Surprise on a String, Take 2

 This oldy but goodie is one I did with Erik when he was little. He tended to think that if he was in his high chair I owed him some food, so we had to do a little improvisation, but Maren had no problem hanging out in there.

 Set up is simple. Grab a few item from around the house, tie them to some string, and tape the string to your child's high chair tray. If they don't figure out what to do after a few minutes you can show them that there is something on the end of the string.

 Once Maren realized there were interesting things at the end of the strings she was hooked. This kept her busy long enough for me to get a few boxes packed for our move. That means it's a win in my book!

TBT: Cardboard

A quick look around my blog will clue you in to the fact that we are big fans of cardboard  boxes around here. We've used them for all sorts of things. 

On this particular day we took a large sheet of cardboard we'd acquired and worked as a team (Sharli included) to create an awesome play mat. I taped a couple of markers on either side of one of the kids' blocks and drew roads, then we all brainstormed on the details. 

We drew a pond like the one near our home, a place for the toy animals to live in their very own zoo, parking lots for the toy cars, etc. This thing got played with until it literally fell apart and had to be smuggled out under cover of darkness because:

Our neighbors got a new washer/dryer, and as soon as I found out I begged them to save the box for us. This thing provided more hours of fun than just about anything else we've had in our home. It stayed like this in the living room for almost a week for the kids to play in. They colored nearly every square inch of it with their crayons over the course of the week which would've been worth it all by itself. 

 When it started to get too beat up to stand up anymore, I chopped it in half so we could stand it up easily and we made a little house out of it, complete with door and windows.

 This box lived in our playroom for more than a month. Most of that time it was known as "Maddie B's Restaurant", though I actually have no idea where that name came from. So many imaginary delicacies were cooked in there! It was sure a sad day when this box had been played to death and had to be smuggled out of the house as well.

What amazing fun have you had at your house with cardboard?

Deal A Story

This is another activity given to us by my amazing mother-in-law. It is very simple to put together, and the odds are good that you already have what you need right in your home. 

Let's gather our materials:

Playing cards with numbers on them (regular face cards, UNO cards, Rook cards, Skip-Bo Cards, whatever you have)

That's it! Piece of cake, right? No prep, although this is a game that requires your participation. 

 So how do we play?

Deal two or three cards facedown to each player. Choose a child to turn over a card and name the number on it. Use the number as you begin telling a story. Then continue, each turning over a card and saying it's number to incorporate into the story. For example: (child turns over a ten) "Ten little rabbits went to town." (child turns over a two) "They went to two houses looking for food." (next card is a five) "At the second house they met five kind children." (next card is a seven) "The children gave them seven carrots." Continue the story using the number cards. Older children can take turns being the storyteller, adding to the story on their turn.

*Diedre Mower is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com. This post contains affiliate links.

TBT: Large Group Toy Matching Game

For today's Throw Back Thursday post, I wanted to show you how I took the Toy Matching Game I shared a while back to the next level, and made it possible to use it for group play. Here's the original set-up:

A single sheet of paper, and a few toys. This is perfect for one child to play with, but not so great when you've got a half a dozen kids at your house for a play date. So, how do you make this work for a larger group? 

 We had children ages 2-10 coming to play, so I wanted this to be fun for as many of them as possible. The night before everyone came, I went through the kids' toy boxes and picked out all the toys I could find that would be fairly simple to trace, while still presenting a challenge. I especially tried to find pairs of things that were of similar shape, but not identical. For example, a toy hammer with a long skinny handle and one with a short fat handle, or a five pointed star and a six pointed star, etc.
Once I gathered the toys, I spread a sheet of paper (I used the back side of some leftover Christmas wrapping paper, but craft paper would work great too) across my coffee table and used painters tape to attach it all the way around. Then I laid out all the toys and traced them onto the paper.
When our friends started arriving this is what they found waiting for them:

I didn't give any instruction, just let them do with it as they pleased. This worked great as a way to keep kids busy while we waited for everyone to get here. It was fun to watch the kids work on figuring out where everything went. There was enough room that 4-6 kids could each work independently in their own little area, but most of them chose to work together in small teams or groups. 

