Tag Archives: kid activity

Indoor Road Rally

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It’s official, I’m a Fall girl.  The glorious weather has finally arrived!  And now, of course, it’s raining.  And I don’t mean sprinkle, I mean someone is throwing buckets of water from the sky.  Well we can’t let being stuck inside prevent us from having fun or from exercising!  (Gotta get the crazies out somehow, right?)  We decided to have our very own indoor road rally this afternoon and while the layout of the house (we rent) drives me bananas it turns out it’s perfect for racing.  One perfect loop around the chimney takes you from the hall, into the family room, through the kitchen, and back.  So we cut some ribbon and taped it between one entry way for the starting line and we took another ribbon for the finish line on the other side, the kids picked their vehicles (“J” chose his beloved plane and “M” chose the CAT truck), started their engines, and they’re off!

[Disclaimer: You are about to get a glimpse at the chaos that is my house....I like to go with the theory that the messier the house the more fun we are having.]

The plane is admittedly harder to maneuver, “J” is smaller and a little (although not much) slower, and “M” has a definite competitive streak…..so, we had a clear winner.  Not that it mattered the kids were just having a blast going round and round.

In fact I put back up the finishing line just so that “J” could know the glory of crashing through it and….

He wanted none of it.  If you don’t happen to have a kid size plane and/or giant CAT truck don’t despair, the kids actually ditched the vehicles after awhile and took it by foot.  Going so fast you could hardly see them!
 The glory of victory!

And last but not least once the kids were tuckered out but didn’t want to stop racing, we let the toys do the work for us (just in time for the rain to stop!).

What kind of activities do you do inside when you need to do something active?  I’d love to hear from you!

Salty Halloween Fun!

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I’ve begun to notice (and secretly love) that our “craft” closet is growing exponentially to include all sorts of food pantry items, like baking soda and vinegar for our science experiments, flour for cloud dough,  I should just go ahead and buy food dye in bulk considering how much we use it, and salt (to name a few).  You can do so many fun things with salt (who knew?), including making your own playdough, and today we used it for two Halloween themed crafts.

First, I found adorable salt dough ghosts on Familyfun and knew instantly that we had to try to make them.  ”M” loved the entire process, especially being in charge of pushing the buttons on the microwave (I figured this was a little number recognition bonus).  I loved watching her think of all the various expressions that her little ghosts would have (I think she was equally excited by the fact that I gave her an adult marker).

To make the salt dough ghosts mix:

  • 1 cup flour
  • 1 cup salt
  • 1/2 cup water
Then form in to little ghosts and microwave a few at a time at 20-30 second intervals for ~ 2 minutes total.  Once cooled dry on faces with black fine point Sharpie (although any marker will do).

Also at Familyfun (same link as the salt ghosts) was this frightfully cute brown bag tree.  To make the tree start with a rectangle of brown paper.  You can either cut a large paper grocery bag into one long strip or we happened to have some wrapping paper from when we moved.  Then I used a plastic children’s glass to initially mold the trunk by placing it in the middle of the flattened brown paper and gathering it up and giving it a few twists around the cup.  Once the bag trunk was sort of shaped I took the glass out and put in flower arrangement stones to weigh down the tree.  Then you just twist back up the trunk and keep going.  After a few twists cut a few long strips into the bag for the branches and start twisting them individually.  After a few more twists make more cuts for the smaller branches or twigs and twist again.  Keep going until you run out of bag and have the perfect spooky twisty tree!

Our second salty craft was a whole new approach to painting.  We brushed watercolors on salt…stuck on glue.  First make shapes with glue on paper, I would highly recommend placing the paper in a baking pan, now sprinkle the glue liberally with salt. If done in a pan or large container you can gently shake off the excess salt and use it for the next painting without a huge mess (in theory).  Then dip a paint brush (or small dropper) in water color paint, touch the salt, and watch the color spread along your picture!

We made pumpkins…

And spider webs!

