Movin’ Mondays – Stamps

For a lesson in patience, we decided to try our skills at using stamps.  *wink*  Stamps are so messy and with two very willing preschoolers, it can take a lot of verbal communication to keep the process of stamping a clean and fun project. (If you can’t tell, I don’t like messy kids.  Haha!)  Needless to say, stamping can be really fun and a good activity to get kiddos into the crafty mood.

What’s your "Moving” activity to start the week?

Movin’ Mondays — crazy hats!

There is something about hats that seems to draw in children.  It’s as if wearing hats allows the preschooler the chance to be something different or to be somewhere else. None of my boys actually like to wear a hat for it’s real intent but they enjoy playing with them from time to time.  Plus, when you have silly ones like this, that makes play even more fun!

We have a basketful of ball caps and fishing hats in our hall closet (which is funny because none of us wear hats more than once a month or so!).  Instead of just letting them collect dust, every so often we pull out the basket and let the boys have at it!  They get so tickled seeing each other try out the different sizes and styles.  Some get stacked on-top of each other while others inspire them to suddenly act like they are out hunting or wherever their imagination may lead!


What’s your "Moving” activity to start the week? 

Movin’ Mondays – Domino trains

(Photo of my toddler using the Instgram app…isn’t is cool?!?)

One of our favorite family game night games is Dominoes.  We have the Mexican Train domino version. The rules are for the players to start with seven dominoes in their hand with a double-number domino placed in the center.  Then each person places their matching number domino and you take turns matching up your dominoes which form a train. If you can’t match, then you draw one and put up a plastic train on your line so others can play.

But playing games with a preschooler and toddler doesn’t usually involve rule-following.  Our two year old adores the plastic miniature trains so he is usually focused on playing with those while our four year old likes to count the dots on the dominoes.  

It’s important to try to teach the basic concepts but we also allow for a lot of ‘interpretation’ of those rules as well…which often leads to other really fun versions of game play! 

What “Moving” activities do you have planned for the week?
(Feel free to comment below)

Movin’ Mondays – Playing dress-up

If you head over to the house of any little girl, I bet you’ll find a host of dress-up clothes…anything from tu-tu’s to toddler-sized high heals (complete with bling!) to oversized gowns and much more. But for boys, there really aren’t that many ‘dress-up’ options and we just don’t have that many outfits for pretending.

But playing dress-up is a great tool for letting children role play, express emotions, pretend, and much more! It’s a type of play that opens the door to expressing thoughts in a safe way by communicating as ‘someone else’.

So playing dress-up with three little boys gets a little creative around our house.  When we decide to play, half of the game time is allotted to searching for our outfits!

We pull out our magnifying glass and binoculars and go on a ‘hunt’ for the clothes to make up our characters. And we use anything from scarfs to Daddy’s neck-ties to old Halloween costumes to Mommy’s dressy shoes. The end result is a mishmash and often pretty funny but always fun.  Then we spend time playing our character roles; whether that is a role of fireman (photo above), explorer, detective, or anything else these little preschoolers decide to be!

What’s your "Moving” activity to start the week?

Movin’ Mondays – Colored Ice Cubes

A fun activity idea for our Monday morning post is about colored ice cubes!  I came across a preschooler activity last fall called Ice Boats (will post later) in which you fill an ice cube tray with water and let the toddler color the water and then add a stick to make a boat.  My boys LOVED the activity and we’ve made a few fun versions of the game.

Coloring the water can be done with a variety of mediums…here are some we have tried:
1. Food coloring – Have the adult drop food coloring into the water and let the child mix! After frozen, drop into a bowl of warm water to watch colors swirl as they melt.

2. Sprinkles – These usually dissolve in water and it’s fun to watch what colors come off of each sprinkle! After frozen, drop into a bowl of warm water or they can be added to a drink!
We have a few sprinkles leftover from Christmas that are green trees and red dots as well as some of the typical multi-colored balls.  The balls never fully dissolved and made the water sort of brown while the Christmas ones floated so this discovery lead to some good communication about color mixing and sinking/floating.

