Dinosaur Playdough Play

As we were getting ready for Little Brother's Dinosaur birthday party this month we were excited to set up a new playdough play invitation. This invitation uses one of our all time favorite playdough recipes - we call it "Chocolate Cake Playdough" because it has the amazing scent of real chocolate.

For this playdough play invitation we added in a few key pieces: miniature dinosaurs, floral rocks, and fake plants so that the boys could create a dinosaur world.

Barnyard Small World Play

The boys are getting more interested in small world play, and I'm excited to think of all of the possible scenarios we can set up. Although we've experimented with small world play a little before (including setting up a beach small world and a Lorax small world) it's not something we do often. For this small world set-up I had Little Brother in mind. He's such an animal lover, I knew he'd be interested in a farm scene.

We've also been eating a lot of clementines lately, in fact the boys just can't get enough of them, but that also means we have several clementine crates itching to be used for a project. Which inspired us to try using the boxes as containers for small world play.

Beach Small World Play

This past week we enjoyed exploring beach & ocean activities as part of our Simple Summer Theme series.

One thing I've recently been wanting to do more of with the kiddos is small world play. 

Using the sandbox was a natural idea for beach play, although we also could have set up a small sensory tub for this type of play. 

Cardboard Airfield

Okay, so I'm not going to lie, I had a little too much fun putting together this cardboard airfield for the boys.

They've been really into airplanes lately, and I knew they would love it. But, I also just loved having a chance to be creative myself. And even though I could have let them help me put it together, I again have to admit I was having too much fun to let them help and decided to put it together all on my own.

Lorax Small World Play

March 2 is Read Across America Day, planned by the National Educator's Association in honor of Dr. Seuss' birthday. Today, to celebrate both occasions a group of bloggers has joined together to come up with Read + Play ideas with favorite Dr. Seuss books.

We decided to celebrate with the Lorax, which we've read several times lately. We've read it enough we decided to try creating our own small world play.

Small world play is something we don't explore often but something we're interested in creating more often. Originally I had planned to have the boys help me create the small world, but the timing worked better for me to create it first and for the boys to explore it afterwards. 

Tractor Sensory Bin

Little Brother has definitely been finding an interest in all things vehicle related, just like his Big Brother. But lately he's seemed really interested in tractors; whether it is the ones we read about, our toy tractors, or the ones we see out in the real world. To play off this interest, we created a tractor sensory bin.

Tractor Sensory Bin

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It's been a while since I set up a sensory bin, and as soon as I started Big Brother was eager to help. I didn't realize it had been quite a while since we had one to play with but his excitement (even though I was trying to connect this to his brother's interest) reminded me we need to get back into our bin and small world play. 

Sparkle Snow Dough

Today's rainy weather is definitely putting a damper on winter fun. No sledding, no snowman building, no using skates and snowshoes. So we decided we needed to bring some winter fun inside. I'd seen several recipes for "Cloud Dough" before and heard from other moms how fun it can be, so we decided to turn it into "Sparkle Cloud Snow Dough."

There are several different versions of cloud dough online. I went with a a flour based version. We tweaked amounts based on a couple of different recipes and added in glitter for a more wintery look.