Category: Imaginative Play

Super Hero Costume

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Need a last minute costume? It only takes a couple of easy items to put together this super hero idea from High Five magazine, and your child can help with most of it!

Draw two eye holes on craft foam, then draw a mask shape around the eyes and cut out. Measure your child’s head and cut two more strips of craft foam to be the straps. Using self-adhesive Velcro, attach the straps to the face of the mask (kids can help with this part!)

Cut two additional strips of craft foam to be the arm bands, attaching the ends of each cuff with self-adhesive Velcro as well.

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Now it’s time to decorate! Add star stickers, or other fun shapes that demonstrate your super powers!

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For the cape, simply attach two ribbons to a towel with safety pins, and drape over your little hero’s shoulders.

Not just for Halloween, this costume will store easily for dress-up play all year long.

Squirrel It Away

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Here’s another cute idea from 365 Toddler Activities That Inspire Creativity; this silly game will engage your child’s imagination and get them running around to burn off some energy!

Of course we’ve been having fun watching the very busy squirrels outside this time of year. To set the stage for the game, we first sang the song Gray Squirrel:

Gray squirrel, gray squirrel, sway your bushy tail.

Put a nut between your toes,

Wrinkle up your tiny nose.

Gray squirrel gray squirrel, sway your bushy tail.

Then it was time to be a squirrel! Hide any nuts in the shell around the house – walnuts, pistachios, or even real acorns from outside will work great! Hide them in little batches and invite your “squirrel” to find them all.

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No sooner did he find them than Travis was asking if we could do it again – a sign of a hit!

 

Bathtub Fun

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Don’t reserve the bathtub for actual bath time – you might find you have even more fun when the tub is dry!

To wit, these two simple games are sure to delight. Surprise your child by filling his or her tub with all the stuffed animals in the house. Travis’s eyes popped with amazement! He climbed right in of course… and then his favorite part was tossing the animals out.

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He is also fascinated by the shower in the master bathroom, particularly the shower curtain. There’s no need to have watched the Wizard of Oz to understand why hiding behind the curtain before a big reveal is a fun game.

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You can take turns with your toddler pretending to be the “wizard” while they pull back the curtain, and then vice versa. Or skip the wizardry and just make it a game of “peek a boo”!

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Paper Bag Whale

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On the heels of our jellyfish, Travis and I wondered what other sea creatures we could make at home. Would it be possible to turn this plain brown bag into a … great big gray-blue humpback whale?

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The first order of business was to stuff the bag with crumpled newspaper – a sure hit for any toddler. Leave a little room at the end of the bag so you can cinch it closed, tying it shut with string. Give the “tail” a slight rip so it looks even more like a whale’s tail.

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Travis didn’t quite understand what we were aiming at while stuffing the newspaper, thinking he was helping with the trash, but once I presented him with the closed bag and paint, he was so excited to discover we were making a whale. I set out one cup of white paint and one of black, and together we produced a wonderfully gray “humpback.”

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This was by far the largest surface Travis has ever had to cover with paint, and he loved every moment, especially seeing how the white and black interacted.

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I took us off to the park, knowing he’d be impatient for the whale to dry. Once we were home, Mr. Whale had quite a lot of swimming to around the apartment!

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Between the whale and the jellyfish, we’ve certainly had a lot of sea creatures in the house! To continue the fun, I staged a “deep sea dive,” placing blue blankets across two stools as the ocean.

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Underneath, I set up his various bath and beach toys in the shape of sea animals – and then Travis was the scuba diver, diving in to see what treasures he came up with! He was very proud to surface with a fish:

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And, of course, whale. This makes for a great game on summer days when you can’t make it to the actual beach!

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Tea Party

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I’ve joked in the past that tea parties are very gender-neutral affairs around here – trucks and cars have been distinguished “guests” in the past!

A rainy evening gave us the perfect opportunity to host another party, and Travis had fun mapping out the whole event. He started by writing “invitations” for the guests, after I showed him an example.

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Next up was making sure every guest had a party hat!

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I asked him what we should serve, and he enthusiastically decided, “Cookies!” Since I had none on hand, peanut butter crackers made a nice substitute.

As a special treat, we used “real tea” (i.e. water) in the teapot, and Travis was very careful pouring for his guests…

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…and making sure everyone had a sip!

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I love watching his imagination at work in games like this, and am reminded that tea parties are not just for little girls. What “guests” have been invited to food parties at your house? What did you serve? Please share in the comments!

Frog’s Dinner

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Here’s a silly and fun way to teach kids how very differently frogs eat from us – not just that they eat bugs, but that they use a long tongue to do it!

To set the scene, we gathered together all of Travis’s stuffed frogs, and said the frogs were very hungry!

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Attach Velcro pieces to any plastic bugs you have (I love the Velcro strips sold with a sticky backing already, so you don’t need glue). Attach additional pieces of Velcro  to the ends of paper party blowers. Then, show your toddler how an elongated party blower latches right on to one of the bugs and slurps it up, just like a frog’s tongue!

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Travis thought the game was an absolute delight. He didn’t want to try blowing a party blower himself, but loved watching mom and dad do it! I put a few pieces of Velcro directly over the stuffed frogs’ mouths so they could “slurp” up the bugs just by pressing onto the Velcro as well.

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Party blowers were fascinating in and of themselves, and provided entertainment for a nice little while.

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Feed the Baby Bird

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We’ve had fantastic tenants at our apartment recently – a family of barn swallows decided to make their nest on our balcony, and we’ve been honored to watch the mommy and daddy bird grow their family!