So what if you don't have a large surface that would work for this? Or what if you're going to have more kids than will fit around a single table?

One other idea I toyed with when planning this activity was to make a bunch of individual papers so that each kid had their own to work on (like individual bingo cards). I think this would have worked out okay, but I think it would have kept the kids from joining forces to figure out the puzzle together. If that's the best you can do in your situation I'm sure the kiddos will still have fun. 

Filling up the Letter B

To help introduce the sound the letter B makes, we used this idea from The Measured Mom (she has TONS of alphabet activities, you should check it out!). The first time we did this I handed Erik a bunch of teddy Bear counters and a paper with a large letter B on it. I didn't tell him what to do with it, I just handed it over. He immediately started filling the letter up with bears. We talked about the different colors, we lined them up in a row, we made up little stories about them. At some point I asked him what sound a B makes and made the connection to the bear counters, but I didn't dwell on it. I wanted this to be fun. 

 The next day I put our letter B on a cookie sheet along with another piece of paper with four circles, each colored a different color and labelled with the correct color name. Again, I didn't give any instructions, just turned him loose. He never did sort the buttons by color (he's just not really into sorting things), but he did ask what the words said and we talked about that. He started to outline the B with the buttons, but got distracted just enjoying looking at all the different kinds of buttons. He's asked for this activity several times since this, but due to the choking hazard for Sharli we just haven't had another good opportunity to pull the buttons back out. We will though, don't worry.

Beach Math Flannel Board

This flannel board set is one of many great resources my mother-in-law saved from when her children were young. She has given us use of anything we want out of her many boxes of materials, and we're loving it! 

While I know that most of you don't have access to such a treasure trove, that doesn't mean you can't find a way to do something like this at home. You could make something like our Weather Counting Wall in just about any theme you can dream up and draw. You could use felt and fabric paint to make your own flannel board set. OR, I did the research and found this exact flannel set for sale on this neat website. You're welcome.

We sorted all the different objects (classification) by type and counted how many there were of each. 

We made up little stories about the different children and the things they brought to or saw at the beach, then counted the total number of objects (beginning addition). We made up similar stories for some basic subtraction (Bob saw three fish, but then one swam away. How many are left?)

 Mostly we just played with this and had fun. Erik loves to help make up stories (creative expression) about anything, so we had a lot of fun just imagining what all the felt boys and girls were doing at the beach. Not every story had math involved, but some did.

 My favorite part of this was when my hubby walked in the door for his lunch break and saw the beach scene stuck to the back of our couch (because I don't have a real flannel board to stick these to, but the couch works great). He was SO surprised to see this relic from his childhood sitting in our living room.
The best part? Erik loved this and would happily play with it every day.

Cardboard Creations

 As I'm sure I've mentioned before, I am all over anything that is cheap (free is even better!!!) and will keep my little guy busy for a few minutes. Here are a few things I've thrown together in the last few months to keep Erik entertained and out of my hair. It doesn't hurt that they help to encourage independent play and imagination either!

We made this one not too long after we moved, out of one of the MANY boxes we had laying around. I'm particularly proud of the fact that the steering wheel turns, so it's even more like driving a real car. To make that bit of magic happen, I cut out two circles from another piece of cardboard; a bigger one for the steering wheel, and a smaller one for a hood ornament. Then I poked holes in the center of each and used a long twist tie to connect the two through a hole in the box (I just used the hole already cut into the box for a handle, but you could cut a small hole out of the side of a box with no handles). Draw whatever details you want with a permanent marker, and tada! We pulled out our colored pencils and colored the car, but that is completely up to you and your kiddo.

