Another Messy Play Date

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Although messy play can be a lot of work and stressful for parents, there are so many benefits for children.  It helps children develop hand eye coordination and fine motor skills.  It allows children to learn through their senses and explore a variety of new and different materials.  It gives children the opportunity to explore and manipulate materials on their own.  It is process driven and gives children the opportunity to use their creativity and imagination.  


We had our 2nd Messy Play Date this week and once again we had so much fun!  Here is what we had out for the kids to explore:

Avery loves water beads so we went all out with them.  I bought a 1 pound bag of clear water beads plus 3 half ounce bags of colored water beads (I got them in purple, green, and blue). I put the clear water beads in the swimming pool the night before and added 5 red Crayloa Color Bath Dropz.  We threw in some varying clear containers (coffee creamer bottle, tennis ball container, clear bowls, and baby food container).  

We loved making mud cupcakes in our mud pit and I had an extra bag of top soil from our first messy play date so I decided to make a mud kitchen.  We had some spoons, measuring cups, measuring spoons, bowls, muffin tin, pie pans, and cake pans.  I also added a container of flowers to use to decorate their creations (picture is from before I put the flowers out).  

Another favorite taken to a larger scale...cloud dough. The kids used ice cream scoops, a muffin pan, ice cream bowls, spoons, and little silicon bowls to play with the cloud dough.

I found a fun recipe for rainbow slime and thought the kids would love it!  It turned out different than I thought it would but it was great.  

I thought our garden sensory tub would go along nicely with the mud kitchen.  

I saw this fun Barnyard Sensory Station and thought it would be a good one for our group.  I bought a 50 pound bag of clean whole corn from Orscheln and added in some of our farm themed toys plus a couple bowls.  

Avery is really into bubbles lately so I thought we could do a couple of different stations that involved bubbles.  The first was a basic bubble blowing station.  We used my mom's tried and true bubble recipe (1 part Joy Dish Soap, 15 parts Distilled Water, .25 parts White Karo Syrup) and then couple bubble wands.

Bubble Painting was the next bubble related station.  We had a bunch of Crayola Outdoor Colored Bubbles that were the focus of this station.  I also added some spray bottles with water and liquid watercolor since the kids loved them so much as our first messy play date.  The canvas was a full size white sheet that I safety pinned over our monkey bars.

This was the bubble mixing station.  I filled one of our water tables with water and added in some baby shampoo.  The kids used a bunch of whisks and an egg beater to make bubbles.  

 Once again we had our kid wash for clean up...

...and a water table.

Since it was so hot out I also added a swimming pool full of sponges as an additional clean up station and as a way to stay cool.  I made a bunch of blue and yellow ice cubes in a variety of shapes and put them in a cooler right next to the pool.  We used the blue ones first and when we were done with those I got out the yellow ones.  The kids loved playing with the ice and they thought it was really cool when the water turned from blue to green when the yellow ice was added.  

We had quite a few more stations this time around than the first but we also had a lot more kids, the first one we had six and this time we had 12 kids.  

I didn't do as good a job taking pictures of the kids exploring as I did last time but it was a lot busier!!  Hopefully you get the basic idea!  The two favorites were by far the water bead and the mud kitchen.  The least favorite was the bubble painting.  The bubbles didn't work to well, they just kind of bounced off the sheet and didn't really pop the way I had hoped.  Overall though, another successful messy play date.  I'm hoping to get one more in before summer is over!


Go here to see where I am linking up!

Baby Play Date

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Since I hosted a play date for the 2 year olds in our mom group (our messy play date), I figured I should also host a play date for the under 1 kids.  I wanted to keep it pretty simple but also give them some fun stuff to do.  The weather was perfect that week so I knew I wanted to let the little ones play outside.  I decided on setting up 3 stations.  First, I laid out some blankets and put out 2 different infant treasure baskets and a little wagon full of other baby toys.  The babies loved the treasure baskets!  They spent so much time investigating and exploring all the goodies inside them.  I put out our all things shiny basket and our all things wooden basket (I added a couple more things to each one so there would be plenty for everyone).

Next, we set up 2 little kiddie pools.  One had some pool toys thrown in and the other didn't.  One of the little girls spent pretty much the whole time crawling back and forth between the two pools.  It was really cute!  Parker loved it, too!  She wasn't really interested in the toys, mostly splashing and watching the other babies kept her occupied!

Last, Eric and I made a redneck waterbed for the babies to lay on and/or crawl on.  I had seen this idea on Pinterest and had been wanting to make one for a while so this was the perfect excuse  I used a clear plastic sheet (painters' tarp) that was 25' by 10' and 6 mil thick.  We folded the tarp in half and sealed it shut with duct tape (leaving a small hole in one corner for filling).  We put 3 pieces of duct tape on each side.  The first sealing the 2 sides together and then another one on the top and one on the bottom.  It worked really well and I only had one corner that I had to patch.  This one had mixed reviews from the babies, some loved it and some hated it!  Parker loved it!  Her favorite thing was when Avery would run across it or jump on it and the waves would rock her up and down.  She would just laugh and laugh!

We will definitely be getting it out again this summer!  


