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Microphone Craft

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Microphone Craft (5)

Encourage a budding rock star with this cute, easy craft!

To make the base of the microphone, have your child help wrap an empty toilet paper tube in foil. Travis immediately loved how shiny and crinkly our creation was.

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For the top of the microphone, the best bet is really a small foam craft ball. Since I didn’t have one on hand, we used a ball from an old baby toy, which I wedged into place and secured with a bed of duct tape.

Good enough for now, though I hope to buy a craft ball as a replacement! Now, is this thing on? Testing, testing, one-two-three.

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Travis latched right onto the idea that it was a microphone, and loved singing songs from our local music class. Wait, is that a microphone or an ice cream cone?

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All around, good fun. I might even make a few of these, and keep one in the car for road trip sing-alongs.

What’s your child’s favorite song to sing? Please share in the comments!

Super Smoothie Bowl

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Kick off the morning with this tropical bowlful – it’s cute and customizable in a way that will satisfy even picky toddlers.

Ingredients:

  • 3 kiwis, peeled and chopped
  • 1 cup pineapple chunks
  • 1 banana, peeled and chopped
  1. Combine the kiwi, pineapple, and banana in a blender and process until smooth
  2. Adorn each smoothie as desired! Stir in chia seeds about 5 minutes before serving for a great Omega-3 punch. Other topping options include berries, shredded coconut, or granola.

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Nature Treasure Hunt Bracelet

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Nature Bracelet (5)

While in the park recently collecting treasures to paint, Travis and I also made a nature collection bracelet. I was surprised that he didn’t want to wear it himself, since he usually loves things around his arm – my watch, his father’s elastic wrist bands – but apparently he draws the line at duct tape! So I was the bracelet model, and Travis helped build our collection.

To make the bracelet, wrap duct tape around itself in a loose circle, big enough to slip on and off your wrist easily.  You want the sticky side facing out.

As you walk, loosely press your nature finds onto the bracelet.

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Travis adored this part, hunting for flowers and leaves, and helping me stick our treasures on. It was a great way to talk about some new items, too, like pine needles and a bird feather.

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Once you decide your bracelet is complete, cut a strip of clear contact paper just a little wider than the duct tape. Remove the backing and place the contact paper, sticky side down, over the bracelet. Fold the overhanging edge over the duct tape to seal.

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Another magical creation here in late summer!

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Greek Salad

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Greek Salad

Fresh croutons and fresh veggies make for a great summer bowlful. I served this salad alongside a dinner of sauteed tofu.

Ingredients:

  • 1 and 1/2 cups cherry or grape tomatoes, quartered
  • 1/4 cup finely chopped green bell pepper
  • 1 cup finely chopped English cucumber
  • 5 pitted and chopped kalamata olives
  • 1 tablespoon rice vinegar
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
  • 2 cups (1/2-inch) cubed country-style bread
  1. Combine the tomatoes bell pepper, cucumber, and olives in a bowl. Add the vinegar, olive oil, and oregano, tossing to coat. Let stand at room temperature for at least 20 minutes.
  2. Toast the bread cubes in a skillet over medium heat for about 5 minutes. Add to the salad just before serving if you want them crunchy – although toddlers may prefer them a little soft!

Nature Painting

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Nature Painting (6)

Travis and I had a magically different afternoon. We don’t exactly live anywhere near a forest trail, but that didn’t stop us from going to our town’s Village Green and searching for “treasures.” Once back home, we turned our treasures trove into an unconventional canvas for painting!

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I didn’t even have to explain to Travis what we were doing. He saw the paints and brushes and began eagerly painting a leaf.

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His favorite by far was a large stick we found. First, he painted it blue, making sure he got all the way to the edges:

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He was quite serious as he worked, and once finished with the blue, he dipped his brush in all the different paint colors and turned his stick into a “rainbow.”

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This project was a delight, especially because painting on the various textures felt so different from flat paper – especially the bumpy pinecone! I confess I joined in just for the fun of it.

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Camping Crate

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Koala Camping (2)

We’ve received our second Koala Crate, this time with a camping theme! I was a little disappointed that I had to put together all three crafts by myself this month, but as stated in my Rainbow Crate post, this is mainly because the crates are marketed to ages 3 and up, and Travis sometimes doesn’t have the fine motor skills needed at age 2. That said, the camping theme was a delight, and a great way to introduce new materials, learn new concepts and vocab, and engage in imaginative play with our creations!

