Playing Card Holder for Kids

I was browsing through the book 1444 Fun Things To Do With Kids by Caryl Krueger and ran across this amazing idea!  It's a playing card holder to help kids that can play a game of cards, but can not yet hold all of their cards in their hand. Isn't that genius?! By the way, this book has a lot of other great ideas and is worth looking into. I own a copy and you can buy yours here. Or you might be able to find a copy at your local library.

Before this wonderful craft, whenever R and I would play "Go Fish" I would have to look away as he arranged his cards in front of him. But now he can arrange and hold all of his cards by himself. This makes playing cards during family game time much easier for everyone. R was very fond of this craft as well!

What You Need:

Two matching plastic lids 

Stapler

Stickers

Directions:

Put the two lids together, tops facing inward.  Staple them together in the center. To finish, use stickers to decorate and cover the staple. Yes, it really is that simple!

I used two Cool Whip lids because I liked the size. You can also use smaller lids (sour cream, dip, etc).

I hope this simple little craft changes your card games for the better!

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Art And Play: The Nature Way - Sand

It's that time again! Art And Play: The Nature Way is back with another installment! This time it's all about sand. Unfortunately, we don't live close to any great naturally occurring sand. R would really love it if we did! When we think of sand, we immediately think of the beach, which happens to be R's favorite place in the world.

Once we surprised him with a small vacation at the beach. We didn't tell him where we were going. We just loaded up and drove the six hours to his most coveted vacation spot. He was really surprised! Now, anytime we say we have a surprise he immediately asks if it's the beach. Sadly, not all surprises are the beach. We were reminded of that fact just last week, when we had a small surprise for him that immediately got his hopes up. So I thought I'd bring a little bit of beach fun to our yard.

I made moon sand. It's great for sand castles and such when it's winter and there isn't a huge body of water nearby. It's crumbly, yet moldable. And it's a lot of fun! I went back to my last post about homemade moon sand and decided to do some more experimenting. I came up with a new recipe that we liked a lot. I hope you like it too.

Moon Sand Recipe

What you need:
4 cups play Sand
2 cups corn starch
1 cup flour
1.5 cups warm water

What you do:
Blend together the dry ingredients and then slowly add the warm water. I added half a cup at a time and mixed. This allowed for me to make sure it was well mixed and the right consistency.

The Final Result:
I think the final result will depend on the type of sand you use. If your sand is really coarse you might want to add more flour. I think the flour softened ours up a bit. Our end result was still a bit different from the commercial variety of moon sand, but it was our favorite homemade kind thus far. It made a good bit and was much cheaper.

The Play

I set the moon sand out in a bin on a marvelously sunny day. I gathered a few of R's beach toys and just let him play. He felt the sand squish between his fingers. He made moon sand pizzas. He used his imagination and had fun. It was really simple and child led. And without me prompting, he even proclaimed, "This is just like the beach!!"

After we got through playing in the sand, we went inside and continued our beach play with a bath filled with all of R's under the sea toys. He had a nice time splashing and playing with his sea creatures, and it really added to the experience.

I keep rediscovering that it really doesn't take much to make my child feel special and happy. This was a really easy activity to provide and it was very well received.




You don't have to take it outside though. Moon sand is a lot of fun indoors as well! If you're worried about the mess you could always set your container on a plastic tablecloth from the dollar store. After the play just pick up the tablecloth and dump the mess. It also vacuums up quite easily, and since it was so cheap to make you don't have to worry about it being wasted.

And be sure to check out Dilly-Dali Art to see their creative (and beautiful) sand art. 

Did you miss the fun last time? We had a lot of creative fun with rocks.

What's your favorite way to have fun with sand?

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Play Dough Snowmen

It has been terribly cold in Alabama the last several days. It's a cold that we are not accustomed to in this mild winter we are having. And it's a cold that is without snow. What's the fun in that? So this week we've made our own snow fun in various ways.

The first activity was a big hit with R. We made snowmen out of play dough and various crafting supplies. R had so much fun designing his snowman over and over again. 

