Paper Plate Frog

July 13, 20171 Comment

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Travis has just started camp, and every day the teacher gathers everyone together for craft time. It has renewed his interest in simple hands-on activities – painting, gluing – which lately he seemed to have tired of when it was just mom in charge! Now he comes home and wants to play camp, so we threw together this easy frog with items we had on hand.

For the mouth, fold a paper plate in half; paint the outside green, and the inside black. Travis didn’t even want my help making sure the paint got all the way to the edges.

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For the legs and arms, I drew simple outlines on green craft foam and cut them out.

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Travis was a big helper putting on globs of glue so we could set the legs and arms in the right place once the paint was dry. A pink construction paper tongue was added as well.

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I glued on googly eyes as the final touch. When the frog was ready, Travis decided all on his own that we needed to make flies to feed it. “Let’s paint them white!” White flies? Why not!

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A hoppin’ good time.

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Summer Fun Watermelon Shakers

July 13, 2017July 18, 2017Leave a comment

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Watermelon is arguably the perfect summer food. Take the enjoyment beyond the edible and continue the watermelon theme with these easy shakers. They’re perfect to shake around the house or to bring along on your next picnic!

First we needed to fill a paper coffee cup with rice – Travis was very excited for this step!

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Place a second coffee cup over the first, and add pink duct tape around the middle – you’ll probably want to use careful adult supervision until the seam where rice can escape is completely covered.

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Now cover the tops and bottoms of the cups with green duct tape – voila, a watermelon in a rind!

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We added black dots with a permanent marker for seeds.

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Now shake-shake-shake!

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Surprisingly, the maraca held Travis’s attention for only a short while.

But he did soon want to make his own tape and cup creations. He told me this was a cow and a pig:

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And that this was a lantern!

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Just goes to show you never know what creativity one craft will spark in your child.

Crab Cakes

July 12, 2017Leave a comment

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This recipe gives a whole new meaning to the term “crab cakes” – there’s no actual crab here, just a wonderful crab-shaped figure of cake and fruit on your child’s plate!

The original recipe called for a store-bought loaf cake, cut into slices. However, it can be hard to find vegan loaf cakes, so I baked a yellow cake from a mix in a 9-inch round pan. Let cool completely, then carefully cut in half horizontally with a serrated knife.

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Using a large circle-shaped cookie cutter, cut out 8 crab bodies from your cakes. Use a smaller cookie cutter to form 16 eyes. Discard any additional cake scraps (or save for nibbling!)

We added strawberry claws and antennae, cake crumbs below the crabs for sand, and blueberries for water.

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For the smiles, microwave non-dairy chocolate chips at 20 second intervals until melted (about 1 minute total). Use a toothpick to draw on a happy chocolate crab smile.

Dig in!

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Needless to say, our crab didn’t last very long.

Destination: MCU Park and Coney Island

July 11, 2017Leave a comment

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Major league baseball stadiums can be overwhelming for children – the noise, the crowds, the noise, the fans’ energy, the noise – did I mention the noise?

A great bet for a child’s first game (and subsequent ones!) is to support your local Triple-A team. We’re lucky to live near MCU Park, home to the Brooklyn Cyclones. The stadium is wonderfully family-friendly; many games include kids running the bases either before or after the game; fireworks on select nights; or themes like Harry Potter Night.

Because the stadium is small, there is literally not a bad seat in the house, perfect for explaining the ins and outs of the game to children old enough to understand.

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You’ll be right up close to all those silly mascots, too!

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MCU Park has the added bonus of being right up against Coney Island with the rest of its attractions. Make a day of it before the game starts (I find that 4 p.m. games are the ideal start time for the preschool set). If you arrive in the early afternoon, you’ll have ample time to stroll the boardwalk and sample the food (Italian ice is a must!). Duck into Luna Park for a few kiddie rides;

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Gape in terror at the roller coasters;

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And soak up the local characters (parrot-toting guitar players??)

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A perfect summer afternoon!

