Pattern blocks: Beyond templates

I blog about pattern blocks quite a bit. They are currently my favorite educational toy, and this is one of the (many) reasons why. Emma called me in the other day and said, “Mama, look at my robot!” I went in, and she had created this beautiful robot. She went on to explain that she gave the robot a skirt, because the robot is a girl.

Homemade Maracas

They may be a little lacking in the handle department, but the kids don’t mind and these sound exactly like maracas. We filled ours with small pieces of cardboard, which make enough noise that the kids are happy and are quiet enough that I don’t mind listening to them all day long. Glue on the lids (hot glue works well) if you don’t want your children opening the containers. Our lids are not glued on, and my kids have had fun emptying and re-filling their bottles.

A few extensions of this activity that we may or may not do:

• Decorate the containers
• Try swapping out different materials to see what they sound like. A few we might try:
  • beans
  • rice
  • pasta
  • cotton balls
• Shaking along to the beat in a song
• Counting shakes
• Experiment with putting more or less of a material in the bottle to see how it changes the pitch and timbre of the maraca.

When little ones don’t feel well…

It’s been a month of not feeling great at our house. Nothing serious, just a rather miserable and long-lived virus making the rounds in our family (Lily, thankfully, seems to have been spared the experience). It has, however, gotten me thinking about ways to keep little ones as happy as possible when they feel anything but great. Here are a few quiet activities that have helped to distract from illness this month at our house:

• puzzles
• books (hooray for public libraries!)
• drawing
• coloring
• painting
• play dough
• sidewalk paint
• looking after baby dolls and stuffed animals
• building with blocks
• pattern blocks
• playing with fabric scraps
• playing “school”

I have resorted to television on occasion, but I try to stick to Signing Time DVDs (I did allow a handful of Bob the Builder and one or two Word World episodes). I watch with the kids so we can talk about what they see and to keep myself from using the television as a babysitter. Both my children and I have learned sign language vocabulary from Signing Time, and I learned about greywater purification systems from Bob the Builder. I even looked it up afterwards, and the description seemed reasonably accurate, at least according to Wikipedia…

How do you keep your young children happy when they don’t feel well?

Another play mat

MATERIALS:

• Large sheet of paper
• Desktop protector
• Markers or crayons

We hadn’t made a play mat in a while, so it was the perfect activity for our first day home without relatives to help entertain yesterday. Johnny got this car/boat/plane set from a friend as a big brother gift, so we made a town to go with it. I accidentally cut the paper a little bigger than the mat. We’ll either cut it down for future play or let this one wear out and make the next one fit.

The kids pulled out the peg dolls Emma decorated to use as townspeople.

I was pleasantly surprised at how smoothly the day went caring for three children on my own. The kids are maybe starting to feel better, and I think that helped. They both ate properly for the first time since Lily was born, and that went a long way towards the day going well.

See other play mats we’ve made here.

Blog Favorites: Crafts requiring minimal materials

• 4 Crazy Kings shows how to make Easy Toilet Paper Tube Stamps. Materials used: toilet paper tubes and paint. Haven’t got paint? See the post for some substitution ideas.

 

• Make a nature collage using a lint roller as described at the Frugal Family Fun Blog. You can even turn your collage into a placemat! Materials used: a sticky lint roller and plants from your neighborhood.

 

• Make your own foam bath toys as seen at Pink and Green Mama. Materials used: craft foam (and scissors).

 

• Looking for outdoor water play ideas? Try this aluminum foil river from Filth Wizardry. Materials used: aluminum foil.

$1 Crafting with Dad: Dinosaur Models

Last Saturday, Mike and I decided to take advantage of my 14-year-old sister visiting to go on a mini-date. Our destination? Our local Michaels craft store, where we picked up these two wooden dinosaur models for $1 apiece. Emma and Johnny put the models together with Mike Sunday and last night, and thoroughly enjoyed themselves each time. Johnny’s dinosaur rarely falls apart, but Emma’s has a habit of losing limbs, so we may need to add some glue so she can play with it a little more. Both kids really enjoy their dinosaurs.

