Summer and all of its busyness is finally winding down. While I am grateful for the travel, birthday parties, showers, and events, I am so looking forward to routine and a normal schedule. Anyone else feel the same way?? Anyone else miss their proposed “start school” date by a month? 🙄 No? Only me?! Three cheers for flexible homeschool schedules! 😀
One of the main things I wanted to do differently this year was to have activities prepped and planned for my youngest. Last year, she had just turned a year old when we started, and once she cut out that second nap, gosh it was so dang hard to do anything with my older one that was more structured. I’m determined to have more at my disposal to keep her engaged and learning, too! One of her favorite independent activities is color sorting!
The materials for this one is super easy. Toilet paper rolls, cardstock/construction paper, and colored popsicle sticks! Hot glue paper to toilet paper rolls and glue the tubes together (I glued two sets of three together so they would still fit in a gallon ziplock bag), and that’s it!
I plopped all the materials down in front of Annabelle. I didn’t show her what to do, or say a thing. (Mostly because I wanted to see if she would figure it out on her own, but also because she had waken up way too early this morning, and I hadn’t had coffee yet and was still part zombie). And let me tell you, she went to town! It kept her so entertained that I got to drink my coffee in p e a c e without fear of her spilling it because she is climbing all over me, which happens every single morning.
The only thing that I noticed, is once the tubes started to get full, they became too heavy and tipped over pretty easily. To fix this, I glued chipboard (thin cardboard–think cereal box) to the base of the tubes. This worked perfectly. 
Once big sister woke up, she had to get in on the action too! Annabelle had already finished sorting all of her sticks, so we dumped them out and split the pile in half. Even more time to myself in the morning? I’ll take it! 
When my husband woke up, he grabbed some coffee and joined me on the couch. After a little while, Annabelle came over and asked to eat something, which is typically the very first thing she says after she wakes up. My husband turns to me and says, ” They haven’t eaten anything yet? How did you manage that?!” Color sorting popsicle sticks or morning sanity savor…call it what you may!
