Playing to Learn

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Another use for Rainbow Rigatoni

I still have one more activity we did with our rainbow noodles that I haven't posted yet. It's nothing big or fancy but it is one more use for a cheap and easy resource.
We made some home made play dough from this recipe for a play group with some of our friends and then we used it and the small dowel rods left over from this toy to create a simple activity (I found it here).

This was a great way for Erik to practice his fine motor control and hand/eye coordination, as well as to create a unique work of art. He loved pushing the sticks into the playdough, and then dropping the noodles over the sticks. This was a great way to keep him busy using things we already had laying around the house.

Friday, May 24, 2013

Ways to Keep a Toddler Busy on a Road Trip (Updated)

*Update at bottom of post*
As I mentioned last time, we are currently staying with family in New Mexico after having moved from Mississippi. In case you've never thought about it, you ought to know that the distance between those two locations is about 1300 miles and it takes two 12-hour days of driving to get from one to the other. Now think about doing that road trip with an almost two-year-old. Sounds like *fun*, right?
Yeah, that's what I thought too so I spent the time leading up to our move perusing Pinterest and the web in general for ideas on how to survive such an ~~ordeal~~ adventure. I got pictures of most of the things we did, so I'm going to share those with you today. With a little advance planning a long carseat ride doesn't have to be pure torture for everyone in the vehicle.
I assembled all the activities I'm going to talk about later, along with snacks and anything else I thought I'd need (scissors, glue, etc) in what I dubbed my Box of Tricks. It was all organized and ready to go, so I had everything I could want right at my finger tips.

First, a few tips:
***Remember, you're pretty much living in your car for however long it takes to get to your destination so resign yourself to a little mess, and noise, and stickiness, and crankiness, and all the other fun things that are part of life (just condensed into one tiny location).
***Put a towel under your toddler's carseat before you buckle it into the car so clean up is easier when you arrive, and then take a deep breath and remember you can wash/vacuum it all away when you get wherever you're going.
***Hit the dollar store before you leave and pick up a new toy or two to pull out of hiding when you're desperate. This little treasure was one of Erik's favorite ways to pass the time on the road and it only cost me a dollar. Best buck I ever spent.

***Unless you have a very strict schedule that you HAVE to keep, don't give in to the temptation to hit the drive through and just keep on rolling while everyone eats. Look for somewhere to stop where Jr. can get out and run for a few minutes. The break will make everyone happier and you'll be glad you took a few minutes to relax.
*** Try to stay organized. Trust me, the chaos and clutter of toddler travel will make you nuts if you don't try to keep on top of it. While some mess is to be expected and accepted, try to make sure you have all the important things (toys count as important here!) where you can find them when you need them. I chose to keep all our things in a box, but I seriously considered this idea.
***Pack some fun snacks. And when I say "some" I mean "a TON". I used this idea to make some "Surprise" Snack Mix. I just bought a couple varieties of snacks (making sure to get a mix of sweet and savory, crunchy and chewy) and mixed them all together. (*we did learn that the french toast flavored gold fish graham crackers make everything else in the container taste like maple syrup, so consider yourself warned!). Whenever Erik would get crabby/munchy I'd fill up a designated snack up with some of the mix and he'd go to town.

*** Sit in the back seat with your child if at all possible, at least while he/she is awake. I know, it's not as fun, but remember they don't enjoy being stuck back there anymore than you do and maybe if you work together you can make it better for everyone.
***If there's enough room keep a comfort item or two within easy reach at all times. Erik got to have his favorite blanket and stuffed animal on the seat next to him at all times so he could grab them for a snuggle whenever he wanted.

And now for the activities we did (links take you to the sites that inspired me):

Play dough in a balloon. I used the idea from this pin to stuff the play dough in there and it worked great! All the squishy fun of play dough and none of the mess. It builds strong fingers too!