Behind The Scenes:

I wanted to surprise R with some new winter themed play dough and I made a batch of my "go to" play dough. It wasn't white. Ooops. Apparently white flour isn't white enough and it was a dingy yellowish color. Definitely not the snow I want to play in. So then I did some experimenting. And then I did some research and tried other various recipes. I was left with a table full of play dough in various shades of white and various consistencies. And so, I present to you, my personal favorite recipe for snow play dough. 

1 1/2 cups cornstarch

1/2 cup flour

1 cup salt

1 1/2 cup water

3 tbsp vegetable oil (I used olive oil)

4 tbsp cream of tartar

Mix all ingredients in a pot and cook on medium heat while stirring. It does eventually turn into a dough while you stir. It differs from the other recipe I use, but it's still just as easy. Once it forms a sticky glob of dough, turn out onto wax paper and let cool. After it cools, knead the dough and add glitter if desired. We used a lot of fine white glitter. It was really pretty in the dough but didn't show up in the picture. 

This was my favorite out of the many I tried, but I still wasn't thrilled with it. It was pretty, soft, and easily molded but the texture was different and it dried out quicker. It was perfect for the activity we had planned, but it is not something I would make for any other reason. I'm just not a fan of using the corn starch, which is needed for the white color. All that being said, R was happy with it and didn't mention the change if he noticed it.

The Fun Part:

When R woke up, I had the best batch of play dough out on the table with a bunch of craft supplies. I had scissors, sequins, pipe cleaners, ribbons, googly eyes, gems, and other miscellaneous bits. He had a blast making and remaking his snowman. The possible combinations are many and he loved switching everything around.

 For his favorite he figured out how to give the snowman hands and how to make a top hat out of pipe cleaners. He carefully chose the colors for each item. He used googly eyes for buttons, a ribbon for a scarf, and another pipe cleaner for his nose. He used sequins for the face and took great delight in the snowman's round mouth. 

Play dough snowmen were a happy and entertaining success! Even with the work of making several batches of dough, it was worth it because it provided entertainment for quite some time. But if you'd like to take my word on the recipe, you could easily get all of this creative fun for around 10 minutes of prep time. 

What materials would you provide for building snowmen?

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Our Magnetic Advent Calendar

Creating an advent calendar was a family affair this year. It was very easy and a lot of fun. Today is the first day of our advent calendar, but don't worry if you've been wanting to make one and just haven't yet. You could make one as a family tonight! You could even have the first day's activity to be "make an advent calendar." That's something I would totally do. Haha.

Making The Advent Calendar:

I quickly sketched out the shape of a Christmas tree on a large poster board. It doesn't have to be perfect. Then we got to work on painting it. R did most of the painting because he enjoys it so much. He did a really good job! Then just cut it out once it's dry. I traced a small cup for the ornaments. R decided he'd rather color those with markers so that's what we did. We each got our own page of ornaments to color and decorate. We cut them out and glued them onto our tree. Since we were all working together it didn't take long at all. We also made a star for on top. Next, we glued a few button magnets onto the back of our tree cut out. One at the very top, one on the trunk, and one on a few of the branches to make sure it stayed put.

Making The Day Marker:

We used a recycled crayon snowflake for the magnetic marker. We made the cute recycled crayons and glued a magnetic button to the back of one. Each day we will move the marker to the new day and read our planned activity from a list I have printed out. And because it's a crayon, we could even use it to mark the activity off of the list. I did it this way so that our calendar may be used again next year, even if we'd like to change the activities.

Making recycled crayons is very easy. We just peeled a bunch of our broken crayons and put the pieces in a silicone snowflake muffin tin. (We also made Christmas trees just because. :) We used one color per snowflake with varying shades. So all of the blue crayons went in one, the green in another, and so on. You put the muffin tin in a 200 degree oven for five to ten minutes or until the crayons have melted completely. Carefully remove the muffin tin to avoid sloshing and let cool. After the crayons have cooled and completely hardened you can just pop them out. R loves making crayons and coloring with the specially made sets.