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Trip Date: July 2017

Ages: 3+

Useful Links:

Destination: The High Line

July 11, 2017July 11, 2017Leave a comment

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This is the first post in a new series of vacations or day trips to enjoy with kids! The High Line is a perfect oasis, not just for children, but also for adults overwhelmed by New York’s concrete jungle. Up a flight of stairs off Tenth Avenue, you’ll suddenly find yourself above the fray of the metropolis. (Note: There is elevator access at the 14th Street, 16th Street, 23rd Street, and 30th Street entrances).

Summer is my favorite time to visit the High Line, although each season has its beauties. You’ll find acres of gardens planted with flowers and vines.

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There are also grass lawns to sunbathe on and strategically placed viewing platforms where you can sit right above the traffic – perfect for toddlers learning to name their vehicles!

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Best of all, if you visit when the High Line is not too crowded, there’s a bit of room for kids to run or walk about and get out their energy… A much safer thing to do up on the High Line than down on the sidewalks.

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A perfect oasis!

Trip Date: July 2016

Ages: All!

Useful Links:

http://www.thehighline.org/

Galaxy in a Bottle

July 10, 2017July 10, 2017Leave a comment

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This project is reminiscent of our Glitter Star Jars, but we liked the results and the making of it even better!

It all began when we found gorgeous pictures of galaxies and star clusters on NASA’s website – so cool to skim through and to teach your child a bit about the cosmos, even if the larger details are lost on a preschooler.

After our picture-gazing was done, we began the real fun – putting together our own glittery universe.

We dyed water with food coloring in two separate cups, one red and one blue.

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To the red cup, we added a judicious amount of glitter. In the blue cup, we went wild with lots of glitter!

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To assemble your universe, tear cotton balls apart slightly, and fill a clear glass or plastic jar.

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We poured in the red cup, which fully saturated the cotton balls. After adding a second layer of cotton balls, we poured in the blue cup. The two layers stayed perfectly separated, which made for a gorgeous effect!

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Travis had so much fun that he soon became a little scientist, concocting universes out of food coloring and glitter for quite some time.

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A great start to the morning!

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Spider Web Snacks

July 10, 2017July 10, 2017Leave a comment

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To continue with some recent web-filled fun, we made edible spiderwebs for snack! This project has a few steps that kids can help out with for hands-on cooking fun.

Let your child help arrange 5 pretzel sticks on wax paper so they form a five-pointed star. Make as many arrangements of 5 as you’ll need to feed all the children snacking in your household.

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Adults: Microwave chocolate chips at 20 second intervals until melted (about 1 minute total). Transfer the melted chocolate to a zip-top plastic bag, then pipe the chocolate “web” in circles around the pretzel rods.

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Travis loved helping with this step, so our webs weren’t always perfect circles – nothing wrong with a few globs!

You can add a big clump of raisins in the center as big scary spiders. Single raisins around the edges made perfect flies caught in the web.

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Transfer the wax paper to the fridge and let the chocolate set. Once it cools, you can remove the spider web directly from the wax paper. Impatience meant that ours didn’t last nearly that long, so instead we ate a snack that looked more like chocolate-dipped pretzels – delicious either way!

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Paper Plate Sea Creatures

July 9, 2017July 9, 2017Leave a comment

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Travis is enamored with sea creatures now that we’ve returned from the shore. Luckily I had paper plates on hand upon our arrival home, which was all we needed to bring the sea to us!

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To start, I cut out several sea animal shapes from the plates. Travis was eager to help with the scissors, so with some adult guidance he helped cut the snips for jellyfish tentacles and octopus legs.

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Then it was time to decorate! Dot markers were a mess-free and perfect way to make our sea creatures colorful.

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Travis declared his orange and blue fish a clownfish without any prompting!

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Mommy added the smile and eyes onto our jolly octopus after Travis had dotted him all over with yellow.

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Let the paint dry, and then turn your living room into a giant ocean full of swimming sea creatures.

