Monday, February 25, 2013

Flying Fun!

     Recently Adam had the very exciting experience of taking his first airplane trip!  My mom, Adam, and I flew to Arizona to surprise my grandma and celebrate her 80th birthday.  We had a wonderful time visiting with family that we see far too infrequently, and loved soaking up some sunshine!  Adam was an absolute champ while we were traveling, and had a great time on the plane! 

Ready to rock and roll!
Lucky kid even got an invite into the cockpit, and made an announcement to the whole plane!
"My tray table is down....where are my snacks?!"
     I was pretty sure that the novelty of flying, combined with a few favorite snacks and some Transformers action figures would be enough to keep Adam entertained during the trip, but I figured it couldn't hurt to have a few fun things to do as well.  Before we left I raided the Dollar Tree and put together six "Mystery Envelopes".  I numbered each one and told Adam that he could choose three on the flight to Arizona, and three on the flight back.  We spaced the activities out with snacking, napping, and being amazed at the views out the window, and the whole experience turned out to be fan-freaking-tastic!  Here's what our envelopes contained......



#1:  A calculator, notebook, and pen/pencil


#2:  Build a Word matching game, and puzzle cards



#3:  Blank foam bookmarks and stickers for decorating


#4:  Small dry erase board with markers


#5:  Spiderman coloring book and crayons



#6:  Shape Magnets (The mini cookie sheet we use for a travel felt/magnet board fit nicely in Adam's carry on backpack along with all the envelopes.  And the aforementioned Transformers and snacks!)


     Adam loved the surprise element of choosing a blank envelope and not knowing what would be inside.  He had fun with all six of the activities, and now....bonus!.....I have six great travel friendly things ready for him to do on our road trip to North Carolina this weekend!  Happy travels, y'all!  :-)






Thursday, February 21, 2013

The "Feely Bin" Chronicles: Volume 2

For our February "feely bin" we went with a dinosaur theme!  (True confession:  in first grade I was completely obsessed with being a paleontologist!)  Adam seems to be having a good time with this bin....but seriously, what's not to love about dinosaurs?!



Dino central!

The base of this bin is dried beans...specifically kidney beans and pinto beans.  I threw in a bag of decorative rocks, (I think they're the kind that are intended for use in vases and such.) two packages of plastic dinos, and an island and some trees from Adam's lego bin.  Super easy, and pretty darned authentically prehistoric if you ask me!  :-)


Might as well look the part!



Who put this tree here?!

I found these really cute foam puzzles that Adam had fun putting together, and we cut apart some classroom type signs to make a little matching game.  I also wrote numbers on paper plates and asked Adam to grab the corresponding number of dinosaurs with his tongs and put them on each plate, although I didn't get a picture of that.  As an extension of the "feely bin" theme, we've been watching some episodes of Dinosaur Train, reading that literary classic Dinosaurs Love Underpants, and googling lots of fun dinosaur facts!  Good stuff all around!


I thought these were pretty gosh darned cool for $1!





I snuck in some cutting practice by having Adam cut out the orange rectangles.



Stay tuned for our March journey into OUTER SPACE!!