Snow Day! Art Free-For-All!!

Snow day fun continues, since our weather seems determined to provide us with snow days! Next on our list... Art free-for-all!

Art Free-For-All

Materials: (Any art/craft materials you have laying around will work... we raid the dollar store periodically and stock up on stuff like this. I let the kids roam around the store and grab anything they think they can create with!)

• foam sheets
• stickers
• googly eyes
• craft sticks
• dowels
• glue
• glitter glue
• crayons
• markers
• sequins
• beads
• tape
• scissors
• pompoms
• string
• condiment cups
• etc

Gather up any craft materials you can find, place them on the table, and let the kids go wild with creativity. I would use a washable table or cover the surface because this WILL get messy. Boy they have fun though!

I started each boy with a sheet of foam so that they would have a place to begin. 

They both created something on that and then moved on to creating other things with the materials. It is amazing what kids can come up with when left to explore and try things! 

My 8-year-old even broke open some googly eyes so he could make use of the black circles inside. So creative! A perfect project for antsy, snow-bound little boys and girls!

Snow Day! Ping Pong Plop!

The quest to keep the minions entertained on this *now raining* snow day continues. Our next project, ping pong balls.


Ping Pong Plop

Materials: 
*small box
*ping pong balls
*containers of varying sizes
*straws

Ping pong balls can be so fun because they are small, lightweight, and extremely bouncy! I adapted this activity from one I found in the book Unplugged Play by Bobbi Conner. First, cut the box to make a passageway for the ping pong balls to travel through. Place it on a table to serve as a "chute" for the balls. 

Fill the containers with water and place them on the floor. Talk about which containers they think will be easy to land a ball in and which will be difficult. Slide the first container below the chute and line it up to catch the balls.






We started by rolling the balls to get a feel for how to move them through the chute and plop them into the water below. Try rolling them fast and slow. Try standing to the side and at the back. Try letting the balls bounce before plopping. Have the children experiment with the different sizes of containers to see if they can still get the balls to "plop" in the water.

Once they get the hang of rolling the balls, give them straws and have them blow the balls through the chute and into the water below. Is it harder to do it this way? Have them try making different obstacles or changing the shape of the chute. 

With my boys I found that the activity evolved into trying to bounce the balls into the containers and then trying to "golf" the balls into a container they created. There are so many possible variations to this activity. The only limit is their creativity! 

Snow Day! Snow Play Dough!

I love snow days! It usually means we actually got enough snow for the kids to go out and have some fun. Around here we typically have a snow day with several inches of exciting, fun snow and then it melts off by the next day. However, when you randomly get so much snow and ice that you are at a week straight of snow days the kids start getting cabin fever....

Time for some indoor snow day fun. I think we will start with my old fall-back... play dough!


Snow Play Dough

Snow play dough is easy to make, and it adds just enough of a twist that the kids get excited about it. All you do is make your favorite play dough recipe and add glitter. Voila! Snow play dough is born! Here is a recipe to try:

1 cup salt
2 cups flour 
2 T cream of tartar
2 cups water
2 T vegetable oil
Glitter

I like to have the kids help me make the play dough... It gives them something to do, and they love to measure and stir!


First, measure the dry ingredients into a medium saucepan and mix them together. Add the water and oil and heat over medium heat. Continue to stir and heat until it gets thick and starts to form a ball. You will want to keep it moving so it doesn't sit on the bottom of the pan, almost like you are kneading it with your spoon. As soon as it starts to thicken add the glitter and continue to stir. Once you have a ball of dough, remove it from the heat and dump it onto the counter to cool. As soon as it is cool enough to touch you can knead it until it reaches the right consistency. 

There are so many things kids can do with snow play dough! Have them build snowmen or create snow scenes. Get out some cookie cutters and have them roll out the dough and cut out shapes. They can make snakes and practice making alphabet letters or writing words with the snakes. The possibilities are endless!

