Crafts
This painting with sound activity was too brilliant to not share. It’s a perfect addition to a 5 senses theme. I can’t claim any credit for this other than choosing a great preschool for my kids. This came directly from my daughter’s teachers and when I saw it Wednesday I gasped because it’s pretty rare when I see something new to me. The only thing I changed was to put it on a vertical surface but that was because I was duplicating the activity only a few hours after my daughter did it at school and wanted to change it a little for her. I love using my doors as makeshift easels.
- Gather your materials. You will need some paintbrushes ( these were sent to me from craftprojectideas.com and worked well! ) , jingle bells, pipe cleaners, paper, and paint. If you are doing this on a window like we did you will want some painter’s tape to keep the paper up without leaving crud on your window.
- Start by threading the bells on the pipe cleaners. I put different numbers of bells on each to create slightly different sounds.
- Wrap around the end of the paint brushes.
- Let your little one explore the brushes and shake before they get covered in paint . She shook them as hard as she could before they were covered in paint.
- Grab some paint and paper.
- Add your artist.
She really liked this and loved hearing the jiggle bells as she painting. We talked about which ones made the prettiest sound and she decided she only liked 3 out of the 4 and refused to use the largest one at all. Using the vertical surface seemed to encourage her to make big strokes which really made the bells jingle. We ended up learning all about color mixing too. 
She wanted to make red so we tried all the combinations to discover how close we could come to it. Don’t shy away from lessons like color mixing that emerge from other ones.
Yes the plan was to talk about sound but there is always room for more or different lessons. - I even managed to step away and start dinner while she painted and made beautiful tinkling sounds.
by Allison McDonald 
We have been doing so many playdough and other sensory activities lately that it was about time to get back to a simple and playful alphabet activity. This alphabet activity is part of our Alphabet For Starters series. This series is all about playing with letters, discovering them without pressure. This alphabet garden is super simple but can be made more challenging with a few simple changes.
- Gather your materials. You will need some contact paper ( rumor has it that the dollar store is carrying it now! ), some green construction paper, multi-color construction paper, scissor and a marker or two.
- Attach the contact paper to the wall sticky side out. She loves to “get stuck” on the wall .
- Next step is making some grass. Fold your green paper, and cut.
- Next cut some stems and flowers. I sis tulips because they are easy to free hand cut.
- Add letters to your flowers. Now here is where you can easily customize this activity. For my daughter I did plain old lowercase letters. You can do upper or a mix or write letters on the stems and have it turn into a match game.
- Set the pieces out and let your kiddo explore.
- My daughter loves flowers and she got right into it.
We talked about the letters, the colors of the flowers and how the stems are different lengths. Don’t pressure young kids to do every letter. My daughter put a handful on while we played the first time and then I left it all set up and a few days letter she returned and added a few more. I will leave it up for a few more days and I am sure she will keep adding a few every day.
The whole point is to play and discover letters. As she adds the letters to the wall she naturally says ” Look this is a it’s your letter Mama!” and we talk about it .
If you are looking for a more traditional letter of the week approach we have many letter of the week ideas here. My son loved cutting and pasting so we made fun letter crafts when he was learning his letters. Find what works best for your child, what they enjoy and don’t forget to have fun!
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I love when I set up an activity with one child in mind and the other ends up completely into it. I love the addition of small items to playdough not just for the extra kick of fine motor development ( playdough all by itself is great for it) but also for the extra kick of creativity. My toddler took to this activity very literally decorating her butterfly but my son experimented with decorating as well as using the materials as tools. I love watching the gears turn in their heads!
- Gather your materials. You will need some playdough ( I love the commercial stuff but have some great recipes if you want to make your own) , animal shaped cookie cutters, googley eyes, beads/bits of straws/buttons and other embellishments.
- Start by choosing a color of playdough and pressing it down flat.
- Choose a cookie cutter and cut out.
- Start decorating.
I love how a simple googly eye transforms the playdough. My daughter was totally into it but it was my son who surprised me. He was far more focused than I expected him to be. 
He quickly discovered that the beads made cool prints and that he could make it look like scales and fur. 
- After she was done her butterfly my daughter found our plastic scissors and joined us at the table to do some playdough cutting.
- My son just kept creating.
He couldn’t wait to show his dad what he made and his new techniques when he got home from work. 
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While we were learning about China for Chinese New Year months ago we read about woodcut printing. I was going to do it with my toddler with foam but my daughter didn’t have the strength or dexterity to press hard enough into the foam to make a permanent designs so we adapted. This project will work for toddlers but older children will still love it. Woodcut Prints are normally carved and older children can do them with foam ( meat trays thoroughly washed were always my favorite!) , ivory soap even erasers work . Did you carve yours in math class with your compass? No? Well if you did it’s the same technique. Our adaptation reverses the technique but for a toddler experience I think it was still fun intro into print making.
- Gather your materials. You will need some card board, good double stick tape, popscicle sticks, paint, paint brushes, some glitter glue ( optional but everything is better with a little sparkle) and white paper.
- Start by adding the double stick tape to the cardboard.
It’s tricky but forgiving, even if the tape is lumpy everything will be OK. I loved to see how hard she was working. You will need at least 4 or 5 pieces in random spots for popsicle sticks to stay on. You can absolutely use glue but make sure it’s all dry before moving on to step 4.
- Next add the sticks. Stick them on and press.
- Add your paint.
- Flip and print onto the paper. Add more paint as needed and keep printing layering it if you want.
- When your child is done printing add some flair if you want. My daughter was adamant about adding glitter.
- Let it all dry and display or use for wrapping paper!
Getting kids to learn after school can be hard. Bribery, delayed rewards even punishment seems futile because we want them to WANT to learn. Making it a game or using some novel tools for learning are my son’s favorite ways to learn after school. These little slimy snakes are favorites around here . I find them all over the playroom so I decided to use them for a quick lesson in long and short vowel sounds. Learning to distinguish these sounds is an important skill for reading and spelling. Have fun with learning after school activities and remember that these aren’t in place of homework they are in addition to. Use them as you see fit . My kindergartner usually does 2-3 a week and they are all pretty quick lasting between 5-15 minutes.
- Gather your materials. You will need some paper, markers, scissors and plastic snakes you can cut. **If you don’t have access to these try gummy worm candies, ribbon, or yarn.
- Start by writing out pages of simple words with long and short vowel sounds . Remember that long vowels say their name (o- open , a-grape, i- bite) . I would work on one letter at a time.
- Invite your word detective to the table and ask him or her to help you cut some of the snakes into short pieces . My son thought I was joking ad was excited to be doing something destructive. Is it a boy thing?
- Use the short pieces to indicate a short vowel sound and a full snake for the long vowel sounds. He was pretty into it. It was sorta silly but that worked in our favor because he loved it. The combination of a concrete object to show a concept that is not concrete can really help some kids grasp these tasks better than just saying words and having them listen and decide.
- You can see how he was sounding the words out as he read them. Teach your child to read the words slowly exaggerating the vowel sound. He liked to stretch the sound the same time he stretched the snake.
Make multiple sheets but don’t worry if they want to work on them one or two at a time. 
- Clearly he was having too much fun to be learning! At least that is what he thought.
If this Learning After School activity isn’t exactly what you need but you want to keep learning with your school age kiddo check out our other posts in this series here.
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