I mean, let’s be real. It’s not screen free all day. She is four (five tomorrow!), and I have work to do. But she did get a snow day here today because of the blizzard named Stella, which is really more of a gross, slushy snow dump than a proper blizzard. But nevertheless, here we are cooped up inside. It seemed like a good day to share some screen free activities we’ve been doing lately (while the small human is tucked up in our bed watching Scaredy Squirrel).

We had this lovely week of spring weather, and then the cold came back, brutally. But before it returned, we had a lot of fun outside.

We’ve been at Mama Bear’s Play Cafe a lot this winter, so she can run around and play while I get some work done.

Adam brought these Squigz back from one of his work trips, and she’s been playing with them a lot. Great fine motor building, and great for a rainy (or snowy) day. They’ve also been great to give her so she can sit in the kitchen and play while I get dinner going.

H came with me to pick up some free fabric last week, too. That was very cool, a friend from high school connected me with an art teacher she knows who was cleaning out an abandoned dressmaker shop for a friend. The dressmaker moved back to Peru and left all of this inventory behind, and I got the chance to pick up a bunch of rolls and bolts of fabric for free. FREE. H came with me and played with the tulle. She found a doll to take home in a bag of dolls.

As I was loading the car out front, I heard some passing middle schoolers say, “Someone left a baby for rent in that window! That’s not right!” Heh.

We took another trip to the NJ State Museum a couple of weeks ago to check out the dinosaur bones. She loves it here, and we met another little girl and her mom who were really sweet.

We picked up this kaleidoscope kit in the museum gift shop, and we put it together the other day. This was such a great kit, and you can open it back up and fill it with new and different things whenever. We talked about how the mirrors work, what we were putting in, how the colors changed. She loved it, and I got a little science into our craft time.

And today, she’s been dancing around the house in this new butterfly costume that she got for her birthday, from her school friend Harper. This costume is everything.

I have a whole other post planned on the theme weeks we’ve started doing, which so far we have successfully completed one time, and then birthdays and snow days disrupted the best laid plans. But we’ll get back to it!