Gulfarium Adventures

If you ever come to Destin, Florida on vacation and you have the kids with you, take a break from the beach one day and check out the Gulfarium Marine Adventure Park. It is just across the bridge from Destin in Fort Walton Beach (on Okaloosa Island).  There is several activities to suit each age group. I took Jack there for his first time last month and he loved it! I’m not sure of his favorite section although I know he really liked the dolphin show.  He also asked to see the alligators, which are big, he wanted to see bigger and go pet them. I blame myself for letting him watch Gator Boys for that one. My personal favorite part are the penguins (yes! Penguins in Florida!) and the touch and feel sealife tank. Tickets aren’t too bad priced for what all you get to see.

Deciding to go here all started because Jack wanted to be a ninja turtle. We have an old turtle shell at home and it really peaked his interest.

Here are a few pictures from our adventure!

 

Lego Adventures

Thanks to the Lego Movie, Jack has now shown interest in Legos. I was happy to find a Lego Junior set and he actually followed the directions (with help) and built the sets!

He has asked for a few different sets already.

 

Lego Juniors are great for little hands that still need a little assistance!

1 year!

 

Well today The Adventures of Action Jackson blog turned 1 year old!  Thank you to everyone who comes and reads on all the activities we do.  We hope that everyone had a Merry Christmas is you celebrate. Jackson’s birthday is also Christmas day so we get to celebrate his awesomeness with a lot of presents.  He turned a might 4 years old!

You can also keep up with us on Facebook.   See everyone in the new year!

Sock Puppets

Today was craft day today with my mom’s group.  The theme was sock puppets. I don’t think Action Jackson was very interested in it after he colored on the sock. Maybe he will grow to really like his sock like he did with Mr. Pickles (his Muppet).  He usually runs around the house though with socks on his hands, which is silly since more often than not they aren’t clean.

 

Supplies:

EVERYTHING IN YOUR CRAFT ROOM! No, seriously, anything and everything works to make sock puppets, but if you need a list here you go:

• Socks
• Pom-Poms
• Google eyes
• Fabric Markers
• Beads
• Pipe Cleaners
• Buttons
• Sewing Kit
• Felt
• Yarn
• Hot glue

 

As you can see from all of our mom’s we had a lot of items!

Step 1:

Choose your sock. Slide your hand into the sock so that your fingers are where you toes go.  Open your hand at the toe of the sock and push the sock in to your palm.  This will be making the mouth.

 

 

Step 2:

Cut your felt out to the color that you would like your mouth to be. We chose green, and later cut out just enough red for a tongue.  Hot flue the felt in.

 

 

Step 3:

Decide what kind of eyes you want either the google eyes or if you want to sew on buttons. Mark and make your sock puppet see!

Step 4:

Design. Have fun with your puppets. Give it a nose, hair, scales, anything you can think of. Here is some inspiration!

 

Our lovely mom Elizabeth made a dragon for her little one.

She ended up adding her google eyes to the pom pom’s so that they stand up more!

 

Jackson’s and mine needs some help, but it was still fun making it

 

 

All of our socks!

 

No sock puppets are perfect. They are supposed to be silly and a lot of fun to make. It’s the memories made that are more important than a physical appearance.

 

I hope everyone has fun! 

 

Sensory Bins

Since sensory bins are everywhere it seems, Jackson and I decided make two today.

The 1st one all we did was mix water beads ( already hydrated) and shaving cream. He usually likes to play with shaving cream, today he just wasn’t into having his hands all dirty. I however did enjoy it. I love the feel of water beads, instant hand massage for me.  Shaving cream just gives it a little bit more friction.

 

 

The second sensory bin we made used beans. We used black beans, red kidney beans, small red beans. I even added some cashews. Warning if they get wet they become slimy.  So you may not want to add them.  Jackson loved this one. He even put his Angry Birds and farm animals in to play.

Let’s scoop them

Yum mommy!

 

Even has to add some beans to the shaving cream.

 

 

 

 

Hello Angry Birds

 

 

Jumping Numbers

              Action Jackson is full of action tonight! He is jumping over everything including the dog! So instead of him landing on the dog and getting bit I made jumping pieces. Construction paper taped to the ground with numbers. Every jump over the paper he has to tell me the number! We did numbers 1-10!

What you need:

• Construction paper/ Craft paper
• Pen/ Sharpie
• Tape

Step 1:

Take your paper and fold it length ways fold it 4 ways.

Step 2:

Write your numbers on your craft paper. You could do the alphabet too, but that is a lot of paper. I would hope you have a long  hallway.

Step 3:

Tape down your numbers. I didn’t measure because I have tile floors and I just well kinda went with it! .

What a fun way to learn numbers and get energy out!

Watch the video on Facebook!

Dinosaur Stomp!

