This easy pack-and-go mix will give kids the energy to get through any morning or afternoon slump between meals!
Ingredients:
You can store the mix in an air-tight container at room temperature.
This adorable suggestion from Little Passports allows kids to plan and construct – the basics of engineering! For my three-year-old, the activity was equally about the fun of squishing straws into marshmallows (and eating a couple along the way), as it was about building a dinosaur… But nothing wrong with that! It was a neat exercise in getting him to think more deliberately about how to build a structure.
We started by setting up two of our dinosaur toys as models (if you don’t have dino toys at home, consider looking at a picture online), and gathered our materials – Dandies marshmallows and straws.
I asked Travis if he thought T-rex’s head should be a marshmallow or straw, to which he replied the former, and we went from there. As we added each piece, Travis loved helping decide what should come next, and was also fascinated by how we could shape the dinosaur by trimming the straws into smaller pieces (a grown-up or big kid job).
He especially loved figuring out how tails, arms, and legs attached.
The fun didn’t end when our dinosaurs were complete – we had lots of leftover marshmallows which he wanted to play with. This one became a “snowman” with a firefighter’s hose.
It also turned into a neat lesson on fractions, since as I cut the straws into halves, thirds, or quarters, he helped me count the pieces. Overall, great STEM-based fun!
Here’s a quirky, sweet project to compliment any fall nature walk – make a collection of the items you find, then bring them home and turn them into “friends”.
Travis loved this element to a stroll we took at a local Audubon society, delightedly filling up the bag I brought along. Although unseasonably warm weather means we didn’t find too many brightly colored leaves yet, there is no shortage of neat things to find. Big seed pods were especially a hit, as were little acorn caps, pieces of bark, and other small treasures.
To make our friends once home, I gathered odds and ends from our craft bin – pom poms and buttons were good options for eyes.
Ribbon and decorative tape could make smiles. Travis thought it was funny that the tape made a straight line for an “angry friend” (who actually was his favorite!) instead of a curved smile.
Adults, you may need hot glue depending on what materials you’re working – pipe cleaner arms and legs needed the help of the hot glue gun, as did items we glued to roly-poly seed pods.
In sum, have fun with this one. What will be the body of your friend – bark, a rock, a big leaf? The only limit is your child’s imagination!
Here’s an adorable little snack that takes tomatoes from good to gourmet! If a store near you doesn’t sell Miyoko’s creamy cheeses (or a similar substitute), you can order online from purveyors like Vegan Essentials.
Ingredients:
This project is yet another that I’ve tabled for over a year, since I needed a hot glue gun. Armed with my latest favorite crafting tool, it was a beautiful project after school one day this week.
Wish flags (also called Prayer Flags) are rectangular strips of cloth traditionally found outside in the Himalayas, used to bless the countryside or impart another wish. I told Travis a bit about the history and context of the project as I cut an old pillowcase into 4 rectangles.
Cut a long piece of twine, and arrange your rectangles in a row with the twine extending across all 4; make sure to leave enough twine at the end to hang your flags up later. Fold each rectangle in half over the twine, using hot glue to seal it down.
If it’s not glitter paint these days, then Travis isn’t interested, so glitter paint it was to decorate our wish flags!
The idea was to mimic the woodblock-printed text and images that can be found on Tibetan prayer flags. Travis mostly just had fun painting, but I asked him if any of his art work represented a wish or hope he had for anyone. Older children may really want to put some thought into this part!
Mama added a wish flag for love and peace on earth for all humans and animals.
Once the paint dried, we hung our project outside in the sunshine – what a beautiful addition to any landscape!
We pretty much never tire of making baking soda explode with vinegar around here. To add an autumnal spin to the project, this time we erupted “apples” instead of volcanoes!
To make your apple mixture, combine 1 cup baking soda, 1 tablespoon dish detergent and 1 tablespoon water. We had everything ready to go in a bin for outside, since we knew this was going to be a messy one…
Time to get your hands dirty! Get in there and mush your baking soda mixture around, until you can form it into balls as the apples. We squirted in a little red food coloring, but oddly this made our apples purple, not red! Ah well, a little leaf as the finishing touch made them super cute.
