Day: January 27, 2020

Continent Cookies and Pen Pals

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Passports World (1)

Travis has a new subscription to the World Edition of Little Passports, having graduated from Early Explorers. With this big kid subscription, he’ll now get to explore a specific country each month instead of a worldwide theme.

The starter kit contained everything he’ll need moving forward, including: a suitcase; a letter from our guides “Sam and Sofia”; a first luggage tag; a passport; a world map; and a coin chart that he’ll fill in each month.

Passports World (2)

The activities in his first booklet are great for early elementary school age, including simple addition, mazes, and word scrambles.

As an activity to kick start things, we made the suggested Continent Cookies. Prepare sugar cookies according to your favorite recipe (full disclosure: we used a mix!).

Divide the dough into thirds. Tint one third with about 10 drops of green food coloring; this will be your land. Tint the remaining two-thirds dough with about 10 drops of blue food coloring; this will be your ocean.

World Passports (4)

Pull off about 2 tablespoons of the blue dough and press into a disk. We followed along with Little Passport’s handy instruction sheet and tried to shape pinches of the green dough into the shapes of the continents. Travis enjoyed this challenge, and also made up his own pretend continents.

World Passports (5)

Our full world didn’t turn out too badly!

World Passports (6)

Bake according to recipe instructions, then enjoy a taste of the world – literally!

For some final fun, we checked out extras online like how to say hello in multiple languages.

World Passports (8)

We also printed out a pen pal template and decided to start a correspondence with his cousin, who lives a few states away.

World Passports (9)

Your kids might even have friends or relatives in another country to write to! We’re excited to see what arrives in the first country kit next month.

Pom Pom Push

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Pom Pom Push (4)

This game is sort of like a DIY shape sorter, only all the shapes are circles and it’s more about dexterity than exact shape matching. Regardless, it was a huge hit with Veronika at just shy of fifteen months old.

Make holes in the lid of a large (empty and clean) yogurt container. You can use a drill for this, but I found it worked just fine to poke the initial hole with an Xacto knife and then use scissors to snip into an even circle. Just make sure you have no jagged edges, as cut plastic lids can be sharp. Return the lid to the top of the container.

Pom Pom Push (1)

I then presented Veronika with the container and pom poms. Since the pom poms were on the smaller side, you’ll definitely want to supervise this activity closely and make sure none find their way to your child’s mouth.

Pom Pom Push (3)

We had two sizes: tiny green ones that slipped right into the holes and slightly bigger red ones that needed a push with the thumb. She loved them both! I loved watching her dexterity as she plucked the small green ones from my palm and inserted into a hole.

Pom Pom Push (2)

Of course once the container is filled, the lid can be taken off, the pom poms dumped out, and the fun begun again!

Pom Pom Push (5)

And don’t be surprised if your toddler finds other uses for that empty yogurt container. Apparently it made the perfect seat for Veronika’s “baby”!

Pom Pom Push (7)