Clever non-messy, high-sensory, multi-educational paint activity

This activity has it all--ease, fun, sensory, educational in so many ways, no mess, and no clean up. What you do it put a few colors of paint in a freezer bag and then seal and duct tape it. My husband used left-over finger paint that had been sitting around in covered jars for over a week, and he was brilliant to add the duct tape!

We discovered this activity from a great post on ToddlerApproved.com here, which lead us to another post here. Our toddler loves to do this activity together and independently (hence the benefit of the duct tape); the possibilities for fun and learning with are endless! Just see the pictures below.

The Snowy Day & watching a snowball melt science activity

This activity comes directly from my veteran preschool teacher mom. I was sharing with her how much we love to read books by Ezra Jack Keats and during a recent snowstorm, we were highly enjoying "The Snowy Day."  Of course, my mom says like it's common knowledge, oh you can do a really fun activity with that one. Take some snow, put it in a see-through container, and watch it melt. Brilliant!

The little guy was most fascinated when the snow had completely disappeared, so I see us doing this over and over throughout the years as his attention to details grows and grows.

Fantastic vintage children's crafts and play-space books from my veteran preschool teacher mom!

Look at these great books! I can't wait to explore them more and add some photos of the ideas inside.

 

Color my bath water!

Every night this week, we've been coloring our bath water. Just a few drops do the trick for a ton of fun!

 

Homemade football game noise maker

You can make a homemade football game noise maker with a paper towel roll, small amount of beans or rice, and two small pieces of cardboard, and paint or anything you want to use to decorate it. The little man's veteran preschool teacher grandma made the noise maker with him, and we later had fun painting it in prep for watching our Denver Broncos win a spot in the 2014 Super Bowl! Here's how to do it...

First, cut out two round pieces of cardboard to cover the openings of the paper towel roll, glue one to one side of the paper towel roll to close up the hole, put some beans or rice in the paper towel roll, and then glue the other piece of coardboard to close up the other side. Let dry completely. I like to use tacky glue for things that really need to stay stuck on.

Below you can see that the peice of cardboard doesn't have to be the exact size of the opening; it can be a little bit bigger.

Even though we do projects on an art mat to protect the table, I still like to lay down a piece of large cardboard for easy clean up, and so that paint can be put right on top of it.

 

Working away... 

The younger your kid is, the faster they will find something more interesting than the project, lol. You can generate some new ideas, like we started applying dots to the noise maker instead of just strokes, but soon enough, they will want to explore in their own way, which is certainly part of the process. 

Don't expect even the majority of the paint to end up on the noise maker if you have a toddker, but they will live playing with it regardless. 

 Oh, and go Denver Broncos!

A Simple Construction Paper Mask to Satiate His Disguise Obsessions

My toddler has been obsessed with masks since Halloween. He is even obsessed with his little toy people that have masks on. (He has a set of Fisher-Price Super Hero Little People, and he is constantly showing them to us saying, "mask, mask, mask.") He is also obsessed with Batman. Whenever we play hide-and-seek, he says, "hide, Batman is coming," and if he see a billboard or an image of Batman in public, he grabs onto us showing in a bit of fear and makes sure we know about it. 

I don't even think he really knows who Batman is, and we try to tell him Batman is good, but any shady character with their face covered or with any type of disguise is Batman. Today, we were playing, and I pulled the hoodie on his t-shirt up over his head, and he turned and said, Batman. So, I asked if he'd like to enhance the look with a mask, and he was thrilled. And that's what inspired this craft project. 

Essentials are a string and some paper. I asked him what color he wanted his mask to be, and he said red. (Another reason why he can't possibly know much about Batman, haha.) I have never made him a mask before, so I got a pencil and drew a simple outline, cut it out, and then tried to hold it up to his face to figure out where to cut the eyes, but he wouldn't let me, so I eye-balled it (and had to make them bigger later, but that wasn't a big deal).

I used a hole punch to create holes to attach the strings and had a leather string laying around, which has some stretch and a non-slick texture, which proved perfect for keeping the mask in place when he was wearing it, but you can use any string.

Like I said, I had to adjust the eye holes and the notch for the nose several times until perfect (or at least workable). And because I get a lot of my art supplies from the dollar store, my construction paper is thin and flimsy, so I covered the whole mask with clear packing tape on both sides, trimmed off the edges and eye holes, and it looks nicely laminated--not to mention pliable.

After the mask was complete, he had a costume for the day, (or at least for the next hour or so, lol.)

Making a New Years Hat & Learning About the Calendar

My mom was encouraging me to take our toddler to the Children's Museum, because they have a "noon" celebration for kids to learn about New Years, and even though we weren't up for going out, she did give me the idea that I could do a project at home, and what would be better than a New Years hat he could wear all day?!

Before getting started, we talked about what a year is. I don't expect a toddler to be able to understand everything about a calendar, but make it a practice to include him in everything I can in life, and New Years is a big part of life and is about ending a year and starting a new one, so that's what we talked about. We also talked about it being a celebration and saying "Happy New Year," which he caught on to really fast, especially coming off the tail feathers of saying "Happy Halloween" and "Merry Christmas." He thought it was great to have another exciting saying!

To make a top hat, you can look up instructions on the Internet. You can look up how to make almost anything on the Internet. Here are the instructions I referenced: http://childrensart.info/paper-top-hats/. You basically cut out the pieces and let your toddler decorate them; the options are endless.

We had some numbers and letters that my brother and sister-in-law got him for Christmas, that we used as a learning opportunity by asking our toddler to find the  numbers 2-0-1-4 and the letters of his name in the pile of letters, which you can see made it on to the hat. 

My mother-in-law did this activity with my little one, and we both cut our shapes he could glue on the hat. Again, you get to be very involved in doing crafts with toddlers, so have fun! We also used glitter paint, and I added some of the tensile embellishment myself to the top.

The only challenge we ran into is that he was so excited to put a hat on, that he kept putting the pieces of it on, before I had constructed it, so in the end, I raced to finished some of the parts and put it together so that he could enjoy wearing it as soon as possible. There are worse problems!



Happy New Year!