 

Our kids enjoyed finding the pieces and matching the shapes to the map provided with the wood cuts.

Paint chips and color schemes

  

Emma loved this simple color-matching activity that I made using paint chips. I took two identical strips, cut one and left the other one intact. Emma’s job was to match the shades. The differences in shades are subtle enough that she found this activity interesting and challenging. Johnny didn’t understand the activity, but he still thoroughly enjoyed playing with his own set of paint chips.

This activity provides a good opportunity to discuss the concept of light and dark colors, favorite shades of a particular color, if you would need more or less dye/food coloring to get a lighter/darker shade, etc.

Computer and toddlers

I’ve written before about my children’s computer addiction. Here are three of my favorite free programs – chosen in part because they don’t have ads for your child to click into or easy ways to start chatting with customer service. All of these work great on our PC computer running Windows; I haven’t tried any of them on a Mac.

Downloads:

• Crazy Little Fingers is a free program that is supposed to lock out the rest of your computer. I have never been able to get out without using the Ctrl-Alt-Del key combination that is designed to get you out, but Johnny has, several times – and he usually shuts down the computer at the same time. I don’t know how he does it, but consider yourself warned. The program is very simple: it brings up a new picture and/or sound effect for every key your child hits. For letters, it brings up a picture of an animal that starts with that letter. I’ve learned about some new animals that way. If your child hits a number key, they get that number on the screen with a sound effect. Other keys just add sound effects to the picture that is currently on the screen.
• Tuxpaint is a very cool free art program that is (in my opinion) better than many of the children’s art programs available for purchase. The program includes a wide variety of art tools, including shapes, textures, and stamps.

Online:

• Poisson Rouge/Red Fish Soup is a trilingual (UK English, French, and Chinese) exploratory site. Clicking on different parts of the main site takes you to games, music programs, programs to teach body parts, seasons, letters, numbers, coloring, and much, much more. None of the games can be “won” – they just get played over and over. This may appeal to some people and frustrate others. Change the language by clicking on the castle turret with the corresponding flag on the lower right corner of the main screen.

I’d love to hear of any educational, free programs your child enjoys.

Peg doll and recyclables dollhouse

I bought these peg dolls for Emma quite a while ago, and today she asked to get them out and decorate them. I think they turned out quite nicely, especially given that it’s her first go at decorating a 3D object. I need to get her some non-smudging pens for this type of work, ideally in a range of colors instead of just black. Any suggestions as to what I should look for?

The dolls needed a house, so we took the lid of a shoebox and some scraps of cardboard and fabric and created this humble abode:

Emma loved this activity, and it was made completely from leftover scraps apart from the two dolls (99 cents for a package of two, and I think I got them 40% off). She spent at least an hour playing with the finished product this afternoon. Maybe we should take a second shoebox lid and build an addition onto the dollhouse. :)

Play food to last (for a while, at least)

You may recognize this food from my restaurant play post a couple months ago. The food was printed from Filth Wizardry. My kids used our first set until it literally fell to shreds, so we made a second set this week, laminating it this time. I don’t have a laminator, but I bought a roll of laminate that works well for small projects like this. I’ve seen other bloggers use clear packing tape to produce a similar effect.

Both kids love their new laminated food. The food is pretty small, so we store it in an old yogurt container. Emma uses it with her play kitchen as well as with the restaurant play mat!

When activities don’t go as planned…

The kids were both grumpy and Johnny was sick yesterday, so to distract them from their mutual bad moods I set up this indoor water play activity. Instead of playing in the water with plastic utensils as usual, however, Emma decided to start walking in the water. This was okay until she got a drop of water on her dress. She decided to remove her “so wet” clothes and was about to use the tray as a tub, but I whisked both kids off to the real tub instead…

I think it’ll be a bit before I try this activity again. Luckily we have over a foot of fresh snow, so we can do this one instead until Johnny’s feeling well enough to go out - no idea why I didn’t think of that during yesterday’s snow storm…

Keeping toddlers active indoors

It’s warmer here than it was earlier in the month (34F this morning and set to go up into the low 40s, hooray!), but still not the kind of weather where we can spend a lot of time outside. This post got me thinking about some of the ways we stay active indoors.