Muddle and Match

Imagination Exploration

Materials:

• Muddle and Match books from Usborne Books and More
• Paper
• Crayons
• Blocks
• Glue
• Magazine
• Letter cards or plastic letters

Skills:

• Imagination
• Alliteration
• Writing
• Drawing
• Alphabet recognition
• Initial sound

Age: 3 and up

Have you ever imagined a princess-mermaid? How about an explorer-superhero? Maybe a cowgirl-witch-ballerina? No? If you haven't then you need this book!

This is such a fun book for young children, and it is full of secret learning opportunities. Perfect! There are six different versions of the book, enabling it to either grab the attention of different kids, or provide children with different versions of the same learning experience, expanding their imagination. I have the "Imagine" version which features girls as different characters.

The first thing I love about this book is the alliteration, a fantastic skill for beginning readers. Each character's description focuses on a letter, and nearly all of the words on the page start with that letter. Perfect for helping young ears tune into those letter sounds.

After that the fun begins in earnest, however. Each character is split into three parts, allowing the reader to mix up the parts of the characters, along with the descriptions. All of a sudden "Carly, the courageous cowgirl, waves her wonderful wand and waits as she blushes and bows for being the best." Woah, what? Can you just feel the little imaginations exploding with ideas? Kids love to mix these pages up and discover new characters, imagining the crazy world that these characters could live in. It is great!

The fun doesn't have to stop there, though. There are so many activities that kids can do to continue the imagination (and the learning)!  Here are some ideas:

1. Make their own book--Draw an outline of a person on a sheet of paper and copy it several times. Bind the pages together and have your child decorate each person differently. Cut the pages into 3rds just like the book and invite your child to "muddle" up their pictures. Have them describe each new character they create.

2. Story-starter--For older children, use the mixed up stories in the book as a story-starter. Ask the children to write stories based on the new characters they have created.

3. Picture prompt--Much like the story-starter, but for younger children. Ask the children to draw a picture based on the crazy sentence they created.

4. Muddle Blocks--Cut pictures of characters (drawn, printed, or snipped from a magazine) and glue them to blocks. Have your child stack the blocks to create their own crazy characters.

5. Muddle magazines--Cut out people, animals, etc. from magazines. Cut each character into 3rds and have your child muddle them up and glue their new characters to a piece of paper. You could even have them dictate a sentence about each new character.

6. Letter identification--Rather than muddling the characters in the book randomly, place a letter card (or plastic letter) for each page in a bag. Ask your child to draw out three letters and create a character with pages that use words beginning with those three letters. Talk about the crazy characters they create!

The possibilities are endless! I am going to try each of these with my own children and update this post with pictures as we complete them. Check back so you can see how it goes! I am so ready to have some Muddle and Match fun!

[Disclaimer: I am an independent consultant for Usborne Books & More, however, they do not employ me to review their books or compensate me in any way for my reviews. These are my personal thoughts and do not reflect the views of the company.]

Pull-Back Books

Cars and Reading at the Same Time?!?

Materials:

• Pull-back books from Usborne Books and More

Skills:

• Reading
• Fine motor skills
• Positional words
• Visual discrimination
• Prediction

Age: 3 and up

My little boys love many things, but they absolutely LOVE anything related to cars, trucks, trains, planes... anything that "goes." That alone was a good reason for me to be excited about these books. The books combine a simple story with a vehicle (a helicopter in this case) that drives around a track in the story. SO FUN! 

Here is how it works: Each page contains text for the story along with a track for the vehicle to travel on. You pull the vehicle back to wind it up and then release it to travel around the page. We usually watch it travel and then read the words describing the journey that it took. My kids love it! They could make that helicopter follow those paths a hundred times if I let them.

Now this is where the teacher in me gets super excited. I am already happy about anything that helps kids to engage in a story, but there is more. The text of the story follows the path that the helicopter takes, so children can practice tracing their fingers along a path as the words are read (or the helicopter is traveling). Also, (and this is the coolest part) the story is FILLED with positional words. Nice! Positional words is a skill that preschool kids should be working on, and it is one of the hardest things to comprehend. What is the difference between "in front" and "behind?" "Above" or "below?" For some reason this is such a hard thing for kids to grasp, but having it reinforced in a fun and engaging way is amazing!  

