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Sunshiny Art, Three Ways

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Baby it’s hot outside! But instead of lamenting the fact, Travis and I are using the sun as our accomplice in art.

First, we made suncatchers. This is a craft we’ve done before but it never loses its luster. Use markers to color over coffee filters – the more colors the better! Spritz with water to bleed the colors together.

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Once dry, we made paper frames by cutting rectangles out of white paper and taping around the filters. Place them in the window to catch the sun!

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Then we headed outside with a long roll of craft paper to make shadow portraits. Have your child stand so that the paper catches their shadow (you might have to lay it down a few times before you get the right angle). Trace around the shadow.

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Travis filled in his outline with a smile and clothes – all orange today!

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I challenged him to draw my shadow next. This task was tough, especially because he lost his place when the sun went behind a cloud, but it was great tracing practice.

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Finally, we returned to another oldie-but-goodie: sun prints. Place toys or other items on a piece of dark construction paper. Travis liked placing the items just so.

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Wait a few hours, then check and see if the image of the items remains on the paper. The longer the sun bleaches your paper, the more pronounced the effect will be.

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Thanks for helping out, Mr. Sun!

Wave Bye-Bye

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The more you model the behavior of saying and waving bye-bye, the sooner your baby will understand this important gesture of human communication. Today, Veronika and I played a few fun “bye-bye” games.

For the first, I hid a toy inside a box, first saying, “Bye-bye toy!” I made sure to give a little wave.

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She eagerly reached right into the box each time to dig out the toy, and we repeated the process over and over until she tired of it.

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Another adorable version is to sit your child on one side of a door frame. With a big smile and wave, say, “bye-bye!” and then disappear around the corner. Immediately pop back into view and say, “hello again!” I remember this getting huge smiles from Travis as a baby, and now it was Veronika’s turn.

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Finally, say bye-bye all over the place throughout your day. You can do this when you leave a location (“bye-bye library!”) or a person (“bye-bye Grammy!”). Veronika looks like she wants to give a wave, and the more I model, the sooner she will.

On a personal note, we turn today to say “bye-bye” to our apartment, the only home Veronika has ever known. Here’s to new beginnings and many hellos to come!

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Where O Where is O?

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O is usually one of the first letters that children feel comfortable tracing, since it’s just drawing a circle. After confidently doing his tracing for the day, I sent Travis on a hunt: He needed to locate three things in the apartment that looked like an O.

At first he spotted the underside of his marker, but I knew he could look harder than that.

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After some searching, he soon had an assembly: a paper plate, mommy’s bracelet, and a toy from his baby sister.

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For lower case o, I simply asked him to form one with his hand. This was an easy day!

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Make Your Baby Laugh

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Veronika has developed the most impish sense of humor; she cackles with her big brother when she knows the two of them are being slightly naughty, like playing with the fabric of the couch instead of taking her nap, or giggling together in the back seat of the car. The best is when she treats us to her big belly laugh, and we’re always on the hunt for new ways to make it erupt.

Here are a few ideas to try with your eight month old! First, I fell back on the old parental favorite: making silly faces. This got big happy grins, especially when I make bubbly sounds with my lips.

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Next I tickled her thighs and tummy. This got a giggle, but still not a belly laugh.

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Finally, I pretended that her feet were really stinky and smelly, and made faces of disgust. Cue the belly laugh!

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While you’re at it, don’t forget to nurture your own sense of humor. I sometimes tell my husband I have no brain capacity for anything more serious than a sitcom at the end of the day, and I truly mean that. After dealing with little humans non-stop for 15 hours, I need comedy!

Find one that makes you belly laugh, even if that means old re-runs.

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You can also curl up with a book that makes you laugh out loud (might I recommend anything P.G, Wodehouse?) or head to the theater for laughs if you can get a babysitter. Even some kids movies these days have comedy of high caliber, like a recent family outing to Toy Story 4, meaning you can skip the babysitter altogether.

What makes you laugh these days? What makes your baby laugh? Please share in the comments!

Baby Squats and Mama Bench Presses

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Veronika is just about at that age when babies start pulling up. To encourage the motion, today she did her squats!

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Hold your baby on your lap, with his or her feet firmly on your thighs. As many times as he or she will tolerate, let them push up to stand and then squat back down.

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The first few times we played the game, she would hang her feet in the air, uncertain what to do.

