Digging for Treasure

2 Comments

Today Veronika helped make “gems” at home to take to the sandbox… A beach-sized sandbox that is! Although you could do this activity in a backyard sandbox (or inside!), there was something about being out on a real beach that doubled the fun.

To start, Veronika helped gather some special rocks from outside, and then we made them even more special with silver and gold paint. I assumed she would use a brush to paint the rocks, but she loved dunking them right into cups of paint!

This gave them a beautiful coating, although admittedly they took longer to dry. To speed up the process, I used a hair dryer on low, because we couldn’t wait to get outside.

It was time to head to the beach and see if X marked the spot! While Veronika wasn’t looking, I dug a hole and buried the rocks, along with a few other treasures from home like plastic gemstones and fake coins. If you’re burying items like this, make sure you keep track of them so you don’t leave any trash behind.

I handed her the shovel and encouraged her to dig. She was so delighted when she uncovered her first find, a golden coin.

We kept digging and used a toy colander to “pan” for the gold. She loved scooping sand into the colander, as well as watching it sift down.

When all the treasure has been collected, you can even leave the natural rocks behind for the next lucky pirate to find!

Spinach & Ricotta Pasta Bake

Leave a comment

A small shell pasta (such as orecchiette) topped with creamy vegan ricotta and marinara sauce makes a toddler-friendly alternative to large stuffed shell pasta.

Ingredients:

For the ricotta:

  • 1 (14-ounce) package firm tofu
  • 1 tablespoon lemon juice
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 1 teaspoon garlic powder

For the remaining ingredients:

  • 1 pound orecchiette pasta
  • 1 (16-ounce) package fresh baby spinach
  • 1 cup vegan Parmesan shreds
  • 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
  • 1 (25-ounce) jar marinara sauce
  1. To prepare the ricotta, combine the tofu, lemon juice, olive oil, and garlic powder in a blender; process until smooth. Refrigerate until ready to use.
  2. To prepare the pasta, cook the orecchiette according to package directions. Drain and transfer to the bottom of a 9×13-inch baking dish. Set aside
  3. Meanwhile, steam the spinach for about 2 minutes, until wilted, then drain and chop.
  4. In a bowl, stir together the spinach, prepared ricotta, vegan Parmesan, and nutmeg. Spoon the ricotta mixture over the pasta, then top evenly with the marinara sauce.
  5. Bake at 350 degrees F for 40 minutes. Serve with a green salad to complete the meal!

Berry Basket Printing

Leave a comment

There are many items around the house for making perfect circles, but it can be harder to find an item that’s just right for dipping in paint to make perfect squares. The solution? Berry baskets! Because the market is bursting with fresh berries right now, this activity had a nice seasonal feel, too.

To start, I poured out several colors of paint directly onto a tray so we had a surface large enough to dip in our pint-sized berry basket.

I showed Veronika how to press the basket into the paint, then lift up and transfer to paper. A perfect square!

She loved mixing colors, too, for a beautiful blue-green hue on some of them.

We let the paint dry, then finished the fun with markers. I challenged her to think about what we could turn our squares into. While I drew a house and a window box as examples, Veronika loved scribbling beside me.  Overall, this is a berry cute craft in the merry month of May.

Fishy Necklace

Leave a comment

Fishy Necklace (7)

It was our first beach day of the season, and Veronika loved spotting fish in the water. At home, we decided to continue the fishy fun with this cute necklace, which counted towards the day’s arts & crafts, plus worked her fine motor skills!

To start, I cut simple fish shapes from construction paper and Veronika helped punch a hole near the top of each as the “eye”.

For a few extra necklace beads, we painted penne pasta. I expected Veronika to brush the paint on, but she loved dunking the pasta right in cups of paint! This gave us great saturated colors, although it did mean they took longer to dry.

Fishy Necklace (2)

Once the pasta was dry, it as time to thread. I showed Veronika how to alternate adding a fish and then a pasta “bead” onto a lacing string, working in this way until the lace was full.

Fishy Necklace (3)

She absolutely loved the process, picking each color bead to add, delighting in the way we could pull the thread through, and eagerly selecting what item should go on next. Then we knotted it off for a fashion show!

