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Pasta Bead Sequencing

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Here’s another fantastic activity for the Kool-Aid dyed pasta we made a few weeks back. We’ve already strung together bracelets with our pasta beads, but this time I used the pasta for a slightly more educational purpose.

Using the template available from Kiwi Crate, I printed out pictures of the pasta beads arranged by color, and then had them laminated. You can skip the lamination, but doing so means you can do this activity again and again!

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Encourage your child to line up the beads in the order that’s shown on the card. As an alternative, give him or her a pipe cleaner, to thread the pasta in order.

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Travis is a little young to accomplish a task like this from start to finish still, but he loved selecting a pasta piece from his bag and placing it on the correct color. We’ll work up to completing the whole sequence on pipe cleaners as he gets older!

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This activity would be perfect for on-the-go moments when you need to keep your kiddo occupied, like a restaurant or waiting room.

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Update: At closer to 3, Travis now loves doing this activity directly onto a pipe cleaner!

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Make a Rain Meter

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Rainy March sure came in like a lion, and seems to be ending the same way! Meaning it was the perfect time to make a rain meter! Travis wasn’t especially interested in making this craft (another clever suggestion from High Five magazine), but he sure loved the results!

To make the rain meter, we laid a fork along a piece of masking tape and made 5 notches. Label them 1 through 5, having your child count along with you.

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Place the tape on a plastic cup, then secure the cup some place outside where rain will fall. We taped ours quite securely to the balcony because our rain storm involved a lot of wind!

The next morning, we could check on our results. When I told Travis the liquid in the cup was rain, he was amazed. “Can I hold it?” he asked. “Can I touch it?” I have to admit, I’ve never put my fingers in a cup of collected rain water either, and it was neat to think that they started out as individual rain drops!

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After the first storm, the rain was just above our 1 mark. We intend to keep collecting through upcoming April showers to see how much spring rain we get!

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Spray Bottle & Watercolor

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Travis has recently loved using a spritz bottle to “clean” alongside me. I’ve set up safe zones in which he can do so without getting the whole house wet – bathtub tiles, his chalkboard – but thought he’d love it if I granted him permission to spritz from the spray bottle in a rather taboo way… With colored water!

To make our “paint” we added one pack of Kool-aid – in black cherry thank you very much – for a nice dark result.

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I set Travis up with paper and newspaper to spray to his heart’s content, but it quickly became apparent that neither was absorbent enough.

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A switch to watercolor paper saved the day! We loved exploring the ways the bottle could make small dots from further way, and big wet blobs when held close to the paper.

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As a bonus, your “paintings” will smell fantastic once finished, making this a nice project for the senses as well.

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Be forewarned: Kool-aid stains, so you need to be careful or things will get really messy. You might consider waiting and doing the activity outside in the warm weather!

Stress Ball

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“Terrible twos” don’t have to be terrible. A simple too like a stress ball can help your child calm down in a rough moment – and help you stay joyful as a parent! We talked a lot about feelings lately with our Koala Feelings crate, and helping your child identify frustration is a key first step in quelling a tantrum.

Ready to help your toddler squeeze away emotions? Grab a balloon, a funnel, and cornstarch. Lacking a funnel, we actually used an old party horn, which was shaped perfectly!

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Inflate the balloon a couple of times to stretch it out, then insert the funnel. Gradually add your cornstarch until the balloon is filled; you may need a kebab skewer or pencil to help push the cornstarch down – Travis loved this part.

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Now it was time to give a squeeze; he thought it was very cool how soft and squishy it was. The stress ball would also work great in situations where your child is nervous or scared!

 

Marshmallow Sculptures

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Travis and I had some gooey fun attempting to make sculptures from marshmallows last November, but I confess our attempts were foiled by using large marshmallows and unsteady straws as construction materials.

This time we used toothpicks and the small marshmallows from Dandies, and were able to create much sturdier constructions! Note: I recommend playing this game soon after your child has had a meal or a snack – that way the marshmallows will be viewed more as building material, and less as a treat to eat… Although we did sneak a few bites along the way!

Already compared to November, Travis was much better at construction. He loved adding a marshmallow to either end of a toothpick, and loved that they looked like Q-tips!

