A Fun Experiment

I kind of gave up on writing for a bit on here because of the lack of readers, but school and life are going well. I did want to post this on here though, because it was so fun. Today, we did a bit of an experiment. I found 4 different play dough recipes online and we made them all and then reviewed them. Alan and I talked about how each one felt and tried each recipe out with cookie cutters and other fun things we use with play dough. Below, I will post each recipe and our review of each dough.

Play dough number 1:

Recipe: Emily's Fantastic No Cook Playdough Recipe

2 cups of plain/all-purpose flour
1 cup salt
1 cup cold water
1 tbspn oil (vegetable oil is fine - baby oil smells lovely).

Drop the ingredients into a plastic bag and seal. Let the children knead them together inside the bag - then tip it out for modeling fun.

Notes: The fact that this recipe was no-cook and that it could be mixed in a bag made it very easy to make. Our biggest problem with mixing in the bag was that we couldn’t get the color to disperse evenly through the dough, and we used a lot of food coloring trying to get this to happen, so we used green and yellow dye and ended up with a bit of a marbled effect. When we took the play dough out of the bag, it was mixed very well and had a nice dough-y consistency, though I could feel the salt grains throughout it. It took shape well and worked with the cookie cutters and did just about everything that good play dough is supposed to do, so I gave it a 4.5 out of 5. Alan gave it a 4.5 as well.

 

Play dough number 2:

Recipe: Homemade Modeling Clay Recipe #2

• 1 cup salt
• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup water
• food coloring (optional)

Mix and stir the ingredients together over low heat. Cook the mixture until it has thickened. Remove the clay from heat and allow it to cool before using it.

Notes: this recipe is similar to the first one except that this is a cooked recipe. The ingredients were easy to mix and stir together. We added yellow coloring to this mixture, and it came out a nice sunny yellow. The dough took a bit to thicken over low heat on our stove, which isn’t the greatest stove. When we removed it from the heat and let it cool, it felt about the same as the first one. I could feel the grains from the salt in it again, except with this one, it seemed that the more I worked with it, the salt seemed to mix in more and it became a little less grainy over time. It took shape well and worked with all the cookie cutters. I gave this one a 4.5 as well, so I would recommend that if you want an easier, quicker time to make play dough for kids, go with the first one, because you don’t have to put it on the heat at all, and the doughs are so similar otherwise. I would say that this one is my favorite.

Play Dough Number 3:

Recipe:

Colorful Sugar Play Clay

Bag of Powdered/Icing Sugar
Tepid Water
Food Coloring

This is a nice simple edible play dough recipe.
Pour some icing sugar into a bowl and slowly add water (1 tablespoon at a time). Stir until you have a soft play dough.

You can make separate colored batches of this clay by adding a drop of food coloring to each bowl before your add water. Or make up one large white batch, then divide and knead in the food coloring. This method gives you a pretty marble color effect.

Notes:

This one was made from powdered sugar, so it was basically a cheap frosting stiffened into dough. We did not eat it. We added blue food coloring to this one which turned out to be the prettiest looking one, in my opinion. It was tough for me to mix this recipe because I like defined units of measurement, so just adding water a bit at a time was tricky for me to get a consistency that I liked. Also, I didn’t use a whole bag of sugar, though it was close to it, because I had 2 open bags that were a little under half empty each. The dough was moldable, but it was sticky and stayed on our hands a lot. It wasn’t as easy to use the cookie cutters, but was still fun to work with. I added a little flour to this recipe to try to make it a little less sticky. I would recommend this recipe to someone who has very small, young toddlers because of the edible quality of the dough (although the other two can be eaten without harming a kid, salt in that high quantity can’t taste all that great). I give this recipe a 3, and Alan gave it a 4. He said that this one was his favorite, because of the blue and because it was made out of sugar, his favorite thing on the planet.

Play dough number 4:

Recipe:

No Cook Lotion Dough

You will need:

• Baby lotion 
• Baking soda
• Water

If you are starting from scratch, fill a small bowl with baking soda and slowly add water to it.  You will want to be sure to add a little water at a time and mix it in well. If you are using food coloring to color the dough, add it now and continue mixing. You are going for a texture that is somewhat moist and can be molded, but can also be crumbly. 