The Creative Christmas Countdown:

I'm not going to share the advent activities we have planned just yet. Many of ours coincide with the fabulous Creative Christmas Countdown and I don't want to spoil anything for those that are reading that like surprises. I will be sharing our advent activities most days, so please check back for some fun holiday activities! Also, if you are planning on following along with the online advent calendar and would like to be more prepared or use them in your own calendar, you can find a free printable at the above link. Lots of fun in store this month!

Let Kids Create has the activity for day one of the Creative Christmas Countdown, and it's a fantastic way to kick off the season! Be sure to check out her post for an activity that will leave you smiling and creating warm memories each day until Christmas!

What are some of your favorite advent activities?

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"Eat Or Be Eaten" Turkey Toss

It's eat or be eaten! This turkey toss game is a ton of fun with lots of educational variations. So play to learn or just to play! You could even use this game as entertainment for the kids on Thanksgiving while the adults are cooking and talking. 

Making the Game:

The adorable bean bag turkey was inspired by this post from one of my absolute favorite blogs, Almost Unschoolers. If you need instructions for this little turkey, be sure to visit her tutorial. Our turkeys are different, but it's the same basic concept. I sewed mine by hand, but you could also assemble your turkey with fabric glue. 

I printed the corn pictures from this website. I colored them, cut them out, and then laminated them to make them last. I made the plates by tracing two different sized plates and then laminated them as well. We like to take this game outside, and to prevent the turkey from getting dirty, we put the game pieces on a shower liner we got from the dollar store.

The Play:

The premise of "Eat Or Be Eaten" is to try and toss the turkey onto ears of corn. If your turkey lands on an ear of corn, he gobbles it up and you get a point. But be careful! Laid out among the corn pieces are plates. If you land on the plate the turkey is gobbled up and you lose a turn. You can adjust the difficulty by adding more plates and placing the corn closer to them, or by changing the distance of where you stand. 

It really is a ton of fun. R was so excited to play. He was giggling and squealing the entire time. 

And R loves this turkey and has thanked me daily for making him. He named him Gobble Gobble. It's appropriate, don't you think? He has wanted to sleep with him every night. Gobble Gobble quickly became a part of the family. Plus, he's fun to play with on his own!

Variations on Ways to Play:

• You could reinforce counting by two's and fives, by increasing the point value of the corn. 
• You could use a dry erase marker to write a letter, number, math problem, sight word, etc on the bottom of each ear of corn to practice those skills in a fun way. {I love the lamination for that purpose as well. It's so easy to change it up by just wiping it off!} 
• Instead of losing a turn when you land on a plate, you could lose all of your corn. 
• The list goes on!

How would you play? Do you have any ideas for a fun bean bag game?

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On The Go Geoboard

If you follow me on Facebook you might have read that this past Sunday night my dad had a heart attack. He is recovering but we are still very worried about him. We have all wanted to be by his side and that has meant a lot of time spent in the hospital. I had made this geoboard for R for the purpose of being able to bring it to doctor's offices, restaraunts, etc. This week, with my dad being in the hospital and R's eye specialist appointment, poor R has spent a lot of time in places he is suppose to sit still and behave and be quiet. This geoboard is perfect for those situations!

Making a geoboard is really easy and it brings hours of fun. We made ours out of a piece of 2x6 decking board. My husband cut it to the size I wanted and I sanded all of the edges. Then I primed and painted our board black. I thought the black would make the colors of the rubber bands stand out. I also added a layer of Mod Podge because practically everything is better with it. Next, we made a grid on a piece of paper for the nail holes. We spaced each nail one inch apart and taped the paper to the board. My husband sweetly offered to hammer in the nails for me while I worked on something else. And that was it! 

I made a felt pouch for our board as an added bonus. I let R pick out a color of felt that he liked and I sewed it by hand (as you can tell by the wonky stitches). It was simple to sew, but you could also use glue if you'd rather. Then I added a velcro closure and attached it to the geoboard with velcro. This way he can store all of the rubber bands in the pouch, which stays attached to the board when it is not in use. When he wants to play with it, he can easily remove the pouch from the back. It's easy and quick to pack up because any rubber bands he has put on the board will stay. If we are called back into our room at the doctor's office we can just put the pouch back on the board and toss it in my purse. Everything stays together!

