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At one of our playgroup meetings back in January, Molly and two of her friends wore aprons the entire time. So, I came home and searched for a pattern to make one for her. I found this free child's apron pattern at Sew Liberated and got to work. The montessori style allows Molly to put in on by herself. It has an elastic neckband and a velcro attached waist strap, so no assistance from Mommy needed! She loves wearing it when helping me in the kitchen.

I have also made a few for gifts.

I'm linking up to Strut Your Stuff Thursday at Somewhat Simple so you can see other fun, crafty things being made.

Molly and Leah really like playing on the floor together, though I don't think Molly realizes that Leah is about to taste her head!

Leah's also doing much better pushing up and around on the floor. You can no longer leave her somewhere and expect her to be there when you look back at her.

We had a lot of fun learning about 'G' this week! Molly loves music, so we made a 'G' for guitar. I saw the idea on Always Something to Learn.

Molly has been very interested in games lately. We've played Uno Moo more times than I can count! It's great for her matching skills. She kept asking for something else to play, so if you have suggestions for your favorite toddler board game, let me know!

We celebrated Dr. Seuss's birthday with a reading of Green Eggs and Ham.

We then used Molly's great-great-grandmother's recipe to make green egg-shaped sugar cookies. They were yummy! Real green eggs would not have flown with this toddler!

I hosted playgroup this week and involved them in this week's stART project. We read Go Away, Big Green Monster!

The story build's a monster face by talking about the all the different features of the big green monster, so as I read the story the kids glued on each of the parts. The book's pages provide great stencils for creating this craft. I found the idea at Teaching Two.

Molly was excited to show off her big green monster.

I organized a gymnastics playdate in honor of ‘G’ week. Molly and her friends had a great time.

And we couldn't go through 'G' week without playing Daddy's guitar! We have started singing songs before bedtime from The Christian Children's Songbook.

You can check out what other moms are doing with their tots at 1+1+1=1.

I organized a gymnastics playdate in honor of 'G' week. Molly was so excited to be there that she was doing summersaults!

She was bouncing so fast down the trampoline run it made getting a picture difficult.

She loved all the bouncing fun!

The kids then moved on to an obstacle course.

Spinning around with these hula hoops was fun too.

We ended our session sliding into a big foam pit. It was a bit challenging to get out of the pit though!

There were so many 'D' things that I wanted to do this week but we ran out of time, so here is what we did get to.

Molly helped me make dinner while Daddy was out of town - pepperoni and pineapple pizza.

The beginning of our letter 'D' began with a little feather painting.

We added a few feathers, an eye, and a beak and I thought we were done. Molly then said, "Mommy, he needs feet!" and she was so right. Here's our cute little duck. (Found at No Time for Flashcards)

I created a doodle rubbing for Molly to try.

Here's the finished art. Molly's coloring is a bit sporadic, so I helped a bit to uncover the doodles.

I introduced Do-A-Dot art this week. She loved it! I think she colored 8 pages. She kept asking for more.

I made Molly some Dora dominos. (I saw them as part of this Dora Tot Pack.) She had fun matching the characters. Daddy even played it with us for our first "Family Game Night" on Friday night.

On Saturday morning, Molly had an extra special treat at Dunkin Donuts. While waiting in line, she spotted the strawberry iced donuts and immediately wanted a pink one!

She loved pointing out all the letters, especially all the D's!

We also made a popsicle stick dragaonfly, but Molly was too busy flying it around for me to get a good picture of it! You can check out what other moms are doing with their tots at 1+1+1=1.

Our letter this week was 'K', however Leah decided to start the week with the letters 'E.R.' due to a dislocated elbow. You can read about it here.

To share my Louisiana roots and celebrate Mardi Gras, I hosted a Mardi Gras playdate. Molly helped me decorate one of the two king cakes that I made. She did a great job pouring the colored sugar only where she was told.

We worked on crafting our letter 'K'.

I combined ideas from No Time for Flash Cards and dltk-teach.com to create our K for King.

Molly worked on her counting skills with this kite matching game.

She made a cardboard kazoo and then serenaded Leah with a song.