3. Kool aid – Pre-mix in a pitcher so you don’t get liquid on the counters which may stain.  We have a Pampered Chef large pitcher with built-in sifter to mix the liquid so my little preschoolers like to take turns with the mixing!  After frozen, you can put in a bowl of water or, for a special treat, add these to a cup of water or Sprite!

As shown in the photo, we mixed three different packets of koolaid with water; one at a time.  We only used about 1/3 of the water that the directions call for and then poured into a few slots in the ice cube tray.  Two of the packets were the same color just different shades (berry and pink lemonade) so we added a little bit of our blue mix to make purple.  It turned into a fun science lesson and, once frozen, will turn into a fun drink with our soda!

What’s your "Moving” activity to start the week?

Mr. Push It busy bag

Loving this activity.  L.o.v.e. I.t. 

I do have to say that this may be the best preschooler Busy Bag out there! At least it has been the most interesting to my young preschooler so far!!  We get to use an everyday item and recycle it (snack container) plus all the items store inside for easy access.

We tried a different version of this Busy Bag called Pom Pom Stuff It In (per MoneySavingMom’s blog)…used a yogurt cup and cut slits in the top for stuffing in pom poms.  But my preschooler kept getting his finger stuck in the hole and just using pom poms was uninteresting after awhile.

I know there was also a version somewhere that used pipe cleaners and a Pringles can…but even if you wash the can, those chips always seem so greesy to me! 

After my boys quickly ate through a tub of Ritz Bitz, :) I wanted to recycle the container somehow and realized that it was the perfect container for a mix of the two activities!  We called it “Mr. Push It” because my little guy kept saying ‘pushhhh’ as he was pushing in each item.

To create, we started by letting my two preschoolers have ‘craft time’ and color a bunch of hole reinforcement stickers with markers. Then I got out my special single hole punch and hammer (back from scrapboooking days!) and whacked a couple of holes.  After the boys added their stickers around the holes, we found matching pipe cleaners and pom poms for each color. 

Two adjustments had to be made:
1) The holes were a bit small for the pom poms so I snipped a quick rectangle down the center for easier manageability by my two year old.
2) Plus we had to cut the pipe cleaners in half to fit the length of our container.

We made this two days ago and my preschooler has played and played with it.  Since creation, it has been found randomly in our rec room and in the kitchen and in the dining room….meaning that he has carried it around and played with it at different times all on his own – AND cleaned it up on his own! 

This Busy Bag activity is getting permanent residence in our Busy Bag Box as well as a copy is being made to go in the diaper bag!

Toothpick Trace busy bag

(Disclaimer: This activity is suggested for older preschoolers who can safely use toothpicks without hurting themselves.)

Here is an interesting activity that I’ve called Toothpick Trace.  I was reading about different ways to develop hand-eye-coordination in older preschoolers and they suggested using toothpicks to ‘trace’ – have the child poke holes along a pattern line.

As shown above, place a hand towel on a flat surface then a dark colored piece of construction paper and top with a pattern. (Our patterns were hand-traced from favorite puzzle pieces but you could just print off some clipart shapes.)  Once the holes are poked, the dark colored piece of paper can be hung in a window to let the light shine through the new outline!

Wooden clothes pins are placed to secure the top and bottom so my preschooler can focus on his handiwork with the toothpicks.  To reduce the risk of injury, I may go buy some of those fun toothpicks with silly decals at the top (such as little umbrellas) so there is only one sharp end.

Now, this activity does break a rule of the Busy Bag criteria list…all bags are:
non-messy and/or quick clean up, totally independent in use, interesting enough to last 15-30 minutes, and reusable products <—the rule breaker.

Even though this basically fits the concept of other Busy Bags, I wanted to give it a try with my four year old. He doesn’t show interest in writing or drawing or doodling. If he does any of these activities, it’s because I told him that he had to and then the activity only lasts 5 minutes.  This also means he doesn’t have very good skills with using pencils or paint brushes.

So I’m open to any kind of activity for him that builds his skill at “writing”…and using toothpicks is included! 