There are so many different ways to play with a geoboard. You can make shapes, letters, patterns, and abstract designs. We also counted the nails, columns and rows. Our geoboard has five rows with seven columns for a total of 35 nails. It's also great for strengthening those hand muscles! R likes making pictures on occasion but I think his favorite part is just stretching the rubber bands. The pictures are usually an afterthought for now.

                                          

I think that this would be a great homemade Christmas present as well. It's not just for travel! It's also a great activity just for fun, or for a busy activity at the kitchen table as you cook dinner. My son loves his and I wish that I would have made him one sooner. 

Do you think a geoboard is something that would interest your child?

I'm linking this up to:

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Cloud Dough, Moon Sand, And A Fail

Today's favorite activity was inspired by two fabulous blogs. We are still participating in the play challenges (even though I haven't blogged about them all, we've had a blast with every one of them) and today's challenge was mixing concoctions from Hands On : As We Grow. Then I was catching up on some blog reading and discovered TinkerLab's great post on cloud dough. I had been wanting to make cloud dough for the longest time and had just never got around to it. I thought it would be perfect for today, although you absolutely do not need an excuse to make that stuff!

I figured it would be fun to make both cloud dough and moon sand to compare and contrast. We started off making the cloud dough. We used 4 cups of flour and a half a cup of baby oil. R measured and mixed. He absolutely loved the stuff! He immediately started pretending his fingers were ice skaters and renamed it snow dough. I loved it too. The texture is amazing.

Then we made the moon sand, or what turned into the sand plaster. It was a horrible fail. Maybe it was because our play sand was too coarse? It was extremely hard to mix and turned into a sand plaster that hardened almost immediately into a huge block of unpleasantness. My hands were red from the mixing and R was not impressed. We still compared it though and talked about the different textures and colors. R was quick to name his favorite, even though typically he is an "I like it all " kind of child that refuses to choose a favorite on most things.

I had given up and we were having a blast with the cloud snow dough when my mind wandered back to the store bought moon sand and it's consistency. What is it that they use?!? It was similar to the cloud dough, and yet different. So we decided to do a bit more experimenting. I used the earlier recipe for moon sand, but where it called for play sand, I replaced it with flour. This is what we did:

• 3 cups corn starch
• 1.5 cups cold water
• 6 cups flour

Mix the cornstarch into the cold water until smooth(ish). Add one cup of flour and mix in. Repeat until all the flour is added to the mixture.

It is very similar to the store bought moon sand. It's not an exact replica but it made us happy. It looked similar to the cloud dough but had a different texture. We then compared and contrasted the cloud dough and the moon sand. It was neat to play with two different mixtures that looked almost identical but felt completely different. R said he really liked the moon sand, but the cloud dough was still his favorite. He was very vocal during this process and really got into comparing the mixtures. He was thoughtfully describing each aspect on his own. I loved listening to him.

We used kitchen utensils for play. He also made up stories as he explored. We had a lot of fun, and he insisted on playing longer on his own. I'm thinking we'll be playing with this again tomorrow!

So thank you ladies, for the inspiration and motivation. You helped make our day a fun one!

Have you been successful at making moon sand? Do you have a recipe that would be better than the one I improvised? I would love for you to share!

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Chatterboxes For Speech and Literacy

R is in speech therapy and he is learning how to correctly make his letter sounds. I think that it's important that we get this sorted out now and practicing is a must! But it's still something that I want to be fun for him. We practice in several playful ways, like letter sounds hopscotch, but this one is a favorite.

We make chatterboxes for each new letter sound. We do them in the traditional way, but under the flaps are various words that contain the sound he's working on. We go back and forth and I read him the words that he chooses. Then he has to repeat them or use them in a sentence. I was expecting the novelty to wear off quickly, but it hasn't. He loves it! I honestly have to make him stop practicing. He's learned letter sounds and a blend very quickly by practicing in this way. We take turns and it's fun.