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I then helped arrange these into more complex structures, whether two-dimensional shapes…

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Or three-dimensional creations.

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The project was a great way to discuss shapes and dimensions! We even tried a double-decker hexagon.

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In sum, sticky fun for everyone.

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A Week!

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I can hardly believe it, but we’ve reached the end (beginning) of our Letter of the Week journey, begun last September. Twenty-six letter weeks (plus a few holiday weeks) later, I can say I have loved every step of this project. Travis can identify every letter, and understands the concept that letters are connected to words, the very first step toward reading. In addition, these weeks have helped me to be creative and joyful as a parent, deciding what would fill our activities and games based on the current letter each week. So please, go back through all my letter posts and I hope you enjoy as much as we did!

But first, don’t forget to take a look at our A week…

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Animals: Pull out all your animal toys of course, whatever you have. You’re guaranteed to have some lying around, whether stuffed animals, plastic animals, puzzle animals, and more. In addition, we went back to old favorite games like an animal safari this week, and then acted out animals with a game of charades.

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Put your child’s toy animals in a bag or bin, and take turns selecting. Act out the animal you selected and let the others guess what you are.

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Apron: Pop a toddler-sized apron over your little one’s head and have them join you in the kitchen this week!

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For bonus points, make sure your main ingredient starts with an A, as in the stuffed baked apples we put together.

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Acorns: We used a little collection of acorn caps (gathered at last week’s bird sanctuary!) and turned them into acorn jewels. Acorns lend themselves to any number of arts & crafts, so if “jewels” aren’t your cup of tea, fashion them into whatever your child will like best.

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Aquarium: For our field trip of the week, we headed to a local aquarium! (Please note that I do not recommend facilities keeping dolphins and whales in captivity).

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Alphabet: How appropriate that A week could also be a sort of recap week, since alphabet begins with (of course) A. We put together an alphabet flower garden, played with alphabet tiles, and searched for alphabet beads in a big bin of colored rice.

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And some extras…

Fine art: The suggestion from Letter of the Week was to assemble paper bag animal puppets. I wanted to Travis to have full range of creativity, so rather than assign him a specific animal to make, I let him create and then built off his design to finish our puppets. He loved using glitter glue and stickers, and we wound up with an alligator and a tiger.

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Food: In addition to painting with apples, we ate them in the form of applesauce. Travis also enjoyed animal crackers, avocados, and alphabet soup

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Songs: Ants Go Marching is a big hit around here, and we also watched the clip of April Showers from Bambi (which brought back nostalgic memories!).

Books: Some favorites this week included apple books (Secrets of the Apple Tree and The Apple Pie Tree by Zoe Hall), Let’s Be Animals by Ann Turner, Eating the Alphabet by Lois Ehlert, and Alligator Wedding by Nancy Jewell. Check out your library’s non-fiction section for a cute intro to astronauts as well!

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Math: An abacus was the perfect tool to help Travis visualize his age. I started by showing him two beads for his own age, then showed my age, my husband’s, and the ages of his friends and cousins. He loved seeing two ages in comparison (i.e. himself versus his 6 year old cousin). For preschoolers, you can use your abacus for early addition lessons as well!

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All’s well that ends well… Thanks for reading along on this journey!

Acorn Jewels

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Although this project didn’t turn out quite as well as I hoped, I still love the idea and want to share!

The first thing you’ll need to make acorn jewels is… acorn caps! We didn’t let winter deter us from heading outside to collect a few. In fact, with all the acorns eaten up by animals, we found lots of large empty caps that were perfect for this project.

Next we needed to wash the winter dirt off of them, so gave the acorn caps a quick bath. This was arguably Travis’s favorite part of the entire project.

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Color in each acorn cap with marker, preferably in a variety of jewel tones and bright colors. We used fabric marker, but I think maybe those Mr. Sketch scented markers would work better.

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Now fill each cap all the way with glue.

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Let sit for 24 to 48 hours – the glue should be completely dried up, and the color will have seeped into it, leaving a jewel tone behind.

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What will you do with your acorn jewels? Please share in the comments!

Stained Glass Apples

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This whimsical creation is a neat way to do stamp painting with your child!

