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?

Easter Egg matching activity

Easter Egg Matching activity! With this weekend holding a fun-filled activity that will probably leave your home with lots of empty eggs by Monday, here is an activity that can put them to creative use this next week! 

Create a scene with construction paper. Trace the shape of the eggs, cut out the halves and then mix them up (i.e. yellow on top and green on the bottom). Then secure the mis-matched eggs onto your background.
Give the preschooler the eggs and ask them to find the matching pairs and place ontop of the correct images on the scene! 

For the younger tot (2 to 3 years), have the eggs already popped in half and ready to match together.  For the older preschooler (4 to 6 years), give them the eggs whole and ask them to pop open and match together by themselves.

Another version is to let the tot create the background scene with you!  Let them practice egg tracing (a hard skill for younger preschoolers) and have them run the gluing of the objects to the background paper.  They can also color or draw on the finished scene for more fun.

I saw a post on one of my favorite blogs (MoneySavingMom.com) that had ideas for reusing plastic eggs with egg cartons and realized that these little objects are perfect for developing finger strength as well as growing sorting skills.  This activity also builds skill sets of: color recognition, finger strength, object manipulation, sorting and grouping as well as skills in patterning and shape recognition.

Enjoy your weekend and may it be filled with the Hope that is found in Jesus Christ!

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!

St. Patty's Day cooking craft

Happy St. Patty's Day to ya!  We used an idea off of Pinterest for a cooking craft with our preschoolers = yummy Shamrock flowers!!

We took three pretzels and laid them next to each other (ours were waffle-shaped but the regular ones would make the end product look more like a flower).  Then I had my toddler bite one in half for our stem while my older boy laid wax paper inside a cooking sheet (to contain our mess).  :)

After melting almond bark, I drizzled it onto our 'shamrock' and then let the boys sprinkle with green sprinkles. We finished it off with a bit of green icing for the stem.

Our shamrock flowers each got their own unique touch and we enjoyed eating each of them!!