Chatterbox How-To:

1. You need a square piece of paper. For visibility purposes, I'm using construction paper for the folding part of this tutorial. Fold one corner over to the side like shown. Then you trim off the extra rectangle of paper at the bottom.

2. Once you have a square piece of paper, you fold all four corners in to meet in the middle.

3. Turn the paper over and repeat the process of folding all four corners in to meet in the middle.

On one side you have four squares. Write colors there. On the other side you have eight small triangles. Write numbers there. Then you can lift each flap and put something under each number.

How to Play:

You hold the chatterbox in a pincer grasp with both hands. Have your child pick a color. Spell the color as you open the chatterbox for each letter. Alternate between opening it vertically and horizontally. Leave it open on the last letter and have your child pick a number. Count to that number, opening the chatterbox as you did before. On the last number, have your child pick another number. Lift the flap and see what is under that number.

That's it. It's really simple but children delight in playing with them.

More Ways to Play:

We use this for speech, but it could be used for various other fun, educational purposes. You could draw pictures under each flap, or use themed stickers and ask a younger child what letter that picture starts with. It would also help them to learn colors and numbers. You could draw shapes under each flap for them to identify. You could use this in various ways to practice sight words and spelling words with an older child. The possibilities are great!

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Halloween Magnets Made From Salt Dough

We love magnets. R has always had a love for magnets and his collection has grown quite a bit. Did we need to add to it? Probably not. But we had fun making these festive magnets anyway!

We started by making the salt dough, and I have to say that R really did this by himself. I told him how much we needed for the recipe, but he did all of the measuring and mixing, rolling and cutting. It really amazes me at how fast he's growing up and how capable he really is.

The Recipe:

2 cups flour
1 cup salt
1 cup warm water

Start by mixing the flour and salt. Then slowly mix in the water. We use our hands. It gets lumpy, and gloopey, and sticky before it turns into the dough. R loved that part. Then you turn it out onto a floured surface and roll it thin with a rolling pin. We also flour our rolling pin before hand, and several times during the process so that the dough doesn't stick to it. You don't want it too thin, but the thinner it is, the faster it dries. Ours typically range from 1/4 of an inch to a 1/2 inch.

Making the Magnets:

To set the mood, we listened to our "Wee Sing For Halloween" CD. It was perfect for this activity. We used our Halloween themed cookie cutters, and as R sang along to the songs he would hold up the cookie cutters that went along with it. His own musical puppet show!

A song about a spider came on and he insisted that we make one even though we didn't have a spider cookie cutter. So he decided how he wanted it to look and rolled out the dough for the legs and fangs. I just made sure they were attached to the body securely.

Then we put the cutouts onto cookie tins and popped them in the oven. We let them dry for four hours on 200 degrees F, before checking them. Most of them were done, but a few of the thicker ones were still a bit soft, so we put them back in for another hour.

We waited until the next day to paint the creations. I think he did a wonderful job. I adore his jack-o-lantern faces. After they dried, I covered them with a thin layer of Mod Podge. Next we applied the magnets and googly eyes with hot glue.

Give as Gifts!

We are keeping several of them, but plan to give a bunch away. The adults in our lives will receive a few of the painted ones, and his friends will receive a few of the unpainted. We thought that they might like to paint them instead. We will also include the googly eyes because they are fun!

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Pumpkin Pie Play Dough

 

We decided to remove a leaf from our fall bucket list and make some autumn themed play dough. This play dough smells so incredibly yummy. It smells just like pumpkin pie. I was constantly opening the bag just to sniff it. I carried it around with me and made all of my friends smell it too. I'm amazed and I adore it.

Pumpkin Pie Play Dough Recipe

1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
1 cup water
2 tbsp oil
2 tbsp cream of tartar
1/3 of the jar of pumpkin pie spice (the tiny jar)
maple extract
vanilla extract
food coloring

Combine the dry ingredients and the oil. Slowly add the water. Add a few dashes of each of the extracts and a few drops of red and yellow food coloring. Cook over medium heat, stirring until stiff.

As it mixes you can see if you'll need more food dye. We tried to be conservative at first, because I didn't want it to be too vibrant. We added a little at a time until we acheived the right color.

