Month: July 2016

Turtle in a Shell

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We had adorable, impromptu play this morning, and although the photos didn’t come out very well (a very blurry Travis on the move!), I wanted to put up a quick blog post.

A stuffed turtle became a favorite yesterday, having to come along on car rides with us and sleep in Travis’s crib. When he woke up this morning, Turtle followed us into the living room, so I thought: why not invite Travis to pretend he was a turtle as well?

I explained how the turtle has a shell that goes everywhere with him as he crawls around, and then placed a light blanket over Travis’s back. Well, he just loved pretending! He scampered all about the apartment, shouting out that he was a turtle…

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And interacting with his new stuffed buddy:

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I used a second blanket on my own back to show him how a turtle pulls its head inside the shell when it gets startled, which turned into a fun game of peekaboo.

Even once the turtle play ended, Travis loved parading around with the blanket on his shoulders for a while. A very fun, imaginative way to play with stuffed animals!

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What stuffed toys does your little one have that lend themselves to make-believe? Please share ideas in the comments!

Rain-Themed Day!

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We have blazing sunshine here today, and we’re waiting for a rain storm to come break the heat. In the meantime, Travis and I are making our own rain at home!

He loved the gross motor play to fit our theme – making a downpour with various kitchen colanders and sieves. The kitchen sink was a bit high for him, even on his stepstool…

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So I moved things to the kitchen floor. Spread a towel underneath, and you won’t need to worry about “puddles”!

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Travis loved scooping and pouring, as well as seeing the way water ran through the holes of the colander.

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When he tired of that, he asked if he could get in the basin of water we were using. I rolled up his pants and had him pretend it was a real puddle, and he had a blast stomping and making bubbles and waves with his feet.

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Even better, if you’re doing these activities on a real rainy day, put on some rubber boots and head outdoors to stomp!

For fine motor skills, we made a raincloud. Trace a rough outline of a cloud on blue construction paper, and have your child cover the area with glue before pressing down cotton balls. Don’t worry if the cotton ends up outside the lines, of course!

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Travis loved this part, so much so that he needed to make a second cloud while our first was drying.

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I was surprised he wasn’t more into the idea for raindrops – little teardrop shapes cut from shiny foil. So after he dabbed on more glue, I arranged the “rain” myself.

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Round out your themed day with other rain toys you can think of – shake rain sticks, do a rain dance, or bring out bath toys and have a “storm” at bathtime.

A great nursery rhyme to recite is Doctor Foster:

Doctor Foster went to Gloucester

In a shower of rain.

He stepped in a puddle

Right up to his middle

And never went there again.

We also sang our favorite rainy day songs (Rain Rain Go Away; I Hear Thunder), and ended the day with a book about rain (Soggy Saturday).

And how perfect: by bedtime we were rewarded with this:

Rainy Day

Rolling Wheels

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I have yet to meet a little boy who didn’t love all things with wheels – buses, cars, trucks, bulldozers – you name it! So what better way to paint than to create “tire tracks” in your own home?

Tuck the paintbrushes aside for the day, and instead set a variety of small trucks and cars alongside paper plates or foil pie tins filled with a different paint colors. Black is an obvious choice, to make authentic-looking tire tracks, but we had fun with green and orange paint too. Sturdy construction paper or poster board are good for this project.

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Travis loved dipping his cars in the paint, and seemed surprised every time he saw the resulting color on the page, after giving a vroom. “It’s green!” he would declare with delight.

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For variety, try using cars with wheels of varying thickness. A Brio train made nice big tracks.

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When we were cleaning up, Travis invented a new method of painting: he dipped a wet wipe in the paint trays and rubbed all over the newspaper we had layered on the floor – quelle artiste!

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Pirate’s Treasure

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Travis has lately been enthralled with finding “gold” rocks, leading to rock hunts all around our courtyard and when we visit the beach. Usually, I call any yellow or white ones we find “gold” rocks to make them special… but I decided to give Travis a real surprise at home!

Although normally it’s fun to do paint projects with your toddler, do this one while they’re sleeping – shh, it’s a surprise! Paint various rocks yellow (if your child still puts objects in his or her mouth, make sure they are too big to be choking hazards). For even truer color, you can spray paint them gold, but I have yet to find a spray paint that’s vegan. Let the rocks dry overnight.

The next day, bury them in a sandbox. If you’re indoors, a pan filled with coarse salt, oatmeal, or even flour makes a great sand substitute.

I told Travis I had a special surprise for him, and handed him a shovel. The hunt begins…

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What’s that he sees?

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The joy on his face was absolutely priceless.

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He was so ecstatic from having found “real” gold rocks that he hardly knew what to do with himself. He reburied them a few times so he could dig them up again, and then we played with them all around the house.

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I can think of a few ways to expand the game: creating a “treasure chest” to keep them in; pretending to be pirates on an island… Let me know what variations you and your child come up with in the comments!

Backyard Grill

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This one’s a little complicated, parents, but I promise it’s worth it!

The idea came from our August High Five magazine, and although I wondered if Travis would understand the concepts – we’ve never grilled dinner with him! – he has lately been very curious about the grills in our building’s courtyard, and took to the whole game with alacrity.

You’ll need to do some set-up the day before. Cut sponges into circles and have your child paint some brown and some yellow to make (veggie) burgers and buns. Our yellow is on the brown-ish side anyway, but if yours is bright yellow, you might want to tone it down with a drop of brown for better bun color.

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Travis had a blast painting the sponges, proudly saying, “We’re making burgers!” Make sure to let dry overnight – the sponges will absorb a lot of paint.