I really should have written this post a while ago since the pictures have been on my phone for almost 2 months now. I have been slacking I know. I really thought I would be updating this more and keeping up with my Project 52 a lot more than I am. I thought I could do both, since I did Project 52 last year and kept up with it even while moving.  Well no moving this years and I am just slacking.

Anyways… Action Jackson and I went to Michaels a while ago and we found these dinosaur feet stilts. They are great. They aren’t to high where I am constantly afraid that he is going to trip over something and break a neck. I do wish the rope handles were a little bit longer because it is hard for him to stand up straight. But he loves these things. I almost want to put felt or something on the bottom of them because they are super loud on tile floor.  But then if I did that he might really fall and break something.  These feet were about $4 I think. Really not that bad. They are made out of plastic so there probably is a weight limit. Jackson is only 34 lbs so I’m not to worried about him breaking them yet. But here is a few pictures from our 1st adventure with them.

He just started trying to get his balance and wasn’t too sure about them yet.

 

 

ROAR!!!!

 

I would say that this is a pretty happy face.

 

Target Practice

**Warning this works best when no wind is present**

 

Are you ready for your little ones to work on some hand and eye coordination?  Target practice is a great way to practice just that.  Don’t worry no guns (or water guns) are used.

What you need:

1. Spray Bottle (preferably one with a stream knob instead of spray)
2. Ping Pong balls
3. Golf Tees
4. Foam Pool Noodle

Step 1:

Cut about 2 feet off of your pool noodle. This will be your base for target practice.

 

Step 2:

In as straight of line as possible  line up your golf tees horizontally across the pool noodle.

 

 

Step 3:

Use two golf tees in the back  and on in the front, placed at a diagonal slant to insure the pool noodle doesn’t move.

 

 

Step 4:

Add your ping pong balls to the golf tees. **Remember this activity works best with no wind**

 

 

Step 5: 

Have your child sit at various lengths away from the target with the spray bottle. The farther away they are the harder the targets will be to hit.

 

 

 

 

Now enjoy!  This is perfect for summer time. Caution for the backlash of giving a kid a spray bottle, you might just get wet yourself 😉

Let’s be a Prince (or a Princess)

A few weeks ago we took Jack to see Disney on Ice and it was all Princesses. Well I knew the place would be filled with all these little girls dressed as their favorite princess (BOY! WAS I RIGHT!) Well I didn’t want Jack to feel left out, so I made him a crown so he could be a prince for the evening. I  wanted to find a crown that was just right and and could be used more than once. So felt was automatically perfect for the occasion.

Our family ❤

I didn’t take pictures of the making of this crown, but as luck would have it, a close friend of mine is having a baby boy in June so I made him a newborn sized crown with pictures!!

I will be showing 3 different crowns (1 boy and 2 girls)

For all of these you will need:

2 pieces for felt (same or contrasting colors)

thread

sewing machine

pattern

sharp scissors

The pattern I used for the newborns and Jackson’s crown I found at Hellobee . For this crown you will need some embroidery thread and needle.

Step 1: 

Lay out your crown pattern (remember this was for a newborn for newborns use once, for toddler cut the felt horizontally and use the pattern twice)

(for newborns use once, for toddler cut the felt horizontally and use the pattern twice)

Step 2:

Cut out your felt pieces and line them up. (using pins help while sewing)

Step 3: 

Sew the 2 pieces together along all the edges. In the back where the pieces overlap cut down one triangle so that it will not be thicker than the others. Once you are done sewing go around with scissors and trim up your crown so that all edges meet perfectly. Use the embroidery thread at your back seam for added decoration.

Congratulations you now have your own Prince Crown! Customize it as much as you want or leave it be.

Now for those Princesses! These crowns were made for the same little boy’s bigger sisters. Why not have a fairy tale family!

These patterns came from Cutesy Crafts . They are the exact same steps as the above crown so I will just show with pictures!

Step 1:

(You can see on the light pink where the main section of the crown I placed in the middle and along the top is the band for the back of the child’s head. I wanted the seams to be along the sides instead of the middle like the pattern showed.)

Step 2:

Cut it out!

Step 3: SEW!!!

I hope you princesses and prince enjoy a little dress up time this week!

Let’s Play with Shaving Cream!

There are so many different ways you can play with shaving cream. This week our shaving cream play time involved a tarp (left over from Outdoor Waterbed), shaving cream (we used 2 travel sized cans) and a little bit of water that was left over from rinsing the tarp off in the 1st place 🙂

After spraying on the shaving cream I just let Jackson go to town. It turned out to be a pretty cool slip n slide. We will definitely be doing this one again!  He had so much fun that all you could see was a smile on his face and hear the giggles in the air.  He even pretended to be a frog perched on top of his lilly pad.

Warning: very picture heavy! It just shows the excitement! 

We had to get mommy in on the action