Mix the lotion in with the dough until something resembling play dough forms. 

Notes:

Again, this one was a bit harder for me because of the lack of measurements. I used a nice smelling lotion that I have and we did just a bit of red coloring in this one so that the end result was a pinkish hue. This dough was also a bit sticky, and I ended up adding a bit of flour to it as well to counteract that a bit. It came out a bit crumbly, so I had to add more water to it, too. This dough was nice to mold in our hands but didn’t work well with cookie cutters very much. It was crumbly, and so we ended up giving up on it pretty quickly. The big selling point for this one was that the lotion made the dough smell nice, but then because of the lotion, this one is the LEAST edible. I gave it a 2.5, and Alan agreed, also giving his a 2.5.

Over A Week Since Last Post...

...but I don't feel bad! Haha. I'm fairly confident no one reads this anyway, so it's fine with me. Anyway, the past week and a half-ish, we have been busy with school, among other things, so I will just highlight some top accomplishments:

Alan wrote his name by himself this week! He can now remember that his name is spelled A-L-A-N, and that is exciting! He writes it in all caps still, but I will introduce lowercase letters in the next few months, after I feel confident he has had enough practice with his capitals. Right now, he can with confidence write A, D, L, M, N, O, X, and he can also write Y, but it's a bit tricky for him still to get the two points to touch correctly. Today, he learned to write Mommy, and M's were very easy for him.

This week was Michael's birthday. It was yesterday, actually, and Alan made him a card all by himself and wrote DADDY on it and signed it ALAN. We also made a banner and Alan wrote DADDY on that, too. It was so cool.

He has shown much improvement with phonics. He knows what a majority of letters "say" now, including that vowels have 2 sounds. When I give him a word, he can usually tell me what letter it starts with.

Alan was starting to make a breakthrough with some drawing, and was drawing shapes and pictures the other day. I think the letter and number writing and shape drawing has helped him learn to practice drawing pictures. His coloring has also improved a lot, and he colors in the lines quite well now.

His counting is starting to get better, although he struggles to remember 9 now for some reason. I had him do lots of 9 worksheets this week to improve. I had him do a fun craft today with "counting sheep", where he had to draw 15 circles, cut them out, then glue them on a paper in groups of 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. He had to write the number of the circles under each group, and then I transformed them to make them look like sheep. It was really cute and we had fun! He was so proud of it he's hung it up in his bedroom. I will post a picture below.

He can write numbers 1 and 0 well, so he can also write 10. I had him practice 1, 2, and 3 this week and 2 was hard, but 3 gave him a particular struggle, so we need to keep working on it. Today with the sheep craft though, he did pretty well. He gets frustrated if I make him do extra practice on writing certain numbers, but I tell him that he can't improve and learn if he doesn't practice. Practice makes progress! :)

A Case of the Tuesdays...

Today, I think we both had a serious case of the Tuesdays. Monday was alright, but today, we woke up and it was cloudy. Alan didn't end up getting into bed until almost 9:30, so he went to sleep a bit late. Consequently, he didn't wake up until later. I woke up at normal time (7:30), but it being cloudy and me not hearing Alan up, I went back to sleep and got up at around 8:00. Alan didn't get up and out of his room until almost 8:30! So, it was a slow start this morning, and we started school a bit later (around 10:30 or later).
Today, we did our calendar day and then talked about the types of clothes we wear in each season, using pictures. Next, we did the alphabet. He sang it almost flawlessly today with the visual, so I think I'll use the visual for a few more days and then maybe Tuesday or Wednesday next week I'll start testing him without the visual. We also talked phonics and I reminded him about the Leap Frog video from yesterday, and I think we'll watch it again later today or tomorrow. We also went around the house and tried to find things that started with each letter. Alan also took pictures of them and I listed them, so I want to do something later on this week or next with the pictures in a chart and taping letters onto the objects we found.
For our numbers today I had him trace some numbers in his workbook as well as count numbers 1-10 chronologically, and made him differentiate 0 and 10 several times. When he didn't trace certain letters correctly (he struggled with 4, 6, and 9), I had him write them onto paper several times until they started looking right. 6 took the longest.
Because this extra practice took a bit longer, Alan became frustrated with me and the work, so we didn't do his health lesson today, but that's okay, because I can incorporate it into the lesson I have planned for tomorrow a little bit.
That's all for today, Alan's watching Nick Jr now and I will spend the rest of the afternoon trying to stay awake. Cloudy days make me so sleepy... zzzzzz....

