5 senses
Happy St. Patrick’s Day. You can’t have St. Patrick’s Day without eating something green and we know how easy that can be with little kids. One way to encourage healthy eating is to play with food, make up recipes and taste test! So we made these super easy green popscicles that are all natural , no food coloring and we even had fun playing test kitchen trying a few times to make the color green.
Attempt #1
Ingredients: We opened the fridge and looked for blue and yellow ingredients. We settled on blueberries and lemonade. You and I both know that it won’t blend to green but as long as the waste isn’t too much let your kids experiment. As soon as my son poured in the lemonade he could see that this was not the mix we needed. It was super tasty though and I blended it and drank it!
Attempt #2
Ingredients : We went back to the fridge and grabbed the spinach. I suggested the yogurt ( vanilla or lemon would make it yummier) and we tried again.
Blended.
Strained the big spinach out.
Froze it
Taste test – he loved it!
It tasted like watery lemon to me, if you are going for tasty – add a ripe banana and like mentioned above use vanilla or lemon yogurt. These green treats we made a few years ago were great.
The point of this activity was the process of trial and error, color mixing and having fun with healthy food!
My daughter is learning her shapes and colors. She is doing fabulous, but I remember my son having trouble with certain shapes simply because we didn’t talk about them as much. Let’s face it diamonds, ovals, and octagons (other than stop signs) don’t really come up that often. So I came up with this sensory box as a fun way to practice these shapes.
You will need scissors, craft foam, cardboard, aluminum foil, and black beans.
I drew some shapes onto the craft foam and cardboard. Rectangles on green (for emeralds), octagons on red (for rubies), ovals on blue (for sapphires), and diamonds on the cardboard.
Cut the shapes out and wrap the diamond shapes with small pieces of foil.
Pour the black beans and shapes in the bowl. I chose black beans because I thought it would look more like coal. It really makes the colors stand out, too.
To make it a tad more authentic for mining, you can cut strips of construction paper and tape them together to fit around your child’s head. Then cut a 1 inch section off of a toilet paper roll and tape it to the headband. I thought we had yellow tissue paper (very cute for the headlamp, but we didn’t). He’s still cute, I think.
You can give your child tongs, sifter, strainer, colander, or measuring cups. Try anything to make it feel more like mining. It’s all about having fun.
Every time my daughter found a shape I would say “Wow, you found a blue oval. Great job!” or the corresponding shape and color. We had a blast mining. My son had to play along after he saw how much fun my daughter was having.
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Kim is a contributing writer for No Time For Flash Cards, a mom to a toddler, a preschooler, and a foster parent, too. She juggles her day by trying out fun activities and crafts with the kids. After all, she is just a big kid herself. See what she has been up to over at Mom Tried It.
I love including my son in making something fun and useful for his sister. This discovery bottle is a fun way of using a holiday theme and gives your infant something fun to play with too. Remember with infants all activities and projects are intended to be used only when directly supervised. Also only you know what is safe for your child, if they aren’t ready for an activity bookmark it and try it when they are.
- Gather your materials. You will need some plastic bottles with lids a hot glue gun, a shamrock bead necklace, scissors and some rainbow ribbon. I also use tape on the bottles that run the risk of making huge messes if they open. For the gel and sparkle bottle you will also need a funnel, some gold sparkles and green shower gel or shampoo( got mine for a buck at the dollar store). For the rainbow shaker bottle some pom poms in rainbow colors.
- Start by drinking the water.
- Next take off the label.
- Next cut the shamrock necklace into the bottle. This is awesome for fine motor development and takes a lot of patience. I was amazed my son was not only able to do this without help but how into it he was. They grow up so fast!
- Next add the sparkles.
- Next add the gel.
- I used hot glue to glue the top on. Then more on the outside to seal it, and wrapped it in tape. Be careful some bottles are so thin that they will melt with hot glue on contact. If you are worried consider using crazy glue. Whether you are using hot or crazy glue should be done by adults only.
- Cut a small piece of rainbow ribbon and glue it on.
- Let everything dry and cool completely .
- For the rainbow shaker Cut the necklace in.
Pop in the pom poms.
Glue the top and ribbon on as above.
- Play!
For the photos I had her in the crib so the bottle wouldn’t roll too far when I was trying to take a photo. I am not suggesting giving it to your infant for independent play, these discovery bottles are for closely supervised play only.
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When I saw this post by Jenae over at I Can Teach My Child ( who will be a guest poster tomorrow so don’t miss it! ) my head was running with ideas on how to make something similar. I would be lying if I told you it was easy, maybe it would have been with no kids but I had an infant in my arms while taking every picture and a 4 year old helper wanting to “help”. However the results were pretty cool and it’s a great book to take to church or somewhere else that talking in that not so quiet but really trying to voice. It’s been tested out by a handful of friends already and was quite the hit at a playdate last week. So the effort was worth it. Here is how we made it.
- Gather your materials. This is a long list so take notes! I gathered a bunch of categories of my son’s toys. You can use anything for the pictures but I went with themes because it was easy to just grab bins from his room and the family room. You will also need some back drops. I chose plain jane construction paper, you will need some foam letters and a camera. A good camera would be better but my point and shoot was ok. Once the pictures are developed ( or printed out) you will need some self laminating pages, a hole punch, and some binder rings.
- Start by using the foam letters to write Can You Find and take a picture. This will be the cover page.
- Next do the first lay out. Lay the toys you are looking for on the page.
I laid out the whole search page first then picked a few out to lay on the can you find page.
Take a picture. - Replace the objects you used and take a picture of the full lay out.
- Repeat this is a bunch of different toys. I always used the same black paper with ” Can You Find ” in foam letters for the search page. It made the process quicker.
- I took this picture for the back cover.
- Have the pictures developed or print them out on your printer.
- Time to laminate.
Now in my dream house I have a craft room with awesome natural light and a laminator. But in reality I have my kitchen and these cool laminator envelopes that are sorta tricky but they laminate so clearly without a machine that they are worth it. I had a few bubbles but nothing too bad. Remember to laminate in order so 2 pictures front and back to each page. - Punch holes.
- Pop the rings through and you are done! I like using the rings because I have plenty of room to add more pages.
- Time to find things!
More Eye-Spy Crafts
Sensory tubs are great for all sorts of learning and you don’t need fancy things to get your kids interested … but it’s so fun to give them a theme! This one is a great one for preschoolers who want to do a little more than scoop and pour. It’s easy enough to simplify using plain rice or beans , only the larger letters and adding cups to fill and spill! Do not feel like you have to be directing your kids while they play with sensory tubs, some kids need it but most do not, just let them play. If they are older and looking for a game to play with it follow our instructions for the letter hunt .
- Gather your materials. For this sensory tub we used a handful of magnetic letters, some huge floor puzzle letters,small foam letters, small letter beads, plain white beans a plastic dish tub , alphabet pasta. If you want to do the letter hunt game, you will also need an ice cube tray and some tongs.
- Start by putting the beans in the tub .
- Next the pasta.
- Now add the letter beads – my son was playing outside and came in to help.
- Next the foam, magnets and jumbo puzzle pieces.
- If you are doing a letter hunt place some letters in your ice tray for your child to find.
- Go for it!
- Found it!
- This was such a big hit that he pulled it back out later that evening.
More Fun with Letters
