Skills learned: Imaginative play
Age: 18m+
Rating (out of 4 stars): 2
This month we have big plans for some fun Halloween themed activities. Our first Halloween activity just happened to be playing dress up! I used a roll of toilet paper to attempt to wrap Izzy up like a mummy. This was way easier said than done as he is a squirmer and doesn't know the definition of holding still and on top of that I am a terrible mummy wrapper in the first place. I think the biggest thing I personally took away from this is the hope that Izzy never really wants to be a mummy for Halloween because my current skill set may not be very accommodating for that. But in all seriousness, this was a fun activity, but maybe a little too fun because the next day Izzy tried to get some more of our regular use toilet paper and brought it to me to have me wrap him up (so a tip on this one might be to make sure your little one absolutely knows the proper use of toilet paper before hand). As I said... I'm not very good in the mummy wrapping department, but I promise that Izzy wasn't as angry as he looks... Cost: $1
Skills learned: Imaginative play Age: 18m+ Rating (out of 4 stars): 2
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We had two activities on our summer bucket list focused around art. This was our second one of the summer. Our first was edible bath paint which you can read about here. Between the two, I think Izzy enjoyed this one more. We started out by dividing up a can of sweetened condensed milk into the individual wells of an ice cube tray. Then I let Izzy watch me dye the milk into each color of the rainbow and we talked about colors and how they can mix together to make other colors. After our paint was all ready to go, we got to work. We both painted our own pictures so I could let Izzy watch me color mine and get a better idea of what to do for his. Although he did get some paint on his paper, most of it ended up on him. Luckily I laid out some towels for us to sit on while painting otherwise a lot more of it would have gotten our floors. After a while things were getting a little too messy to be safe to play in the kitchen anymore, so we finished up in the bath tub and gave him a quick rinse off after we were done. While sweetened condensed milk is super sticky and therefore harder to clean up than our edible bath paint was, it still wasn't too bad and we were done with cleanup within a matter of minutes. And we got these beautiful paintings out of the deal. Not too shabby :) Cost: $1
Skills learned: Creativity, colors, fine motor skills Age: 12m+ Rating (out of 4 stars): 3 Since the weather has been so hot lately, we decided to cool off today with some iceberg animals. What these are are just plastic toy animals (or any small toy you want to use) frozen into ice cubes. I picked farm animals because Izzy loves them and just put the smaller ones from the pack into a regular ice cube tray, poured some water over the top of them, and put them in the freezer over night. Then we were ready to play. There are a lot of things you can do with these at play time. We counted the ice cubes, talked about the animals inside the cubes and what sounds they make, practiced putting them in the container and taking them back out again, and of course Izzy tried to eat them. We played with them for about 10 minutes and then decided to have lunch. After we had lunch we returned to the cubes only to find that they had melted enough that when you threw them at the floor they would shatter and the animals would pop out. This added a fun new dimension to the game and we spent another 5-10 minutes throwing ice cubes around the kitchen. Cost: $3
Skills learned: Counting, fine and gross motor skills, the concepts of 'cold' and 'slippery', animal sounds, Age: 12m+ Rating (out of 4 stars): 3 This evening while daddy was at the temple, Izzy and I decided to try out our creative sides with some edible bath paint. It needed to be edible because although Izzy doesn't put everything in his mouth anymore, I still can't fully trust him not to put something in there just because I tell him not to. We searched pinterest to find some ideas for edible bath paint and found some good ones like plain or vanilla yogurt or whipped cream, but we decided to go with some good old fashioned vanilla pudding. I bought a big package of the instant variety at our local WalMart and whipped it up while Izzy was napping. I poured it into the individual holes of a muffin pan and added some food coloring to make it pretty. It ended up looking like this: For play time, I got Izzy all suited up in a swim diaper (because crazy things can happen if he plays naked in the tub for too long), added some paintbrushes to the pudding and just let him have at it. I showed him how to use the paintbrushes to color the sides of the tub and he figured out how to use his fingers to get the same effect. And yes, he ate his fair share of the paint so it's a good thing we went with an edible version. He painted for a little while but got super frustrated when he tried to stand up only to find that the tub was incredibly slippery which he didn't like in the least. However, my tub was very pretty and colorful by that point so it was okay. Clean up was incredibly easy as I just turned on the shower and rinsed off both Izzy and the tub at the same time and the pudding washed right off. Cost: $1