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While he slept, I did a little mommy work: roll toilet paper tubes in yellow tissue paper, and tuck in the ends. Add a piece of green tissue paper to one side, securing with tape; twist the overhanging end and secure with a rubber band. Draw on corn kernels with brown pen. Now you have corn on the cob!

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If your child is a preschooler instead of a toddler, they can probably help out with this part too!

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In the morning, I told Travis we were setting up the grill, and he was so excited. We used castle blocks as the base, but any blocks or Duplo you have around the house will work. We crumpled up black construction paper for charcoal, and then I told Travis we needed to add fire so our grill would be hot like the oven. He loved adding wads of red and yellow tissue paper, and helped me blow on the coals to start our fire!

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We added a cookie rack as the grill itself. Then it was time to cook our burgers!

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Travis became an expert burger flipper:

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Added green tissue paper “lettuce”:

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And liked the corn even though he seemed very unsure what it was:

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And after about 20 minutes of good fun, toddler happened:

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A good ending!

Shoebox Golf

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Develop hand-eye coordination with this toddler version of mini golf, no golf club required!

For visual fun, decorate the inside of a shoebox lid with crayons, before cutting a hole in the center large enough for a golf ball or ping pong ball to roll through. Travis wasn’t a fan of coloring the lid because he kept running up against the edges, so I designed a mini golf course for him – grass and a flag!

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Use masking tape to secure the lid, upside down, on top of the shoebox, and place the ball inside. Now show your child how to maneuver the lid until the ball drops through the hole – goal!

Travis had a hard time gripping both the lid and box at the same time, so we actually just took the top off, and let the ball drop onto the ground with each goal. This method also eliminates the need to untape the lid every time your toddler “scores” and retrieve the ball from inside the shoebox, so I think it’s a better solution all around. Try it both ways and see which you prefer!

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Apologies for the blurry photos – all our pics were action shots for this game, of course!

What other shoebox games have you and your toddler come up with? Let me know in the comments!

Horse-Themed Day!

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Occasionally, I’ll introduce a “theme” for the day, a nice way to give a loose structure to our play and spark ideas for creativity. Travis and I made today all about horses!

As a fine motor skills project, I thought it would be fun to use yarn as the mane on a coloring book cut-out of a horse. Surprisingly, since he loves yarn, Travis wasn’t in the mood to do the gluing or pressing down of the yarn, but it was a great way to introduce ‘mane’ into his vocabulary. He then enjoyed finishing the picture with watercolors (his request!) and crayons.

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For gross motor play, I turned an old wrapping paper roll into a “hobby horse,” taping it closed at intervals and adding play scarves as the mane. Travis ignored the game in the morning, but surprised me mid-afternoon by picking the tube up and trotting about the apartment.

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To add to the fun, we sang familiar horse ditties (“Trot Trot to Boston” “This is the Way the Ladies Ride”) as he galloped around.

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To round-out your horse-themed day, pull out other toys around the house that contain horses (plastic barns and toy animals, stuffed animals etc). You can also read any books you have at home about horses.

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And to end the day on a sweet note, sing ‘All the Pretty Little Horses’ as a lullaby!

Cloud Blobs

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This simple art project was a fun way to introduce Travis to the idea of cloud-watching, and is also great for sparking imagination.

Use any dark-colored construction paper as the background, since you’ll be using white paint. I chose blue and black so we could have clouds in both a “daytime” and “nighttime” sky.

Have your toddler dip a spoon into the white paint, and drizzle in the middle of the paper. Travis was very into the novelty of using a spoon instead of a brush, and needed to cover a few more sheets of paper once we’d completed the project itself.

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Fold the construction paper in half and smooth down, then open back up again – you’ll have a “cloud” blob of white paint. Encourage your child to tell you what he or she sees in the image. I joked that this was a little like a toddler Rorschach test!

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To wit, I thought our cloud on blue paper looked like a bee, but Travis told me he saw an octopus. If you like, have your toddler use white crayons (or other colors) to embellish the paintings, but Travis mostly lost interest at that point.

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To end the fun, we took a trip outside to look at real clouds, and I encouraged him to spot shapes in the sky as well. Overall, a nice introduction to the wonderful art of cloud-watching!

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Flags for Breakfast

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Get patriotic with this adorable American flag breakfast! My husband has proudly taught Travis to say the words “American flag” so he was very excited to recreate one in our kitchen.

Toast one slice of whole wheat bread, and spread with about 1 tablespoon non-dairy cream cheese. Even the littlest toddlers can help with this part, although you’ll likely have to spread to the edges.

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Add four stripes of strawberry jelly across the toast with a small spoon. If you’re child is old enough, they can help out with this part as well!

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Finally, arrange blueberries in the upper corner of the toast for “stars.” Travis loved helping with the blueberries, even if they didn’t all quite make it to the right place.

The taste brought a huge smile to his face – a sure winner for Independence Day and beyond.

Happy 4th!

Fireworks Circle Prints

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This easy art project is a fun way to talk about a specific shape. Travis and I used circles, but if you’d rather focus on squares, triangles, or any other shape, it lends itself perfectly!

For the circle version, seek out a variety of round items in your home that you can dip into paint – jar lids and small (washable) circular toys work well.

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Fill pie tins or paper plates with paint in two or more colors, and show your child how to press the circular objects in the paint and then onto the paper. Travis quickly picked up on the fact that we were making only circles, and had fun playing with the different sizes and making small circles inside larger ones.

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Although we used purple and red paint for this project, the purple was so deep it dried nearly blue. When Travis had finished, I realized the resulting, overlapping circles looked like fireworks bursting in air!

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It turned out to be very appropriate for so soon before the Fourth of  July, and will hang on the fridge in celebration for the next week or so.