Fishy Necklace (4)

She loved it so much that we made a second version; this time, I didn’t knot the lace so she could remove the beads and put them on again to her heart’s content.

Fishy Necklace (6)

In sum, there was nothing fishy about this craft, just lots of good fun!

Sticky Table Sensory Play

Leave a comment

Sticky Table Sensory (6)

Here’s a fun twist on contact paper collages for toddlers, taking the concept up a notch: turn a whole table into a sticky canvas!

To be honest, I only had enough contact paper to cover half of the table, but that didn’t seem to matter to Veronika. Place the contact paper on a tabletop, sticky side up, and secure with masking tape around the edges.

Sticky Table Sensory (1)

I then presented Veronika with a variety of items from the craft bin that she could adhere. My original intention was to use pom poms, but we recently used ours up! Still, there were plenty of materials to test out. Some, such as strips of gift ribbon or pipe cleaners, she could pull up easily.

Sticky Table Sensory (2)

Others, like yarn and cotton pads were much harder, sticking on firmly. The cotton pads were particularly fun since she could pull them up and see bits of cotton fluff left behind!

Sticky Table Sensory (3)

We also tested out squares of bubble wrap and pieces of felt.

Sticky Table Sensory (4)

The point of the activity was mainly sensory play for Veronika, feeling not only the sticky paper and observing its effect, but also enjoying the various textured materials. For something more artistic, simply turn the final creation into a collage by placing a second sheet of contact paper on top!

Sticky Table Sensory (5)

Play in a Box

Leave a comment

Boxes can be anything and everything, but often when we play with them, I give Veronika a prompt or we embellish the boxes in some way. Today, we had several empty delivery boxes in the house, and I simply presented them to her as is, curious to see what she’d do with them!

First, she wanted to climb in. I did add a little bit of detail with crayon so she had a “steering wheel” and dashboard, and now it was her race car! Similarly, you can quickly make a box into a boat or plane with just a few swipes of crayon.

Next, I turned the box so the opening was on the bottom. Now it was a perfect table! I loved watching her stage a tea party in the afternoon sunlight. A box like this is also perfect for kitchen or restaurant play.

Finally, we turned a few smaller boxes on their sides. Now they were a perfect stable for horses…

…or a cozy house for her puppy dog!

What will your child do with a box? Please share in the comments!

Lines of Tape

Leave a comment

2 Lines of Tape (1)

Sometimes, facilitating a full morning of play is as simple as laying down a few lines of tape on the floor. To wit, here are several different ways we played with tape on this lazy Sunday!

The first idea came from Hands on as We Grow, using a few strips of tape to build gross motor skills. Lay down six lines of tape so they are almost like the rungs of a ladder. First, the kids hopped forward on them.

6 Lines of Tape (2)

But a bigger challenge was next: Hop backwards!

6 Lines of Tape (3)

Big brother Travis then tackled the course on one foot; hopping like this is still too advanced for Veronika, but she loved watching.

6 Lines of Tape (4)

Next, I challenged them to see how far their legs could stretch. Travis proudly got across 5 lines! Veronika loved imitating his pose.

6 Lines of Tape (5)

Next up was reaching with the arms…

6 Lines of Tape (6)

…and then with whole bodies! Travis was a full 6 lines tall, and Veronika stretched across 5. She wanted to measure up her stuffed puppy, too!

6 Lines of Tape (7)

From here, we moved on to a different activity using colored lines of tape. This time I taped down three different colors of duct tape, each one taking a few twists and turns.

2 Lines of Tape (5)

The first challenge was to move the building blocks in the same color as the line from one end of it to the other.

2 Lines of Tape (4)

Veronika diligently followed the lines with dainty footsteps…

2 Lines of Tape (7)

… and then loved building up structures at the other end! When I gave her red blocks and asked her to follow the red line, she looked so confused for moment until I amended, “The pink line!” This girl knows her colors.

2 Lines of Tape (6)

We ended the day with a relay race!

2 Lines of Tape (8)

This final activity was great for balance; I handed each kid a spoon with a ping pong ball balanced in the center and they each picked a colored line to walk along.

2 Lines of Tape (9)

They loved racing to the finish, Travis on green and Veronika on blue. Travis was so proud to win, and loved cheering on his little sister, too!

