Contact Paper Fun

This is a super fun idea that will keep your kids busy for hours and days!!  

I put up this contact paper "frame" one morning before the kids got up and stuck on some of our foam shapes.  As soon as they walked downstairs and saw it, they smiled, laughed and immediately starting taking the foam shapes on and off.  Both my kiddos (3 years and 17 months) played with this for hours on the first day.  The contact paper is great for sensory play.  The foam shapes easily stuck to the paper, but were also easy to remove and re-stick.

Lots of sorting....

The next morning, I decided to switch out our foam shapes for some foam sea animals we have.   Again....they both were so excited to see the sea creatures and jumped right in and played away for a while.

Sweet Girl would sort them by animal and Little Man would knock them all off for her to do again.

And then next came the letters.....

Sweet Girl really enjoyed these and we practiced spelling our names and some simple words.  I only put up about 10 or so, so not to overwhelm her with choices.

Contact paper is super fun!!  And also mess free...my favorite!

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Aquarium Sensory Bag

I have wanted to make an aquarium sensory bag for Little Man for a while, but never got around to it.  I finally remembered the other day and had all the supplies handy, so I decided to whip up one for him.  Sweet Girl wanted in on the action right away, so this is something fun for both toddlers and preschoolers alike!

Supplies needed:

Zip loc bag (I recommend a freezer type bag because it's stronger)

Random small toys

Baby Oil

Water

Food coloring

Glitter

A strong tape (duct or something like that...)

Start by gathering up all your little toys and add them to the zip loc bag.

Have a helper add some glitter if you want.

Then add some water, some baby oil and a few drops of food coloring for your color.  Carefully zip up your bag and tape all around where the zipper is....and then tape some more!! You definitely don't want this thing to leak.

Then let the sensory fun begin!!  Both of mine had lots of fun.  Little Man loved watching everything "swim" around in his "aquarium" as he played with the bag.  And Sweet Girl had fun playing "I spy" with me!

Other fun things to do:

I Spy game

Matching (put a couple sets of items in the bag and try to find the matches)

Upper and lowercase alphabet hunt (I would only put about 4-5 letters in there for smaller kids)

Alphabet bag (add items that begin with the same letter to work on letter sounds)

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Pasta Fun: 9 Ways to Extend Your Pasta Box

So you have this big ole box of colored pasta and your kiddos barely pay it any attention anymore.  Sound familiar?  Ours goes through stages, but I always try to think of new ways to keep it exciting and fun for my two.  

Here are 9 great ways to extend the use of your pasta!

1. Have a tea party!!

(Pretend to eat it...obviously)

(Drink your "tea")

(Have a pasta "snack")

2. Work on spooning and pouring

This is a great activity to work on control and fine motor abilities.  You can use large or small spoons, scoops, cups, etc.

3. Pasta sort by color

Gather up plates and cups that are corresponding colors and have a sorting party.  We do ours in "race style" where we see who can fill up a plate the fastest.

4. Find the error and correct it

This is always fun for little ones.  Little Man is almost 17 months and he is really into "things being in the right place".  

5. Pasta sorting and matching 

and

6. Pasta counting

For this activity, you can sort the pasta by color and/or shape.  To try to work on some simple counting skills, Sweet Girl and I will try to make sure all the rows have 10 pieces of pasta.

7. Stringing pasta

Make a fun pasta necklace using rigatoni pasta and a shoestring.

8. Pasta patterns

Add a little fun to your pasta stringing by creating patterns with your pasta!

9. Find the pasta game

This is probably Sweet Girl's favorite thing to do with the pasta.  Just grab three cups and hide a piece of pasta underneath one of the cups.  Then move the cups around a few times and have them guess which cup the pasta is under.  (FYI...this works better on either a hard floor or table).

What are some fun ways you play with your pasta?   I'd love to hear!!  

Toddler Art: Tissue Paper Staining

I had a package of these colorful tissue paper circles sitting around so when Sweet Girl asked to paint today, I pulled them out and we did some tissue paper staining. 