• Dancing: I love this one because it’s simple and easy. Put on some fun music and improvise. I’m a terrible dancer, but my kids are too young to know it.
• Hide and seek: Neither one of my kids gets the concept of hiding and then waiting to be found, so if I count to ten they run and hide (nearly always in the same place) and then come running out when I say “Ready or not, here I come!” I actually love this version of the game, since I can play it with Emma while making dinner, emptying the dishwasher, etc. Johnny just runs and hides wherever Emma is.
• Rolling and throwing balls: Kids get a workout with this one, especially when their coordination isn’t good enough to catch the balls. This is probably Johnny’s favorite game (he loves balls). You can have them roll/throw the balls to you or have them throw the balls into box or roll/kick them into a large bag (or a box on its side). Oballs make fantastic indoor balls because you can’t throw or kick them far enough/fast enough to do any real damage. We also have a cool soft rubber spiky ball I picked up in the “Beyond” section of a Bed Bath and Beyond store once that has similar benefits. Unfortunately, I don’t know what it’s called.
• Activity songs: Both kids love these. When I don’t know or don’t like the words/actions I just change them/make them up.
• Balance challenge: Put masking tape on the floor and challenge your child to walk along it. Johnny’s too young for this one, but Emma loves it.
• Different modes of transportation: Practice walking on tiptoes, jumping, skipping, standing on one foot.
• Red light, green light: The goal is to get from one end of the room to the other. They can move forward when the person in charge (who typically stands at the end of the room everyone else is trying to reach) says “green light” and stop when they say “red light”. This works best if you have a large room (we don’t), but we use our long-ish hallway.
• Simon Says: My kids don’t get they they aren’t supposed to do it if it isn’t prefaced by “Simon Says”, but they will eventually and it’s still good practice in listening to and following directions.

How do you keep your toddlers active indoors?

House Plan Play Mat

We made a new Play Mat! This one is a house plan (for a very small one-bedroom house).

As usual, we made this using butcher paper and our trusty IKEA desk protector alongside my miserable art skills and some scribbled help from the kids…

I planned for them to use this mat with Play-Doh (I was planning to make furniture), but Emma wanted to use her little doll instead, so Johnny used Play-Doh and Emma used her doll. This arrangement worked surprisingly well!

The most popular play mat so far is this one. Emma asks to play with it at least every other day. The paper food has held up surprisingly well, although I plan to make a second set with the kids sometime this week and shroud it in contact paper for even better durability.

Rainbow Collage

The idea for this craft came from this post at No time for flash cards. Allie mentioned that this was a good long term project. I did it in bits and pieces as the kids were interested, and it took us about six weeks start to finish! I had actually forgotten all about it until earlier this week when Emma said, “Mama, let’s finish rainbow” – and that’s what we did!

The sun is made out of four handprints – two of Emma’s and two of Johnny’s.

I initially left off the  purple row of the rainbow because we don't have any purple colored paper. When I announced that we were done, Emma said, "No, rainbow needs purple." I knew she knew the colors of the rainbow thanks to a Signing Time song, but I was still surprised when she noticed that purple was missing. I explained that we didn't have any purple paper. Emma said, "well, black kind of like purple." She was right that we did have black paper and I do see the similarity to purple, but I was reluctant to add a black row to our rainbow. So Emma made a second suggestion: "we can color purple!" And that's what we did. I think it turned out great, and I'm very proud of my little girl's problem-solving skills!