It all started with a flutter of activity one morning in June – no doubt daddy bird scouting his nest-building location. We woke up the next morning to the nest! Unfortunately, I had a hard time getting photos, as the balcony corner is dark, but hopefully you can see a little here:

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The next few days were quiet. Daddy bird would sit on the balcony railing or wind chimes, and give a signal of alarm for any noise or worry, sending mommy bird flying from her cupped nest.

We departed on vacation, and I worried Travis would miss the chance to see the birds hatch, but nope! It wasn’t until early July that we saw little beaks appear above the rim of the nest. We got to watch mommy and daddy bird swoop in to feed them many times over the next few days. Travis loved the excitement, calling out whenever he saw “Daddy bird.”

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I was amazed how long the four chicks stayed in the nest; they looked awfully cramped up there by the end. Then one day, we looked outside and saw that two of the fledglings had taken their first flight! They were perched on the balcony, looking very downy and adorable and uncertain.

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A torrential rain storm swept through right after, unfortunately. We were very relieved to see at least one of the fledglings had returned to the nest after, and I’m hopeful the other one made out okay in the storm. Meanwhile it was touching to see mommy and daddy bird swoop in during the storm to make sure their chicks were okay!

Travis and I continued the fun at home with mommy and baby bird play. He sat in a little nest made out of brown blankets, and I “flew” in to give him bites of Surf Sweets gummy worms (a leftover birthday treat!) as a snack. He gets a kick out of the fact that birds eat worms, and now probably believes all worms taste gummy and fruity.

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We’re still waiting for the final two chicks to leave the nest, and are honored to have shared in the birds’ journey!

Update: Here are the three surviving chicks, on the day before they left us for good. I had heard swallows didn’t return to the nest after their first flight, so was delighted that they lingered for nearly a week, playing on our balcony by day, and sleeping in the nest at night. So glad we were able to give them a safe place to begin their life’s journey.

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Rescue

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Rescue (5)The cute idea for this game came from 365 Toddler Activities that Inspire Creativity. Although we didn’t exactly adhere to the script, the game is a great launching-off point for imaginative play. In our case, I started Travis with a few prompts, but then he took the game in his own direction! Try it and see where your imagination takes you.

Have your child help you scatter rags or beanbags on the floor – anything that can be used as “dangers” to avoid. We dubbed our bean bags “alligators”.

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Next, place a stuffed animal or toy in the center, and have your child “rescue” the toy without touching any of the dangerous bean bags.

Travis found the task to be very easy – he just reached in and picked up his stuffed owl – but was also very proud! He had a great time messing the bean bags all around, saying, “don’t step on the alligators!”

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Next we set up a car in need of help:

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But because the game seemed too easy, we reversed things next – what if Travis could only step on the bean bags, and needed to avoid the “alligator-infested” water around him? This led to great fun stepping from bag to bag:

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And practicing a big jump off of them.

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Oh no, Travis fell in the ocean!

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I’m not even sure what’s going on here, except that he clearly had some game going in his head!

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After seeing if he could walk around from bean bag to bean bag, Travis reversed things again. What if he could move around without the bean bag falling off him?

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This proved delightful for a little while, although he was frustrated it didn’t stay on his back as long as he hoped. I swooped in and made the bean bag fall off my head a few times – always a sure way to make him laugh!

 

Turtle in a Shell

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We had adorable, impromptu play this morning, and although the photos didn’t come out very well (a very blurry Travis on the move!), I wanted to put up a quick blog post.

A stuffed turtle became a favorite yesterday, having to come along on car rides with us and sleep in Travis’s crib. When he woke up this morning, Turtle followed us into the living room, so I thought: why not invite Travis to pretend he was a turtle as well?

I explained how the turtle has a shell that goes everywhere with him as he crawls around, and then placed a light blanket over Travis’s back. Well, he just loved pretending! He scampered all about the apartment, shouting out that he was a turtle…

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And interacting with his new stuffed buddy:

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I used a second blanket on my own back to show him how a turtle pulls its head inside the shell when it gets startled, which turned into a fun game of peekaboo.

Even once the turtle play ended, Travis loved parading around with the blanket on his shoulders for a while. A very fun, imaginative way to play with stuffed animals!

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What stuffed toys does your little one have that lend themselves to make-believe? Please share ideas in the comments!

Pirate’s Treasure

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Travis has lately been enthralled with finding “gold” rocks, leading to rock hunts all around our courtyard and when we visit the beach. Usually, I call any yellow or white ones we find “gold” rocks to make them special… but I decided to give Travis a real surprise at home!

Although normally it’s fun to do paint projects with your toddler, do this one while they’re sleeping – shh, it’s a surprise! Paint various rocks yellow (if your child still puts objects in his or her mouth, make sure they are too big to be choking hazards). For even truer color, you can spray paint them gold, but I have yet to find a spray paint that’s vegan. Let the rocks dry overnight.

The next day, bury them in a sandbox. If you’re indoors, a pan filled with coarse salt, oatmeal, or even flour makes a great sand substitute.

I told Travis I had a special surprise for him, and handed him a shovel. The hunt begins…

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What’s that he sees?

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The joy on his face was absolutely priceless.

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He was so ecstatic from having found “real” gold rocks that he hardly knew what to do with himself. He reburied them a few times so he could dig them up again, and then we played with them all around the house.

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I can think of a few ways to expand the game: creating a “treasure chest” to keep them in; pretending to be pirates on an island… Let me know what variations you and your child come up with in the comments!