Squish Bag CVC Words

We have tried lots of ways to learn CVC (consonant vowel consonant) words.  I believe the more fun the activity is the more the child learns and this activity truly engages your child and their sense of touch.

A squish bag takes 5 minutes  or less to put together and makes zero mess!  This is a good choice of sensory play if your child doesn't like to get messy.

Here's what you'll need to make a bag of your own:

Large ziploc bag
Hair gel (any dollar store brand)
Food coloring
Water
Painters/masking tape
Paper
Pen

Here's how to set it up:

• Write the CVC words or any words, numbers or even shapes that your child might be learning onto a piece of paper.  
• Fill the ziploc bag with hair gel, add water and a few drops of food coloring.  
• Squish the bag to mix the gel, water and food coloring together.  I really didn't measure how much gel and water. Start small with a few good squirts of gel and a little bit of water. This should give you a good idea of how much more you may or may not need.  
• Use the tape and tape the bag over the sheet of paper with the words on it.

Once this is done your child is ready to squish away!  My daughter loved moving the gel around to find the different 'hidden' words.  Once she found a word I had her write it on another sheet of paper and sound it out.  

This was a fun sensory activity where my daughter was also able to work on CVC words, writing  skills and sounding out words.  

A simple to setup activity which made learning CVC words lots more fun!  

Here are a couple of other squish bags we had fun with:

"Under the Sea" bag filled with sea creatures and gems

Letters bag (used no food coloring)

Making words!

Dandelion the Book and Paper Plate Craft

I find lots of treasures at yard sales and our most recent was the book, Dandelion by Don Freeman.  I grabbed it for .25 cents AND because who can resist a Don Freeman book!  Since getting this book my daughter has asked me to read it to her before bed every night.

Dandelion is story about a lion who is attending a party but chooses to dress 'dandy' instead of being himself.  This classic story shares an important message to children which is always be who you are.

My 5 year old daughter has enjoyed this book so much that we decided to do a craft to go along with it.  Here's what we made and the materials you'll need to make one yourself!

Materials used:

Paper plate
Tan tempera paint
Orange pipe cleaners
Hot glue gun
Googly eyes
Black foam
Black marker
Ribbon

We started off painting our plate.

Since Dandelion gets a 'wave' in the story we used pipe cleaners as the curls for Dandelion's mane.  Simply take your pipe cleaners and wind them around a marker or pen.  Once all the pipe cleaners were curled, use a hot glue gun to add them on around the plate.  This part is for adults only!

Once the paint is dry on your plate add on:

googly eyes

triangle for the nose

draw on some whiskers

and voila..........Dandelion the Lion!  We added a piece of ribbon to the top of the paper plate and hung him up in our kitchen!

If you haven't read this book it is a must find, truly a classic and loved by all!

Organize Stuffed Animals

My daughter LOVES her stuffed animals!  But we have a standing rule, if a new stuffed animal comes in, one goes out.

Admittedly, we have way too many stuffed animals and I am always looking for new ways to organize them.  For awhile we were using this stuffed animal chair, kind of like a bean bag chair but stuffed with furry friends instead! Sadly, the chair ripped and so we were in the need of something else.  We still use a large Thirty One tote and a cute little frog both of which are still holding up, thankfully!

Since I don't want to use up any more floor space our latest stuffed animal organizer goes vertical.... an over the door shoe organizer! Just browse Pinterest and tons and tons of ideas will come up on how to organize with them. We also use one on the back of our coat closet which is in our kitchen and holds all kinds of things!

For the stuffed animals I bought a clear shoe organizer and it's definitely the way to go because your child can easily see which animals are in each pocket.  My son has one too but the pockets are not clear and not as easy to see.

I hope this simple idea helps with organizing your child's stuffed animal friends!

Recycled Bookmark

I've always thought those strips that come off the ziploc boxes would make perfect bookmarks.

We got a chance to try it out since it was recently Grandma's birthday.  This would also make a cute gift idea for Mother's Day, Grandparent's Day or for the book reader in your life!

Here's what we used:
Ziploc strip (the part you tear off to get to the bags)
Construction paper
Stickers
Ribbon
Hole punch
Glue

Step 1: Wrap the construction paper around the bookmark.  Add some glue on the ends to seal closed.

Step 2: Decorate; we used stickers but you could use crayons or markers.

Step 3: At the top use a hole punch

Step 4: String the ribbon through the hole and tie a bow.

I think our bookmark turned out really cute and Grandma loved it!

I even had my daughter work on some letter sound and recognition by finding each letter in the word Grandma.  I sounded out each letter and my daughter had to find the letter and place onto the bookmark.