What fun spooky crafts have you been making recently?  Let me know, I love to hear from you!

Hands, Fingers, and Toes! Footprint Ghosts, Handprint Bats, and Fingerprint Spiders: The Halloween Crafts Have Begun!

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I definitely have a love of hand and footprint art.  I guess it’s because the kids grow so quickly.  Each and every one of their little crafts with their prints on it is an instant keepsake to me.  Not to mention the kids LOVE painting themselves so why not go with it?  The Halloween crafts have begun and the decorations are starting to go up (it’s ok because it’s October, granted it’s October 3rd, but October nonetheless)!  Today I wanted to share our collection of hand, finger, and foot print Halloween art.

Footprint ghosts are the friendliest ghosts you’ll ever run in to!  Just step in to white paint and then on to black paper and add googly eyes!

We actually explored two different ways to make handprint bats.  The first was for me to cut out a bat shape and then put handprints in it…..

The second is to make a bat shape with your hands.

Last are our fingerprint spiders.  Again we went with two different approaches on this one.  The first was to simply make some fingerprints with black paint, wait for them to dry, and then add legs, a spider string, and who could resist the googly eyes?

The second, largely spurred on by the use of glitter glue in the first attempt was to make a web first with glitter glue and then add spiders.

And, well, we’ve already gotten our hands dirty.  Might as well make a really, really big spider!

Aren’t they great?  Have I missed any other Halloween print ideas?  Be sure to let me know (I love comments!).

Kid science: Making a Water Xylophone to Learn About Sound

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Our latest venture in to preschool science is to learn about sound (for previous kid science posts type “science” in the search box to the right).

Fill several glasses (glass is best but hard plastic will work) with different levels of water (including an empty glass) then carefully tap the side of the glass using a spoon, or in our case, a plastic mallet to hear different sounds. (Want to get fancy?  Color the water.)

What’s happening?  The length of the air column in each bottle differs based on how much water is added.  The more water, the shorter the air column which changes the frequency of the sound.

Stop there?  Never!  You now have a xylophone but what you really need is a drum (says my child holding the second plastic mallet) so flip over that tupperware container and pound away.  Hum a tune and begin to march because you now have the makings over your very own (albeit small) band!

Bonus Kid Science Experiment: Using the glass filled about 2/3 with water you can also do a lesson on light reflection.  Go into a dark room and place a small mirror (we happened to have one from a mini tool kit) inside the water tilted slightly upwards, then shine a light on the mirror and look to the ceiling for a rainbow.

I’d love to have a picture of this but I haven’t managed taking pictures in the dark yet.  But here’s how it works: Light slows down and seems to bend when it hits water which is called refraction.  Sunlight is made up of several colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple.  Refraction causes the colors to separate out so that you can see them as the colored bands of a rainbow.

Fall Leaf Tree

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The tree in our front yard is breathtaking in the Fall.  Seriously.  People actually take the long way home just to stop by and see it and on more than one occasion I’ve walked outside and seen people with cameras in our front yard (weird).  Granted our tree is one of the last to lose its leaves but the tree in front of “M’s” school is already starting to shed its leaves and they are beautiful.  Since it always takes a few minutes for “M” to unwind after school and get in the car and “J” is so excited to see “M” again he normally has to run in a few circles before I can get him in the car too I had everyone collect leaves Friday after school and today we made our own Fall tree with the leaves.

I cut out the trunk using brown construction paper and placed it on a large square of contact paper which I had placed (sticky side up) on the table.  The kids then added all of our leaf collection and we sealed our tree with another piece of contact paper.  Believe it or not “M” then cut all around the tree to trim off the excess contact paper.  My 4 year old is an expert cutter!  I love our tree and it serves double duty.  During the day it’s a window decoration and during meals “M” uses it as her placemat.  I didn’t preserve the leaves in any way so I don’t think it will last long but for now it’s a nice Fall decoration.  If we were to make it again I would probably try to dry out the leaves and/or I’ve heard rumor that you can preserve leaves with Mod Podge…hmmm….

