Water Beads: Olympic Style

In keeping with the Olympic theme, we pulled out our water beads and made our own "Olympic rings".

Water beads are just cool.  Plain and simple.

If you've never played around with them, you should totally give them a try.  You can find them in any craft store in the floral section.  They come in little tiny bags and start out as little tiny beads.  As they absorb water, they expand, and make super fun and bouncy play toys. 

Once our water beads had absorbed all of the water, we put them into an empty egg carton to play with.  We tried to put the beads side by side to make the Olympic rings, but they just kept rolling away.  Lots of giggles though!!

Anna loves to run her fingers through them, sort them and just play around with them.

Drew....well...he loves to throw them and watch them bounce.  And he gets such a kick out of them that I just don't have the heart to take them away.  He's just too cute.

Rainbow Rice Fun

Like most toddlers and preschoolers, my kids love playing with anything that can be poured, scooped or shoveled (beans, rice, pasta).  So the other day, I decided to make a super large batch of rainbow rice and rainbow pasta.

I added some shovels, rakes, watering cans, bowls and little cups and let them have some fun.

I used the neon food coloring drops and the colors turned out so beautiful and so vibrant!

I also added some rainbow pasta too, but I think they really just loved playing with the rice.

Lots of scooping, pouring and shoveling for sure!!

Invitations to Play - Week Wrap Up

Nothing too fabulous about our invitations to play this week, but the kids sure enjoyed them!  We spent a lot of time outside early in the week since it was so nice and then some time at the pool once it got too hot to do anything outdoors other than swim!

Here's how we spent some "down time".  

I must say that beans and rice are a huge hit in our house.  Basically anything that can be poured, dumped or pushed around is super fun for my one and three year old.  

If you've never tried playing with dried beans, pasta or rice, I highly recommend giving it a try!  Your kids will thank you!  Some tips, though, for your first timers...

1. Start with a larger dried bean or colored pasta (they are much easier to pick up than rice)

2. Place a large blanket, shower curtain liner or something under your container to help with clean up

3. Set some ground rules with your kids.  Mine know that the beans stay either in the container or on the blanket.  And that there is absolutely no throwing, slinging, etc.  We've had a couple of warnings, but no real issues in this department.

4. Be sure to monitor your kids while playing to make sure they don't "taste" any.

5. Offer lots of cups, bowls, spoons, shovels, trucks, etc.

6. Get in on the fun too!  It really is quite relaxing to run your fingers through beans and rice!

To find out more about the idea behind Invitations to Play, visit The Imagination Tree.

Want to see more of our Invitations to Play?

Click here to see them all!

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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Our Pretend Farm - Sensory Bin and Additional Activities

Sweet Girl is having so much fun playing with our tot trays this month and actually created this sensory bin, pretend farm and corresponding activities by herself!  She just told me what to cut, where to put it, etc...

She is having lots of fun...making up stories about babies and mommies, birthday parties....all that good imaginary play!  And it's been a great learning experience.

Here's what is on our pretend farm and sensory bin:

Popcorn kernels

Barn (from our string a farm set)

Mini farm animals

Various pieces of felt cut up to be a pond, a mud puddle, grass, vegetables.

Several pieces of string (as hay for the horses)

Mini basket

The ducks in the pond.

The mommy pig and the piglets playing in the mud.

Planting a vegetable garden

Here I just grabbed an ice cube tray and cut up some pieces of felt to be our "vegetables".

She has literally spent hours playing with our farm set!!

St. Patrick's Day Fun

Looking for something to do for St. Patrick's Day?  Here are some things we did last year that were super fun!

Rainbow cupcakes

Click on the link to see other fun party ideas!

St. Patrick's Day Crafts

St. Patrick's Day Tot Trays

St. Patrick's Day Sensory Bin



Alphabet Learning Fun

This is a fun activity I have planned for this week.  It's another one of my fabulous finds on Pinterest (addicted!!).  Sweet Girl loves playing with these alphabet puzzles in our busy boxes so I know she will enjoy this too.

I mixed up all of the alphabet letters in the alphabet pasta from our sensory bins.

I added numbers 1-4 because....well...because I'm anal like that!!  I just couldn't leave it "unfinished" looking!!

ABC Fun - Letter L

We're up to letter L now!!  We are going to finish up with letters I,J,K,L review next week and then we are planning on taking a little "tot school" break during the summer!!  The pool is calling our names!!  I still have lots of fun stuff planned for us though...just not as much planning and organizing on my part!  (Momma needs a summer break too!!)

Alphabet Sensory Bin

Here's our letter L sensory bin for this week!! 

Ladybug magnet page

This is from COAH.  Sweet Girl always enjoys using the magnets.  I just tape the laminated sheet to an old cookie sheet and set the magnets out with it!  This is usually completed several times during each week.

Letter L picture matching

We did something similar to this during our letter J week and Sweet Girl really enjoyed it!  She completed the letter J picture matching independently so I will just leave this one out for her to complete on her own.  I love finding things that she can accomplish all my herself.

(Click here if you want to download your own copy)

Ladybug counting cards

And to finish up our letter L week, I plan on pulling out our ladybug counting cards!  Sweet Girl loves these and we haven't played with them in a while! 

(Click here if you want to download your own copy)

ABC Fun - Letter K

We had a lot of fun learning letter J last week!  Sweet Girl's favorite part was "jumping over the J's" and now we do that almost every time we're outside playing with chalk!!

I've planned lots of fun things for letter K this week! 

Alphabet Sensory Bin

First up is our letter K sensory bin.  I couldn't find too many letter K objects other than a key and a koala so I printed off some objects/things that begin with the letter K and added them to our bin.  We always use our bin first so we can talk about the letter and it's sound!

Making letter K/k with play-doh

This is from Homeschool Creations.

Counting keys

I drew several large keys and gathered up all our extra keys for this simple counting activity.

Kite pattern

And since our week is all about the beach, I thought this kite pattern would fit perfectly!!  This is from letter K over at COAH!

Kicking "K"

I love to find ways to make learning interactive and fun!  Since jumping over "J" was so much fun last week, I decided to do "kicking the K" this week.  The big inflatable balls are a huge hit at our house so I know Sweet Girl will love this one!