In My Girl's World

Good morning friends! I meant to share this shelf breakdown with you all on Sunday, but #momlife. Ella is super busy these days and I rarely get time to sit down and work on my blog anymore. This pregnancy has left me feeling sooo tired too, so at the end of the day I can barely keep my eyes open. However, it's Thursday morning and Ella is still sleeping so I took this opportunity to finally get this post put together. Many of my readers don't even have young children, but I so love sharing the prepared activities I have for Ella.

  I knew I really wanted to do something simple and fun for Valentine's Day on Ella's shelf, but didn't want to go spend a bunch of money to make it happen. We have Chinese New Year coming up as well, and so I figure we could do Valentine's Day now, and attempt a Chinese New Year shelf in the next week or two. Here are her activities for the week! This post does contain affiliate links (see disclosure) to some of our favorite Amazon materials, but many of the materials I talk about here are cheap, easy and DIY.

Flower arranging- This is a great practical life activity that Ella really enjoys. I keep the loose flowers in the basket, and she works on arranging them in the vase. I got both the vase and the flowers at The Dollar Tree, so it was an inexpensive activity to throw together. The vase is actually breakable glass, so this is a great opportunity for Ella to work on caring for her materials.

We displayed a couple of our favorite books on our shelf as well!

Music Box- I added this sweet little music box to the top of the shelf, and Ella loves playing with it. It helps her work her fine motor skills to try and crank the little handle to make music. It plays 'You are my Sunshine' which is a song I sing to her everyday. Such a sweet little music box and incredibly inexpensive.

Pom Pom Transfer- This is an easy DIY activity you can throw together easily. I used an empty heart shaped box that we had as well as another empty chocolates container. (I have learned to recycle everything you guys.) We had some fun red and pink pom poms from the craft store and are using the little tongs from her kitchen to work on 'filling the box of chocolates' with each pom. 

Coffee Maker- Ella loves pretend play and loves doing the things she sees Michael and I do on a regular basis. Both Michael and Ella know the way to my heart is to make me a coffee in the morning... so I thought this would be an appropriate and fun activity for her shelf this week. Ella absolutely loves this little coffee maker and making coffee for all of her friends.

Red Gem Transfer- Another easy DIY activity using extremely cheap materials. We grabbed these little plastic red heart gems and the bowls from The Dollar Tree. We had the tray and wooden scoop already. Ella works on using her scoop to transfer the gems from one bowl to the other. She has learned it's a lot faster for her to just use her hands too... She actually loves having these little red gems out and ends up playing with them in all sorts of ways- including filling up her vase from her flower arranging activity. We are fortunate that Ella has never been one to put things in her mouth, but we are obviously extremely careful and watch her!

Farm Animal Momma & Baby Match- These farm animals provide Ella with all sorts of open-ended play, as she uses them for activities all over the house. However, she also will sit down and play the 'activity' as intended, which is to match the 'Momma' animal (larger) with the 'baby' animal (smaller.) The large animals are from The Dollar Tree and surprisingly good quality. The smaller animals are from the Safari LTD Farm Animal TOOB. I love all of the toobs, and if my budget was endless we would own them all, haha!

Toothpick Insert- This is a great fine motor activity that also works on color sorting. We bought a bag of the red heart toothpicks at The Dollar Tree (can you sense a theme?) and are using them with her knobbed cylinder blocks to create a fresh new activity. The knobbed cylinder blocks are actually turned upside down, but the hole underneath offer a perfect opportunity for Ella to work on inserting the toothpicks. She is really good at this and enjoys this activity but has pretty much mastered it 100%, which is why it won't stay in rotation long.

Babies- It wouldn't be a shelf about love if I didn't include Ella's baby dollars on there. She absolutely loves having all her babies and accessories out at all times, so this stays accessible to her all the time.

And Ella's little reading area also got a little Valentine's Day upgrade! I plan to do a quick post on this area too and include some of her favorite books! That post will probably happen on Sunday, my designated day for these types of posts... :)

Thanks for checking out Ella's shelf. If you have friends of toddlers who you think would benefit from some of these activities, be sure to share!