Creative Ways to Play With Playdough

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When “J” was born he bought “M” a present (ok we might have helped).  When we arrived home from the hospital a giant bin of playdough was waiting for “M” with all sorts of colors and molds and things to play with.  And we love it.  ”M” happily brings up how thoughtful it was of baby “J” and we’ve gotten a lot of good use out of it.  Granted that was before I learned the gloriousness of making your own playdough (more on that in another post).  For a long time our favorite playdough activity was to pretend we were in a restaurant and we’d make all sorts of food with it (peas and spaghetti were my specialty) but I kind of steered away from that around the time that “J” actually started wanting to eat the playdough.  Something about making pretend food and giving it to a kid that eats everything and then telling him that he can’t eat it seemed wrong.  That being said my favorite type of games to see the kids play are the ones that they come up with themselves when they show true imagination and thought.  Like today, we had just made some playdough and I turned around to find this:

Now most people might not be thrilled with the concept of playdoh on their walls but this was a brick chimney so I figured we were safe.  And besides, we rent.  There isn’t a single photographable surface in the house due to all the holes and scrapes how could a little playdoh hurt?  And yes, that is my son in the Easter bonnet.  Granted he was yelling YEEHAW at the time so it’s clearly also a cowboy hat….mental note: get some boy dress up clothes.

So we started out with just playdoh on a wall then decided to add various items from the craft closet to end up with this wall art:

And better yet this outstanding likeness of myself:

Which I liked so much I am keeping it up….

Getting in to the Halloween spirit we then decided to make spooky spiders.  Marbles for eyes, and pipe cleaners for legs.

Which eventually became a spider monster courtesy of “M”.  I love his nose.

How do you play with Playdough?  Any fun ideas to share?

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Apple Crafts and Activities to Celebrate Johnny Appleseed’s Birthday

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In order to celebrate Johnny Appleseed’s Birthday (Happy Birthdaaaayy to youuuu!) I thought I would share some of our many apple themed crafts and our visit to the apple orchard.  Grab an apple and enjoy!

You can use apple halves to stamp prints.  Simply cut an apple in half, dip it in paint, and transfer to paper!

Make a sun catcher apple!  Cut up red tissue paper and put on to contact paper to make a collage/sun catcher.  I had the kids put tons of little red pieces of tissue paper (which “M” helped to cut) on to squares of contact paper and then I covered the collage with another piece of contact paper.

I then cut the contact paper into a giant apple shape and we added a construction paper stem.  The finished result:

(oh and the glitter you might notice in the collage is actually because the tissue paper is from Christmas, and also has Santa on it….hehe)

The last craft is to make paper apples.  This was done by cutting a piece of construction paper in to strips.  I drew lines in pencil on the paper about one inch thick and had “M” cut them out.  We then took a pipe cleaner, made a knot on one end, and we pushed the pipe cleaner through each strip of paper near one end.  If your kids are having trouble pushing through the paper you could use a hole punch to make the holes before stringing.  You’ll want to make holes at both ends of the strip.

Then you want to loop the paper back up and push the other end of each strip on to the pipe cleaner.  I always find myself going through counting with the kids with activities like this (with each strip of paper we count: 1, 2, 3, etc. and then when looping back 10, 9, 8, etc.).  I also find myself constantly going over letters and spelling signs out as a matter of habit at this point (and more often than not when I am humming a tune it’s a kids song *sigh*).

Once all of the strips are on the pipe cleaner you can make the apple as short and squat or tall and lean as you like.  Then twist the top of the pipe cleaner to make a stem.  As you can see we not only have red, green, and yellow apples but we decided to go ahead and make a pumpkin too!

Saving the best for last, the most fun way to celebrate Johnny Appleseed’s birthday is by going to an apple orchard!  We went this past weekend and it was glorious.  Beautiful weather and a wonderful and fun day with the family.  This is the good life.