For more photos, go to the Facebook page under “BusyBagCentral” and be sure to ‘Like’ us so you can get in on the fan-only giveaways. Orders can be taken on Facebook or by emailing (BusyBagCentral@gmail.com). Thanks for reading!

Twist-Ties busy bag

For this Busy Bag, you take a handful of twist-ties and a handful of objects and present it to the child then let them play.  We don’t use twist-ties in my house because our trashcans have either a bag with a built-in drawstring or they are recycled bags from the grocery store.  But I’m a saver and collect these each time we empty a bag of bread.

The interest of this activity comes because the primary object (the ties) are new and different for the preschooler. We’ve included a variety of items for the twist-ties to be twisted around – a pencil, an empty spool, tupperware, and so on. We also included a few pipe cleaners for more twisting fun.

So far, my two year old is not sure what to think of the activity.  Since we don’t use twist-ties, he is having a hard time wrapping the ties around and keeping them around anything.  He is more interested in stuffing all the objects into the green tub for the moment but he has asked to play with this again today and left all the parts out, as if he wanted to play with it again later.  So we’ll have to make an effort to develop his twist-tying skills to make this more interesting. 

I know my four year old can do this type of twisting motion so I’ll post again once he plays with the activity to let you know if it’s a winner or a dud of an activity for him.

 

For more photos, go to the Facebook page under “BusyBagCentral” and be sure to ‘Like’ us so you can get in on the fan-only giveaways. Orders can be taken on Facebook or by emailing (BusyBagCentral@gmail.com). Thanks for reading!

Small & Large motor skill activity: BOXES!

When young children receive a present, many times the box the present came in suddenly becomes more interesting than the actual gift!

As noted in an earlier post, we’ve been busy playing indoors this week and we try to build upon a variety of skill sets using different items around the house. Since we received several large boxes this past week from packages that were delivered, we decided to use the packaging as part of our motor-skill development.

For the small motor skills, Little S colored all over the box.  I created with him and showed him how to draw basic shapes and wrote our names to emphasis letter memorization.

And then it became a fun large motor skill activity when he played with his creation!  At first it was a car then it was a train and then a spaceship and finally used as a good hiding spot.

It was also good entertainment for the baby who was having fun just laying on the floor watching his big brother play!  Now that he’s 5 months old, the little guy is learning ‘object permanence’ and really got a kick watching his brother play peek-a-boo with him and the box! 

Today, we’ll get big brother J in on the fun and have him push around Little S in the box to wear off some energy. Yay!

Small motor activity: Valentine’s Day card box

My 4-yr old is in preschool and their schedule noted trading V-day cards on Tuesday, Valentine’s day. So I thought it’d be fun to make a box for his cards based off an idea a friend posted on Facebook.

Using an empty soda pop box, we first wrapped red cardstock paper around it and taped it securely. Then I cut out hearts from a pink cardstock and we taped the hearts and the cutouts as well as decorated with puff paint per instructions from the one in-charge (my 4 year old).

{One of my ‘parenting bag of tricks’ is to present scenarios during craft time or playtime as if the child is leading all choices.  I provide narrative situations in which they get to give their decisions with decision-based play. This way, when it comes to chore time or bed time, and it's my turn to tell them what to do, the child is less likely to fight my lead since they’ve been encouraged to lead another part of their day. Many toddler outbursts are due to a need to show control; and what, really, does a youngster get to control in their world?!? I’m a pretty strict parent and know that my kids behave better if they are taught how to lead and when it's appropriate for them to be in-charge.}

Since this became a choo-choo train, the last step was to tape construction paper onto a toilet roll and tape it down and then add fuzzy yarn for our steam stack….and whala!

The craft was very quick and a majority of the time was spent learning how to operate a tape dispenser.  Learning to tear tape is a hard skill at the beginning…not folding the tape or tearing it too short or too long, not touching the teeth/blade, etc. There are so many things to learn in life!

What did your household do for Valentine’s day? Please share in the comments below.  Anyone have a great family tradition that you have done? We’re looking for ideas!