Books. Lots of books! Grab a couple old favorites, and maybe even consider picking up something new to pull out when you've all had more of each other's company than you think you can handle.
Mobile magnet boards. I made my magnets out of some magnet paper I had leftover from another project. I used a light layer of glue to put the pictures on the magnets and then after they dried I covered them with contact paper. You can also get some adhesive magnetic sheets in the craft aisle in Walmart that would make it possible to skip the gluing step, or just do like the mom in the link above and just use magnet tape or stickers. The magnet board is just a cookie sheet I picked up for less than a dollar at Walmart. It doubles as a tray for other activities we did, and was small enough to fit nicely in the top of my Box of Tricks.

*These magnets are made from a couple of books I picked up at the dollar store.

*These magnets are made from magazines I picked up off the freebies table at our local public library. We discovered that fashion magazines have the biggest pictures of faces, so look for those.

Remember I said we used the cookie sheet for other things besides magnets? I stuck some painters tape and a few pieces of contact paper in my Box of Tricks to make a mini sticky story board.

Pack a container of Fruit Loops and some pipe cleaners. Encourage your child to thread the cereal on the pipe cleaner to make an edible bracelet or necklace. Snack and activity in one!Just be careful to help them finish off the ends so they don't bite down on any sharp ends of the pipe cleaners.

Remember to pack a few favorite toys from your toy box. You may have noticed our Mr. Potato Head in my Box of Tricks. We also had some matchbox cars and a few other small toys. If you can stand the noise, toys that have buttons to push and that light up and/or make noise are great for the car.
Pack some paper and crayons or colored pencils. We put ours in an empty PB container to keep track of them easier. Here is another time when the cookie sheet came in handy!

Stickers! Hit the dollar store and stock up. And learn to be okay with stickers going on more than just the intended piece of paper.
Activity Boards. We were going to make this one that I saw on Pinterest, but then we found this one and decided it looked like WAY more fun. This (along with the ball I mentioned earlier) was one of the top 2 favorite things of the whole trip. When everything else was boring, the Latches Board never failed to entertain.
If worst comes to worst, you can do what we did towards the end. Pull out your laptop/ipad/ipod/whatever you have and watch videos. Erik can sit and watch videos of himself for hours, so we just played all our home videos over and over for about two hours the last day. Not ideal I guess, but hey, we all made it there without one of us killing the other so I count it as a success.
*I forgot one more thing that I had tucked into my Box of Tricks. I took a big handful of our Rainbow Rigatoni and a piece of string all prepared as I described in that post and put them in a ziplock baggie. This was a great way for Erik to pass the time and it was nice to have an activity he was already familiar with.*

Remember to just relax and try to have fun with your family. Look out the window and talk about what you see. Sing silly songs. Turn on the radio and dance/wiggle (as much as you can while belted in anyways). Stop and see the sights along the way (if time allows). And when you start to feel tired of being the constant entertainer and the seat gets hard and the road seems to be going on FOREVER and you find yourself asking yourself "are we there yet?", remember that it's worse to sit and listen to a screaming kid, so chin up and put on a smile (their contagious you know) and hang in there! If mamma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy!

Monday, May 20, 2013

Water Play

I warned you my posts would be much less frequent! We are now officially "boomerang" children, and are comfortably settled in my parents home for the time being.

Today I'm going to share one of the activities we did with Paisley several weeks ago that just never got posted in all the hustle and bustle of life. Both kids had a blast with this one and would've loved if we'd made it a part of our everyday routine.
All I did was take a big plastic tub, fill it up with water, and turn them loose. I also had made sure to make some fun utensils and containers available to them to explore with. They got to splash and scoop and pour and squeeze and just have a great time.

I put Paisley in some of Erik's old clothes so she'd have something warm and dry to go home in. Don't worry, her mom has much better fashion sense than this!

As is often the case, Paisley stood back and watched Erik for a few minutes before jumping in herself, but once she did she loved it!

Erik never did figure out why drinking out of the funnel didn't work.

Paisley loved showing off her arm muscles by squeezing all the water out of the sponges.