Aunt Caroline and Will came over for a visit. They had fun stamping paper for our last K project...

a kaleidoscope! Molly enjoyed the kaleidoscope for a few short minutes. She had more fun stamping the cover!

Leah wanted to try out the kaleidoscope too. Ok, so maybe she just wanted to chew on it, but she was looking through it by default!

You can check out what other moms are doing with their tots at 1+1+1=1.

Again this year, I hosted a Mardi Gras playdate. It was such a popular activity with my MOMS Club that it filled up in 12 hours and even had a wait-list! Next year, I might just have to host two!

I tried my hand at making a king cake from scratch this year. I even made it with yummy cream cheese filling like Chad prefers. I learned a few things that I know to do differently next year, but overall it was a success.

In addition to eating king cake, we listened to traditional Mardi Gras music, and had fun making jester hats.

Molly and her friend, Allison, happily modeled their new hats.

Molly is her father's child when it comes to cake. She licked all the sugar and icing off the king cake, then asked for another piece. Clearly, she does not need to be able to see to do this!

I made sure that both girls were sporting their Mardi Gras fashions for the day. Here they are taking in a little reading after the party.

While being snowbound due to record breaking snowfalls we had a lot of time for some 'H' activities. I loved my friend's idea for this week: "H for housebound, hot cocoa, and holy moly this is too much snow!!" Though very funny and so true, we stuck to our Valentine theme of "H is for hearts."

Molly had fun gluing and sticking hearts for her letter H project.

For our stART project, we read the story Clifford's First Valentine's Day.

We then used a heart-shaped cookie cutter to paint hearts,

and then turned our heart stamping into valentines for some very special people!

Molly practiced her counting with Valentine candy. She enjoyed some candies along the way, and Mommy may have had a few too!

I made these alphabet matching cards as another aid for learning lowercase letters. Molly quickly realized that the colors for the pairs matched, so next time we'll try something a little different.

Other activities this week:

These word puzzles are also a fun toy to help with lowercase letters.

Finally, in honor of the Vancouver olympics, a friend hosted a "Make a flag" playdate. Molly was so proud of her new flag.

You can check out what other moms are doing with their tots at 1+1+1=1.

Leah's started holding onto the ring in the swing when she's sleeping,

as her sister before her.

Leah's also started smooshing her face into the wall of the crib when she sleeps. While using the bumper to roll over, I think she gets too tired to make the effort, so she gives up and goes to sleep.

When I planned our letter weeks, I had not initially done the letters of Molly's name in a row. But, after we did 'M' and 'O', I got questioned whether we were doing 'L' and 'Y' next. And I thought, "Well, that would make sense!" So, as you can see, that's what we did.

To begin our letter Y project, Molly colored everything yellow.

As soon as I got out my scissors to cut out the shapes, Molly was no longer interested in coloring. All she wanted to do was cut, so I gave her some small strips to practice with.

Here is our 'Y' for yellow. Notice that we "colored" the lemon with some of her paper snips.

We worked with various forms of yogurt. First Molly used yogurt-covered raisins to practice her counting skills with these Curious George cards from One Little, Two Little.

She was also very excited to make chocolate frozen yogurt.

And after one failed attempt to actually freeze the yogurt, Molly finally got to enjoy the tasty treat.

For our stART project, we read Just how long can a long string be?!

We extended the story by making a yarn egg. Molly was not interested in getting her hands dirty with the glue, so it turned into a Mommy project.

It turned out really neat. Molly has loved playing with it, but it is now a bit squished. If you have the patience to do a few of these, they'd make a really pretty Easter decoration.

We also used the yarn to make this octopus, which appears to be attacking Noah's Ark.

Lastly, Molly and her daddy went out for a little bit of playing in the snow. She couldn't really walk in the snow, since it was almost as tall as she is, but Molly was very helpful in using the yard stick to measuring how high the pile Daddy was shoveling was. Also, note the plastic bags taped onto her legs as makeshift snow boots (we learned that trick last snow storm).

You can check out what other moms are doing with their tots at 1+1+1=1.