Around the room....

This is the area of our room we call the 'Messy' room. This is where we paint. We have painting, a sensory bin, the light table/craft table, the big blue table, the writing table, the playdough table, and the science area. We just addded snails...I will post that in a bit. On the big blue table we are painting with baby calf nipples. I got the idea at conference and purchased them at the Grange...which is our local farm store.

In the sensory bin we have flax seed. I also got this at the Grange. If you haven't used this before it is very cool to the touch. Later you can try adding oil or water for a totally different experience. We added silver tins and cups and a bunch of plastic Spiders. And yes....I use food. Kids do not get confused about playing with food and eating it. I remember playing with Oatmeal as a kid and I never associated it with the Oatmeal that I ate. I certainly never ate dry Oatmeal....or uncooked rice, or uncooked colored rice or noodles or flax seed. ewww. So yes, we play with food...it's cool.

My kiddos LOVE magnets. We keep them out or have them easily accessable at all times. These are big black magnet sheets with little containers, colored block magnets, clear colored magnet rim pieces, and chain. The chain is especially versitile and they love it!

The days following a Costco run are always good for some seriouse box play. I had 3 large produce boxes and these guys are surfing!! Yup surfing. Bryan has the stance down good.....

and then they needed to lay down and paddle. Loralie is doing the full crawl stroke!Our little ones LOVE to read! Yes, it is upside down, but she is chatting away about apples. The kids love to build and lately we have been asking them if they want to draw what they build. YES! They do, and Bryan is very careful to make sure that all his blocks are represented. The kids are practicing and learning good pencil control and this is also helping with eye hand coordination. Here is Addy using some of the materials that were on the Magnet boards. She liked to do this on the blue table. She is patterning and creating shapes.....Korina and I cleaned out one of my 'sheet' closets. Oh boy did the kids have a good time with all the unwanted sheets. We used clothes pins to pin everything together to make a fort. Here we have corn painting...This is the decorative corn that you can buy at the grocery store. Sometimes they get their hands painty just so they can wash them! :)These two were up here for a good amount of time. They are standing on one of the benches. I am not sure why they didn't just pull down the containers...but it was a great place for them to play with their horses/animals. We made this building 'blocks' using old baby formula containers. I added colored paper and pictures of the kids or animals and then put contact paper over them. They can build these up taller than themselves...and they make a LOUD noise when they fall...that is the most important part.