First Monday of School...

Mondays. Alan woke up earlier than usual today, so I'm feeling the Mondays a bit today. I adjusted the schedule, and now it's working a whole lot better than before (although it's just been two days so far...) So, we do school at 10 am now until about 11:15 or so and then have lunch. We just got done today's lessons so here's what we did:

Calendar: we updated our calendar (like we do daily) and put cloudy day on for today because it's cloudy (I sense some rain coming later). He never got to go to the dollar store this weekend like we wanted (because it was like pulling teeth to get him to clean up the toys in his room), so I offered that if he pooped in the toilet at least 3 times this week, we'd take him to the dollar store to spend his birthday gift card.

Alphabet: Today's alphabet lesson was fun and successful! This is why I hate when people automatically say watching TV is bad for children, because educational TV has saved me several times and taught him a lot. Alan and I sat down together and watched his Leap Frog DVD called the Letter Factory. It teaches each letter, capital and lowercase, and how they're pronounced (phonics). I made it fun for Alan by getting into the DVD myself and when the letters said the sound they make, I acted out whatever they were doing, like the L's lick lollipops, so I made a motion like I was licking a lolli, and said, "llllllllll"! It was fun and he enjoyed it and I was so surprised by how much he participated and then remembered afterwards when I was just pointing out letters to him on a page. It was the most success I've seen so far, so I think we'll be watching that DVD several more times. I highly recommend. Here is part of the DVD that was on youtube, with really bad quality. The letter song starts around 5:00 and carries on into the next part:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4rNj7apanQ


Numbers: For numbers today, we did counting. I made it fun by having him go around the house and count what we had 1, 2, 3, and so forth of up to the number 10, like we have 1 vacuum, 2 lamps, 3 arm chairs, etc. It was a good lesson in counting and I can see he still needs a little more help with counting order. I should find a leapfrog video for numbers! lol

Health: I've been working on sick vs. healthy with Alan since last week (with a few interruptions like for that dinosaur link), and today, I got many pictures of people doing things and Alan had to categorize them as sick or healthy. Some examples of pictures were: people sneezing, going to the dr, taking medicine, playing outside, etc. He did very well with this activity and got them all right.

Alan's done with lunch, and we're supposed to go outside, but Alan is glued to Nick Jr right now. There were several episodes of Dora the Explorer on, and he's loving all of it, so I'm just letting him chill out right now. Educational TV wins again! ;)

Post For Saturday/Sunday

I said I'd post yesterday, but just about nothing happened. Alan started cleaning his room, but was very stubborn about it, so he didn't finish. He also updated his calendar like we will do every day. So today, I'm tweaking the schedule again because of some nice suggestions from family and friends that I agree with. We got up, had breakfast, then went to work on cleaning his room again. I got out a big box so he could fill it with toys to donate and we filled the box! Next, we had lunch and went outside with our cat (she wears a leash) for an hour. Now, he is napping! And all is quiet in his room! The new schedule is really working so far! I am so happy! On another note, I am also on a weight loss journey that I started this month, and have already lost at least 1 pound, and can fit into some pairs of pants that I haven't been able to in a LONG time! So I am very happy and positive today :)

First Week of School, Over!

