Mail from...New York

Now this (the eastern blue bird) is a beautiful state bird!

New York state is such a diverse place!  We could have studied about the Catskills, or Niagara Falls, or a somewhat famous underground rodent that made an appearance earlier this week.  In desperate need of some hands-on creativity, we decided, instead, to recreate New York City...

 Using every block set we own, the boys and their dad worked on building skyscrapers, a zoo, a farm (okay, maybe not exactly from NYC), bridges and other landmarks.  

I especially love that my husband told them all about King Kong climbing the Empire State building and so that had to become part of their skyline.  Do you see him in the photo above?

Beck was adamant about leaving road space for his trucks to drive through when they finished.  His dad has driven a motorcoach in NYC and HIGHLY advised Beck against ever driving there, but he had his mind set!

Bonus for Mom after all the building was complete?  So easy to separate all those blocks into their own bins and put them away.  It's the cleanest I've seen their bedroom in weeks!

Zoob! Toy Building Sets

This original post was written with no sponsorship.

Post has been updated & affiliate links have been added.

Shortly before Christmas a few years ago I won a Zoob Building Set in a giveaway.  My boys were already getting Fisher Price Trio blocks from Santa Claus, so I put the set in the closet to bring out on a rainy day.

Well, it's not raining here, but it is FREEZING COLD!  We haven't been above 20 degrees in nearly two weeks.  Translate that into my kids have been stuck inside driving me crazy for more than two weeks.  Last week the choice was sell them to the gypsies (which they know is ALWAYS an option) or give them something new to do.  The Zoob building set has saved my sanity!

The set I received contained 35 building pieces and 5 instruction guides that build in difficulty. In less than a week B built every single one and moved on to making his own creations. P loves them too, but pretty much only makes perfectly straight swords or triangle "tents". The best thing about Zoobs is that they the join together as a joint, so the final product can be movable.

This is the "Circle Skier" Beck was most proud of at the end of his day of playing.  Since then we have added more sets and he has made a motorcycle larger than his brother, lots of robots & bugs, and a playhouse he could fit inside.

I love toys that encourage imagination and creativity.  I love toys that keep my boys entertained for long periods of time even more.  I highly recommend adding them to your "the kids are driving me crazy" rainy day arsenal!

Have a question about the Zoob Building Sets?
Let me know, I promise to answer honestly.

Click here for more information on a variety of Zoob sets 
available on Amazon.

Shaping Up the Way It Should Be

When Beck and I started doing kindergarten together I had a small concern about what I was going to do with my two-year-old.  I still haven't figured out how to work the Teaching Your Children Joy activities into our new twin and school-filled days and I was worried he'd get left behind.  Then we did this shapes lesson and I realized that we were going to be just fine.

Instead of putting Peyton down for his nap before starting Beck's lessons, we've started doing the craft or activity parts while he is still awake.  He LOVES drawing and coloring and painting and gluing and all things getting messy, and he LOVES getting to do whatever his big brother is doing.  

Recently, Beck's official curriculum was set to teach him the basic shape names and numbers of sides.  Seriously?  They're a couple years behind.  Instead we had a little learning fun by getting out the blocks and building towers.  

Look at all those different shapes!  After building, I had Beck draw his tower, thus getting great practice at drawing all his sides and corners.  

And while he was busy drawing and coloring, I had free time to sit and work with Peyton.  I held his hand and helped him draw rectangles, triangles, circles, and squares.  And then I had time to just watch as both my boys concentrated completely on what they were doing.

So sweet-Helping little  brother draw his circles

A pretty fair representation

We got a little color lesson in with it as well

I love having the time to work with both of my boys.  Their little minds are always going and it's inspiring to see the light come on every time they learn something new.  And if it takes an afternoon of building a tower made of blocks and coloring, I'm glad I embraced patience and had my priorities in order for at least that part of our day.