Here are the kids putting the finishing touches on their rainbow. Emma is writing I’s and O’s over and over, which she said spelled the following list: Mama, Dada, Emma, Johnny, Baby in Mama’s Tummy, and Obama. She’s had a bit of an Obama obsession ever since we watched the inauguration…

Indoor water play

 

Johnny isn’t stable enough to stand and play with water, so I tried this indoor water play activity. I put a small amount of water on each tray along with some bubble solution, and gave them IKEA utensils to play with in the water. Both kids loved it, but it made a big mess. 

I think I will do this activity again, but I’ll make a couple adjustments:

• Place each tray on a bath towel – this would minimize spill damage and keep the floor from getting slick
• Eliminate bubbles – the bubble solution was messier to clean up, and made the water slicker when spilled. If you do use bubbles, spraying a water-vinegar solution helps eliminate the slippery effect. I learned the vinegar trick at the Acton Discovery Museum, where they put bubble play things out near the parking lot in good weather.

Possible enhancements (probably best for slightly older children):

• Let kids add their own water using a dropper
• Add some corn starch at the end and play around with the funny goop that forms

Any other enhancements/suggestions?

Blog Favorites

More Mom Time shows how to make a great No theme collage using paper, contact paper, and any other craft supplies you have available. This activity looks like something toddlers and older kids could enjoy.

I love this simple woven placemat activity from Frugal Family Fun Blog. All you need is scissors, colored paper, and contact paper. Again, this seems like an activity that could appeal to younger and older kids.

Any kid that loves letters should enjoy this Wall Pockets activity from Having Fun at Home. And the same activity could be done with colors, numbers, or shapes. Now to keep my 13-month-old son from ripping the pockets off the walls…

I see lots of great sensory tub ideas on the internet. This thoroughly mess-less spaghetti and meatballs activity from Teachingtinytots looks like a great option for sensory tub first0timers to get their feet wet.

Cardboard Box Washer/Dryer

Emma’s been asking for a play washer/dryer for some time, so when I saw this booster seat box I knew exactly what to use it for.

I took the box apart and built it again wrong side out, so that the kids would have plenty of space for decorating. We made a door by tracing a saucer and then cutting with a kitchen knife.

Both kids had a blast decorating the box. I added some triangle, square, and circle buttons in different colors (at Emma’s request).

Emma is thrilled with her new washer/dryer – she couldn’t wait to tell Mike about it when he got home. Johnny seems to think it’s pretty cool too.

Crafts with Dad

Mike spent Sunday afternoon entertaining the kids so I could play the piano without help from Emma OR Johnny. He drew this maze with them to go under their desk protector play mat. Emma didn’t quite get the idea of how a maze works, but they all had a great time coloring.

Mike also made Jell-O with the Emma and Johnny, and for some unknown reason the Jell-O box became Emma’s baby. She’s been carrying it around ever since, rocking it, talking to it, and strapping it into her booster seat to be fed.

Oh, to have the imagination of a two-year-old…

Icicle painting

I got the idea this activity from Mom’s Marbles via Her Cup Overfloweth. It was a great way to use the icicles that currently adorn our house. I hope to do it again with a few more colors of paint/Kool-Aid.

1) Get some icicles. I was amazed at how quickly these melted on the counter (we keep our house at 67 degrees Fahrenheit), so you might want to stick them in the freezer.

2) Pour powdered paint/Kool-Aid/pudding mix onto a sheet of paper.

3)Use icicles as a paintbrush (I wrapped a cloth around the end so the kids’ fingers wouldn’t freeze, as well as to prevent dripping) and paint away.

Emma had a lot of fun, although I think the final outcome would have looked nicer with more colors to mix. I just used the red Kool-Aid we had sitting in our cupboard.

Johnny said he was too much of a man to use a cloth to protect his hand, and he preferred eating the icicle to painting. That’s one good reason to use ice cubes instead of icicles for this activity…

Bubble play

One of Emma’s favorite activities is playing with water, preferably with bubbles. It’s a great way to get her hands REALLY clean, and I believe that kids can learn a lot by pouring water in and out of containers. It can make a mess, but nothing that some towels on the floor and a change of clothing won’t fix. I contain the mess by limiting the amount of water.