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Spider Web Walk

July 9, 2017July 9, 20171 Comment

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Travis recently fell in love with finding spider webs at our vacation house – so I surprised him this morning with a giant tape web on the floor! The web lends itself to lots of games.

First, we made “bugs” to get stuck in the web. I only had 3 pipe cleaners on hand but go ahead and scrunch up as many pipe cleaners as you like to form creepy crawlies.

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We then made up games of tossing the bugs into the sticky web and finding silly ways to get to them: on hands and knees; on tip toes; etc.

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I thought he might also enjoy driving cars through the web, since the tape lines made for perfect racing markers.

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Far more fun than this, however, was Travis’s decision to make his own spider web! He loved putting down each piece of sticky tape, which became a great chance to talk about how real spider webs are sticky, too, and why.

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He was so proud of his final creation!

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Phoneme Week 6: SH

July 8, 2017July 8, 20172 Comments

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Apologies for the long lag since our last phoneme – we more properly had an SH month, to accommodate timely trips to shores and ships. Of course we started out by tracing S + H on our Usborne Wipe-Clean Alphabet cards. This sound was a fun one to explain and to say: “Shhhh!”

Phonics Book of the Week: Shark in the Park was a fun intro to the sound, also featuring the words SHarp and SHeep. Although there were not many SH words, the book includes lots of repetition so Travis latched on right away. By the next morning he was guessing that shadow and shade also contained an SH!

Guiding Theme: SHell

To start the fun, we pulled out three different sizes of pasta shells just to play with. This was great fun for sorting and scooping.

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Of course there was also lots of beach combing to search for real shells to take home! Beach Wind Chime (1)

We Listened:

She Sells Seashells

We Made:

Shell art! Get creative with your pasta shells and make a collage. First we painted the big ones, and then we arranged the littles in globs of glue on paper. We added blue for water and brown for sand for a beachy scene!
Ocean Sensory Tray
Beach Memento Wind Chime
Seashell Friends

We Learned:

For science of the week, we focused on the word SHadow; as a perfect coincidence, there was a great explanatory story in our July High Five about what makes a shadow. Then we were off on a shadow hunt outside and experimented with finding them in front of us, behind us, and beside us. We also traced a shadow puzzle.
For math of the week, talk about the word SHort. We compared items in our home as an easy intro to what makes something short versus tall. Blocks are great, as are dolls or figurines or anything else you have at home that provides a short and tall comparison.

We Visited:

The SHore, (obviously!), to see shells. If you’re lucky (or if there is an aquarium nearby), you may also spot SHarks! Or hermit crabs in SHells.

We Ate:

SHepherd’s pie
summer squaSH

Other Words of the Week:

Ship: I set the stage for this word with a read of Usborne’s On a Pirate Ship. We continued the fun with their Build Your Own Pirate Ships sticker book. Although recommended for ages 4 and up, Travis had no trouble at all with a little guidance, and was thrilled with each creation! Then it was time to craft a popsicle stick pirate ship: We finished with a real pirate ship adventure – thank you summer vacation!
Shore: Other than the above-mentioned shore visit to collect shells, we read Shine-a-Light Secrets of the Seashore and Seashore from Usborne’s non-fiction Beginners collection.
Shine: Here’s your perfect week to enjoy Usborne shine-a-light collection. There are 13 to choose from, and we did many reads of On the Train and Apple Tree. To chase away nighttime shadows, we then made a Tissue Paper Night Light; don’t forget to shine your flashlight around the room and see if you can make any SHadows.
Shoes: Set up all your shoes and play shoe store. The best part of this game was trying on silly shoes.Dad’s boots are so fun!
Shapes: Now’s the time to pull out any shape toys you have – in fact, since so many of our shape toys have been retired to the “baby bin”, it was a fun excuse to dig through and play with old favorites. For more preschool-aged fun, we read Usborne’s Lift the Flap Shapes.
Shampoo: For purely tactile fun, we made Instant Sensory Snow out of shampoo. Then let your little one try their hand at sudsing up their own hair during bath time this week!