Wandering Toddler

In this digital era, its sometimes nice to receive a handmade card. I am a sucker for handmade stuff and as a kid I loved making cards. Toddler S is currently into messy painting ;) so this thanksgiving, to express our gratitude we made some cards for the Montessori teachers. Things you would need: Cardstock paper (Preferably some light color) Washable brown color Orange, Red, black and green maker Wiggle eyes Plate or dish for color This is the simplest and the most enjoyable type of cards for kids. They can get their hands messy, play around with the colors and still be able to make some great cards!! Yay!! Take a card stock paper fold into into half and cut it. Fold the half again and cut them. (You can make 4 cards / cardstock paper) Pour some color on a dish/plate and let your toddler press their palm into the color. (After we were done with the cards, we let toddler S play with the color so she can get messy, and she had so much fun with that) Have th

It's Monarch season! Monarch - A beautiful milkweed butterfly in the family Nymphalidae. These are simple yet so beautiful butterflies that migrate to California and can be seen in Oct through Nov... They travel at a speed of 25 miles/hour and can go upto a height of 10,000feet(Woah!). These butterflies make Natural Bridges State beach natural preserve area their home from Oct through Nov. The park ranger have weekend free-1 hour tours at 11am and 2pm. These are great tours, they give you lot of information and are very kid friendly. The rangers were so friendly and make the whole tour so kid oriented with butterfly costumes and Q&A. You can then follow the trail and visit the preserve and watch butterflies.  Trail leading up to the area for butterfly watching They have some binoculars setup that can help you see the pods. (The picture isn't all that great but observe the butterflies hanging on the milkweed leaves. They look like dried leave

Gifts : Gifts is one of those things that everyone loves. And especially with all the festivities, its seems like the gifting/gift giving season. Where I grew up, it wasn't so much about gifting around the festivals or holidays. Something I dislike is the expectation you build about receiving gifts every year. With Toddler S growing up and getting to an age where she understands gifts etc, I thought of starting the concept of gifting as NOT buying new things but gifts/gifting - Is about GIVING Is about making something on your own, make it personal Is about SHARING Well, so with all these festivals - Diwali, Christmas, I wanted to make it all about GIVING! Toddler S has this awesome gift drive at school for the kids in Santa Rosa and I thought that's the best opportunity for us to start this. We bought some random wood trucks, cars, airplanes, colors and some gift boxes from Michaels. Toddler S loves coloring, so we painted them, packed them in