sunflowers, mini pumpkins, new apples, and shedding cattails…
And in are the bare branches, pinecones, evergreen limbs, and dried red berries.
If we’re striving for accuracy, the title ‘Christmas shelf’ would probably be more appropriate at this point, but we’re sticking with ‘nature shelf’ because soon enough all of the little Christmas extras (many of which were mine when I was little) Miss G carefully selected and added will be tucked away until next year and we’ll be back to having shelves filled with plain ol’ nature things.
And because we don’t have quite as many wintery things as we did autumn-y things, we decided to use the bottom shelves for seasonal books, which Gracen loves having on display.Here’s a look at our mini transformation…
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Last night, I sliced my finger open {after my very favourite ever vintage mixing bowl fell from our infamous mountain of clean, drying dishes and shattered all over the floor *sob*}. As I shuffled through our catch-all closet to retrieve the first aid kit, I stumbled upon a giant bag of forgotten about epsom salt. And that’s how this random little sensory activity began. ☺
Having used regular salt {on trays} for drawing and letter printing practice in my classroom many times before, I knew that epsom salt would be just as fun. But to amp it up a little and make it more festive, we decided to turn out plain old epsom salt into the candy cane variety with a little peppermint extract and food colouring.
Of course my little helper did most of the work. 
Then we added a spoonful of peppermint extract. And because this was the white batch, zipped up the bag tightly…
And shook it up.
We repeated the process twice more, this time adding food colouring into the mix. The end result was a tray of minty fresh, candy cane-coloured epsom salt just begging for little hands to play with it.
I gathered up a few spoons and some silicon muffin cups, and Miss G retrieved some Christmas cookie cutters.
Then she got to playing.
First up was making “pucktakes” (cupcakes according to our silly little girl).
Of course pucktakes need candies and cherries on top, so off she went to collect some buttons.
This simple little sensory station kept her happily engaged while I made dinner and washed a big load of dishes, plus our whole kitchen smelled deliciously of peppermint.
And the fun didn’t stop there… When bath time rolled around, Miss G picked her very favourite epsom salt cupcake to take along with her.
Don’t ask me how I come up with these things… Tonight as I was running a bath for Miss G, I randomly decided to surprise her with a special themed bath. I basically gathered up a few things from our 
Gracen was super excited when I dramatically flung open the shower curtain to reveal her surprise bath and immediately jumped in.
I was a little bit worried about her sitting on the hard items by accident, but she automatically cleared them out of the way as soon as she climbed in without me having to say a thing. 
Two things to keep in mind when converting your bath tub into a mini ocean… Make sure the ocean items are washed in warm soapy water first (duh!) and try to pick rocks and shells that are smooth so that no little tushies are poked during the fun.
The huge part of the fun of course is swimming around in the tub with sharks and whales and crocodiles… We got these little sea creatures at the dollar store quite a while ago, but you can find them at toy stores and teacher stores too. 
While we had our painter’s tape out for our 
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This afternoon as Gracen and I were working on our 
I’m not quite sure how it all happened, but before long, we were both sitting on the floor ripping off pieces of tape and creating this little indoor roadway.
As I snipped pieces of tape in half lengthwise and begun adding our lanes, Miss G gathered up her car and tractors.
She started driving her vehicles around on it as soon as she could and we even had a few “races” {and collisions}. 
This is such a simple {and inexpensive idea}, yet it brings hours of fun and endless possibilities. Brad came home from work and immediately commented on our dead ends, so there may revamp in our near future. 
Of course, when it’s not being used as a roadway for cars, it can aways be used as a roadway for people. ☺
During nap time, I used different objects from around the house as tracers to cut the large sheets into an assortment of shapes. I placed the shapes, along with a spray bottle filled with water, on a tray next to our large front window, and left it there for my curious little monkey to discover upon her awakening.
Of course she beelined to the tray the moment she was up. I explained that we could use water to help the shapes stick to the window, and she was off. A little mist….
And stick a shape on top. 
Voila! Instant window art. Super fun and super easy.
It didn’t take her long to realize that looking through the shapes was pretty cool too… “Mama! Everything is all pink!”
Of course the previous method works well for seeing the outside world in pink, but this is much more effective for making your house turn pink.
The really cool thing about the fact that our shapes are primary colours is that they lend themselves to colour mixing very well. Grae was amazed at all of the colours she could make by simply overlapping two shapes.
And after experimenting with colour mixing, she tried sorting the pieces into groups based on shapes and colours.
And soon after that, the pieces started becoming pictures of things. The triangles stacked on top of one another became her tree and the tower of large circles became her snowman (if you look closely, you’ll see she is in the process of adding buttons to her snowman’s belly).
I was raking leaves like a mad woman when I noticed that Grae had invented her own little game in the pile of leaves she was playing in. She played round after round as I sat back quietly chuckling to myself as I watched. First, she’d toss her little rake into the pile somewhere, then burry it with leaves and call out “Where’s Grae Grae’s rake? Hmmm… I don’t know!” while holding her hands out up to the sky wandering through the pile…
Then she’d sort through the leaves, eventually find it, and retrieve it.