This one was created after Erik got a set of dishes and play food from his Grandma for Christmas. I hope someday to make a more permanent version of it (with this as my inspiration) but for now this is all I've gotten around to. It's great because he can store his toys in the box when he's not playing with them, but he also has a stove to cook on. The box I used had stuff printed on the cardboard, so I drew my stove-top on a piece of craft paper from the dollar store and then used contact paper and packing tape to attach it to the bottom of the box. (It turns out contact paper doesn't like cardboard, so the packing tape was required to get it to stick on at all)

This creation is technically not made out of cardboard, but it could've been (and it looks like it is since it's made out of brown craft paper) so I'm throwing it in here. I needed Erik to keep himself occupied for a few minutes one day and I was feeling frustrated that I couldn't seem to get him interested in his toys. I started lamenting the fact that he doesn't have anything fun to go with his collection of toy cars, and wishing I had the supplies on hand to make one of these. Then I realized I had a brand new roll of craft paper from the dollar store, so I grabbed a marker and threw this together. I realized as I was drawing it that the paper was too flimsy to last for very long, so I pulled out my roll of contact paper (I'm seriously falling in love with that stuff!!!) and put a layer of that over the paper. I had to use packing tape around the edges to make them stay down (remember contact paper doesn't like cardboard type surfaces?) but several weeks later our DIY road mat is still alive and kicking.

Play Dough

After letting Erik attempt using scissors for the first time while we were at Explora, I realized that we need to do more work on his fine motor skills/strength. One of the BEST ways to do this is to play with play dough. We made up a batch of dough (and I do mean WE, let your little one help with the whole process!) and pulled out some toys and I let him go to town with it. He poked it and squeezed it and cut it with different toys/cookie cutters. He rolled it between his hands and made lots of little "snakes". He played and played until it was time to put it away and eat lunch, and has loved it just as much each time I've pulled it out since then too. 

 As you can see, this was around Christmas time and he was a bit obsessed with the baby Jesus from his nativity scene. It was his idea to bring baby Jesus over for his play dough ginger bread man to "worship". Seriously, this was entirely his own idea. We haven't done anything like this before, but he just really thought that the Christ-child deserved a little gingerbread man love. The Baby got lots of gooey play dough kisses before the day was over, but don't worry, Erik made sure Mary was nearby to closely supervise the whole thing.

Walk (and Skip, and Hop, and Run, and...) on the Line

*Warning: If you have a problem seeing a mommy blog where the child is not dressed in a perfectly coordinated outfit (or even wearing any pants), and the home is messy and actually looks lived in then you better not read this post. :) 

Ever since he could walk, Erik has loved to see how close to the edge he can get. He loves trying to balance on things and see if he can walk on them. If he loses his balance though, he's okay with that because it means he gets to jump off of whatever it is and that's dare devil enough for him. 

I've toyed with the idea of making some kind of balance beam for him, and had even considered doing this particular idea, but I just never did it. Our new apartment is TINY so I don't have a place to put any kind of balance beam, and tape on the floor just didn't seem like it would be all that exciting. 

Then, I started seeing pins for games using masking tape all over pinterest, and thought that if everyone else thinks it looks like fun than maybe Erik will too. One day when he was bored and driving us both crazy I grabbed my roll of painter's tape and let him help me make a line on the floor. It looked too narrow, so I ended up putting three strips side by side. 

We started out walking on the line...

...but that soon turned into jumping.

 His "Ta Da!!!" pose: 

 Next he wanted to find out what else could walk the line. Various toys were put to the test, starting with this toy horse.

 It quickly became apparent that his toys were as good as he was at this game, so it was time to see what else could do it. Suddenly all the books off of my bookshelf were taking turns sliding down the line.

 Then, he decided he needed a bigger challenge. Would a can of pumpkin roll down the line? It turns out cans are a little more prone to wandering wherever they please. To be fair though, he gave a good number of cans a chance at the line, with generally the same results for them all. Cans just aren't good at rolling straight.

It was so fun to watch Erik work those legs muscles as he walked, tip-toed, jumped, skipped, hopped, and crawled along the line. It was even more fun to watch his little brain work as he tried sending object after object along the line. Amazingly enough, this simple little strip of tape kept this kid busy for well over an hour, and that's not including the time he spent the next day playing with the ball of tape we made when we pulled up the line.