July 9, 2017 – joyful parenting

Paper Plate Sea (8)

Travis is enamored with sea creatures now that we’ve returned from the shore. Luckily I had paper plates on hand upon our arrival home, which was all we needed to bring the sea to us!

Paper Plate Sea (1)

To start, I cut out several sea animal shapes from the plates. Travis was eager to help with the scissors, so with some adult guidance he helped cut the snips for jellyfish tentacles and octopus legs.

Paper Plate Sea (2)

Then it was time to decorate! Dot markers were a mess-free and perfect way to make our sea creatures colorful.

Paper Plate Sea (4)

Travis declared his orange and blue fish a clownfish without any prompting!

Paper Plate Sea (3)

Mommy added the smile and eyes onto our jolly octopus after Travis had dotted him all over with yellow.

Paper Plate Sea (5)

Let the paint dry, and then turn your living room into a giant ocean full of swimming sea creatures.

Paper Plate Sea (6)

Spider Walk (4)

Travis recently fell in love with finding spider webs at our vacation house – so I surprised him this morning with a giant tape web on the floor! The web lends itself to lots of games.

First, we made “bugs” to get stuck in the web. I only had 3 pipe cleaners on hand but go ahead and scrunch up as many pipe cleaners as you like to form creepy crawlies.

Spider Walk (2)

We then made up games of tossing the bugs into the sticky web and finding silly ways to get to them: on hands and knees; on tip toes; etc.

Spider Walk (3)

I thought he might also enjoy driving cars through the web, since the tape lines made for perfect racing markers.

Spider Walk (6)

Far more fun than this, however, was Travis’s decision to make his own spider web! He loved putting down each piece of sticky tape, which became a great chance to talk about how real spider webs are sticky, too, and why.

Spider Walk (5)