Wrapping Presents!

Yay! It is the most wonderful time of the year! 🙂 Thank you for stopping by! What kid doesn’t want to waste all of your wrapping paper and wrap presents for his/herself?

So today I wanted to share a super easy activity that is great for fine motor skills and is also pretty fun (and one that doesn’t waste all of your tape).

All you need is:

• Aluminum foil
• Objects to wrap such as blocks or toys
• Bows (optional)

Give your child the materials and let them start wrapping! I’m sure it will be a hit. 🙂

Happy wrapping!

Amber

Magic Pumpkin Experiment

Hello everyone!

I hope you are having a lovely day. Today I decided to try a fun experiment that I got the idea from over at http://www.playdoughtoplato.com/magic-pumpkin-science/.

What you need:

• Reeses pieces (or skittles will work too)
• Warm water
• A hard surface that water won’t run off of

First what you are going to do is arrange your Reeses pieces or skittles on your hard surface. This can be in the shape of a pumpkin as I did or any other shape or completely random!

Next, pour in a little bit of hot water so that it partially or completely covers the candy.

Finally, you can sit back and watch the magic as the pumpkin forms!

So how does this happen? You can explain to the child or group of children you are doing this activity with that because there is food coloring and sugar on the coating of the Reese’s pieces, that when the water comes into contact with the candy, the sugar dissolves into the water and the food coloring fills the plate where the water is. A similar example is when you put one of these candies in your mouth and just let it sit there for awhile without swallowing it. The saliva and moisture in your mouth dissolve the sugar and the food coloring will most likely stain your tongue!

Happy reading! I hope you enjoyed this science activity idea I found! If you liked it, feel free to leave a comment and share how it went for you.

Amber

Pumpkin Hammering

So maybe not the best quality of photos (I didn’t have my nice camera with me) but pumpkin hammering is a super fun fall festive activity that also helps strengthen those fine motor skills!

What you need:

• 1-2 pumpkins depending on how many are doing the hammering
• Hammers for each child participating (many older preschoolers are capable of handling a real hammer but kid sized ones I would say generally work best)
• Golf tees

Set the pumpkins up and let your child start hammering away! So fun!

If you tried this activity at home leave me a comment, I would love to know how it worked for you!

Amber

DIY Colorful Fuzzy Shoes

I made these shoes with Independence Day in mind, but these shoes will work with whatever colors and fabrics you choose to make them with. Thanks for taking some time to visit my crafty blog, I hope you enjoy this activity!

What you need:

• Pair of flip flops
• Different colors of fabric (I have used fleece in the past which works but tends to make your feet pretty warm! This time I used some flannel I found and re-purposed an old t-shirt.)
• Scissors

Next, depending on the age of your child doing this craft, have them or you assist in them cutting out long strips of the fabric. This will be kind of trial and error depending on what fabric you use and how long you want them to look on the shoes, but here is an image of about how long I cut them out to be. The t-shirt material was stretchy, so I made those pieces a little bit shorter then the flannel.

Then comes the fun, but time consuming part! Depending on the age of your child again, assistance may be needed. This is a great project for developing those  fine motor skills as well as pattern recognition! Have your child tie knots around the plastic piece of the flip flop. I have usually done double knots, but who knows you might be fine just tying them in one knot! Then decide on your pattern and continue making the knots until you are finished!

Being the Fourth of July is coming up this week, I used the colors red, white, and blue to make these for my sister. They might feel a little tight the first couple times you wear them after making them, but as you break them in, they will stretch out. I hope you enjoy making some of these fuzzy shoes!

If you tried this activity, I would love to hear about how it went!

Amber

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Make Your Own Homemade Lava Lamp

I don’t know if I was the only one who so badly wanted a lava lamp as a kid but never got one, but today I am going to show you how to make your very own homemade one using just a couple of household materials. This is something your kids will definitely have a blast making!

What you need:

• A plastic container with a tight lid
• Water
• Food Coloring
• Vegetable Oil (I used canola oil)
• Alka Seltzer Tablets (Antacid and Pain Relief tablets)

First, you are going to take your water bottle and fill it one fourth of the way full with water. Next add in a few drops of food coloring, the coloring of your choice. Then fill the rest of the bottle full with vegetable oil (canola oil). I left a little bit of room at the top of the water bottle. It works whichever way you decide to do it.

Now comes the fun step! Hopefully you’ve been letting your child pour in the ingredients so far, if not, you are definitely going to want to let them do this step! Take your Alka Seltzer tablets or Antacid pain reliever tablets and break them into four pieces. Let your child drop the tablets in and screw on the cap (don’t worry it won’t explode!) The result should be something as seen below. When your lava lamp begins to settle again, drop in another piece of the tablet.

I hope you liked this fun activity!  As always, if you tried it, I would love to hear about how it went!

Amber

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Water Absorption Science Activity

This is a fun activity that not only teaches the science concept of water absorption but also lets children use their fine motor skills in an engaging way!

What you will need:

• A tray or plate
• Eye dropper or syringe
• Water
• Blue Food Coloring
• Cotton Balls (I used makeup wipes)

First, add the food coloring to the water. Then let your child use the eye dropper or syringe to put a few droplets on whatever surface you are using. I used a plate as mine.

