Here’s an instant upgrade over a standard cup of yogurt in the morning!
Ingredients:
Here’s a great activity for siblings that gets giggles (because it tickles!), checks off the arts and crafts box for the day, and will have siblings thinking about what they love best about each other. You can do this with two or more siblings of any age.
I needed to first trace both kids on a big sheet of craft paper, and Travis volunteered to lie down first. Veronika laughed as I traced around him with crayon.
She was clearly eager for her turn!
This little one loved being traced!
Next, fill in the outline of each sibling with how they feel about each other. I posed the question to Travis, asking him to describe words about Veronika and his emotions. I thought he might mention some of their inside jokes or games, but instead he said, “I love her, that’s all!” Can’t argue with that, so we wrote that in.
Pose the same question to a second sibling. Obviously if you play the game with a baby or toddler, he or she won’t understand the concept. In that case, older siblings get to fill in words about the baby inside their outline. Travis said “copy” (because she always loves to copy him!), “cute”, and “love”.
If your kids want to get creative, you can then draw on faces, hair, or other feature. My kids just liked rolling around on the paper afterwards, and that was fine, too!
Veronika wanted to copy along when Travis threaded beads to make friendship bracelets back in the spring, so today I thought I’d introduce her to the skill! Threading is a fantastic fine motor activity for toddlers, and although I didn’t expect Veronika to ace it today, the idea was to introduce the concept and see if she could loop some items with large holes onto string.
Good, early items for toddlers to thread include dried tube-shaped pasta, cut up pieces of a paper towel tube, beads with big holes, and wooden craft spools.
At first I was going to have her thread onto shoe laces…
…but these were a little droopy and wobbly. We switched over to pipe cleaners which were much sturdier for her!
She was most interested in the pasta, which was by far the easiest item for her to thread. She could loop it onto the shoelace or the pipe cleaner with a little assistance.
She also loved testing out the beads, although these were tough for her fingers.
After a short while, she was mostly just interested in playing with the materials.
But I thought it was so sweet when big brother Travis swooped in and created a “bracelet” for Veronika.
She loved his creation!
On the heels of a fun avocado textbook, here was another project to kit out Travis’s school supplies for the first day next week!
Travis helped glue a piece of brown cardstock to the cover of a standard spiral notebook. Then we glued scrapbook paper in a gingham print (which reminded us of a picnic blanket!) on to the first sheet of paper of the notebook; let dry.
Trim the edge of the cover so it is rounded like a taco shell.
Next up was cutting taco fillings (lettuce, tomato, and cheese shreds) from felt. This was great scissor practice for Travis since felt is tough to cut.
We glued the felt shapes along the inside cover of the “taco shell”.
Once closed, it looked almost good enough to eat!
joyful parenting 