Buckets of Fun!

I decided to change it up a little bit and give Wyokiddo some water time without setting up the sprinkler.  I set her up with her stacking buckets and a few toys borrowed from the sandbox and bath bag and found a nice sunny spot in the driveway.  She had buckets of fun, literally!  She spent almost an hour dunking toys, dumping water and generally making a big, wet mess.  She eventually figured out I was refilling buckets from the faucet on the side of the house.  When a bucket was empty, she'd toddle to the side of the house, stick her bucket under the faucet and beg for more water.  Even the dogs got in on some of the water fun, draining a bucket or two when Wyokiddo dropped her guard!

Setup and clean up was simple...gather up the buckets and let everything air dry!  If you don't have buckets, storage containers of any size would work.

Fun with Foil

I bought a new photography book and was eager to practice using my camera, so I wanted  to set up Wyokiddo with a quick activity.  She's been into exploring new textures lately, so I cut up some squares of wax paper and tin foil and let her explore!  She had fun crumpling the tin foil and combining crumpled balls into bigger crumpled balls of tin foil.  I made some strips that I wrapped around her wrists and legs like bracelets, which Wyokiddo thought was a hoot.  I didn't get much done with my camera, because I was too busy enjoying the time playing with her!  She definitely liked the tin foil better than the wax paper, and I only had to reminder her once not to put it in her mouth.  This was so simple to set up and clean up.  I might even cut up some squares and keep them in an old travel wipes container to use next time we are stuck in the doctor's office!

Pompom Fun

Wyokiddo decided she didn't want to nap after we got home from a trip to town and the park.  But she was cranky and not interested in any of her toys, so I needed something new to keep her attention and get her smiling again.  I broke out the pack of rainbow colored pompoms I bought at the dollar store to make a discover bottle with, and handed Emily the bag of pompoms and muffin tin.  I had seen something like this with cotton balls and an egg carton on Pinterest and figured, close enough!

It was a hit!  She played for about half an hour, putting the pompoms in the muffin tin or the empty wipes container she found in a drawer.  When that got boring, she looked for other balls to put in the muffin tin...soon we had pompoms, a tennis ball, a hackey sack and balls confiscated from the ball popper in our tin.  That led to her experimenting with shoving the pompoms into the trunk of the ball popping elephant.  What to do you know, the ball popper can shoot out a handful of pompoms like confetti.  What fun!  This was a great activity for a cranky toddler that required about a minute of setup and clean up.  I had to remind Wyokiddo not to put the pompoms in her mouth a few times, so this is not and independent play activity.  But I highly recommend it as a boredom buster!