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

2 Ways to Play with Rainbow Rigatoni

I know, this is the second post about rainbow colored pasta I've done in the last little while, but this one is totally different and has been so much fun!
I used the instructions from here to dye my pasta (which I got for $1/box, so this is a cheap activity) and then used the noodles to do two different but simultaneous activities with Erik and Paisley.

Erik got to thread the noodles onto a piece of string to make necklaces (I know, boys don't usually wear necklaces, but he was having SO much fun!). As suggest by the original blogger, I taped the end of a string with some masking tape (I probably taped 4-5 inches of the string so that when you put a noodle on it you could easily grab both ends of the masking tape) to make it easier to manipulate, and tied a noodle to the other end. I then showed him how to thread the noodles onto the string and he was hooked. He didn't want to leave the noodles on, but instead would put one or two on and then pull them off and start over. This means we didn't ever end up with a wearable necklace, but who cares?

Paisley got to play with and explore the pan full of noodles as a sensory bin. She loved to scoop up handfuls of the noodles and throw them back into the metal pan, they made a great noise! She played with the noodles for quite a while, and seemed a bit miffed when I eventually put them away.

I saved these noodles and we've pulled them out several times since our first trial run with them. Each time they are a big hit, and never fail to keep the little ones entertained for a several minutes (long enough to fix lunch perhaps?)

Monday, April 29, 2013

The only constant in life is change...

Well, things have been a little crazy around here as I've mentioned before, but that was just the beginning of it. We're getting ready to head into some pretty serious life changes that are undoubtedly going to affect my posting on this blog for a month or two at least.
Sometime in the next few weeks (we don't have an exact date yet) we are going to be moving from Mississippi to New Mexico. My hubby just finished his Masters Degree at MSU and is looking for a job. He has some great prospects in NM (which is where we both grew up and where our families still live) so we are going to pack up our stuff and head that direction so he can be there in person for the interview process for the jobs he wants. We'll stay with family for a few weeks until we know what the job situation is going to be and then who know where we'll end up. It may be just a few weeks until we're settled somewhere in our own new home, or we may end up bumming off of family for longer than expected, who knows.
This week is our last week with Paisley. :( She's been so much fun to have around and it's been so fun to watch her grow. I hope to get a few more activities done with her this week that I've had on my to do list, so she may still be putting in appearances on the blog for awhile, but we'll have to wait and see. We'll miss our little Miss P.

My posts are probably going to be a bit sporadic for a while, but don't worry. Someday our lives will settle back down into a routine and we'll get back into the groove. We'll be back!

Monday, April 22, 2013

Body Stickers

Remember last Monday how I said we were doing a theme that week all about our bodies? Well, here is the next installment in that theme. We chose to go with this activity for Paisley to help her start to become familiar with the names for all the different body parts. I knew there was no way I'd get her to hold still while I traced her (as I did with Erik), so this seemed like a good alternative. Basically you just stick a sticker on to a part of the baby's body, and then show them the sticker and say "look, there's a sticker on your <insert body part here>". You proceed to label other body parts and have a wonderful time. That's the idea anyways. Instead it goes something like this:
Place a sticker on baby's leg. Point to it and say "look there's a flower on your leg!"

Next you say "ummm, let's not eat the stickers please. Seriously, get that thing out of your mouth. Okay fine, I'll get that thing out of your mouth!"

You proceed to hold baby firmly and fish around in her mouth looking all over for the sticker (which is hiding on the roof of her mouth, next time look there first instead of the bottomless depths of the chubby adorable little cheeks) while she screams as if you were trying to rip her head off of her body.

Now you give up, put the stickers away, and break out the cheerios. Don't worry, you can always learn body parts tomorrow instead, right?

Friday, April 19, 2013

Celebrating my 100th Post

To celebrate this being my one hundredth post, I decided to compile a list of all our fun activities for easy reference. I've sorted them by the age at which we did them, but different children are ready for things at different ages (and some of them are appropriate for multiple age groups) so take that into consideration as you look through these. Also, I am putting a few "bonus" links at the end, so don't forget to check them out. And now, without further ado I give you...