Blog Favorites: Educational Activities Part II

The Adventures of Bear shares how to make a simple number counting book any toddler would love using paper, a stapler, and some sticker.

I think my kids are a little bit young for it, but I love this Parts of the Blood lesson from My Montessori Journey.

Filth Wizardry shares some ideas of grid copying drawings you can make with your kids. Looks like a good “quiet time” activity to me.

The Peterson Party has a cute uppercase and lowercase letter matching game you can easily make using water bottle caps. Finally a good use for non-recyclable water bottle caps!

Have an educational activity you’d like to share? Please link up in the comments section!

Toddler gardening

This activity is courtesy of my local library’s wonderful free toddler craft series. We did this activity last year and this year. Emma really enjoyed it both years, and this year the grass even survived Emma and Johnny dumping out the cups of newly-planted grass seeds and then throwing everything back in topsy-turvy.

MATERIALS:

• Cup (clear ones are nice since you can see some of the roots)
• Soil
• Grass seeds
• Water

STEPS:

1. Fill cup with soil, leaving at least 1 inch of clearance at the top.
2. Add a thin layer of grass seeds.
3. Cover the grass seeds with a small amount of soil.
4. Water.
5. Place in a sunny area.
6. Wait for seeds to grow.

Here is the poor destroyed grass plant (I thought it was out of Emma’s reach and I was wrong)

Surviving five days later

And thriving two weeks later

  Emma really enjoyed giving the grass a “haircut” this morning.

Crafts With Dad

Mike is off on a business trip for the week. Before he left, he decided to spend some quality time doing crafts with the kids.

Of course, his first idea had to involve fire. He wrote the message using lemon juice, and then held a tea light underneath until the message showed up. Emma liked this activity, although it took a long time for the letters to show up. This is obviously an activity that requires a lot of parental supervision. Mike says it’s easy to burn the paper. He remembers doing this with his aunt as a little kid, and she actually caught the paper on fire.

Next up was to make a case to protect our GPS unit. They started off with duct tape and paper…

And made a very nice, robust case :)

This last picture has nothing to do with Mike, but I thought it was really cute. Emma spent about half an hour reading Johnny books in their room this afternoon. He sometimes paid attention and sometimes read his own book at the same time. Just like Emma does when I read books to her.

For the Birds

The Great Backyard Bird Count starts this Friday! It’s free and easy to participate, and a great way for you and your child to learn more about your local birds. You can participate from anywhere, even from a high-rise city apartment. You only watch birds as often as you want to – you don’t have to commit to watching every day or for a set time period.

See the official site for more info, and don’t forget to check out their “just for kids” section while you are there!

Too cold to go out? Bring winter in!

I’ve been feeling frustrated by this winter’s constantly-well-below-freezing temperatures that have made it hard to have a 1-year-old and a 2-year-old outside for more than a couple minutes.

Yesterday I was tired (having been up with Johnny from 1:30-2am and mysteriously stayed awake ever since) and the kids were grumpy and feeling cabin-feverish. It was 11 degrees Fahrenheit outside, so not great weather for going out. Both kids were mildly sick, so I thought it would be cruel to fellow mothers to take them to the children’s museum (where they would have a blast, but would also infect everyone else). I decided to do what I’d seen done on a few other blogs (can’t remember which ones, feel free to comment if you’ve blogged about this) and bring the snow in to them.

I put a towel on the floor, loaded two IKEA food trays with snow, and gave each kid some play silverware to play in it with.

I wish I had a picture of Johnny’s face when I first brought the snow in – he thought it was the coolest thing ever!

 

We added some food coloring after a while, and Emma now knows that if you mix red and blue you get purple!

The snow lasted a long time, especially considering that our house is heated through our floors so the floors are always the warmest part of the house.

This kept the kids occupied for nearly an hour, cleanup was minimal (thanks to the trays and the towel), and they played with snow for a long time again this morning.

This is an activity with a lot of learning potential too – yesterday we talked about how the snow was cold and how it melted because the house was warm. Emma got to watch the food coloring disperse throughout the snow from initially being just a few drops of color, she saw how the color got lighter as it spread through more and more snow, and she learned a little bit about color mixing. Johnny learned about the texture of snow without crying because he was cold, and he learned what snow tastes like too (not something I was trying to teach him, but somewhat inevitable considering he’s 13 months old. At least recent research says dirt is good for kids…

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?

For the Birds

The Great Backyard Bird Count is an annual event run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society. It runs February 13-16, but you can get started now by learning how to identify birds. If you have older children, you might want to check out their site for kids and their free homeschool unit. You can even start counting birds now through eBird.