Can you spot my child?

“J” was really of the philosophy that we try each and every apple picked.  We have little “taste” marks on just about every apple….

 

Johnny Appleseed became a legend not only by introducing apple trees to many states in North America but due to his kind and generous ways.  So in addition to enjoying the wonder of apples today try to be kind and generous to others, as well as yourself.

Bath Time Fall Leaves!

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To my new readers: Welcome!  I’m so glad you’re here.  Be sure to follow me on Facebook as well so that you can catch all of my latest posts.

I’m always on the look out for fun bath time ideas for those days when the kids are reluctant to get in the tub (then again it’s always almost impossible to get them out!)

Growing a Jeweled Rose used foam shapes to make pumpkins in the bath and I just couldn’t believe how easy and fun this idea was!  I just so happen to have bought foam in bulk during one of my trips to the craft store and we’ve been using it for art activities but this is borderline brilliance.

Simply cut out shapes and then wet them and they will stay on bathroom tile!

This was a hit in the tub and I can see that we’ll be doing it for many of occasions (I see birthday parties in the tub, Thanksgiving projects in the tub, and Christmas covered in suds in my future).  Be sure to come back for more bath tub fun!

*Bonus points to the person that can spot the red bird in the tree!

Kid Science: Learning about Density by Making a Liquid Rainbow!

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What do you think of when you see a rainbow in a glass?  My daughter thought “pretty”, I thought about density and concentration, and my husband thought college (granted we were doing the project in a shot glass).  At least I was with the lesson plan!  By using only sugar, water, and food dye you can do an easy and neat lesson on concentration with your kids (yes, neat).

You’ll need 5 glasses, or 4 glasses and a shot glass (hehe).  In the first glass add 1 Tbl of sugar, 2 Tbl of sugar in the second, 3 in the third, and 4 in the 4th.  Keep them in order!  Now add 3 Tbl of water to each of the four glasses that have sugar in them.  Mix.  Note: not all the sugar will go in to solution.  Now add a few drops of red food coloring to the first glass, yellow in the second, green in the third, and blue in the fourth.  Mix again.  At this point the first two glasses are probably completely in solution with no visible sugar, the remaining two will continue to have sugar.

Using a syringe (Come on, you mean you don’t have loads of them tucked away from all the various illnesses your child has needed antibiotics for?  Just me?  Hmpf.) or spoon to carefully layer the water.  Start with blue, then green, then yellow, and finally red.  If using a shot glass (since “M” was doing the layering I thought the less liquid we had to gently add the better) you only need a few tsp of liquid for each color. Otherwise you want to fill the cup about 1/4 of the way with each color which is why we used the shot glass, less to layer.  If you layer carefully enough the colors should remain separated due to the different sugar concentrations of each color.  (Note: the colors, several hours later, will mix eventually)

How does it work?  By using different amounts of sugar in each glass the concentration was different for each color.  The densest solution sits and the bottom and the least dense (least amount of sugar) sits on top.  Density is the amount of matter contained in each unit of volume.

***Another interesting density experiment for you to try: cold water is more dense than warm.  Dive deeper in to water and how does it feel?

Missing the Beach? Make Your Own Ocean

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Oil and water don’t mix?  Perfect!  Use this to your advantage and make your own beach.

We made this small scale so that the little man could play with it easily and I wanted it to be a plastic sealed container and this is the one we had.  To make, fill the container about 3/4ths full of water and add food coloring and fine glitter (large glitter will fall out of solution very quickly) then fill almost to the top with oil.  Our bottle of baby oil has mysteriously disappeared (and by that I mean I put it away really, really well) so we used vegetable oil.  We also added a little plastic pencil topper dolphin!  ”J” loved shaking his ocean and watching the craziness of the waves.

Here’s the dolphin in less turbulent seas….

You can practically smell the salt water, right? ;)