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Chocolate Chip Cookie Fossil Dig!

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Digging for dinosaurs might be fun… but digging for chocolate? Even better!

We had some purely indulgent fun with this game, having talked a lot this week about digging for fossils and archaeology. I presented Travis with two chocolate chip cookies (one thin, one thick, for nice variation) and invited him to excavate the chocolate chips.

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Possible tools include toothpicks, forks, or toddler-safe knives.

The fork turned out to be the fast favorite.

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Although hands were a close second place!

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Did we eat our discoveries? But of course.

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Buzzing Bee Noisemaker

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Parents, I need your hive mind to solve a mystery here – pun intended!

We wanted to make a delightful buzzy bee at home, and I copied instructions online (and quite similar to the New Year’s Eve Noisemaker we concocted back in January). But try as we might, our little bee wouldn’t buzz. Now, arguably this failure was Travis’s favorite part of the entire project; he got a kick out of me trying to make our bee buzz over and over. So, I’ll still consider the project a “success”! Needless to say, I’d love to hear if your buzzing bees work properly, or if you see the mistake I made in the steps below.

First, we trimmed an index card slightly, and decorated as a bee. I made one with alternating yellow and black stripes as an example, and Travis had fun trying to replicate my stripes on a second index card.

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We did momentarily glue on yellow googly eyes to complete our happy bee’s face, but the glue barely had time to dry before the eyes fell victim to a toddler.

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Eyes or no, we attached our bee to a wooden craft stick with a piece of sticky-back foam. Place a second craft stick on top.

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Now secure the two craft sticks together at the edges using additional pieces of cut sticky-back foam.

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Finally, stretch a rubber band around the craft sticks – and then try to make your bee buzz!

Bubble Wrap Bee Hive

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Travis loved when we painted with bubble wrap a few weeks back, so we did it again this morning – but with more precision!

Having recently seen a colony of bees buzzing at a local preserve, I thought that would make a good theme. I cut plastic wrap roughly into the shape of a domed beehive. Travis helped cover it with orange and yellow paint.

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We flipped the bubble wrap over to press the bubbles onto paper – leaving behind what look so much like honeycombs! Travis particularly loved that the back of the bubble wrap was dry during this step, knowing the front had been so wet.

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My original intent was for him to dip his thumb in yellow paint to make bees around the hive, but Travis balked at the idea (he doesn’t want to get messy, these days!) Instead, we used a yellow dot marker.

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Once the paint dried, I colored in the bees stripes, wings, and smiles. Bzzz!

Dinosaur Crate

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With the arrival of our latest Koala Crate, I’m struck yet again by the ways in which Travis’s brain has changed since we started this subscription. He was so eager to get started on the first project in our box that I had to let him dive in before I’d even seen the theme and instructions!

Luckily, I could catch up quickly as he peeled off the stickers for the first craft – Dinosaur Dress-Up! Apply the felt stickers to the provided visor and dino feet to make your fearsome T-rex.

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You can talk about shapes (triangles, circles) as your child works, as well as what elements of the dinosaur they represent, like teeth, spots, or claws.

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Travis had the eyes stuck on the visor in the right spot before I even had a chance to ask him where he thought they should go!

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Rar!

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No sooner had he paraded around in the costume for a bit than he wanted to see what was next, so I pulled out the materials for Clay Fossils. This craft required first matching up puffy bone stickers to a template, great practice for getting stickers precisely in the right spot.

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He was so proud of his work, and then thrilled when I showed him the imprint of a dinosaur skeleton that was left behind when we pressed the provided air-dry clay on top.

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We had fun talking about what fossils are and the clues they leave behind, i.e. a dinosaur with short arm bones likely walked on only two feet, versus one whose arms and legs were the same length.

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And then like a whirlwind he was already moving on to project three, the Dino Match Game, with two provided game boards, a spinner, and pop-out tokens to match up with the proper dinosaur footprint.

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Travis loved playing several rounds in a row.

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He wanted to know the names of all the dinosaurs on the card, so luckily our included Imagine magazine had a helpful name and pronunciation guide. This mama had never heard of the Spinosaurus before!

We continued the fun with at-home crafts like Dino Eggs, and pulled out some of our favorite Usborne dino books like The Big Book of Big Dinosaurs, Lift the Flap Dinosaurs, I’m a Dirty Dinosaur, and Dinosaur Activity Book.

As always, you can replicate much of this crate with materials from your local craft store, though you’ll need to pull out your artistic skills to draw those game boards!

Easy Macaroni and Cheese

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Easy Mac

Finally a homemade recipe that captures the texture and flavor of Daiya’s prepared mac and cheese mix, but with ingredients I feel good about! As much as I love Daiya, my son sometimes finds it too sticky or cloying; he gobbled up every bite of this version. Sprinkle with smoked paprika before serving for kids who like a little extra flavor.

Ingredients:

  • 1 and 1/2 cups uncooked elbow macaroni
  • 1 and 1/4 cups hemp milk
  • 1/3 cup nutritional yeast
  • 2 tablespoons white miso
  • 2 tablespoons cornstarch
  • 1/4 teaspoon turmeric
  1. Cook the pasta according to package directions; drain and set aside.
  2. Meanwhile, combine the remaining ingredients in a saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium heat, then reduce heat to low and cook until thickened, stirring frequently.
  3. Add the cheesy sauce to the cooked pasta, and cook over low heat a few minutes to warm through.

