Cloud Dough Sand Castles

This was our very first experience with cloud dough.  To be honest I've never heard of it before but after seeing several other blogs and tons of pins on Pinterest I knew we had to give it a try.  It is so super easy to make too!  Just flour and oil.  After reading different ways of making it I chose to go with 8 cups of flour to 1 cup of baby oil.  I did see that you could also use vegetable oil but glad we chose the baby oil as it smells sooo good!  My 3.5 year old is funny when it comes to touching things that are...different.  I'm glad to report that she is a fan of cloud dough.  If I had to describe the texture it would be kind of fine like sand but much smoother.  This activity kept my daughters attention for almost 2 hours!  Other than playing with water beads this is the longest she has played while engaged in a sensory activity.

Tiffany loved shaking in the glitter.  We went through a few tubes of glitter with this activity!

Before we started playing I told Tiffany we were going to have a pretend day at the beach.  When she starting playing with the cloud dough the first thing she wanted to do was make sand castles, of course!

And here is all that glitter!

I also brought out a pirate sand table out and part of that became a part of the cloud dough activity.  My daughter began burying 'gold' and then digging for treasure! Tiffany would bury and Mommy  Pirate Mommy would find the gleaming booty!

Cloud dough is by far our favorite sensory activity!!  

Recycled Bird Feeders

By no means is making this kind of bird feeder a new idea.  It's just one of those good old fashion crafts you can easily share with your kids.  At our house we keep the empty paper towel and toilet paper rolls for future use since their are so many creative uses for them.  My daughter is 3.5 and to date has not yet made a peanut butter bird feeder.  Initially, I was going to use a couple of pine cones from a tree we have in our backyard but then I remembered all the empty paper towel and toilet paper rolls we have and opted to use those....less sticky then those pine cones too!

Start with 2 paper plates one with the peanut butter and the other with the seed. Before beginning to cover your toilet paper roll with the peanut butter be sure to use a hole punch on each side of the roll so that you can hang it later.

My daughter was very focused on the spreading part.  Good for those fine motor skills too!

Voila!  Finished product.  I didn't get a picture of it but of course after spreading your peanut butter simply roll the toilet paper roll in the bird seed.  My daughter was very happy with her work.  Throughout the craft we talked about how we are helping to feed the birds and how happy they will be to find our bird feeders.

And here comes the real joy!  We hung the bird feeder where we could see it from our dining room window.  Within minutes of hanging our feeder this is what we had the joy of watching.  You can only imagine my 3.5 year old's excitement!  I reminded her that she did this, she helped the birds find food when it's hard for them to find it on their own.

This craft was not only fun but it also offered a special message.  The message that it's important to remember to help others including these lovely creatures.  

For those of you who may be in the dead of winter, like us, help your feathered friends by making one of these simple bird feeders with your kiddos.

BIRD FEEDER NUMBER 2:

We also made a second bird feeder this time using a paper towel roll.  I also added 2 craft sticks so that the birds could stand on something while they eat!

The process is the same for this feeder as it was for the first one.  The only difference is that I added the 2 craft sticks.  I used a razor to make a slit and slid the craft sticks through the paper towel roll.  My daughter was still in charge of the spreading and rolling!

And here is bird feeder number 2:

Presidents Day craft

In honor of Presidents Day here is a fun and easy craft for your preschooler.

Supplies you will need:
Construction paper (any color)
Craft sticks, either colored or plain that you can paint
Markers
Glue
Cotton balls

I really loved this craft because it helps with color recognition, shape recognition and fine motor skills.  Before my daughter glued on the craft sticks I used markers that matched the color of the sticks we were using and drew where the craft sticks should go.  Basically an outline of the craft stick.  Tiffany matched and glued the craft stick  to the correct color on the paper while also using her fine motor skills with the gluing part! We used a triangle shape for the roof and a rectangle shape for the front door and chimney.  Finally, Tiffany glued on cotton balls for smoke.

What fun crafts or activities do you have for Presidents day?

Tape Resist Art

I've been seeing some pins and posts about Tape Resist Art and decided to give it a go with my 3.5 year old.  We started off with a large piece of regular paper and I used painters tape and spelled out her name. Please forgive the boxed off areas.  Initially, my 8 year old was going to try his hand at it and I thought I would give them each their own section of the paper but my son decided not to try after all.

 My daughter LOVES to see her name in print so I thought using her name for this activity would add some extra excitement for her.  I opted to go with markers versus paint for this go-around.  With some coaxing Tiffany began scribbling around the letters and asked for some help from me.  Once she got going she was excited to pick the colors and scribble away.

Once I peeled the tape carefully off of the paper she seemed amazed at how pretty the letters of her name stood out!  Definitely something we will try again.

Counting with stickers

We have been working on one-to-one correspondence and here is an easy activity to help your preschooler build on this skill.  I simply put some fun animal stickers on construction paper and used white sticker dots to show the number of animal stickers.

I drew some boxes to show my daughter where the dots should go.  She counted each sticker and then added the correct number of dots.

......And she got them correct!

I left Tiffany after I thought she had finished the activity.  When I came back to the room I found that she had turned the paper over and was doing it again by her own choice!!  That put a great big smile on my face!!

What kind of one-to-one correspondence activities have you done?

Playing With Straws

We love using contact paper since they're are so many fun ways to be creative with it.  Most recently we used contact paper and bath tub letters to go over our Abc's, see more about that here.  Today we paired contact paper up with straws.  We also tried popsicle sticks which worked fine but Tiffany seemed to have more fun with the straws.  I think the fluorescent colors of the straws makes playing with them that much more enjoyable.

 When Tiffany first started playing around with the straws she immediately made the letter "T."  Anytime she sees the letter "T" she says, "that's my name!" She then made a capital "I" and a lower case "i." 

After playing with letter shapes I asked Tiffany to put up the straws according to size.  I had already cut up the straws into different lengths.  The funny part about this is when she was lining them up she said, "this one is 10 units long!"  I have no clue where that even came from!!  These little ones are smarter than we think!!

My 8 year old got in on the fun with measuring too.

During the same time Tiffany was playing with the straws and contact paper my son happened to be playing with his Lego mini figures.  He had an idea to line up his mini figs on the contact paper.  I told him they probably wouldn't hold.  The verdict.......some fell off while others stayed up just fine!!

I would love to hear how you enjoy contact paper with your kiddos!

Abc's and 123's using bathtub letters and numbers

My 3.5 year old can sing the abc song and for the most part can identify almost all upper case letters (and some lower case) but I still wanted to encourage and reinforce so I came up with an idea.  I knew I wanted to use contact paper but what did I want to use for the letters?? Initially, I was going to cut out pieces of felt into squares and write the letters on each piece.  I tried that but the felt I had on hand was a dark green color and the letters were not showing up very well. After thinking about what I already had on hand I thought of Tiffany's bathtub letters...perfect!!

My next thought was would the letters stick well enough to the contact paper? Yup, perfectly!

We started out by singing the abc song and then I asked Tiffany to put the letters of the alphabet in order up on the wall. What I chose to do was sing with Tiffany and then stop singing before we got to the next letter.  Tiffany had to say what the next letter was and find it in the pile of letters on the floor and then slap it up on the contact paper!

We had a fun time singing and 'slapping' on the letters.  I had numbers on hand too so when we finished with letters we worked on numbers next.

I am in love with contact paper! What fun things do you and your kiddos do with contact paper?