Once it's finished cooking, turn out onto wax paper and allow to cool.

The pumpkin pie spice was too spicy by itself, for my liking. The extracts make it smell sweeter, just like a pumpkin pie. Sniff the dough. Does it smell too spicy? Add a little bit more extract and knead it all together. If the dough is too sticky, add a little more flour. If it's too dry, add a few drops of water.

The Play

The smell is wonderful, and the texture is perfect. We brought it along to a play date and the kids had a lot of fun playing with it. I brought along a muffin tin, some wooden spoons, and a full size rolling pin for them to use. R happily made all kinds of pumpkin baked goods. And he's asked to play with it several times since then.

What are your favorite fall scents?

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Autumn Bucket List- 80 Ideas And A Special Display

Our Autumn bucket list is on our "All Seasons Tree." We keep this tree up year round and decorate it accordingly for seasons, holidays, and birthdays. For our fall bucket list, we will start off the season with a tree full of leaves. On those leaves are the ideas. Every day we will pick an idea (or two!) from the tree and take down the leaf. Hopefully, by the beginning of December our tree will be as bare as the ones outside.

We came up with 80 ideas and I wanted to come up with some way to categorize them. I wanted to make looking through them each day as easy as possible, so I came up with the color coded the different categories. I decided to split them up into five sections.

Gold leaves (which look tan in this picture) are the bigger adventures that take more time, planning, and/or money. Brown is our food ideas. Orange is for crafts. Red is for "simple fun" and yellow is for the few bits of randomness that were thrown in. But you could organize this in so many different ways. Believe me, I know. For instance, you could do it by months, or holidays, or themes.

Now onto the list (in no particular order)! I've added links where needed to give credit or for further information.

1. Celebrate the autumnal equinox!
2. Try to find a more balanced routine.
3. Go hiking.
4. Go camping.
5. Start letterboxing (Finally).
6. Play in a huge pile of newly raked leaves.
7. Go to a pumpkin patch.
8. Make pumpkin muffins.
9. Go to a fall festival.
10. Explore a cave.
11. Go on a leaf nature walk.
12. Paint on leaves.
13. Go on the local "Scarecrow Walk" at the gardens.
14. Visit an apple orchard.
15. Make candied apples.
16. Cook chili together.
17. Make pumpkin pie dip.
18. Roast pumpkin seeds.
19. Do a painted pumpkin seeds craft.
20. Make pumpkin pancakes.
21. Bake apples.
22. Paint a pumpkin.
23. Carve a jack-o-lantern.
24. Drink warm apple cider on a chilly nighttime nature walk.
25. Make bird feeders.
26. Have a Halloween party.
27. Make a scarecrow.
28. Send a care package to a soldier.
29. Make leaf lanterns.
30. Hold a food drive potluck.
31. Make applesauce.
32. Make apple butter.
33. Go trick or treating.
34. Start a compost.
35. Make pumpkin cinnamon rolls.
36. Have an outdoor photo session.
37. Cuddle up and watch a kid friendly Halloween movie...outside!
38. Build a bat house.
39. Create a leaf press.
40. Press leaves.
41. Do leaf rubbings.
42. Go on a hayride.
43. Make Thanksgiving pumpkin and gingerbread trifle.
44. Draw an autumn themed mural with sidewalk chalk.
45. Make a dream catcher.
46. Mail some of our autumn to a far away friend.
47. Climb trees.
48. Make a kite.
49. Fly kites.
50. Make a maze in fallen leaves.
51. Have a bonfire.
52. Make pumpkin pies.
53. Create a fall wreath.
54. Make pinecone turkeys.
55. Pick up litter.
56. Dress up like a scarecrow and practice scary faces.
57. Dig up potatoes.
58. Make candy corn cookies.
59. Lay back and watch the sky for bats.
60. Create leaves with colored glue.
61. Go through a corn maze.
62. Create 3D fall art on a canvas.
63. Make and play with fall themed play dough.
64. Try painting leaves in a baggie.
65. Create land art.
66. Make leaf glitter artwork.
67. Celebrate Thanksgiving.
68. Blow rainbow bubbles in puddles.
69. Have a fall book read-a-thon at the park.
70. Create a Thanksgiving leaf garland.
71. Play "Bats and Moths"
72. Create a fall centerpiece for the table.
73. Try out pumpkin printing.
74. Make autumn leaf coasters.
75. Go puddle jumping.
76. Draw with chalk on the wet ground.
77. Revisit colored bubbles. (With a fall theme)
78. Have a rainy day orchestra.
79. Host a magical indoor picnic.
80. Make homemade caramel.

