Sick Days

It has done nothing but snow for days here and one by one each of us have caught the flu.  As I type I am in bed and have been for 30 minutes and fully anticipate going to sleep the second I hit "publish"....and it's only 8:00pm.  As any mom knows illness plus snow equals days inside.  We have spent the entire week confined to the indoors and are going CRAZY, Walker especially who is the only one who hasn't gotten sick yet.  So this morning I was desperate to find something that would entertain my little ones while we awaited Emma's arrival home from school.  I accessed my handy dandy "kids board" on Pinterest and searched for some new activity to do while Walker whined beside me "Hurry Mom!  I really need to do something fun."  I quickly found an activity for both he and Lillian and we had a morning of messes, it was wonderful. 

I always struggle to find things that will help Lillian learn and develop fine motor skills but never really know just how to go about it.  I found this great idea on one of the mommy blogs and it worked beautifully.  I was worried that she would put the little pieces in her mouth but she didn't try even once for the first 30 minutes until she got bored and then attempted to eat them, which meant that it was time to put the "sensory bin" away.

It took her a while to understand that she was allowed to play in the rice and pasta and she just spent a long time trying to put it into the shapes.  She figured it out though and our kitchen quickly looked like this... 

and she looked like this...

 

Then it was Walker's turn to do cotton ball painting.  It

 was the messiest thing we have done in a long time but he enjoyed it, especially after we baked them and he got to break them apart.

It is so hard sometimes to let your kids take the lead in these kinds of things.  I pictured these brightly colored cotton balls in primary colors but Walker, the mixer, decided on yellow, gray, and whatever that gross color on the left is.

Seriously!! SO MESSY!!!

 Sampling his creations.  Don't worry, it's only water and flour.

 

He loved cracking them open because the inside was still all cotton bally.

I love his sweet face.

And an update on our Emma.  She got an award at school last week for all of her hard work in class.  Her teacher says that she is an "industrious student" who works hard and helps others.  We are so proud of her!!  She is such a responsible little thing and when she had to miss school on Monday because she was sick she nearly had a nervous breakdown because she would miss "work."  Maybe she's a little too responsible for a 6 year old.

She was SO excited that she got to shake the Principal's hand.  You would have thought he was Cinderella at Disneyland or something, it was kind of hilarious.