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Then she started to get the hang of using those leg muscles. Veronika didn’t know she was getting exercise, she just loved the up and down motion.

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When she put her weight on her feet, I encouraged her with a big grin and a “Soooo big!”

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After baby gets some exercise, why not reverse things and fit in a few quick moves of your own? Because she can support her upper body completely now, it was time for some Veronika bench presses. Lie flat on your back with your knees bent and hold your baby on your tummy, then lift high into the air. A work out for mama and an airplane ride for baby!

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Or why not flip over and do push ups? For this one, I lay Veronika on her back and assumed push up position over her.

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We nuzzle noses and say I love you each time I press down and then she giggles as I push back up again.

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Note: All photo credits in this post go to big brother Travis!

Noodle N

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Travis traced the letter N today and enjoyed the two challenges I presented him with after to make 3-D models.

For the first, I gave him three new pencils. Could he figure out how to position the three to form upper case N?

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He had to work closely from a picture to see how it was done, but soon had the first two pencils positioned correctly.

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Hmm, should that final pencil be straight up and down, or at an angle? Tada!

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Our lower case n made him giggle. Ahead of time, I had cooked a few pieces of spaghetti. I gave him a cooked piece and an uncooked piece. The hard noodle became the straight line of n.

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He wiggled around the cooked noodle to form the rest of the letter. Then impishly gobbled it up!

Paper Doll Chain

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In a continuing unit on symmetry, today I thought Travis might like to see an old-fashioned paper doll chain. Making it was good fun… but even more so was the interesting way he created to play with it!

First, cut a piece of construction paper into two long rectangles. Travis helped with this part, which was great for scissor practice.

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Fold the paper in half three times. Pencil in a person, making sure the arms and legs extend all the way to the crease.

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I let Travis cut along the straight lines through all those thick layers of paper – even better scissor practice! I helped out on the trickier bits, like around the head.

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Extend the chain of people out and you’ll see perfectly symmetrical dolls! We did a review of what this means to have symmetry, and he understood that they were all the same because of the way we’d folded the paper.

Then to my amusement, the dolls were lined up in battle formation, a little phalanx to join his action figure battle games!

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Banana Talk

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This quick game was an adorable way to play with Veronika at mealtime. It’s about concrete learning on the one hand – vocabulary, taste, texture – but also introduces a playful silliness that your baby can understand now, at eight months old. Banana phones are a classic of a reason!

I came over to Veronika’s tray carrying a banana up to my ear. Hello hello hello? I had a quick chat into the phone, and passed it to her.

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She looked at it in wonder and wanted to grab for it, of course.

Big brother wanted to have a quick turn on the phone call too!

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Next I turned back one edge of the banana peel and let her pull it the rest of the way down. Bananas are the perfect process food!

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She looked amazed as she worked her way around the whole peel – and then of course we broke off bites to eat and share!

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Reply to Your Baby

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Reply Baby (3)

I had a nice realization this morning that Veronika never uses a newborn’s instinctual cries of “neh” or “heh” or “eh” anymore. Her babble is big baby babble!

My favorite these days is when I catch her in avid conversation, usually either with her food or her toys. She’ll try out new sounds (p and w are favorites in her repertoire these days), and it looks like she has a whole animated story going on in her head.

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Today I made a point of talking back. Whether I imitate her consonants and vowels or use real words, Veronika looks so pleased when she “talks” with us.

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For further fun, I sat her down with big brother Travis and let the two of them have a “chat.” Travis – who is so eager for Veronika’s first word – loved this game, which soon had them laughing between the babbles.

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Here’s a quick clip of a chat today!

Any activity like this will only help foster your baby’s language development, so talk early and often.

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Silly Symmetrical Socks

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Travis has been learning about symmetry lately, but this was the first time I challenged him to make something symmetrical without a template to follow. He was gamely up for the challenge!

I folded a piece of paper in half and drew a sock. How many socks did I have? I asked him. One, he guessed.

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I unfolded the paper to reveal… two socks! He thought this was a neat trick.

Symmetrical Socks (2)Now it was time to add silly decorations. For each one, fold a piece of paper in half and cut out shapes or designs. Travis loved discovering each time that he had duplicates of each shape.

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I helped Travis ponder where on the socks each shape needed to go to keep them symmetrical. At first he had things a little reversed (the heel of one sock and the toe of the other, for example) but as he worked, he got the hang of it!

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This is a simple and quirky project that will give a great visual about symmetry to little learners.

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