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! 

Balloon Free Play

 We LOVE balloons at our house. They are so cheap and provide so much entertainment! I almost always have a package of balloons tucked away somewhere so that when we're desperate for something to do I can pull them out.

 This day both kids were bored and cranky and just kept getting into trouble. I've learned that if I can provide them with something to keep themselves busy and cheer them up it can change a BAD day into a good one. And this pack of balloons only cost me a dollar, so it's a winner all around.

 We built muscles while we threw and caught and batted and kicked the balloons.

 We built vocabulary as we talked about colors and sizes.

 We built a foundation for learning math by comparing and classifying.

 We built memories as we goofed around and enjoyed being together.

 I pulled out a marker and drew a face on one of the balloons. This idea took off like wildfire, and soon every balloon had a different face on it. The kids would bring me a balloon and I'd let them pick whether that one would be happy, sad, surprised, etc.

 To see more of the fun things we've done with balloons, click here.

Summer Reading Fun: If You Give A Mouse A Cookie

I was so excited for this week's Summer Reading Program! There are lots of fun ideas out there to go with this classic kid's book, it was fun to sift through them all and find ones that would work for our little group. 

I found this amazing play dough recipe that I knew I had to try. It worked out pretty well. It's more dense and stiff than my usual recipe, but it looked JUST like cookie dough, and smelled great! We had to watch the younger kids pretty close to make sure they didn't eat it (although without the "chocolate chips" it would be taste safe).

For our gross motor game I found this cute Little Mouse game that sounded fun. I originally envisioned playing outside and placing the houses far enough apart that they would have to run from one to the other, but summer in New Mexico can get pretty darn hot. We scaled things down and brought the fun inside, which took away from the gross motor aspect but not from the fun. To make it a group game I chose one child to pick a house to hide the mouse in, than he/she got to pick which child guessed first. If the one guessing got it right they got to be the next "hider", if not they chose another child to take a guess. I tried to help guide the selection process so that everyone got a turn. 

 Our craft this week was also our sensory activity. We made puffy paint cookies. They were messy and gooey, but so much fun!

 And of course for our snack I made sure to bring real chocolate chip cookies to share with all the kids!

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Summer Reading Fun: The 3 Little Pigs

This story is one of my kids' favorites right now. They love to pretend to huff and puff like the wolf, or tell me "not by my chiny hair!", which is as close as Sharli can manage to the pigs' reply right now. In addition to the more traditional versions of this book, there are some really fun spin-offs out there too. Some of my favorite spin-offs have ninjas, or big bad pigs, or a poor wolf who was framed. My all time favorite version of this story is by David Weisner. With an out-of-the-box approach to the story and beautiful illustrations it's one I want to own someday!

We didn't do anything special with the play dough this week, although these cute play dough mats would have been fun!

For our sensory play I made sticky story boards for each child with an outline of a house drawn on the back of the contact paper. Each child had their own sticky board taped to a piece of construction paper. I had cut out tons of little pieces of construction paper to make straw sticks and bricks, and the kids could choose what to make their house out of. Like this, except I chose contact paper over turning a dozen kids loose with glue.
I am SO SO SO sorry for the terrible pictures. I forgot my camera, so I used the one on my poor old (not smart) phone.

For our craft I copied some cute masks and let each child pick which character's face to decorate. We had crayons, markers, stickers, stencils, etc. It was funny how many kids wanted to be the big bad wolf.

These would have been better printed on cardstock, but I only had regular printer paper. To keep the holes for the string from tearing right through I folded a strip of scotch tape around the edge of the paper before punching the holes. 

 Our gross motor game was going outside and running around with the masks on. Depending on the age and interest level of your kiddos you could do a more organized game, something like this perhaps?

*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: Not Your Typical Dragon

This cute book is one that came to us through the Imagination Library. It's actually comes in handy as a way to help my kids understand when we see someone in a store or somewhere who is different than us. In the book a little dragon named Crispin has a birthday, making him old enough to breathe fire. Unfortunately, when he opens his mouth, fire does not come out. He tries everything he can to be a "real" dragon, but ends up breathing out funny things like beach balls and whipped cream. In the end he has to learn to love himself for who is is, and find a way to use his differences to bless those around him.

The story begins and ends with the dragon Crispin's birthday parties, so for our play dough time I made my usual play dough recipe, and added in a bit of vanilla to make it smell yummy (although I don't think any of the kids noticed the smell, if they did they didn't say anything). I gave the kids cupcake papers and birthday candles, some beads for "sprinkles", and a few utensils from my kids' play kitchen. We did this during last year's library reading program and it was such a favorite that the kids had been asking to do it again all summer.

I forgot to bring my camera with me this week, so I didn't get any pictures of our fun. This picture came from picklebums.com, and they have several more GREAT play dough ideas and lots of other family friendly content, you should definitely check it out!

For our sensory play the kids enjoyed some shaving cream free play, reminiscent of the whipped cream Crispin breathes out on his first attempt at fire breathing.

For our craft we followed Crispin to fire breathing practice. We did straw painting with yellow and red paint, which also brought some color mixing into the fun. I used tempera paints that I watered down enough to be able to squirt them with a syringe. It was so easy to fill the syringe and squirt a little of each color onto the child's paper. Then all they had to do was use their straw to blow the paint around. Erik's (on the left) is what it looks like if you only blow on the paint with the straw. Sharli's (on the right) ended up being more finger painting than straw painting, but oh well.

I found some beach balls at the dollar store, so we blew up a half a dozen of those for the kids to kick around for their outside gross motor play time. I'm not sure who got more of a work out, the adults who blew up the balls, or the kids who played with them. ;)

*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: Big Red Barn

The last week of June our Summer Reading was focused around a farm theme, with Big Red Barn (by Margaret Wise Brown) as the main book. Some of our other favorite farm books are Silly Little Goose, The Jolly Barnyard, and Dog Wants to Play.