Skills learned: Creativity, colors, fine motor skills Age: 12m+ (because of the milk required for the pudding) Rating (out of 4 stars): 2 Our first activity of the week was a clothespin poke. For this activity, I took an old egg carton and cut out the bottoms of each egg home place (whatever you want to call it). When this is done, the holes are the perfect size for poking clothespins through. We tried poking them through with the carton upside down and then with it open and right side up. Izzy preferred to just play with the egg carton itself, but since this activity needs to last us a while, I couldn't let him do that for too long. For durability reasons, I would definitely try to get a cardboard egg carton rather than the Walmart styrofoam ones. Cost: $2 Skills learned: Fine motor skills, counting Age: 15m+ The second activity was pouring buttons. We initially thought about using pompoms, but since they were in Izzy's room and he was asleep while I was setting up these activities, we just used the buttons from our toddler sorting tray last week. For this activity, you just need two cups and some small items such as pompoms or craft buttons that your little one can pour from one cup to another. Or Izzy also liked pouring out the buttons and then just picking them up and putting them back in the cups by hand. Cost: $2 Skills learned: Fine motor skills, pouring, colors, counting Age: 18m+ Our last activity of the week had to do with noise makers which was supposed to focus on music and rhythm. We recycled materials we already had on hand. First we used an old pill bottle with some pennies in it to make a shaker. Then we took some corrugated cardboard and rubbed a spoon across the surface to make a cool sound. The last thing we did was take an old formula can and use our spoon to make it into a little drum. He caught on to all of these different inventions right away and enjoyed making his own little baby music. Cost: Free
Skills learned: Rhythm, music Age: 9m+ Okay so first off, I have to apologize. The last few weeks have been absolutely crazy! All of us have had some health issues (Izzy and I with stomach bugs and husby with a probable concussion) and then on top of it all we moved to a bigger apartment to accommodate our little girl who will be joining us (and the blog) at the end of August. So with all of that going on, I never had time to post the details on the activities we did last month. And since Izzy and I have a bucket list to keep us plenty busy this summer, my blogging time might be even less so I am just going to post the details of our activities as we go along. So without further ado, our first three activities of June are: 1 - Toddler sorting tray 2 - Brag book 3 - Clothespin posting For toddler sorting tray you will need an ice cube tray and some random objects to put in the individual cubes of the tray (we used some big craft buttons we used for our buttons in a puffs container activity we did last month). The idea is to have the same number of items as cubes in the tray and have your little one put one item in each cube. Izzy had fun putting buttons in the tray, but never filled the whole thing up by himself. As he played, we talked about the different colors of the buttons and counted the buttons as he put them in the cubes. Cost: You could make this as expensive or inexpensive as you want but for us it was $2 Skills learned: Fine motor skills, colors, counting Age: 15m+ Rating (out of 4 stars): 1 For the brag book all you need is a cheap photo album and some pictures. You can use whatever pictures you want to, but we chose pictures of close family members (mommy, daddy, and grandparents) along with pictures of the cute Izzy himself so that he can learn to recognize those oh so important people in his life. He had fun looking through the pictures and pointing at the faces for me to name off to him. Cost: $1 Skills learned: Language, facial recognition Age: All ages Rating (out of 4 stars): 2 For our last activity, clothespin posting, you just need a clean and empty milk jug along with some clothespins. The object of the game is to drop the clothespins through the opening in the top of the jug. It is just the right size to fit the clothespins through and as an added bonus, when all the clothespins are in the jug, it makes a fun sound when you shake it. Izzy got a huge smile on his face every time he shook the jug and heard its beautiful AKA loud noise. We also counted the clothespins as Izzy dropped them in the jug to work on his counting abilities. Cost: $2
Skills learned: Fine motor skills, counting Age: 15m+ Rating (out of 4 stars): 2 This week has been filled with fun Easter activities. We did four, but I will only really post about 2 of them since we didn't get pictures of the other two. Our first activity was putting Easter eggs through the hole in a baby wipes container. It was very similar to our balls in a tissue box activity, just with different materials. I had to cut the rubbery stuff off of the opening to the wipes box in order to fit the eggs inside, but once that material was gone, it was the perfect size for our purposes. Izzy had fun pushing the eggs through for a few minutes before he was ready to move on with life. Cost: $2 for the eggs Skills learned: Colors, fine motor skills Age: 9m+ Rating (out of 4 stars): 1 The second activity we have to share was with matching colored eggs to colored eggs. We had five different colors and also used this activity for numbers. We put a different number of eggs in each container and counted them as we went through. I also put little snacks in each egg for him to open and find. He really enjoyed finding all of his treats and after he had found them all, he enjoyed making a mess with all of the grass which helped teach him textures. If your little one is a bit older, they could do a better job of matching the color of the eggs to the color of the grass. We just talked about the colors and had fun playing, 16 month old style. Cost: $2 for the eggs and $4.50 for the grass Skills learned: Colors, counting, textures, critical thinking, fine motor skills Age: 12m+ Rating (out of 4 stars): 4 The other two activities we did were an Easter egg hunt (with help from daddy) and sorting eggs in an empty egg container. Both of those were free with the other activities we did since we already had the required eggs and he enjoyed both of those activities quite a bit as well.
