Cooking Playdate: Handmade Ice Cream

The original plan for this play date included ice cream makers and food processors.  We really planned to go all out.  However, due to last minute obligations, we had to change locations.  We moved the event to my house and I don't have any of that stuff so I decided to go back to basics.  I had everyone bring an ingredient to make ice cream by hand in plastic bags.  In my opinion it was a great success and something we should plan on doing every year!  And by the looks of it the kids really enjoyed it.

Click here for the recipe and try it at home!

Sunrise Lake!

It's better late than never, here's a short and sweet post about our playdate at Sunrise Lake. The lake is located in Lewis Morris Park, in Morristown NJ. That morning quite a few moms backed out because it was supposed to be a very hot day, but a few of us braved the heat! We set up our blankets and umbrellas and let the babies explore! They played in the sand and felt it between their fingers and toes. They also spent a lot of time splashing, wading, and crawling at the water's edge. We brought some water toys, boats, and swimming froggies to play with, which they had such a FUN time doing! We also saw a few fishies swimming by! Back at our blankets we had some lunch and shared snacks while some brave Mama's held and showed the kids some cicadas! It was quite a sight to see them, since they only come out once every 17 years!

The lake is a great place to spend a nice summer day! They have a snack bar, bathrooms, showers, slides, and a wibit (obstacle course type thing in the middle of the lake) for the bigger kids to enjoy! We'll definitely be heading there again before the summer is over!

Ball of Fun

We had a blast at our first meet and greet! The objective was to bring your favorite ball and wear fun, creative name tags. Unfortunately we have a lot of mommas with more important things on their plates, so a lot just ended up using my bright and cheerful turquoise Duck tape. (For something that is supposed to be very supportive, that stuff tears easily.

So, what's a meet and greet without an ice breaker? This game was ideally meant for each mom to ask a question to another a mom pertaining to something she didn't already know. And you couldn't repeat a question. I think it was a fun game and fairly successful. We also ended up discussing certain questions amongst the group and learned which celebrities each mom had a crush on. That was a very entertaining topic!

So, back to the balls! The kids LOVED the balls. They were such a hit that children who weren't even a part of our group couldn't resist playing with them. [I tried my hardest resisting the urge for a ball pun, this is a family blog, btw ;-)]

 

Have no clue who the kid is on the right ;-)

Oh and as far as name tags go, I had planned to pick a winner, but since so many of us forgot, there were slim pickings. Of course, I think the prize has to go to Madelyn!

We definitely plan to do more meet and greets. So, if you would like to join our group, please email momswhoplay@gmail.com to request info on the next upcoming event!

Father's Day T-Shirt Paint N' Play

Father’s Day is this weekend, and most of us moms are fortunate enough to have great husbands with which to raise our little munchkins.  There is nothing sweeter than watching the love of your life delicately snuggle your hours-old newborn who is barely the size of his hands, or eavesdropping on him reading bedtime stories to a pajama-clad tot.  To celebrate these special men, Emily S. planned a Father’s Day paint-a-shirt playdate. 

 

While waiting for everyone to arrive, we munched on some healthy snacks and the kids played in Emily and Arianna’s fantastic playroom.  The most popular attraction was the staircase, so we had to barricade it to stop the brigade of toddler escapees. 

Emily was a fantastic host and had thought of everything.  She cut flat sponges into the letters spelling “Best Dad Ever,” and had arranged a variety of fabric paints, spray paints, paint pens, and puffy paints, along with foam brushes.  To prevent the paint from bleeding through the shirts, Emily provided cardboard slabs. 

The mommies and babies got to work stamping letters on t-shirts and making handprints and footprints. 

 Wendy and Logan covered their shirt with handprints:

 

  Katie and Clare kept theirs simple, spelling out “Best Dad,” but as a creative twist used Clare’s handprints instead of the vowels.   Vanessa used spray paint to outline Nathan's handprint.  Tannia and Rafael did a combination of words and handprints.  Madelyn and I tried to add handprints and footprints, but Madelyn wasn't so happy about getting her feet painted! 

Emily and Arianna gave a graffiti look to theirs:

Afterwards, we had more playtime while the paint dried, and we chatted about whose husbands would be likely to actually wear these masterpieces.  I don't see it becoming a wardrobe staple, but I'm sure my husband will at least model his gift in a picture with Daddy's little girl :)

Baby Signing Time 2

The smaller group of moms and baby's at Sign Time 2 worked out great!  We were small enough for some quality conversations to get to know each other so we started out with a little ice breaker and found out some fun facts on how we met our significant other.

Horse

then we started up the DVD and interacted with our little ones, singing, saying and imitating the signs we were seeing.  Some of the words we learned were eat,  drink, cracker, water, cereal, milk, cat, bird, horse and a few others too.

We discussed the importance of not getting overwhelmed and learning too many words at the same time.  Just choose a few words, use them on a regular basis then add 2 or 3 more a few days or a week later.  Soon you'll be communicating with your child before he/she starts to talk :)

We had some active children who found my pots and pans so we broke out some wooden spoons and let them bang around to make some music.  We added some  fun hand instruments that i have around the house too.  I love <3 <3 <3 hearing the sound of children playing around.

OH and i also had the opportunity to see what needed to be moved around my home to make it more kid friendly!

Thanks everyone who came over and played. I plan on learning the curriculum and making this a regular play-date :)  

Sticky Play

A big thank you to Amanda for hosting!  It's really great when members take it upon themselves to create and host events.  This ensures that there will be plenty of opportunity for everyone to get involved!

Today we had our first "sticky" playdate including all things, well...., sticky!  Amanda took charge and

organized well by bringing everyone out back to her beautiful yard and handing out collection cups.  The kiddos wandered around on a backyard nature walk collecting samples to use for our craft.  I must
admit that, for me, this was a great time for me to see things from my child's point of view.  As I walked around with Anikan I began to notice the small things like the slight variations in the different flowers and how bountiful her yard really was. There were small flowers, different size leaves, and weird phallic symbol looking mushrooms.  Once we finished our nature walk we headed inside for the "sticky" part.  The children (or mommies) used their findings to create art on contact paper (Takisha and John's creation can be seen above). We also provided stickers and paper for the kids to play on but due to their lack of interest we ended up sticking stickers on them instead.  It was cute to watch them curiously explore the "sticky colorful things" all over their bodies!

Once we finished playing with stickers we had some sticky snacks including Takisha's sticky date bars and real fruit icepops outside.  This playdate was a great success and a lot of fun.  I am looking forward to lots more creative playdates!