Put a Lid On It

This past weekend, we had lots and lots of cold, stormy, rainy weather.  A pure delight for us Arizonans.  If only there was no school and other obligations to attend to, so that we could have indulged in a lazy day with pj's, hot cocoa, movies and blankets.  I was loving the rain, but my littles were sorely disappointed that play day at the park, or even in the yard, was cancelled.  What to do with two house-bound kiddos?

I had a bit of cooking to do during the day, and I tried to enlist their help.  They typically love helping to measure and dump things into the mixer.  This time, they lost interest quickly.  Mr. Three went and found some cars and motorcycles to run along the walls and floor while Mr. Four managed to pull out a opened container of oats to keep himself entertained.  Luckily, it was only about 1/4 full, so it didn't bother me too much when it quickly ended up spilled onto the kitchen floor.  Mr. Three was all too willing to help clean up (and by clean up I mean mostly spread around) the mess.  It was actually a nice activity to keep them busy while I finished up my dinner preparations.

After cleaning up the kitchen mess, I had a light bulb moment.  The oatmeal container would make a great toy.  Mr. Three and Mr. Four are really interested in sorting and pouring all sorts of items.  Good thing I have been saving(hoarding) the lids off of the squeeze baby food pouches for some time.  All I did was cut a rectangle in the oatmeal container lid just big enough to push a squeeze pouch lid through, popped the lid on, gave the boys the container of squeeze pouch lids and let them play.  Best rainy-day-free toy ever!

Besides filling the oatmeal canister with lids, they also poured the lids back and forth between the containers.  I had Mr. Three tell me the color names as he pushed each lid through the hole.  We counted lids and then discovered that they are stackable and make great towers to knock down (Mr. Four loved the destruction aspect.).

Earlier in the week, with the cub scouts, we had taken the lids and tried to flick them off the side of our hands into a box, as a simple gathering activity.  The scouts and my little boys loved this game.  Here's a video, if you want a (not so great) demonstration, with a little motorcycle action thrown in for interest.

I have also pinned some other great uses for these squeeze pouch lids that we may have to try soon.  So, if you have been saving (hoarding) these lids like me, here are several good reasons to keep them in your stash of useful stuff.  You're welcome!


It would be fun to make bugs on a sticky table.

I found these rolling truck and car toys.  This could be a fun cub scout activity as well as something for the preschool set.

This build a bug busy bag is on my to do list for the spring.

I love this color wheel matching game, and you could easily use the squeeze pouch lids in place of the wooden wheels.

In case that's not enough, a few more ideas:
use them to make patterns
count the lids
stack and compare towers
graph with them
make a batch of playdough and use the lids as stamps, monster eyes, wheels, etc.

Loads of rainy day (or any day) fun!

If you're still reading, here's the boys playing with their toy, adding their own great sound effects.  Anyone with little boys knows that sound effects are mandatory for pretty much any activity.  Enjoy!

I Spy ABC Tub

You know I love a little I Spy fun at my house.  I have found lots and lots of sensory tub ideas all over the internet and came up with a fun variation on an alphabet tub for my boys, borrowing and adding to lots of great ideas I've seen elsewhere.

I started with some white rice and some alphabet pasta, dyed with the trusty Wilton gel food colors.  I wisely kept the dye out of Mr. Three's reach.  (It was a fun little experiment for the boys to take the baggie of uncolored pasta and squish it in the plastic bag with the vinegar and food coloring and watch it turn colors.)

After putting that together, I added 26 water bottle tops with scrapbook sticker alphabet letters stuck on the inside of the lid, and tossed them in.

I also tossed in a set of magnetic fridge letters and some round colored abc beads.

Then, the funnest part for my boys:  scoops, funnels, magnifying glasses and a pencil-magnet fishing pole to catch the letters.

I also put a cookie sheet with a sun bleached magnet puzzle and a homemade dry erase board (a cd case with white paper inside) alongside the tub to use to explore the letters.

They loved sorting the letters and examining the tiny pasta abc's with the magnifying glass.

I spy some B's!

I was happily surprised when Mr. Three immediately took to finding "his" letter in the box, excitedly pulling out his T's and showing them to me.  He is really fascinated by beginning letters in names right now and points them out on store signs, books, street signs, food packaging.  The kindergarten teacher in me does a little happy dance at this.

Mr. Two, who is starting to read, began making words with his letters and writing them on the homemade dry erase board.  Victory!

Oh, this tub will be put to good use!  I'm so excited that it turned out and that my boys love playing in it as well.

Jumping Frogs

 
I found a set of 24 plastic jumping frogs at The Dollar Tree last week, and couldn't resist.  We had lots of fun just making them hop around the house.  Mr. Three giggles whenever we get them to jump very far.  Here's a little activity we did with our frogs.

I marked each section of a plastic tray with a number, ones on the outside sections, and two on the middle section.  Each person chose a frog color, then we took turns making them hop.  Then we counted out our points, zero for any frogs that hopped outside of the tray, one point for each frog in the outer sections and double points for any that landed in the center.  Simple and fun. 

If making the frogs hop is too difficult for your little one, try standing up and dropping them into the tray placed on the floor, then adding up the points.

 

Try and jump the frogs onto the blue felt "pond" for a simpler variation as well.

These little hoppers are great for sorting (try using tongs or a spoon to transfer them) and patterning as well.

Or just have fun playing with them any way you wish!

Hoppin' Leap Day

To celebrate Leap Day, we enjoyed a little frog fun. 

We read lots of frog books, especially Froggy books (he's our favorite frog, besides Kermit).

I have collected lots of frog manipulatives and such over the years, so I pulled out some and added a few new frogs to the mix.

Here were the favorites today.