Decorate-A-Cupcake Numbers Game

This is a really fun way to work on one to one correspondence.  We also learned number recognition, new words, TAKE and OFF.  Fine Motor as my daughter participated in the setup of the game by using scissors to cut the cards.  And of course as with most games, taking turns.

I found these foam cupcakes at the dollar section in Target.  At the time I had no idea what I would do with them but bought them anyway.  I stuck them in our craft closet knowing that I would get an idea sooner or later!

We have been working on so many word and letter activities recently that I wanted to try a numbers activity.  Here's how we played our Decorate-A-Cupcake Numbers game:

I used coffee filters since they look like giant cupcake liners and we filled them with beads and pom-pom's.  These would act as the 'sprinkles' for our cupcakes.  I also added one heart bead to each coffee filter as the 'topping' for our cupcakes.

Using some cardstock I hand wrote things like TAKE 1, TAKE 2 or  TAKE 0, all the way up to 5.  I also added some TAKE OFF 1, TAKE OFF 2, etc.  And their is also a card that says, HEART which is the 'topping' for the cupcake.  Their was about 20 cards in all.

The object of the game is to draw a card and do whatever the card tells you.  For example, if it's TAKE 3 you would have your child count out either 3 beads or pom-pom's depending on which they want to use as their 'sprinkles.'  The game continues like this until one of the players has at least 10 'sprinkles' on their cupcake.  Whoever gets to 10 first and has their heart 'topping' wins!

We played a few rounds and each round took about 5 minutes which seemed to not be too long or too short and kept my daughter's attention.

Game set up

shucks, picked up a zero!

adding on 'sprinkles'

counting 'sprinkles'

She had alot of fun as we counted and learned a few new words.  

And..........guess who won!

Other ways to play this game are instead of writing TAKE OFF you could introduce the plus and minus signs so writing, -1 OR +3.  You could also write out the number words instead of just the number.

Materials used:
Foam Cupcakes
Perler beads (but any kind of bead would work)
Pom-pom's
Coffee Filters (or anything to hold the beads)
Cardstock
Scissors
Marker/Pen

And here are how some of our other decorated cupcakes:

using pom-pom's as sprinkles

using perler beads as sprinkles

This game fits perfectly in a quart size ziploc baggie!!

DIY Wind Chime - Vacation Memento

Summer vacations are quickly approaching which gave me the idea of writing this post.  How many times do you go on vacation and collect shells, rocks or other things that you would like to keep as a memento but then ends up sitting in the  bottom of a drawer?  I hope this post will help you turn some of your findings into a beautiful keepsake or memento.

Over Easter we visited with my parents in Ohio.  They have this cute 'cove' with lots of shells, driftwood and other beach-y treasures!  My daughter LOVES to collect and so she had a pocket full of some seashells and rocks.  On our way out I grabbed a piece of driftwood as my mind is constantly thinking, "I could do something with this."

 Here's how we turned our treasures into a DIY Wind Chime:

• My daughter sorted through and picked out what she wanted to use

• My husband gave me some spider wire and drilled some holes through the driftwood

Some of the shells had holes so those were easy to string onto the wire and for the other treasures without holes I used a hot glue gun.

Once all done we hung from a tree in our backyard.  This was an easy and lovely way to make a memento from our visit to my parents.  Every time we look at it or hear it clang together we will be reminded of the memories we made.

What do you do with the things you collect from vacation?  Let us know in the comments below or visit us on our Facebook page!

Disney Countdown

We leave for Disney in 11 days and of course my kiddos are super excited.  We've been going annually and this will be our 4th year.  I've never done a countdown before, other than the calendar, but because my kids ask every day how many days are left I decided it would be fun if they had something they could countdown with.

We picked up a few boxes of popsicle sticks at a yard sale last summer and I knew I wanted to use them since I have SO many.  I also have a Mickey Mouse cookie cutter, red glitter and black construction paper so I was almost ready to begin.  The last thing I needed was something to hold the popsicle sticks.....Target dollar section to the rescue!  As I was walking past the dollar section I spotted these yellow tins that would work perfect.  I now had all the colors I wanted to use for Mickey, the classic Black, red and yellow Mickey is so well known for.

I was hoping the colored popsicle sticks I had would have included red but no luck.  I started off by painting the popsicle sticks red.  While they were drying I traced and cut out the Mickey heads.  I used white glue to write the numbers on each Mickey head and shook glitter over the number.

After everything had thoroughly dried I glued the Mickey heads to the popsicle sticks but needed something to hold up the stick inside the tin.  This part was not necessary but I thought it looked better.  Sure enough I had some left over styrofoam in my craft cabinet, cut it to size and stuck each popsicle into it and now the Mickey's stand up perfectly!

I added a simple label to the front of the tin and voila.......Disney Countdown.  It also helps my almost 5 year old with number recognition as she searches for the number each day!