Dino Eggs

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There are baby dinosaurs hatching in our kitchen! Okay, maybe not really, but this make-it-yourself clay egg recipe was as real as it gets for a toddler.

Half the fun was in gathering the materials, because first we needed dirt! Travis loved helping to shovel in the ground until we’d collected 1 cup.

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At home, we mixed the dirt together with the following:

1 cup flour

1 cup sand

1/2 cup salt

2/3 cup water

Travis loved mixing the ingredients, and especially watching the way the dirt changed color once the flour and salt had been added.

Be careful as you add the water so that you don’t mix in too much – you want the mixture to stick together but not be mushy. I was the one getting my hands dirty for this part, while Travis still stirred with a spoon, but he loved watching!

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Place small toy dinosaurs over a portion of the mixture and cover with more until the dinos are hidden, shaping them roughly into an egg.

If you live some place warm and sunny, dry the eggs outside for 4 or 5 days! We sped things up by baking at 175 degrees F for 4 hours. Travis loved peeking in the oven, where I told him the baby dinos were incubating!

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In the morning, it was time to help our dinos hatch, with a little help from a friend! The outside of the “eggs” was quite hard, so it helped for adults to poke a hole with a chisel first to get the process going.

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From there, the boys were able to use wooden craft sticks to get deeper inside the eggs.

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The clay had stayed softer on the inside, so in the final stage, they could release the baby dinosaurs by hand. What a find!

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After a final rinse in clean water, the baby dinos were ready to play.

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This activity is a must for any dinosaur lover!

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Green Guacamole

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I simplified this recipe from the gorgeous Kids Kitchen recipe pack from Barefoot Books. Nearly every ingredient in this kid-friendly guacamole is green, even the olive oil if you count that it sometimes has a green tinge to it! You can throw in a handful or two of parsley for even more green. And for kids who don’t mind a little heat, add 1 green chili pepper (seeds removed), and call it a Mean Green Guacamole.

Ingredients:

  • 1 large ripe avocado
  • 1 green onion
  • 1 lime
  • 1/4 cup olive oil

Combine all ingredients in a food processor and process until smooth. Let your little bunnies dip in carrot sticks for a color contrast – or more green foods, like cucumbers, broccoli, and green bell pepper.

Green Guacamole

Paint with Your Feet

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We enjoyed tactile foot play earlier in the week with foot sensory bins, and continued the theme yesterday evening. This game would no doubt be even better on a bigger piece of fabric outside on a sunny day, but we made do on a rainy day with the bathroom floor and a plain white t-shirt from the craft store!

First, Travis chose his colors, and we filled a big bin with a generous portion of each.

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I started out painting his foot one color at a time, and then he would stamp on the white shirt.

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After a while, he wanted to paint his feet himself – and then painted his knee as well, to which I could only shrug, ‘why not?’. Then of course he had to try standing in the paint! (Note: hold your child carefully, paint is slippery). I would lift him out and place him on the t-shirt to take a few steps each time before he climbed back in the bin.

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In retrospect, I wish we’d done this to music so he could have danced around, but I still loved our final product.

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Clean Up for Earth!

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It’s never too early to teach your children love for this little planet we call home. We set out as a family this Earth Day to pick up trash at a local running trail. Find a park or trail near you on a beautiful day, and your kids will love it… and learn that everyone can help make a difference, no matter how small.

Travis was arguably most excited about the trash bags we carried along and the rubber gloves we got to wear, and headed off very proudly.

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Lots of bottle caps and candy wrappers in this neck of the woods!

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Whenever we found plastic or metal, we’d point out to Travis that those items don’t belong in the Earth.

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It was a beautiful nature excursion to appreciate Earth too, of course – butterflies and ants galore. Travis proudly helped throw our collection into the trash when we had finished.

Once we got home, I made a little pamphlet so we could remember what we had done and invited Travis to draw our adventure inside.

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The yellow was his plastic bag…

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…and then he told me this blue circle was Earth!

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Happy Tooth, Sad Tooth Collage

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If you have a dentist visit coming up, are trying to get a recalcitrant toddler to brush his or her own teeth, or just want to instill good dental habits early on, this project is adorable and useful!

It starts out with a hunt through magazines for food pictures, which Travis thought was heaps of fun. Use family-friendly magazines like Family Fun, Parents, or Family Circle and you’ll come up with lots of food pictures in no time.

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We might have gotten a little side-tracked ripping out the rest of the pages for a while…

I cut two teeth shapes from white paper and drew a smile on one and a sad frown on the other before setting both before Travis. We went through our pile of food clippings item by item, and I asked him which tooth he thought it belonged on – the happy or the sad.

Happy Tooth (2)He seemed sheepish about the quiz at first, because we don’t eat much sugar, so I’ve never really had a talk with him about things that are “sad” for your teeth. Needless to say, he thought cookies and pie were happy, and I helped him understand that the things going on the “sad” tooth were the treats to have once in a while, and the ones on the “happy” tooth were the ones we wanted to be eating every day.

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He got surprisingly into it (not to mention loved using his glue stick!).

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When we were finished, I hung the teeth up near our bathroom sink; they’ll be a great talking point when we brush from now on!