School day number 4 is over and done with, and it is Friday! Today, I went easy on the little guy because I was quite out of sorts today and a little on edge/frustrated with the scheduling conflicts (see previous post) as well as other life stuff. So he added his calendar date number 5 to the calendar and we moved the "sunny day" magnet onto today because it was another sunny day here. We did not discuss other calendar themed stuff today, but next week I think I'll move on to weather. Next, we went through the alphabet song, and he's doing better still with the visual, but still gets slipped up on some letters, like N, J, and U. He traced some letters in his workbook and then I went through the phonetic sound of each letter with him, which he is still not understanding 100 percent. He's becoming interested in how things are spelled though, and this is a good sign. I'll have him trace and write words soon instead of just one letter at a time. And I want to find some fun phonics songs and videos to help him on his learning. I still remember in my own first grade class that we had letter cards across the front of the room that we recited the picture and the sound, and I still remember "B" was "bubbling brook". It's funny what the brain remembers sometimes... I also want to do something more to help him with recognition of lower case letters because he still doesn't recognize most of them. For numbers today, I had him trace pages of numbers and draw some on his own. He still gets the words for zero and ten confused, though I am convinced he knows their values, he just mixes up the words because 10 has a 0 in it. Lastly, we had a discussion on sick vs. healthy and things you can do to stay healthy like wash hands, take vitamins, eat good foods, and visit the doctor. Then, we talked about how when you are sick, you cover your mouth when you sneeze and cough and have to wash your hands and sometimes take medicine. I noticed his struggle to pay attention and follow the line of conversation. (one of my concerns for him is ADD/ADHD) He started talking about something else a few times during the conversation, and when he doesn't want to pay attention and participate and try, he just says "I don't know." I will be looking into child psychologists this month. I am planning a low key but fun day tomorrow since it is Saturday, so I will post sometime tomorrow as well.

Scheduling Conflicts

I'm still working on getting a good schedule going here at home for all of us. I just made some changes to the time of some things, so I'm working out the kinks still almost a week later. Right now, the schedule is a follows:

7AM: I usually hear Alan get up and begin to play in his room and go to the bathroom and pee. I stay in bed and pretend I'm sleeping.

7:30AM: This is what my alarm is currently set to. I typically get up somewhere between 7 and 7:30 AM and get mildly ready (I dress, take my allergy meds, and pee).

Whenever I'm done in the bathroom to whenever Alan gets out of his room (it's usually around 7:45 to as late as 8:00): Alan does his new chore of putting dry food in the cats' food bowls and I fill their water fountain, then I get breakfast ready for Alan and give it to him while he watches some TV. I go on the computer to check email and facebook and have my breakfast.

9AM-11:00AM: Alan finishes breakfast around 9ish and clears his plates and silverware and cups, etc. He gets hungry again around 10:30 (this kid grows like a weed, and I give him a light breakfast). I give him lunch at 11:00. This is typically a PBandJ sandwich, water, and something else (like fruit or veg or crackers).

11AM-1:00PM: Alan free playtime and I will generally play with him or do an activity (like a craft) with him.

1:00PM: Alan goes down for a nap. He must stay in his room and relatively quiet for 2 hours. I just switched nap back from 12 PM to 1 PM because he did not sleep at 12:00 and then was getting up later, like 4:00 or 4:30 because he fell asleep later. I also switched to only giving him water or milk for lunch so he doesn't have the added sugar of juice. The nap is the biggest struggle of the day because he never wants to go to his room, he doesn't nap right away, and gets up at weird late times because it takes him forever to fall asleep. But TRUST ME, he needs this nap or else he is just a terror the rest of the day and is overtired for bedtime and then doesn't go to sleep until like 10 PM to 12 AM. I know, it's weird. I also like him to nap because this is when I do my situps and exercises PEACEFULLY by myself, unless the cat also has to bug me. I also load/unload the dishwasher and other odd jobs.

2 or 3 or 4 or even 4:30 PM: Alan wakes up from nap. He has a snack and watches TV for about an hour.

The Past Few Days It's Been 5:00 PM: Start Alan's school work with him. The work I do with him takes about an hour to an hour and a half. Then, he's burned out and done so I stop so we both don't get frustrated with each other.

It there's time before 6 PM (it hasn't happened yet), we go outside and I want nightly walks to happen. Right now, this isn't happening.

6:00 pm: make dinner
6:15 pm: eat dinner. Dinner lasts about an hour.

7:00 pm-ish: Alan must start cleaning up all the toys and books and junk he got out during the day so the place doesn't look like a tornado hit it. I also give him baths at this time every few days.

about 8:45-9:00: Alan must get dressed in pjs and go to the potty and brush his teeth and get ready for bed in any other way. He gives kisses to Daddy, then picks out a book and gets in bed and we read together for a while. Then, I tuck him in and say goodnight!

I try to go to bed between 11:00 pm-12 AM. Then, it starts all over again the next day! :)