2 Lines of Tape (10)

Tropical Fruit Slushie

2 Comments

Tropical Smoothie alt

This drink is so thick I consider it more of a slushie than a smoothie! If you prefer a more watery beverage, decrease the amount of each fruit to 1/2 cup.

Ingredients:

  • 3/4 cup frozen pineapple
  • 3/4 cup frozen mango
  • 3/4 cup frozen strawberries
  • 1 cup soy milk
  • 1/2 cup orange juice
  1. Combine all of the ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth.

Add brightly colored tropical straws to serve!

Rainbow Water Bead Sensory Bags

Leave a comment

If your kids love water beads but you hate the mess, consider these eye-catching sensory bags. Kids still get the look and squishy tactile fun, without the risk of all those beads skittering across the floor!

To set up, it helps to buy a rainbow pack of water beads where each color comes separately; I promise that you don’t want to try to sorting water beads once saturated.

I filled a zip-top bag with about 1 tablespoon of each bead color, then added water so they could soak overnight. If you notice the beads have absorbed all the water, just add a bit more.

In the morning, the bags were full! I dumped out about half the beads from each to make room, then added a little extra water and tinted it with the appropriate color of food coloring. Seal tightly (it helps to add a strip of duct tape for extra security!) and hand over to your tots.

These are great lying flat on the ground so Veronika could see the beads. She loved that she could push the beads through the water inside with her fingers.

But she also loved picking them up and tossing them! Having the full rainbow is great for teaching ROYGBIV order of course, as well as visually gorgeous.

For all that effort to seal the beads up, she did still want to play with some beads out of the bag. So I poured the extras into a wide bin. Pretty soon, toys were swimming through, and big brother Travis needed to join the fun. Luckily, not too many went skittering away!

Chalk Fun, Indoors and Outside

Leave a comment

Chalk Fun (13)

There are so many ways to play with chalk, ranging from the artistic to the educational, and from indoor activities to outdoor fun.

To start, Veronika tested out some indoor ways to play, many of which were suggestions from the Toddler’s Busy Book. Of course you can simply draw on paper, which is a novel variation over a chalkboard. Once complete, set the picture with a spritz of hair spray!

Chalk Fun (1)

It’s also fun to wet paper with a damp sponge and see the difference in color in the wet and dry spaces. Note: The Toddler’s Busy Book also suggests wetting paper with laundry starch and buttermilk… but we skipped both of those.

Chalk Fun (2)

You can also soak chalk in a sugar-water mixture (about 1 cup water to 1/2 cup sugar) for 10 minutes, then draw with it for a wonderfully saturated look.

Chalk Fun (5)

Prefer your chalk on the dry side? Veronika enjoyed simply drawing on the paper and then smearing over it with a cotton ball.

Chalk Fun (3)

Now it was time to head outside! First, we placed a piece of paper down on the ground for a “sidewalk rubbing”, similar to those we’ve done against the bark of a tree with crayon.

Chalk Fun (6)

Next up was a little learning! I tried some early letter matching for Veronika, having her pick out two Vs from a cluster of letters, for example. Or, if she found the upper case T, could she point out the lowercase t? I used only letters she’s very familiar with, but preschoolers can tackle a whole chalk alphabet!

Chalk Fun (8)

Chalk also works well for teaching number correspondence; simply write the numerals next to chalk dots in the corresponding number.

Chalk Fun (9)

Don’t forget shapes! To start, I simply drew a few shapes and had her find me two of each, such as the two triangles, or the two circles.

Chalk Fun (10)

Then we upped the ante with a chalk maze! I drew paths with squares, circles, and triangles, each in a different color.

Chalk Fun (12)

Veronika was a master at this game, zigging and zagging with aplomb and never missing a turn to stay on the same shape.

Chalk Fun (15)

She then spent some time pouring water over the chalk, because it’s always great fun to see chalk lines disappear.

Chalk Fun (11)

That led us out to the back patio where we ended the fun with more water:

Chalk Fun (16)

Dip the chalk sticks into cups of water and then paint right on the glass of a window or patio door.

Chalk Fun (17)

What’s your child’s favorite way to play with chalk? Please share in the comments!

Chalk Fun (4)