Mr. Two loved playing with my bucket of colored frogs.  I love how he grouped them in a rainbow-like formation.  Mr. Three likes to put these frogs on his little fingers like finger puppets to play with them, too.

I found the idea to make a pond with green foam lily pads somewhere on Pinterest (sorry, no link).  I filled a blue bucket with water, lily pads, plastic frogs and glass colored marbles, then gave the kids scoops and funnels to play in the pond with. 

They loved this and asked to get it out again.  Maybe this weekend, since it needs to be outside.

I also made this little "fishing" game for the boys to play with.  I've had the fly swatter and the little pipe cleaner flies for a long time, to be used in other games.  I had a light bulb moment when I realized that they would make a fun little game together, especially after realizing the flies were magnetic.

I had a frog fly swatter that I laced a piece of red ribbon through to make a long tongue.  I sandwiched two magnets between the ribbon end.   

Then I let them try and catch the flies.

The flies are made with 6 inch black pipe cleaners and a black pony bead.  Here's the basic construction. 

Put the bead in the middle of the pipe cleaner and loop one end through the bead to form a wing. 

Repeat on the other side to make the second wing. 

Fold the ends of the pipe cleaner over onto to eliminate the sharp ends and twist.  Now you have a little magnetic fly to catch.

We had so much fun with the frogs today, I think we'll keep them out and I'll be adding some new games and activities this week and next.

I hope you had a "hoppy" Leap Day!

Penguin Puzzlers and Cookie Baking

I forgot about these matching cards that I used in my classroom until Mr. Two pulled them out of my January box yesterday morning.  I originally had my kindergarteners play concentration with them, but today, I had Mr. Two match up the number card with the corresponding number of penguins card. 

He loved doing this, and I was pleasantly surprised that, not only did he count correctly all the way to 15, but could identify the numbers 6 through 15.

A few tips for making your own card games.

Chart stickers are perfect for making math games, as they are inexpensive and you can fit lots onto a card.

When you are placing stickers on a card for your child to count, try and line the items up in rows, rather than randomly, so that it will be easier for them to count and keep track of which items have already been counted.

Laminate your cards so that you will get many uses out of them.

Want to add some fun penguin stories to this activity?  Go here for my list of favorite penguin books.

I also spent some time yesterday afternoon with Mr. Three (who decided not to take a nap) baking cookies. 

 

He loved dumping in the ingredients and helping mix them all together.

The best part? 

 

Eating one, of course!  It's exciting to have this little guy want to help in the kitchen.  What a sweet day!

An Arizona Snow Day

Yesterday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the kids and Mike had the day off.  We had our own version of a snow day here in sunny Arizona.

My brother and his family were in town with their two little boys, so we had some extra cousin time this weekend.  We had a yummy lunch of In 'N Out burgers for the dads and Ned's Krazy Sub sandwiches for the moms and kids at Grammie's house.  Then, we spent some time in the "great outdoors", indoors at the giant Bass Pro Shop.  The boys had fun exploring the tents and atv's, looking at the giant fish and stuffed animals and roaming around the store.

We also made snowmen, with play dough.  We made snow dough, using this play dough recipe, only I added some orange extract (Mr. Two wanted that instead of peppermint) instead of the kool-aid mix.  I also added some fine silver glitter to give it some sparkle.

I gave the boys carrot shaped buttons and round buttons, pieces of ribbon and wiggle eyes to make their own snowmen.  They started out making traditional snowmen, with three round balls for the body, scarves, carrot noses.

Then, it quickly turned into melted snowmen (by squishing them) then a giant mass of button encrusted playdough.  This turned out to be a great fine motor skill practice as I had them pick out all of the buttons from the dough and poke all the remaining dough out of the button holes with toothpicks.

 

Basically, the clean up took a lot longer than the actual play time, but they seemed to have fun with the cleaning too.  Well, maybe not so much for Mr. Three...

I found this idea on Pinterest and decided to adapt it to go along with our snow day.  I gave the kids a small container of water and sponge brushes to paint some foam snowflakes I had on hand.  Then they stuck the flakes all over our sliding glass door.

They loved this and stuck with it for well over half an hour (which was great so that I could fix dinner).  They had fun pretending they were looking out the window at a real snow storm.

That night, after soup and grilled cheese, we went to Bahama Bucks to have a tasty snow treat.  Mr. One and Mr. Two shared a shaved ice with cotton candy and strawberry flavoring, and Mr. Three had a great time eating Mike's and my shaved ice.  Yum!

We may not have typical snow days here in the hot southwest, but we can still enjoy them in our own way!

Looking for some snowy day good reads?  Go here for my list of snow favorites.  You can also try here and here and here for some favorite winter activities we have done in the past.

Happy winter!

Christmas Tree Lights Game and Some Sewing

Yesterday, I pulled out this Christmas game for my boys to play before bedtime.  It was such a hit that Mr. Two immediately pulled it out and wanted to play with it again this morning!  Thanks to Joyfully Weary for some great activity ideas here.

I found the green foam cone and some plastic light pegs at Michael's for half off.

I put 25 light pegs into each glass custard cup and had the kids take turns rolling the dice and putting that number of lights on the tree.  Whoever uses all of their lights first wins.

Mr. Three had lots of fun rolling the dice while the others played.

After the older boys went to school, Mr. Three tried to play the game on his own.  It was so cute to see him roll the dice, stick a light in the tree and roll again.  Then he discovered how much fun it was just to play with the lights, letting them jingle in the bowl and spill through his fingers.  I forget how much he is growing into a little boy.  Not a baby anymore.

The only drawback to this is that the pegs leave large holes in the Styrofoam, so I don't think it's going to survive more than one year.  Maybe I'll try covering it in play dough or clay to reuse it. 

On another note, I got back into sewing mode last night and finished my boys' bow ties for church.  I think they'll look very dapper indeed!