How To Make A Song Caddy

Like many families we love singing with the kids but often I get stuck in a rut of singing the same songs over and over. As cute as Twinkle Twinkle Little Star is it definitely can get old after the 20th time belting it out to my 9 month old.

Some of our favorite times to sing are in the car and when changing my baby's diaper. It serves as a happy distraction for him when he is less than excited to be changed. I often thought of writing all our favorite songs on a list so when I need to quickly come up with one for the kids we can have them all in one place, look on the list, and choose which ones we want to sing. A list seemed so "stuffy" for young kids so I came up with a more hands-on solution to our song dilemmas and it turns out to be a fun way to recycle those Gerber Puff containers! 

The materials needed are index cards (cut into 4's) or small pieces of paper, marker, ribbon, empty Puff container, and alphabet stickers. 

The girls helped me pick out the letters needed (also served as a fun letter recognition activity for my 3 year old)  We spelled out SING A SONG for the outside of the container. 

We then wrote down all the songs we like to sing on the cut up index cards and placed them in the container.

I tied a ribbon around the top and we were done!

There you have it, our very own Song Caddy!  So easy to make and a great way to recycle containers.  The kids enjoy pulling out a song from the bin and my 4 year old is even sounding out some of the words. A simple way to bring print into their everyday lives and encourage those emergent readers!

You can bring it along for a car ride, place by the diaper changing table, use for a preschool classroom circle time, the ideas are endless!

If you like what you see here please join us on Facebook here: Imprints From Tricia on Facebook

My Favorite Photography Tip in Capturing Those Genuine Moments

I've posted a few photography-kid related posts in the past and I often get the most feedback from those types of subjects. While I plan to still have many play based early learning posts on here I do want to continue to open up this little space of mine to a wider range of kid related topics including sharing my passion for children photography every now and then. It's been so much a part of me these last few years that it would be silly to keep it to myself.

On that note I wanted to share a few shots from our Father's Day photo session. Last year we started this tradition of taking photos of the kids to present to my hubby on Father's Day. He loved them and uses them to frame at his work. It's also great excuse to get updated photos of the kids all together.

We went to our local Botanic Gardens to do the session. I brought Grammy and Papa along to help entice smiles and giggles and had my lollipops ready for bribes!

It took all three of us singing and making silly noises just to get them to all look at the camera!

This is the picture (below) we ended giving to my husband for Father's Day and as you can see we have one half smile and the other two are all but frowning. Lollipop bribing and silly animal noises were not doing the trick for my little crew. Since this was the best out of all the shots we went with this one. Of course he loved the photo but in my photographer brain these aren't the expressions I had envisioned.

And then not even 2 minutes after I told them we were done taking pictures this happened.....

I just happened to still have my camera in hand and sitting in the same spot so I snapped away!

They are not sitting perfectly smiling looking at the camera but it was truly a genuine moment!  She was talking to him and playing and then leaned in to hug him.

In my years studying photography the #1 tip in my opinion for capturing those genuine moments is to

Sit back, Watch and Be Patient. Let them be themselves and let things unfold naturally.

I am the first to admit this is so hard to do especially when you have little ones involved and you are crunched for time but it is SO WORTH IT! I don't always get lucky but more often than not when I take this advice I walk away with a cherished memory forever captured in time!

One more thing to note, I obviously have a big fancy camera and some photography classes under my belt but you do not need to be a professional to capture those genuine moments. I've captured some pretty great moments with my iphone taking this same advice!

If you like what you see here please join us on Facebook: Imprints From Tricia on Facebook