For our play dough time I had intended to make a bunch of green play dough, but ran out of time. Instead we just reused the dough that we'd been using all month and had rainbow colored farms. I added in a bunch of farm animal toys, and those were a huge hit! Also on the list of Things Planned But Not Accomplished were popsicle stick fences. Oh well.

This week's craft was maybe my favorite of the whole summer. We did process art paintings, using CHICKEN FEET! Okay, not real chicken feet. I made them out of orange pipe cleaners. They were awesome, and the reactions from the kids when I told them what we were going to do were PRICELESS!

 

 

Our snack this week was haystack cookies, though with a farm theme you could do any kind of fruit or veggie you wanted.

We skipped the sensory play this week because we got invited to join with the big kids in one of their activities, but Pinterest is full of fun ideas!

For our gross motor play we once again pulled out our awesome Roll and Play game. This time I made cards with different farm animals on them and we did the action for whichever animal matched the color rolled on the die. I made my own using clip art from the internet, but here are some ready made printables you could use.

*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: Corduroy

Our next book for our Summer Reading Program was Corduroy, by Don Freeman. This is a cute little story about a bear who goes looking for a lost button and finds a home.

For our play dough time I added buttons and googly eyes to our regular cookie cutters and misc play dough toys. Some of the most popular "toys" I keep out during play dough time are disposable plastic butter knives and a citrus juicer.

We didn't have a craft this day because we joined the older kids on one of their projects, but something like a button collage comes to mind. Or perhaps sewing buttons onto felt?
For our sensory play this week I dumped 20 lbs of rice in a kiddie pool, and mixed in some Teddy Bear Counters and every button I could scrounge up. Add in lots of scooping/digging/sifting toys and you've got all you need to keep kids busy for a while.

Snacks could be Teddy Grahams or you could make sugar cookies and use a straw to poke "button holes" in the circles of dough before you bake them.
For our gross motor activity I made about 15 giant buttons out of paper plates (using a black sharpie), and hid them outside. The kids loved going on a button hunt just like Corduroy did in 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.

Summer Reading Fun: The Rainbow Fish

For the third week of our library's Summer Reading Program we focused on the book "The Rainbow Fish", by Marcus Pfister. I have loved this story since I was little, reading it at my grandma's house.

We started with brightly colored play dough (the same stuff we used last week, I just kneaded in more food coloring) and I added in some large googly eyes and some fun gem stones I found at the dollar store.

As this was the week leading up to Father's Day, we decided to use our craft time to make some cute fishy Father's Day cards. They turned out really cute!

The snack was easy, I just bought some gold fish crackers for the kids to eat because everyone loves those, right? Did you know you can buy sparkly pink ones?

Our sensory activity was a big hit. I filled a small kiddie pool with water, and added some plastic sea creatures, some glass gems, and lots of scooping/pouring toys. I had planned to pick up some sea shells from the dollar store to toss in too, but they were all sold out. The kids loved this! Even the big kids joined in when they came outside for snack time.

To finish off our fishy fun, we adapted our gross motor activity from last week to fit this week's theme. It worked great! I used some clip art images I found on Google and made Ocean Motion game cards to work with our large color dice. It was really fun to watch the kids trying to move like the different sea creatures.

*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: Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See?

 The second week of our Summer Reading Program at our local library, we focused on the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle. Since the book is about different colored animals, I focused all our activities around color.

 We started out with Color Surprise Play-dough (which I apparently forgot to take pictures of), using the white play dough from last week. Talk about low prep!

For our Art activity, I made some finger paint and let the kids make a finger paint mural on a roll of butcher paper.

 

For snack time I made my Grandmother's brownies. They're always a big hit! One of these days I'll have to share that recipe. 

Our Gross Motor activity was a great game that my mother-in-law sent Sharli for Easter. We love this Roll and Play game and have gotten lots of mileage out of it.  

For our sensory activity I made a bunch of bags of Color in a Bag. These didn't get much attention from the kids that day because the big kids were busy playing balloon/flyswatter volleyball (which was naturally way more fun). Oh well, they had fun and that's all that matters.

 

If you need more ideas for activities for learning colors, here are all of ours. Hope you have fun with your Brown Bear adventures! 

*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.

Exploring Density (Sink or Float)

For our letter D science activity I followed the lead of this post and we did an exploration of Density. This was super easy to set up, and kept both kids entertained for a long time. 

Let's gather our supplies:

A selection of toys and other objects, some that will sink and some that will float

A large container to fill with water

A piece of paper that says "sink" and on that says "float"

 We took this activity outside because I wanted to be able to turn the kids loose to have fun without any worries about messes. We could have also done this in the bathtub and it would have worked great. 

The first thing we did was talk about what it means to sink or float. Then we took all the toys out of our bin while hypothesizing on how each one would behave in the water.

 Erik was thrilled to turn on the hose and fill up our tub. Sharli wasn't too sure what was going on yet, but we were outside so it must mean something good!

 Then we tested each item and placed it on the paper that described what it had done. Sharli just splashed around and had fun.

 After we'd tested all our objects, I just turned the kids loose with the water and sat back and watched. Water free-play is one of our favorite activities. Almost no prep, and SO much fun!

 There is so much to be learned from just exploring with water. Fine motor skills such as scooping and pouring, spatial awareness when deciding if water from one container will fit in another, hand-eye coordination, sensory awareness, social skills like cooperation (when you've got more than one child involved), language development as you discuss things like cold or wet.

 Since this day, Erik asks often if we can play with density again (he actually uses the word density, it really stuck with him). He also loves to test all his bath toys to see if they'll sink or float. This was a hit in a major way!