I am a person who loves any good book, but these books make me downright excited because they find a way to engage children in reading in a unique way while all along they are reinforcing an important skill. Perfect!

[Disclaimer: I am an independent consultant for Usborne Books & More, however, they do not employ me to review their books or compensate me in any way for my reviews. These are my personal thoughts and do not reflect the views of the company.]

Fun with Bugs!

Double up the Seek and Find

Materials: 

• A seek and find book about bugs, such as 1001 Bugs to Spot from Usborne Books & More
• Large bowl
• Rice
• Small toy bugs
• A printed picture of the toy bugs

Skill:

• Fine motor skills
• Discrimination
• Matching
• Counting
• Addition/Subtraction
• Connecting literature to real-life experiences

Ages: 3-6

What kid doesn't love a good seek and find book? There is something really gripping about looking at a well-illustrated page and trying to find a specific object on that page. Kids love it! I love that while they are enjoying the book their brains are actually developing and honing some great skills that will help them with reading, math, and many other learning opportunities.

Of course I am never one to leave good enough alone. I love to extend the experience and make it even better. Thus was born "doubling up" the seek and find. Here is how it works:

First, you read the book. Have the children spend as much or as little time as they want looking through the pictures and finding the bugs. Talk about the similarities and differences between the different bugs. Don't feel like you have to read the whole book, but instead let your child/children's interest guide you.

Once you are finished with the book, fill the bowl with rice and hide the toy bugs in the rice. Have the children search through the rice and find the hidden bugs. 

Once they find a bug, have them match the bug to the printed pictures. Encourage them to search out all of the hidden bugs while talking about the similarities and differences between the bugs they have found. 

Children will love feeling the rice and the bugs, and they will enjoy the challenge of a real-life seek and find to go along with the seek and find in the book. So much learning happening, and the children will think they are just playing!

Extensions:  

• Have them count the bugs they have found or count the pictures that they haven't covered yet. 
• Practice addition and subtraction as they find more bugs and add to the finished pictures (or subtract from the uncovered pictures). 

[Disclaimer: I am an independent consultant for Usborne Books & More, however, they do not employ me to review their books or compensate me in any way for my reviews. These are my personal thoughts and do not reflect the views of the company.]

Shine-A-Light Books

Reading, with a twist!

Materials: 

• Book series by Kane Miller available for purchase through Usborne Books & More

Skills: 

• Observation
• Reading for information
• Prediction
• Fine-motor skills 

Age: 4-8

How can you not like this? It is a book that is made to be PLAYED WITH. Seriously, I think it is ingenious. Kids have a book full of tons of information about something they are already most likely excited to learn about, and then on each page they can use a flashlight to reveal a hidden image. So cool!

So, how does it work? 

Open up the book and inside you find nicely illustrated pages with interesting information about the topic, in this case "trains." You can just read the book and it is interesting enough, but each right-hand page has a hidden picture that can be revealed by shining a flashlight behind it.

The page looks like this without light...

...and this with light.










I like to hold the light back away from the page so I can see the whole hidden picture at the same time, but my 4-yr-old likes to hold the flashlight up close and reveal just a small piece at a time. Both ways work great!



Reading is such an important part of early childhood. Kids gain so many skills from looking at books, listening to read-alouds, and interacting with books. Giving children a chance to physically interact with their stories not only builds interest, but it helps them absorb more of what they are reading about. It triggers them to use more areas of their brains, and therefore improves and deepens the learning experience. And through it all the kids think they are playing! Shhh... don't tell them they are actually learning!

[Disclaimer: I am an independent consultant for Usborne Books & More, however, they do not employ me to review their books or compensate me in any way for my reviews. These are my personal thoughts and do not reflect the views of the company.]