If not a Koala subscriber, try these projects using felt shapes, colored tissue paper squares, brown construction paper (for the tripod), glue, and a dowel from a craft store.

The first step was to put together our “campfire” on the sticky tripod provided. Travis did help a little with the neat dowel-method of sticking on tissue paper squares:

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Mostly, though, he watched as I assembled the creation, telling me which color “fire” to add next. Once done, he was thrilled with the tea light provided, giving our campfire a real glow!

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Next I showed him the very cool pretend food, various felt shapes meant to be s’mores and (veggie) dogs roasted over our flames.

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He loved the idea of holding the felt shapes over the campfire, and asked to repeat the game throughout the day.

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For the backpack craft, Travis quickly identified that we were making a bear. I put on all the stickers – too precise a task for his little hands – but he loved watching the bear take shape as I worked. Once complete, I put the backpack on him and he exclaimed, “Bye Mama, I’m going to school!” so proudly.

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And then of course we needed to erect a camping tent! Since I only have stools, not chairs, our tent was quite low…. but Teddy and Bunny fit inside:

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Travis latched right on to the idea of showing the stuffed animals how to cook his new food over the campfire.

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Then he grabbed his guitar, so I told him we should sing campfire songs. “What other campfire songs do we know?” he asked. I rooted around for some old favorites from my childhood and taught him a few new tunes. What fun!

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Overall, this crate was great for introducing new concepts and sparking creativity, but not an art project for a 2 year old. I look forward to more crafting with next month’s kit!

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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Rolling Wheels

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I have yet to meet a little boy who didn’t love all things with wheels – buses, cars, trucks, bulldozers – you name it! So what better way to paint than to create “tire tracks” in your own home?

Tuck the paintbrushes aside for the day, and instead set a variety of small trucks and cars alongside paper plates or foil pie tins filled with a different paint colors. Black is an obvious choice, to make authentic-looking tire tracks, but we had fun with green and orange paint too. Sturdy construction paper or poster board are good for this project.

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Travis loved dipping his cars in the paint, and seemed surprised every time he saw the resulting color on the page, after giving a vroom. “It’s green!” he would declare with delight.

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For variety, try using cars with wheels of varying thickness. A Brio train made nice big tracks.

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When we were cleaning up, Travis invented a new method of painting: he dipped a wet wipe in the paint trays and rubbed all over the newspaper we had layered on the floor – quelle artiste!

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Cloud Blobs

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This simple art project was a fun way to introduce Travis to the idea of cloud-watching, and is also great for sparking imagination.

Use any dark-colored construction paper as the background, since you’ll be using white paint. I chose blue and black so we could have clouds in both a “daytime” and “nighttime” sky.

Have your toddler dip a spoon into the white paint, and drizzle in the middle of the paper. Travis was very into the novelty of using a spoon instead of a brush, and needed to cover a few more sheets of paper once we’d completed the project itself.

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Fold the construction paper in half and smooth down, then open back up again – you’ll have a “cloud” blob of white paint. Encourage your child to tell you what he or she sees in the image. I joked that this was a little like a toddler Rorschach test!

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To wit, I thought our cloud on blue paper looked like a bee, but Travis told me he saw an octopus. If you like, have your toddler use white crayons (or other colors) to embellish the paintings, but Travis mostly lost interest at that point.

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To end the fun, we took a trip outside to look at real clouds, and I encouraged him to spot shapes in the sky as well. Overall, a nice introduction to the wonderful art of cloud-watching!

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Sticker Surprise

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Travis is under the weather, so needless to say we had a very quiet, snuggly day. The happiest and most alert he was all day, though, was when I suggested sticker play – he can’t get enough of his shape stickers! I decided to make things even more interesting with this painting “surprise.”

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Encourage your toddler to arrange stickers (big ones in interesting shapes work best) however he or she would like on a piece of construction paper.

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Next, let your child paint over the entire paper – stickers included! – with tempera paint. This was our first opportunity to test out the non-toxic tempera paints from Natural Earth Paint and they worked wonderfully! (Note: The paint is available in both vegan or milk-based versions).

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Travis chose purple and green and loved that his stickers were now “hiding.”

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Unfortunately by the time the paint dried and I did the big reveal – peeling off the stickers to show the shapes left behind – Travis was feeling even crummier. I hung our craft on the fridge, and hopefully he’ll look back on it in a day or two to remember the fun he had putting it together!

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Now it’s time for more toddler snuggles.