The activity is great, because, for the most part, it's relatively mess free.

Supplies needed:

Tissue paper

Watercolor paper (or cardstock if you don't have watercolor paper)

Paint brushes

Water

Start by painting your paper all over with your water.  This helps your tissue paper stick to the paper.

Next, paint all over your tissue paper.

Even super cute little ones can participate in this activity. 

Make sure your tissue paper is complete saturated.

Then peel away your tissue paper to see the color staining.

We did this several times.  The colors get a little deeper if you let the wet tissue paper sit for awhile.  Sweet Girl was usually too excited to let it sit.

Happy staining!

Fun with Playdough

We had some friends over one day last week and everyone wanted to play with playdough. 

I pulled out all our colors of playdough, some dishes, cups, buttons, straws, googly eyes, pom poms and popsicle sticks and everyone had fun playing!!  It's so fun to see the neat things kids make!

Little Man sticking straws into his playdough.

Sweet Girl adding some arms to a "monster".

The finished monster.

One of Sweet Girl's friends making a "button monster" complete with lots of googly eyes!

More straws and cups.

Popsicle stick monster.

Popsicle stick "Grover".

Stacking playdough.

And another button monster.

What about you guys??  How do your kiddos play with playdough???

Baby Activities - Pasta Fun

Little Man is loving our box of dried pasta right now  (my recipe for dying pasta is at the end)!!  He will literally sit and play for about 15-20 minutes at a time (which is an eternity in baby years). 

He loves to scoop the pasta out and dump it in the bowls.  I keep several different types of spoons in our box (measuring spoons and cups and ladles), as well as several different size bowls.

And he loves to play in it with his hands making one big mess.

We also have several containers with pop off lids in our pasta box, which he loves to fill up, close and shake.

It's messy, but he really enjoys it!!

Here's my recipe for dying dried pasta:

Supplies:

Dried pasta of various shapes and sizes

Food coloring

Rubbing alcohol

Ziploc bags

Baking sheets

Wax paper

Paper Towels

Pour all your pasta into one bowl to mix up the shapes and sizes (unless you only want to dye one color per one pasta type).  Portion out your pasta into your Ziploc bags.  Add about 2-4 TBSP rubbing alcohol (depending on how much pasta you have).  Add your food coloring to your color preference.  (Note: for the pasta above, I used A LOT of food coloring to about 3 TBSP rubbing alcohol.  I wanted very vibrant colors).  Let your pasta soak in your rubbing alcohol/food coloring for about an hour (the longer they soak the more vibrant the colors will be).  Once you are satisfied with the color, dump bags onto baking sheets layered with your wax paper and paper towels.  I use the wax paper to keep my baking sheets clean.  Most of the liquid will absorb into your paper towels.  The colors will darken as the dry.  Mix all the colored pasta together, add some bowls and spoons and enjoy!

Baby Fun - Finger Painting

Now that Little Man is almost ONE (can you believe it??) and isn't putting EVERYTHING in his mouth now-a-days, he is able to play along with us during our craft time!

He loves "finger painting" with yogurt and puddings.

He was a little hesitant at first, but quickly got the hang of it and enjoyed playing around!

(Look at those chubby little fingers!)

I used construction paper and yogurt here, so the paper easily soaked up the water from the yogurt and the paper was super easy to rip.  I'm pretty sure this was his favorite part.

Then the paper had to go because he was ready to eat it, so it was he ended up just using his highchair tray.

It's obviously a little messy, but it's great for introducing textures and temperatures to little ones.

Baby Fun - Stars

This turned out to be a fun little activity for my guy!!  He is soooo busy and into everything so I wanted to try to find something for him to do that would keep him engaged and interested for more than one second!!

I stuck sticky note stars all over our kitchen door and let him go to town pulling them down!!  He loves to stand up and grab stuff so I thought this would be a fun activity for him.

Little Man pulled every.single.one. of those stars down.  Then I stuck them back up....again....and again...and again.  Then I did it for Sweet Girl too.  She just couldn't stand to miss out on all the fun!!