Cut an apple in half crosswise (not lengthwise, as your normally would) – you’ll be able to see the pretty star where the seeds are, which will make for the prettiest prints!

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Squeeze different colors of paint onto paper plates so that each apple half will have a mosaic of colors. Travis loved helping with this step.

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Now dip the apple in the paint, and transfer onto tracing paper. Here’s the key – don’t smoosh the apple around.

Travis got the hang of this so much faster than I anticipated! He really liked the challenge, in fact, of pressing down the apple only once and then pulling up without disturbing the circular image, which is a bit tricky because the apple suctions to the paper. So this project turned out to be great for our motor skill development.

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Once the paint dried, I covered all the apple prints with contact paper (sticky side down), and cut out around the circles.

Travis helped punch holes in the apple circles…

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… and then I laced them together using twine.

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Suspend from a window where the apples will catch the sun!

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Feelings Crate

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Our latest set of activities from Koala Crate was all about friendship and feelings… Parts of this crate were a bit advanced for a two and a half year old, but talking about feelings and emotions is something we always aim to do, and it was nice to have new props!

As with all Koala Crates, you could mostly put these together with craft store items, although the dry erase mirror might be difficult to replicate. Read on…

The biggest hit by far were the felt Funny Face Puppets. Travis loved applying the felt shapes to the provided felt circles, telling me what his creation was feeling (I was especially impressed when he made a “sleepy” one) and designing them to look like relatives.

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On an intellectual level, he really knew where eyes and noses and other features should go in relation to each other, a nice leap forward.

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Older kids may be interested in assembling their faces as a game, using the provided spinner to apply facial features one at a time, but Travis didn’t quite get that concept.

The Friendship Bracelet project was a bit of a dud (although I thought the provided water-filled paintbrush was neat). We threaded the wooden beads onto a dowel to paint, but Travis was more into mixing the colors than painting the beads.

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Once dry, I put together the bracelets for him… and then did love that he chose to give one half of the pair to his daddy! Still, this project was a nice way to talk about the importance of sharing with friends.

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The Feelings Poster was super cute, but Travis preferred just to doodle with the dry erase marker rather than specifically draw emotions on it.

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We then used this crate as a nice jumping-off point to act out our emotions. First we assigned actions to each emotion – stomping for angry, jumping for surprised, dancing for happy etc. Then we played “musical emotions”! I would start a song, and Travis would act out the emotion he felt fit the song best. A great way to build EQ!

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We ended by putting together a suggested craft in the kit – a “Feelings Friend” that Travis can take with him or use to help express his emotions. Punch a hole in a cardboard tube, then use scissors to make that hole the size of a quarter.

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Slip in a piece of paper, and trace a circle through the opening. Repeat all around the paper. Remove the paper from the tube to draw different emotions on each circle, then slide back into the tube.

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Now your toddler can spin the faces around!

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We’ll likely return to all these items once Travis is older, and his emotional vocabulary develops. Thanks Koala Crate!

Sensory Rainbows

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I haven’t a drop of Irish blood in me, but I’ve always adored Ireland – the literature, the music, the wit, the music, the scenery… Did I mention the music? So I wanted to bring a little luck of the Irish to our St. Paddy’s Day just for Travis’s enjoyment. Aside from making a rainbow snack, we put together this sensory rainbow while talking about the lore of the pot of gold that waits at the end. Now I just need to find a green shirt for Travis to wear!

I drew a line for each color of the rainbow on poster board, and set it aside.

Then it was time to sort our supplies! For the best sensory experience, use a variety of items – we used buttons, pom poms, stickers, beads, pipe cleaners, and more. Travis helped sort, and I put everything into little paper cups by color.

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I decided it would be least confusing to glue on the items one color at a time, so first asked Travis to make drops of glue on the red line and presented him with our red cup of items.

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Once he grasped the idea of what we were doing, he was very determined and excited to decide where each item would go. It was a bit exhausting, so we didn’t finish all in one session, letting the glue dry in between.

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As you work, talk about the textures! Our beads were hard, our pom poms were soft, our buttons were smooth etc. As a final sensory touch, I glued on cotton ball clouds.

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Wishing everyone a Happy St. Patrick’s Day!