Allow your child to use the cotton balls (make up wipes) to absorb the moisture. They will probably want to go back and forth dropping the moisture and then absorbing it with the cotton balls. Try having your child use the same cotton ball to absorb so much of the liquid that he/she can, and then try to squeeze it out. Explain that this is how it works when it rains. When it rains, the clouds then absorb or suck up all of the rain and moisture from the ground and air and when they have collected so much of it that they can’t hold anymore, that is when it rains.

Thanks for following along! As always, I would love to hear how this activity went for you if you tried it!

Amber

30 Craft Materials To Always Have In Your Home

If you don’t have a list, you probably aren’t going to remember what you have and what you need. Chances are if you don’t know what you have or what you need, you are going to come looking for a list like this to give you the basic craft mate

rials you need in your home for your child to explore with.

1. Markers
2. Crayons
3. Plain White Paper
4. Construction paper
5. Printer paper (okay that’s enough paper!)
6. Glue/ Glue sticks
7. Stencils
8. Child sized scissors
9. String
10. Beads
11. Watercolors
12. Paintbrushes
13. Stickers
14. Finger Paint
15. Straws
16. Feathers
17. Pipe Cleaners
18. Glitter
19. Foam pieces
20. Pom-Poms
21. Popsicle Sticks
22. Do-A-Dot markers
23. Stamps/ink
24. Tissue Paper
25. Paper Plates
26. Cotton Balls
27. Googly Eyes
28. TAPE!!! (You can never have too much tape!)
29. Colored Pencils
30. Play dough/Cookie cutters

 

Well, there you have it. My list of 30 good craft materials to always have on hand in your home to do with your child. In addition to this list, there are so many good crafting materials outdoors you can find to use to incorporate into a craft such as sticks, rocks, leaves, flowers, dirt, water, feathers, etc. There are also many craft materials you can get from items in your home being recycled as well that would be good to hang on too! This includes toilet paper/paper towel rolls, cardboard, milk and egg cartons, bubble wrap, packing peanuts, magazines, newspapers, sponges, etc. I hope you’ve found this list useful and one that will prove helpful as a list you can print off and bring to your local crafting store next time you go!

Any more suggestions? Leave a comment!

Amber

Sensory Bin For Spring Theme: “Digging For Worms”

Thanks for stopping by! Today I am going to share a fun sensory bin idea I used at the preschool I work at for my theme of Spring! It is super simple. All I used was

• Planting dirt
• Cooked spaghetti noodles
• Cups
• Mini shovels/scoopers

Combine them all in your bin and let the kids start digging!

 

 

I hope you found this idea useful! Thanks for stopping by. Like always, leave a comment if you’ve tried this or something similar. I would love to hear how this activity went for you!

Amber

Fine Motor Activity Using Stickers

What do I mean by “fine motor” you might ask? A child’s fine motor skills refer to one’s ability, strength, and coordination of their small muscles usually used to refer to one’s hands and fingers. Developing these small muscles is important, because these muscles are what allows your child to gain control while using  scissors, holding a paintbrush, tying their shoelaces, and eventually having enough control to write. Whether you have heard this term before or this is completely new to you, in preschool, this is one area of your child’s development we focus on strengthening and developing so that as your child moves on to Kindergarten they have the abilities to for example hold a pencil, have enough stability in their hands to write their letters, be able to cut on a black line, etc. There are many different activities that can be used to strengthen these small muscles, and today I am going to share one fun activity that supports this area of development!

Even just a simple activity of a child peeling off a sticker and placing it on a line is developing their fine motor skills. A child is able to use one fine motor skill which is known as their pincer grasp to first use their thumb and index finger to grab the sticker, then use another one of these skills known as eye-hand coordination to place the sticker onto a specific spot, in this case a letter.

Onto the activity then! First the materials you will need for this activity are:

• A long piece of paper
• A marker
• A plethora of stickers

The explanation for this activity is about as simple as it gets. You are going to write your child’s name on the piece of paper in marker, give your child the stickers, and have them place them on the letters, covering the marker. It is an activity they should have fun doing and develop their fine motor skills as well!

Did you try this activity? I would love to hear how it went!

Amber

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Painting With Marbles

Who doesn’t like fun crafts that involve paint? Better yet, marbles!  This activity is not only fun and engaging to your child but also supports their growth in their creativity! As it is currently raining outside where I am, it seems to me like this would be a fun rainy day activity.

Before you get started you will first need to make sure you have the following items:

• A box big enough to fit in a piece of paper
• Different color paint
• Paper
• Marbles

Once you have these items, you are ready to get started!

First, place your paper into whatever box you will be using for this project. I happened to be using a big cardboard box which was able to fit two pieces of paper at once.

Next, add in your different colors of paint to the different corners of the box. (I did mine on the corners of the paper, but if I did it again, I would use the corners of the box rather than the paper.) Hooray for reflective practice!

Finally,the fun part! Let your child grab the box and shake it in all directions and see the cool trails the marbles will leave on their paper.

I hope you enjoyed this craft! Did you try it? I would love to see a photo from your experience!

Amber