Everyday Learning – Page 20 – The Creative Salad

Repurposed Photo Wreath Frame

Remember our holiday wreath that we made using an embroidery hoop and clothespins?

We decided to repurpose it for the rest of the year, until next December when we’ll fill it with holiday cards again down in our living room.

For the time being we’ve decided to place it in our daughter’s new big girl room, in the last bit of free wall space, next to a nerdy baby poster, her embroidered portrait and toddler artwork, and above our photo banner with glittery clothespins.

We intend to place photos from our recent travels (to New Mexico and New York) in the frame, but in the meantime we’ve clipped some older favorite family photos to the wreath for now.

A perfect fit for the space!

Now I need to work on updating her linens. Perhaps some embroidered pillowcases are in order or a tie dye project for the sheets. What do you think?

Art Envelopes For the Play Post Office

We decided that we needed some handmade, toddler art envelopes to pair with our play postage stamp stickers.

So our toddler drew beautiful art made specifically for this project, i.e. she drew with marker on construction paper. It’s brilliant, I tell you.

To make our envelopes, we first deconstructed an existing envelope (by fully unfolding it), then traced its outline on the toddler artwork.

We cut out the envelope,

then folded and adhered the new envelope together. (You could easily use double-sided tape or glue for a more seamless envelope; I had an impatient toddler working on this project with me, so we relied on plain tape. SHOCKER!)

We then wrote letters to several of our daughter’s friends to place in the envelopes.

After assembling and stuffing the envelopes, we placed one of our play postage stamp stickers on the front of the envelope.

Love these toddler letters, ready and waiting for Postmaster Leyba, age three, to pick up and deliver to her friends!

The Nest in our Wind Chimes

A few weeks ago we noticed a bird dart off our wind chimes every time we opened our front door.

We began to suspect that she was trying to build a nest on them. Hence, the odd twig sticking out:

Last week we decided to take a peak inside the sugar bowl.

Boy, were we wrong!

The bird was so small that she built a nest in our wind chimes. A fluffy, thickly woven, yet petite nest inside the sugar bowl of our re-purposed wind chimes (a lovely wedding present from my friend Amanda that has traveled with us from Colorado to each of our houses in California).

We found five beautiful, speckled, tiny eggs.

Such a perfect Earth Day surprise.

I can’t wait to hear little birds chirping every time I go through our front door. Ah, spring, we love you.

Pretend Sticker Postage Stamps

Our daughter desperately wants to place real postage stamps on her letters.

I understand that she wants her stamps to look exactly like mine, but at 44 cents a stamp, letting her play with them just isn’t financially feasible. Besides, Mama has important letters to mail too!

Instead we photo copied stamp booklets onto plain white paper.

My daughter then cut them out and we fed them through her sticker making machine.

Now she has postage stamps of her very own that look like mine!

The postmaster wouldn’t be fooled, but my three year old is tickled pick by her realistic play stamps.

Fractiles Magnetic Tiles

$Making a menorah with fractiles$

Two posts about magnets in one week! Clearly this is one of our toddler’s current obsessions! (If you missed our post earlier in the week about making your own literary magnets, including the Kevin Henkes Lily magnet shown above, here’s the link.)

We bought these Fractiles for a trip back East earlier this year.

Not only were they fun on the plane and

enjoyed during our trip,

but they have continued to be played with regularly here at home.

She loves matching the pictures from the package (featuring dozens of designs) and making up her own designs.

The possibilities are endless!

The manufacturer packages several different sets of Fractiles magnets: the plain Fractiles Fridge Fractiles and the one that we have, Fractiles: Travel Version, which contains a steel board on which to place the magnets.

We highly recommend Factiles for hours of educational fun!