This big display of our bucket list is going to ensure that having fun this fall is constantly on our minds and at our fingertips. We are so excited to get started.

What are you most excited about for fall? What would you add to your bucket list?

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Valentine's Day Sensory Bin

I made R a sensory bin for Valentine's Day.  I didn't like it as much as some of the others I have done for him but he loves it.  I wanted to make it with items I already had and the only new purchase I made for this bin was the heart containers.  I bought them from the Dollar Tree and they were 10 for a dollar.  Another blogger also bought these same containers.  Biting The Hand That Feeds You uses these for the bento lunches she makes for her daughter.  I plan to use these in lunches and snacks as well, a long with a few other activities I have planned for R.

I colored rice for the base of this bin.  I used five pounds of rice, vinegar, and food coloring.  I was wanting a mixture of red, pink and white rice, but unfortunately I didn't have enough red food coloring.  I still liked how it turned out though.  It is a mixture of white rice and two different shades of pink.  I also added red glass stones, pompoms, rose petals, a TON of various beads, a heart shaped light up eraser, a Valentine's Day spinning top, the heart shaped containers, various foam shapes, curling ribbon, a red pipe cleaner, a spoon, and magnetic letters to make the "I love you."

R loves just running his hand through the rice.  He also transfers the rice into the heart containers.  He threads the beads onto the pipe cleaner. He squeezes the eraser to make it light up.  He spins the top.  He does transferring activities with the pompoms and stones as well.  Not only is this sensorial, but he also gets to practice different grasps and practical life skills.  We also hide all of the magnetic letters under the rice.  He then has to find them and we spell out "I love you" all over again.  He has played with it so much the last few days.  And when he isn't playing in it, he is talking about playing in it.

He has had sensory bins for about two years now and even when he was younger, he never really made a mess with them.  The possibility of a huge mess has always been there, of course, but we have always reminded him that he can't make a mess with it.  I trust him with his sensory bins and he is not always closely supervised when playing with them.  I also trust him with art materials and he has free access to most things.  Yesterday, however, he reminded me that he is still a child and messes will happen.  It was a wild child sort of day.  He was testing us in various ways throughout the day and I should have known it was coming.  In a way, I kind of did.  I needed to get some cleaning done and before leaving him to play I really stressed not making a mess. More so than usual.  I reminded him that he would be the one cleaning it up and asked him if he understood.  He said he did and wouldn't make a mess. 

He did.  He had started transferring the rice to other containers around his playroom.  His face was priceless when I walked back in.  Mine probably was too.  He said "I know, I know! I'll clean it upppp!"  And he did for awhile.  He grew tired of cleaning it up and did some protesting.  At one point he came out of the room and shut the door quickly.  I asked him what he was doing and he said "I'm done."  I said "ohhh, really, well that's great.  I'd like to go see.." and I started to open the door.  He stepped in front of me and said "No, no, I don't want to go look." 

"Well, I'm going to go look." 
"No, no.. not done. I'll go cleeaannn." *sigh*

I guess it was overdue.

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Winter Sensory Box

One of R's favorite activities is playing with sensory bins. He loves them! So I wanted to share the festive winter sensory bin I made him. You can make one too! I used a few craft supplies and items we had on hand from previous winters.

The "snow" is a cotton batting material that I had on hand. You could also use cotton balls, but I just used what I already had. I added blue and clear gems and some white beads to the snow.

The red house was a quick little craft I did last year as well. I cut the top off of an orange juice carton. I painted it red, added red glitter glue, and glued cotton on the roof for snow. The pour spout is the chimney.