I'd say the under 1 play date was a success!  All of the babies found a least one activity they enjoyed.  And it was a great way for the babies to stay cool and have fun while the mommas got to hang out and chat!

Linking up to: 

It's Playtime 

Social Butterflies

Pin It Now! It's a really good thing that we had the party last weekend and not this one because Avery and I have been so busy this week.  I wouldn't have had time to run all my errand and get everything ready in time.  But I love weeks when we are busy and have a lot to do, it makes the time go by faster and it's so good for Avery to get out and about, see new things, and interact with other kids.  Tuesday we went with our playgroup to a local farm.  It was so much fun to see all the animals, they had pigs, goats, emus, chickens, bumblebees, and peacocks.   My favorite were probably the piglets, but boy were they stinky!

  It also gave me a chance to practice some of our baby sign with the real, live animals right there, which was pretty cool.

We had a pretty good turn out for the playdate, we had 8 families, which totaled 11 kids and 19 people in all, not too bad.  As cool as the animals were, the kids favorite part was playing on this little tiny swing-set!  It was pretty funny!


Starting Thursday and going through this weekend my mom is babysitting for this boy (we'll call him C) who lives in her neighborhood while his parents go on a trip.  I call him a boy but he's not really a boy.  It's kind of a sad story but when C was 4 years old he was put on a medicine for his asthma and he ended up having a seizure due to the medicine and he has never been the same (so scary to think about as a mom).  He still has seizures and at age 27 he functions like a 3 year old.  He had progressed up to a 5 year old but the seizures that he continues to have have caused him to regress again.  Well, on Thursday my mom and C came over for lunch.  We had a great time, C held Avery and was so good with her.  He kept giving her little kisses on her head and telling her that he loved her.  So adorable!


That night I had a game night with some friends in the neighborhood.  We played Guesstures, it was so much fun and we laughed so much.  One of our friends even stopped by with her 6 day old baby.  She was so cute and tiny!  It was a wonderful evening of fantastic friends, great conversation, delicious food, and LOTS of laughs!  Gotta love evenings like that!


Friday was the beginning of Gourmet Gals.  It's a monthly luncheon that one of my friends (we'll call her D) is starting.  Once a month she'll come up with a theme (this month was kid friendly meals) and everyone brings a dish and the recipe for it.  Then we get to try out the foods.  D is starting a blog where she is going to put all the recipes with pictures so that we'll have a little online cookbook of everything we got to try.  Such a great, fun idea!!  The first one was wonderful.  The kids all played while we ate and talked!  Avery was kind of at this weird, in between age though.  The kids were either way older then her (3 or 4) or way younger then her (5 months and under).  So she got kind of frustrated, too little to play what the big kids were but the little ones didn't really do anything but lay there.  Oh well, she still had fun trying to play with them all.  D's son G was so sweet, he kept giving Avery hugs and telling her how much he liked her!  I'm so looking forward to the next one!


The week ended with a mom's night out with our playgroup.  Eric's on call this weekend so my dad came over and hung out so that if he got called in I didn't have to come rushing home.  Once again, we had great food and even better conversation.  I love this mom's group that I found, it has been such a great way to meet other moms and give Avery and I stuff to do during the week!


Phew!!  Now I'm ready for a nice, relaxing family weekend!  Hope you have a great one!

What a Week

Pin It Now! Avery and I have had a great week (for the most part) while Eric has been gone, though we have missed him a ton.  We've actually stayed pretty busy which has helped it to go by quickly.  Monday we ran the errands for the week, grocery store and Target.  Tuesday we went shopping for some new clothes for Avery, she's about to start wearing 12 to 18 month clothing and didn't have too many.  From all the baby showers we were pretty well taken care of until this point so I got her quiet a few things.  We went to Children's Orchard, which I love.  In case you don't know what it is, it's a used clothing store for kids (they also have some toys).  I got her 3 outfits, 2 jeans, and 4 shirts all for about $50, way less then I would have paid in a regular store and I got great brands in wonderful condition.  Love a good deal! Wednesday we went to a friends house for lunch and Thursday we had a play date with our playgroup.  However, I am not looking forward to today's errand, heading to the DMV to get our new car licensed and the tax paid!  UGH!!  I waited until after the end of the month for this one so hopefully it won't be too bad.


I said we had a great week for the most part because the nights haven't been going as well as they usually do.  Avery goes to bed at about 7:45 and usually only gets up once a night for a quick feeding around 4 or 5 in the morning and then goes back to sleep until 7:15 or so.  Not sure what is going on this week (Eric gone, approaching a new milestone, sleep regression, etc.) but it has not been going that smoothly.  She goes down great but 3 of the 5 nights she has gotten up at 1 am and has not wanted to get back to sleep.  Sunday she stayed up for 1 hr and 50 min, Tuesday she was up for 1 hrs, and Wednesday she was up for 1 hr and 10 min.  UGH!!!  Eric being gone has made it especially hard since I have to do it all by myself.  Needless to say I've been a little tired this week!  Luckily it hasn't effected naps or her mood at all, which has been nice.  I really hope that once Eric gets back today things will go back to normal.  We'll have to wait and see how it goes tonight!