Shaving Cream Spelling Practice

We are always looking for ways to make learning more engaging around here, so when Erik needed some help with his spelling words we decided to bust out one of our favorite supplies; shaving cream! Shaving cream free play has been one of Erik's favorite things since he was a toddler, and we've had lots of fun with it over the years. 

This day I set up all three kids with a tray, some shaving cream, and a few drops of food coloring. The older two loved it, but Maren wasn't quite as impressed. She played for a moment or two, then wanted to get cleaned up. Oh well, she'll learn to love it eventually. :)

 After giving the kids a few minutes to play around, I started having Erik spell his spelling words with his finger in the shaving cream. This works great because it gets both fine and gross motor muscles involved, as well as multiple senses. And, the more of yourself you get involved in an activity the better you remember it, so theoretically this is a great way to memorize those boring old spelling words!

Summer Reading Fun: Should I Share My Ice Cream?

When we discovered Mo Willems' "Elephant and Piggie" books, it was love at first sight. My kids love to listen to me read them (it helps that I do voices for each character) and Erik is even getting to the point where he can read them himself. I decided we'd use one of our favorite of these stories as our inspiration for our ice cream themed play group. 

 We started off with a fun play dough ice cream shop, complete with chocolate play dough. I had all our regular play dough toys out, plus ice cream cones, scoops, and sprinkles (beads). The kids had a blast with this one!

 Next we made our own ice cream cones with a few simple supplies. Did you know that you can buy already cut tissue paper squares at the dollar store? Like these, except I got mine at Dollar Tree for $1.

 For our sensory play, we let the kids go crazy with some "melted ice cream", aka shaving cream. It's cheap, it smells yummy, and it's pretty easy to clean up. That's three thumbs up from me!

 Our gross motor game was this fun sharing game. I was actually surprised at how much the kids enjoyed it. It was so easy to set up and was a lot of fun.

 For our snack we had ice cream of course! I chose ice cream sandwiches due to the low cost and ease of serving/clean-up. I did seriously consider making home made ice cream, which would have been Amazing, but a lot more work.

To round out our ice cream week, I had several fun ice cream books on hand for the kids to look at. They were all great, but the first two here were the definite favorites. Click any of the books below to go take a closer look at them on Amazon.

*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.

Summer Reading Fun: The Very Hungry Caterpillar

 This week we had fun with Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar. His books are so wonderful and so widely loved that you can find countless ideas out there to go along with any of them. It was hard to narrow things down to just these few.

 For our play dough activity this week the kids got to play with red and green play dough (favorite recipe here), large googly eyes, pipe cleaners, and an assortment of all our favorite play dough toys.

Our craft was caterpillar sponge painting. Instead of buying a bunch of cheap sponges and cutting them into circles, I bought a package of foam hair curlers from the dollar store. I took the foam part off the plastic frame and cut them in half in order to have enough for all the kids. It worked GREAT!

 Our sensory play was the biggest sticky wall I've ever made. I cut out a TON of green and red circles out of foam sheets, as well as grass, flowers, clouds, etc. I drew a sun and a few plants on the non-sticky side of the contact paper before taping it to the wall. Most of the kids had never seen a sticky wall before, so it was fun to introduce a new idea to them all. If you don't want to cut shapes out of foam, here's another route you could take)

 Our gross motor activity was feeding the Hungry Caterpillar. I painted a giant caterpillar onto a piece of foam board and cut a hole for the mouth. I propped the board up in front of an empty laundry basket and let the kids throw toy food in the caterpillar's mouth. Throwing things is always a big hit with the kids.

 For our snack we ate grape caterpillars. I wasn't sure about giving the kids pokey sticks, but they really really loved this snack! If I had just handed them the skewers and a bowl of grapes they would have loved to make their own, but I didn't think and made them ahead of time.

 I try to always have some other books that fit the theme for the kids to look at, so this week I had several of Eric Carle's bug books. Here are the ones we had, click the image to learn more about the book:

*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.

Pink Sensory Bin

 When I asked Sharli what kind of birthday party she wanted, she told me "PINK!" With that as my only guide, I moved forward with plans for a pink party. I knew I wanted to keep things fairly simple, more like a play date than a birthday party. The biggest hit of the day was our pink sensory bin. 

I bought 40 lbs of the cheapest rice I could find, a large bottle of hand sanitizer, and a bottle of pink gel food coloring (from the cake decorating aisle at WalMart).

To dye the rice you first empty the hand sanitizer into a bowl (use one you're not attached to, like an empty sour cream tub) and stir in the food coloring. I used the whole jar of food coloring. Once that is well mixed, add it to your rice and stir well (you probably want to do this in a well ventilated space). Let it dry and you're ready to play.

 I went to the dollar store and picked up anything I could find that was pink (it helped that this was around Valentine's day). There were little pink and red hearts, little pink gem stones, pink and red pom poms, etc. These all got dumped into our little kiddie pool with the rice.

 I found some pink measuring cups at the dollar store, and some cute little silver ice scoops. I added some scooping/pouring toys and utensils from the toy box and my kitchen and we were all set. Oh boy did they love this! It got played with for days! At night I would cover the pool with a fitted sheet to keep critters out so that we'd be ready to play again the next day.

 We did end up with pink rice everywhere in the front yard, but it didn't take very long to break down in the sunshine. Even if I'd felt the need to pick it all up it would have been worth the hours and hours of play for all the kids involved. They played with it until there just wasn't enough left to play with, and I had to throw the remnants away. THAT was a sad day! 

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!

Pom Pom Sorting

 I was looking for a way to keep Sharli busy for a while and decided to go with one of my old stand-byes. Pom poms are good for SO many things, and most of them require very little prep work on my part.

 This day I grabbed a few small bowls out of the cupboard and set them on a tray with a set of tongs. I picked through the bag of pom poms to find only the ones that matched the colors of the bowls, and put those on the tray as well. I didn't give any instructions, just put the tray in front of Sharli and let her decide how to play with it on her own.

 She fiddled around with color sorting for a little while, and really enjoyed the challenge of using the tongs. 

 It didn't take too long before this turned into a game of "Ice Cream Shop". She would ask me what kind of ice cream I wanted, then scoop up a bowl for me. This kept her busy for as long as I was willing to sit and play along.

I picked these pom poms up for a dollar at Dollar Tree, and we have really gotten our money's worth out of them!

Water Painting

 Okay guys, I am so woefully behind in recording all our fun. These pictures will celebrate their first birthday next month and here they are just barely making it on to the blog. Oh well, better late than never, right?

 What do you do when you have three bored kids on a hot summer day, and no A/C? Anything involving water, right? My mom and my nephew Darrow were staying with us for a few days, and we needed to beat the heat, so we headed outside. We started small, with bowls of water and paintbrushes. The kids loved it! They painted the porch, the front door, the house, each other, etc...

 Our front porch gets some nice shade in the afternoons, and add in a light breeze and it becomes much more comfortable than the house. We all love to be outside, and this day was no exception.

 Of course, as always happens around water at our house, it was only a matter of time before the hose was running, clothing magically disappeared, and everyone was soaked from head to toe. It's just water though, so no big deal!

If this activity doesn't top the list of low-prep, no clean-up actvities than it's pretty darn close to it. Give it a try!