 I bought the Santa and the little fur trees at the dollar store last year. I have pom poms randomly hidden in the snow and he uses them as ornaments for the trees. They stick to the needles of the little fake trees and stay nicely. He decorates them over and over.  I also added some toys that he already plays with.  The baby polar bear, puffin and the icy fish are all toys he plays with throughout the year. I also threw in some paper snowflakes, bells, a pine cone, some fake holly, a bow, and a little present ornament.

Last year I really wanted a reindeer for his box, but I could never find one that would be right. This year I finally remembered that you can make basically anything with pipe cleaners! I Googled "pipe cleaner reindeer craft" to get a general idea and Martha Stewart had the example. I didn't follow the instructions exactly. I'm pretty sure hers would have been grander, but I liked how mine turned out.

When R woke up, I showed him his box. He was surprised to see it and he was absolutely delighted. He kept calling it his "surprise winter wonderland" and he thanked me repeatedly. The rest of the day he kept doing little things to surprise me too.

What would you add to your winter sensory bin? Please let me know in the comments!

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Shaving Cream Snowscape!

We don't get a lot of winter weather here in Alabama so I thought I'd set up an activity to let R pretend to play in the snow. This shaving cream snowscape was even more fun than it was messy. If you could imagine!

I started off by asking R to pick out a few toys he'd like to play with in snow. While he was in the next room, I made a snowscape using shaving cream in a shallow bin.  He had no idea what I was planning.

When he came back, I think he was intrigued but a little hesitant and not fully excited. He doesn't typically like mess. He still loved this. After touching the shaving cream and getting the feel for it, we started adding in his toys. He picked out some trees, dinosaurs, lizards, bugs, a cat, and some robot bad guys.

Soon after this picture I realized that the bin on top of the table wasn't the right height for him. So he sat on top of the table and played the rest of the time. We listened to Christmas music and played in the snow. Squeels of delight were heard often.

The last picture was obviously taken in messy splendor. He was saying "messy is fuuunnnn!" I'm really glad he enjoyed it so much. In spite of his appearance, he really didn't make a big mess outside of the bin. Sometimes, when R laughs really hard, he puts his hands to his face. There were several times that he was laughing and did this without thinking. Then he'd realized what he'd done and laugh harder.

When it was time to get cleaned up, his daddy wiped the majority of the mess off of him. While he was doing that, I sprayed the shaving cream off of the bin and his toys in the bathtub. Then I ran a bubble bath for him and we played some more. The mess wasn't so bad that I wouldn't want to do this again. In fact, I'm sure we'll do this again next year. Maybe even again this winter season. It was such a big hit.

Do you have any creative uses for shaving cream?

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Candy Cane Playdoh

The big excitement for today was making gifts for a few of our friends. We also saved some for us. We made candy cane playdoh with the recipe I found from Crunchy Domestic Goddess. I used her basic recipe for playdoh and added the peppermint oil like a commenter had suggested.

And as I had mentioned previously, R loves to measure, so this was a great activity for him.

I let him pour and measure everything by himself, except for the oil.  I only had a full gallon and I worried about the awful mess I'd have if he tried to pour it into a tablespoon, so I helped with that. After we combined all the ingredients he watched while I stirred. It didnt take long and was incredibly easy. After it stiffened, we rolled it out onto wax paper and let it cool. While it was cooling he made some picture labels for the containers we will be giving it in. It didn't take long to cool, and in his anticipation.. it didn't take long for him to make the labels. Then it was back to work.

We separated it into balls and added the peppermint oil and food coloring. I folded the color in the first several times so his hands wouldnt be stained forever. I had completely forgot about gloves, and mixing it with a spoon seemed like it would be impossible. I am now sporting some colorful fingertips.

It turned into a nice red color and smelled just like a candy cane. He was really proud of himself, and I loved how it turned out. I seriously doubt I buy playdoh ever again. I loved the texture, the cost, and how utterly easy it was. This was way past his naptime (which is evident by the pictures, ha!) and it was still an enjoyable experience.

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