The Birth of the Pajama Project Blog

I have been blogging about my son, Dodson, for some time now as a way to keep family and friends updated on his life- his blog is also a "baby book" of sorts, as it has become my main source of recording happenings throughout his life.  I hope it will be a special keepsake for him someday.  I really want to keep that blog more personal.  However, I have had friends ask me to share some of the "little pajama projects" I do with Dodson as a source for them when in need of activities for their class or child.  So... here goes.  This is the "Pajama Project" blog, where I will post some of our morning projects from time to time.
I usually try to do something that is educational/crafty and fun!  We do this before he gets dressed in the morning for a couple of reasons- 1) I am trying to break him from his early morning (and I mean EARLY) Dora addiction and 2) whatever glue, glitter, marker and mess we get on the pjs go directly into the morning wash with everything else!  Easy clean up!

Hope you enjoy!  Pass the word along to friends that might be interested- if I get enough readers, I might just make a little cash and pay for all these crafts!!! :)  If you like what you see, then please sign up to follow the blog if you use google reader, or if you want it emailed to you, you can get it that way too!

On with Project #1:

Since I KNOW Dora, Boots and The Map interest Dodson, I thought this little project might keep his attention-
we had some errands to run, and I wanted him to feel involved and have an end prize to look forward to, so with the tune "Im the map, I'm the map, I'm the map, I'm the map- I'm the MAP" bouncing in my brain, I thought we would make a map to take along on our journey.  We talked about where we would be headed (Target and the fabric shop) and decided on where he wanted to end our morning outing (the park), while we made symbols for each stop.  Dodson glued down the symbols. We made a car and then I cut them out and used warmed the laminator.  I cut a slit in the paper and laminated it as well as the car. Dodson was able to insert the car into the slit and move the car along the "road".  He took it with us in the car and held it and LOVED talking about "where I go next"!  We were able to use ordinal numbers and discuss a sequence of events.  Throughout our adventure I would ask questions "first we left the house, and drove to Target, then we went to our second destination, the fabric store... so, Where do we go next? "The Park, right!"