Rock Buddies

Sometimes the best crafts are the simplest - and I forgot how simple and fun these Rock Buddies can be. I didn't remember until earlier this week when we made some with Little Brother's best buddy on a playdate.

So of course we had to make some more once we remembered how simple and fun they are! 

Astronaut Training Course

The boys always love chances to test their gross motor skills, and the Astronaut Training Course we put together is a perfect activity to do just that!

Obstacles courses of any kind are a great way to create a little fun in the yard, or if you have enough space - inside on a rainy day. Give the Obstacle Course a theme and a have kids complete something at the end - even better! This obstacle course post includes 2 free printables- a training checklist and an astronaut id card at the end! 

Paper Bag Space Helmets

It's hard to believe that this week we're wrapping up summer, but I am having a lot of fun looking through all the fun things we did these last few months. And, after making sure we keep summer simple, I'm still putting together some posts about it all!

These Paper Bag Space Helmets are a simple activity I've always loved doing with kids. A while back we made them at Big Brother's Outer Space Birthday Party, but I also made them with preschoolers years ago in my early days of teaching.

The day the kids made them this summer it proved to be a perfect summer activity - we had all the materials on hand and the kids had a blast playing in the yard with them afterwards. 

Paint with Bouncy Balls

It's been a pretty busy week this past week, which has meant not a lot of time to either create or post. But we've still had a few fun things up our sleeves. This bouncy ball painting activity was something I'd been wanting to try for a while. Now that the sun and warm weather are back, it made for a great deck activity.

Somehow it feels like every time the boys get to pull a prize from a "treasure box" somewhere else (think dentist office, school, game prizes) they wind up picking a bouncy ball. We now have lots of these little bouncy balls hanging around, which lead to me thinking of how to use them. 

Easy Shapes Quilt Busy Bag

It's been quite a while since we created some new busy bags or busy boxes. That's why we were excited to join in on the A to Z Busy Bag series currently being hosted by Teach Me Mommy. There have been some incredible ideas in this series, which is great for inspiring some new sets for our own busy bag collection.

Our letter was Q - and we decided to create an Easy Shapes Quilt Busy Bag.

We wanted to keep things simple, and to use materials we already had on hand, so we used felt for our busy bag project.

Golden Nugget Cotton Ball Smash

I'm not going to lie, these didn't come out quite as pretty I was hoping, but they were fun. I've been wanting to try baked cotton balls as a project for a while now, and our recent snow day was the perfect time to try it out.

Trying to make it a little more fun, I decided to color them gold and add gold glitter  . . . but it's true they turned out a little funny looking.

Basic Cooked Playdough

We do a lot of playdough play here, in fact we usually try to vary up our playdough play every month or so. Although there are a lot of different non-cook playdough recipes out there, we're still a big fan of a basic cooked playdough.

All of our playdough recipes stem from this basic recipe, which we've finally decided to share!

10 Inside Play Ideas for Winter Vacation

In general I find that the winter vacation following Christmas goes by pretty quickly. We usually have family members to see, new things to play with, and some fresh snow to enjoy outside. Not to mention the fun of our Family Focused New Year's Eve to distract us only a week after Christmas.

But, just in case vacation stretches on a little too long for kiddos, it's always nice to have a few things up my "Mama" sleeve. Here are a few of our favorite inside or winter themed activities we may wind up trying this week. Most of them involve materials you probably already have on hand in your cupboard or playroom.

Show Down: Addition Facts Card Game

While my hope is to just have fun and relax over this winter vacation, I also know that it can be good to keep school aged kids thinking at least a little about both math and reading. The best way parents can do that is by keeping the learning fun and playful. (Which does not mean worksheets.)

A few months ago, I came up with this game for Big Brother and I to play and practice math facts at the same time. It's been a big hit on weekends and vacations since then, and he's not even realizing he's building his number facts as we play.

What are number facts? Addition number facts are typically thought of as addition facts with a sum (answer) up to 20. 

The rules to our "Show Down" game are very similar to the traditional card game "War" with a few math twists. The materials are relatively simple: a deck of playing cards, a sheet of paper, and a marker or pencil. 

Watercolor in the Rain

Even though we like to mostly think about the better weather ahead of us, we've still had several rainy days these past few weeks. Now that the summer weather is here at least those rainy days can be warm.

After several rainy days last week, the boys were feeling a little cooped up and in need of something different. This lead us to watercoloring in the rain!

Homemade Race Car Coloring Mat

It's great to have a handful of go-to activities that you know your kiddos enjoy no matter the circumstance. Creating a homemade race car coloring mat is definitely one of ours. We've been creating them for quite a while now; they're great for rainy days, cold weather days, multiage groups, and just any time you need a simple, quiet ongoing craft for kids.

What makes this project great is the materials are simple and something we often have in the house. It can take as long or as little time as needed. Kiddos can take it in any direction they want on their own or get as much adult help as they need to create what they have in mind. 

Toddler Color Sort Box

As I've mentioned before, I'm often looking for ways I can capture Little Brother's attention with a "quieter: activity. He has loved "drop" activities for quite a while now. Other drop activities we've created before include a pom pom can drop, the simple straw drop, and a big bottle ball drop. For this activity I was inspired by my husband's poker chip set (because he's not using them anyway) and a small shoe box to create a Toddler Color Sort Box.

We've tried some color sorting activities with Little Brother before, including a pipe cleaner color sort, but this was our first time using three colors. The poker chips were a perfect sorting material because of their size and distinct colors. 