I gave Travis an old ketchup bottle filled with white vinegar, and he went to town squirting onto the apples, delighted by the foamy erupting result.
He couldn’t stop there of course; half the fun is stirring around the foamy mixture afterwards. Look, a leftover apple!
Travis also decided he wanted to cover one of our gourds with the foam – why not, since this added to the fall feel of the project.
As always, this activity is the perfect way to blow off energy when your kids just want to get messy!
With Travis now in nursery school three days a week and lots of other projects on our agenda, I’ve greatly abbreviated our phoneme games; we seem to be doing phoneme months instead of phoneme weeks. But it’s still nice to have a guiding letter pair up on our wall, introducing Travis to the sounds that letter pairs make, and using that as a jumping-off point for play.
You’ll notice that this post is much simplified from previous phoneme weeks, but this pace suits us just right for now. Have your child practice tracing A and Y over the course of your week or month, and then enjoy the suggestions below!
Words of the Week:
…we also took advantage of moments when the weather was cloudy to do activities best suited to grAY-sky dAYs: Rainy day window painting and a rainy day art picnic! These fun activities are sure to chase any rainy-day blues awAY.
We took the fun home with a bale of hay from a craft store (easy to come by, here in the fall). Travis loved having his own little farm out back where his animals could play in the hay. 
Finally, we incorporated hay into a craft with our Q-tip Painting Indian Corn project.
I also decided to have Travis be my sous-chef for a recipe requiring cooking sprAY, and wanted it to be something novel. That meant we pulled out my old waffle maker for the first time in years, sprayed it with the cooking spray, and scooped in the batter for homemade pumpkin waffles!
Last night was the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival (or Mooncake Festival), celebrating the harvest. Traditionally, families celebrate with picnics and mooncakes eaten underneath the full moon. Making vegan mooncakes was too arduous an undertaking, but fortune cookies seemed like a nice cultural symbol to set the tone, and were easy to make with… clay! This was a fun way to introduce Travis to a new culture and new ideas.
After a real fortune cookie snack, he loved watching the “cookie shop” we set up, as I demonstrated how to roll the clay flat into circles.
Fold each circle in half, then pinch inwards into a fortune cookie shape.
This was a bit tough for Travis, but he loved watching me pinch our cookies as he created other shapes.
We let the clay air-dry overnight, and then painted with watercolors the following afternoon. Travis had fun selecting different shades for each cookie!
To make the fortunes, simply cut paper into thin strips and decorate with pictures or words.
I gave Travis a few prompts, asking what he most hoped for or would wish for somebody else, and wrote his words on some of our fortunes.
Then it was time for the “festival”! This really just entailed heading out after dark as a family to see the moon (so bright my camera couldn’t handle it).
We enjoyed the Chinese tradition of telling riddles as we snacked on real fortune cookies. Two fun ones for kids that earned big giggles:
What’s full of holes but still holds water? – A sponge!
What’s black and white and re(a)d all over? – The newspaper!
Overall, a really fun activity whether you tie the clay cookies into a larger festival or not.
Travis is in nursery school three days a week now (!), a transition that has gone remarkably well, but which sometimes leaves him confused as to whether it’s a school day or a weekend – a term used loosely since his “weekend” is now four days long.
This easy chart helps him visualize the week, and is great both for pre-readers and for kids who can read the days of the week.
To make the chart, cut a piece of poster board into a strip, and divide into 7 spaces (decorative washi tape makes a nice border between days). Write the names of the days across the top.
We filled in each space with a visual of the main activity for each day.
You can draw simple pictures on index cards, and write the words of the activity as well. In addition, we added photos for some of the activities that repeat weekly, like school:
You can print out photos, or use a handy instant camera for the pics.
As the final touch, we added a large paperclip along the top, which Travis can slide along as the week progresses. He loves matching up which day it is with which activity we’re headed off to enjoy!
These after-school snacks are bursting with energy and with natural sweetness from the coconut and dates. They’re the perfect boost to get through a busy afternoon!
Ingredients:
joyful parenting 