Then proudly stand up and announce “There it is! There’s Grae Grae’s rake!!!” 
After 
This project is perfect for when you have some packaging styrofoam sitting around in your garage, but you can also find styrofoam {and floral foam} pieces at places like Urban Source, as well as at craft stores and dollar stores. (Perhaps knowing that the pieces can be used again and again will help you feel less guilty about purchasing styrofoam in the first place? I know…. It’s a stretch, but I’m trying.)
Of course, when you’re constructing, safety’s got to come first – so goggles were also included. ☺
Instead of giving instructions, I simply asked Gracen, “Do you want to build something?” After an enthusiastic “YES!”, she got to work. 
I was pretty amazed with how quickly she figured out that the sticks could be used to attach two styrofoam pieces to each other. She worked away on her masterpiece, concentrating first on the top portion, and later on the sides.
The only tricky part was the whole cutting thing… While I do let her cut things when we cook together, she hasn’t quite mastered the sawing method yet. Instead, she opts for pushing her knife straight through the objects, which may work well with bananas, but doesn’t work so well with styrofoam.
With cutting being a little too challenging, she moved onto enhancing her styrofoam disc instead of deconstructing it. I found it very interesting that she began using the rivets as enclosures for other materials.
After a good long hour of constructing, Grae decided it was time to tip her structure over on its side to do some more ‘work’ there.
Here’s what her structures looked like after nearly and hour and 20 minutes of play. Pretty cool, right? 
Basically, all we do is toss a pillow back and forth. Seriously, that’s it. A pillow is easier to catch than a ball, it’s as soft as can be (even when you get whacked in the head repeatedly), and apparently throwing a pillow around is hilarious. 
I’ve seen 
This afternoon we took out our crate, opened it up, and found all of the materials needed to put together a window garden. Needless to say, my little gardening enthusiast was thrilled.
Included was a clearly laid out instruction card complete with diagrams, and a sweet little observation booklet for Miss G to draw in. 
We carefully set up the garden, referring back to the instruction card after each step. Gracen, Miss ‘Let’s Do a Project!’, loved it and took her work very seriously.
With the exception of really making sure the suction cups were stuck to the window and printing the words “mint” and “basil”, Grae was able to do everything on her own, which was lovely.
We now have a sweet little garden set up right in our living room and I can’t wait to help Grae water it each day and watch as our fresh herbs grow. ☺
Okay, so we didn’t actually mean to do it in the dark, but then again, we didn’t plan on making a leaf maze in the first place. We had actually headed outside so that Gracen could play and I could rake up and compost our mounds of leaves and tidy up the yard, but meh – making a leave maze just seemed like more fun.
I’ve seen this idea on 
Grae found her way through several times and then asked, “Make maze more tricky, Mama?”
So with a few minor adjustments, we had a new, trickier maze for her to try. 
It met her approval and then she decided she’d try driving her tractors through for something different… A fantastic idea if you ask me!
Today Miss G and I tried making and playing with the ridiculously fun {and equally messy} substance called Oobleck. It’s made out of only 2 ingredients (or 3 if you want to add a little colour), and it isn’t quite a liquid and it isn’t really a solid… In fact, it behaves like both. 
All you need in order to make Oobleck is water and cornstarch, plus food colouring if you wish.
I like to start by adding the colouring to the water first because it’s a lot easier to stir colouring into water than into the finished Oobleck.
Plus, this way you get to watch the colouring disperse into the water, which is always kind of neat.
Start by giving your water a little stir to make sure the colouring is evenly dispersed.
Then add your cornstarch a cup at a time, stirring it into the water as you go.
When the mixture is nice and thick and you’re not able to pour off any excess water, your Oobleck is ready.
To set up a simple pomegranate play station for her, I sliced the pomegranate in half, cut a cross about an inch deep on the flat surface of one of the halves, and popped it in a big bowl of cool water for her. (Removing the seeds of a pomegranate in water is by far the best way to do it. Keeping the fruit submerged in water seems to loosen everything up a little, plus it prevents nasty pomegranate stains from occurring. )
I also set out a little tray of “tools” which included a small bowl, a teaspoon, and a large slotted spoon.
Without any direction or modelling, I asked her, “Do you want to play?” She of course let out an immediate “YES!” and jumped right in.
Right away, she began pulling apart the peel and pulp, digging out the seeds (which are actually called ‘arils’, but who says that?) by scraping her finger along the membranes, and adding them to the small yellow bowl. (Keep in mind that she has watched me do this before.)
And before long, she requested another small bowl for the “white yucky parts”. 
The other neat thing about taking apart pomegranates while they’re in water is that the seeds sink down to the bottom and the white membrane bits float to the top, making sorting the two very easy.
After she’d realized this, Grae worked on removing the white bits with her slotted spoon for quite some time, but eventually retired the spoon and went straight to using her hands.
And in the end, not only did we have a very happy {and speckled} little lady, but we also had a big bowl of pomegranate seeds just waiting to be eaten up. ☺