Thanksgiving Table Activity Bag

With the beginning of November it's officially time to start thinking about Thanksgiving. Our Owl Paper Bag Puppet post the other day reminded me of these fun and cute Thanksgiving Table Activity Bags I put together last year.

Thanksgiving Table Activity Bag

Although we don't usually have a very formal Thanksgiving meal, I still wanted something to entertain the kids at the table after they finished eating and the grownups were still talking. I love having little activity sets for kids no matter where we are, so I put together these activity bags for the boys and their cousins. 

Toddler Airplane Activity Binder

A friend of mine starts an amazing adventure this weekend as she and her husband travel internationally to adopt the child they've been waiting for for almost three years. It's been eye opening and inspiring to watch them as they spent the last few years working and waiting through the paperwork process. And now their moment is here. Among hundreds of questions and concerns, my friend mentioned the long airplane ride back to the United States with their little toddler and what she was going to do for activities. Although many of her questions and concerns were ones I could only listen to with empathy, this was one that got my brain churning. Before they left our family gift to them was a Toddler Airplane Activity Binder.

Toddler Airplane Activity Binder

Although I won't know for several weeks if the binder was successful, I'm hoping it is helpful on the long plane ride. I can also see it being used in other settings where toddlers need some purposeful activities, such as waiting at a doctor's office or in a restaurant. 

Pipe Cleaner Color Sort

One of my goals for this fall is to create more purposeful learning opportunities for Little Brother.

As he gets older we have more skills and concepts to explore. Although we've done activities which involve "dropping" or "pushing" objects into containers, this was the first time I've added a sorting element for Little Brother. Although I knew he was a little young, I wanted this to be an activity he could grow with, so I made it a two color sorting activity.

I was inspired to use pipe cleaners and spice containers together from a toddler activity post over at Teaching Mama. (She used a parmesan container, but it looked a lot like our spice containers.) 

Beading With 5 Household Objects

We enjoy beading here. I've loved it since I was a kid, and enjoyed passing on the activity to Big Brother. But not only can we create "beautiful" necklaces and bracelets, it's also a great way to develop fine motor skills.

I've mentioned fine motor skills before; they are small movements made by the smaller muscles in our bodies (like those you find in fingers and toes for example.) Helping kids to develop fine motor skills are important because they need to be able to use these muscles for important everyday activities (like zipping a coat) and academic skills (like writing with a pencil or cutting out a picture.) 

Beading is a great way to work on developing fine motor skills, as it's using repetitive small muscles, it's fun, and you create a finished product (which kids always love.) But you don't always have to use beads, there's plenty of household objects you can use. 

Switching up the object adds variety and interest for kids, but also means they're learning how to hold onto different types of objects. Here are 5 of our favorite household objects you can use below.

Cucumber Boat Investigation

I hadn't actually planned on creating this as a post, but set this out one day during our Pirate Week as an extra activity. The kids had so much fun with it, and it sparked such great inventive thinking, that I couldn't resist putting it together as a post.

It's cucumber and zucchini season here in New England, and as often can happen, the crops are producing quite a lot of veggies! For the last two weeks we've been able to take as many of both veggies as we want from our CSA, and we've been using quite a lot of them in the kitchen. But we did have some extra around and it seemed like it would be great for building cucumber pirate ships.

101 Kids Activities That are the Bestest, Funnest Ever (Book Review)

Earlier this summer we were really excited to receive a copy of the book 101 Kids Activities that are the Bestest, Funnest Ever. This is the first book from Holly Homer and Rachel Miller from the Kids Activities Blog and Quirky Mommas. And after some time with it this summer we're certainly hoping it's not their last!

Book Review of 

101 Kids Activities that are the Bestest, Funnest Ever

This post contains affiliate links for your convenience. 

Book image from 101 Kids Activities by Holly Homer and Rachel Miller, printed with permission of Page Street Publishing June 2014

From the moment the book arrived Big Brother was entranced with it. He was captivated by the incredible photographs and endless activity ideas. He spent over half an hour carefully inspecting each page. The next day he reread the book and began asking about the different activity ideas and selecting the ones he wanted to try. 

Over the last month we've had several opportunities to try out several different activities. Although at first we were drawn in by the photographs and range of activities, one of the things we've enjoyed most about the book is its possibilities for engaging a wide age range of children with a single activity. Each activity includes ideas for how to modify an activity for both older and younger kids, which makes it a great resource when you're looking to play with (and entertain) a wide age range of kids. Below is a brief write up of some of the things we've tried with a group of children. 

Baby Faces Busy Bag (For a One Year Old)

We're really excited to be participating in a Virtual Busy Bag Exchange sponsored by Teach Me Mommy.

Today we're swapping ideas with Life Over C's and Adventure in a Box to share busy bag ideas for one year olds. I've created Busy Bags and Boxes for Big Brother a couple of different times before, check out this post or this one for some of those ideas, but this was the first time I've made a busy bag for Little Brother. I found it an interesting challenge to think of what might interest a one year old in a bag. 

We've started to encourage Little Brother to work on identifying parts of the face which inspired me to create a "baby faces" busy bag. 

Soap Foam Car Wash Bins

If you've been reading our posts for a while you know we love transportation play. The other day we were looking for a new way to play with our matchbox cars. Lately many of them have been spending some time in our sand and water table and getting a little dirty. This has been inspiring Big Brother to pretend to wash them. I decided it would be fun to set up some car wash sensory play.

In the earlier stages of spring we discovered soap foam play from Fun at Home With Kids. We turned it into some really fun clean mud. It's such a cool, easy way to create a different sensory experience for kids.