I don't know about you, but I always have really good intentions to save what is left of my wrapping paper after a holiday to be used in the future, but from one holiday to the next, the majority of my paper ends up crumpled and wrinkled and just in an overall state that is not fit for wrapping a nice present for someone. So I decided to re purpose some of that damaged paper into an activity for Izzy. The idea was just to wrap a small toy he already has and let him unwrap it and repeat that process as long as he was happy or until my paper ran out. It turns out that my paper ran out before he got bored so that is a pretty good sign. He had a lot of fun tearing open the paper to find his monkey and when I got to my last piece of wrapping paper, I decided to wrap a package of fruit snacks so he could get a nice treat out of it all. It obviously wasn't his birthday, but to him I think it might have felt kind of like one. Cost: Free with paper you already have or $1 for a roll at the dollar store
Skills learned: Fine motor, critical thinking and problem solving Age: 12m+ Rating (out of 4 stars): 2 (Would have been higher, but I ran out of paper) Today we did some activities with tissue paper... you know the bright colored kind you stuff bags of presents with. For the first activity, I gathered a couple of different sizes of bottles and tore the tissue paper up into small pieces. The idea was for Izzy to push the pieces of tissue paper through the opening in the top of the bottles. This was not an easy task for him and I had to help a lot, but he did have fun with it for a few minutes. After we were done with the bottles, I filled a box with some full sized sheets of tissue paper and just let him have fun taking it out and throwing it all over the living room floor which he thoroughly enjoyed. And I have to admit that seeing all those bright pretty colors flying all over the place was pretty cool. Cost: $2 for tissue paper
Skills Learned: Fine motor skills, critical thinking skills, colors Age: At least 15m+ for the bottle activity. The tissue paper in a box could probably be started at 6m+. Rating (out of 4 stars): 2.5 Hello! I'm sure you might think we have fallen off the map, but we haven't. Our activity schedule just hasn't been working out well since Izzy is going through one of those phases where his naps won't accommodate his activities well. But we do have a few from this week to share with you. First up was dropping pom poms down a paper towel tube. Unfortunately this was kind of a spur of the moment activity squeezed in just before dinner so I don't have any pictures to show you what I'm talking about, but I do have this link to the site where I got my idea from. It is number 3 on the list and I will just let you read about it there. As for our review of the activity... Cost: $2.50 for the pom poms Skills learned: Fine motor skills, colors Age: 12m+ Rating (out of 4 stars): 1.5 (He probably would have liked it more if I hadn't of told him not to eat the pom poms) Our next activity was very similar to one we did a while back that we called Window Paint. The difference was that instead of filling our ziploc baggy with paint, we filled it with hair gel and then added food coloring to mix in. Before the food coloring was mixed in, it looked like this: I personally liked this better than the paint because hair gel has a really fun texture and it has bubbles in it which are fun to look at. It also smells really really good. I think Izzy liked it better too but then he bit a hole in the corner of the baggy which ended our activity. It was pretty fun to watch the colors mix together before that little biting accident occurred though. The one suggestion I would make is to either use lighter colored dye or not use so much, but I do tend to overdo the dye when we use it in our activities. Cost: $4 for hair gel (You could probably find it way cheaper than that, but we went to WalMart on a super busy night when it felt like there were 500 people in the aisle so I just grabbed what I could get my hands on) Skills learned: Colors Age: 6m+ Rating (out of 4 stars): 1.5 Another activity we have to share with you today is a shredded paper collage. We took the contact paper we had used in our Contact Paper activity and I taped a nice slab of it to the wall. I then cut up about 10 pieces of colored paper, scrunched them up a bit for texture, and put them in a box like such: The idea was for Izzy to stick pieces of the colored paper from the box onto the contact paper on the wall. I made a mural for him to show him how it worked and he grasped the concept, but wasn't feeling very artsy and just tore the mural I had made down. He played with papers in the box for a little bit, but never got in the mood to put them on the wall himself. I thought it was pretty fun though and will definitely try it with him when he gets a little older. Cost: $6 for contact paper Skills learned: Colors, the concept of 'sticky' Age: 9m+ Rating (out of 4 stars): 1.5 The last activity we have to share with you is a messy Friday activity we would like to call muddy race cars. This was one of our first attempts at imaginative play. I made the 'mud' out of two cups of chocolate pudding and added the cars so Izzy could drive them through the mud. I thought it was quite a beautiful muddy race track as you can see below: Izzy had fun driving his cars around the mud. The pudding made the cars slip and slide around his container but it was still really fun. He had even more fun just playing with the pudding though and although I can't be sure, I think he ate more of it than I would have liked him to. If you didn't want your little one eating the pudding like Izzy did, you could find a recipe for edible cornstarch finger paint and color it brown with cocoa. Cost: $1 for pudding
Skills learned: Imagination, textures such as squishy and slippery Age: 12m+ (because of the milk in pudding) Rating (out of 4 stars): 2 |
AuthorHi! My name is Cassity and I am the mom to a little 2 year old boy named Izzy and a baby girl named Sydney. I am lucky enough to get to be a stay-at-home mom to them and we have fun thinking of new activities to do together in the afternoons. We created this blog as an opportunity to share those activities with you. Archives
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