Activities
-
Frozen 2
Our three toddlers are about as Frozen obsessed as you can get. They have been dressing up as Frozen characters since the girls went as Elsa and Anna to the fairytale ball last year, they love to choose Frozen for our family movie night and they love to read any Frozen book they can get their hands on. It’s also a favorite setting for their pretend play as they run about the house freezing each other, escaping from “Marshmellow,” or helping each other as sisters. So with the new movie coming out they’ve been enjoying watching trailer clips and listening to the new song clips that have been released. After…
-
Brown Bear, Brown Bear
We LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Eric Carle in this house and decided to use it to create a little theme week! Lots of storytime activities to pair along with the book – one for each page of the story! This was a great way to extend the reading and talk about the ways things we see in books – like colors, numbers, days of the week etc. apply in real life. Brown Bear Day one was the star of the show – Brown Bear himself. We started with some paper plates and brown paint. While the kids were busy painting I cut…
-
Easter
I feel like Easter is always the holiday that sneaks up on me! As always it is quickly upon us and we worked hard this year to create Easter baskets that don’t over do it on the sugar (or the gifts)! We decided this year to keep all the kids the same as opposed to last year when they basically got individual presents. So today each kid got: A personalized name book A pull tube A pair of play glasses Gardening Gloves A fishing set A playdoh egg A mini chocolate bunny (it is Easter after all) The healthiest fruit snacks i could find Elmo Cookies Chalk Eggs and an…
-
Sensory Week
My kids have been showing more and more interest in pretend play – so this weekend I adjusted our toy bins to reflect that – removing the textured balls, sensory bottles, squeaky blocks and squishies and replacing them with things like toy phones/camera, glasses, dress up hats, baby care toys, play tools and doctor sets. With the lack of sensory play happening in our playroom I decided to focus all of our projects/activities around messy sensory play this week! But why do I care so much about Sensory Play? It is so important and good for your child’s development. Think about your own childhood or what brings back those memories?…
-
Valentine’s Day Activities
We’ve been having so much fun spreading the love for Valentine’s Day this year and hope you enjoy some of our ideas for crafts and activities to get the little ones involved! These are all easy to adapt based on skill level so you can try them with your little ones and big ones – they’ll just need more or less help from you depending on their age. Hand Crafts We recently went to a story-time at the Curious George store where we made these beautiful little valentines. I thought they were so amazing we decided to make them again at home to share with you all! They are so…
-
Numbers & Letters Week: Days 3, 4, & 5
We’ve really been having a blast with our numbers and letters week – if you didn’t catch the first post, this is more a preview to letters & numbers since my three are still so young, but were showing some interest. I don’t expect my kids to have mastered much of anything besides exposure, but have been really impressed by just how much they’ve been picking up through our play! Letters: There are lots of options for letter play and toys when it comes to your babies and toddlers – we had this awesome puzzle that came in a case (honestly this is the best when you’ve got twenty-six pieces…
-
Numbers and Letters Week: Day 1 & 2
We’ve been having lots of fun with our numbers and letters this week! As much as we’ve been enjoying our theme library – we’ve also been trying some fun new activities or old favorites redesigned to incorporate our theme. Below are a few of our favorites from the first two days! Letters: Alphabet Soup This is such a great and easy sensory activity to set up – you could use with whatever sensory material you like! A simple redesign of our classic search and find puzzle pieces to complete the puzzle which you can do with sand, rice, dry beans, play-doh (or more liquid sensory if you’ve got plastic pieces),…
-
Numbers & Letters Week
This week we are focusing on everything numbers and letters! Obviously my three are a bit too little for me to expect them to know or learn their numbers and letters, but they’ve been showing so much interest in them – asking me or trying to tell me what each letter is, counting constantly and wanting to read our ABC book over and over – that I decided to embrace their interests and do what I’m going to call a little pre-learning week. As always with our theme weeks our first stop is the library where we can check out as many books as we like on our theme! I…
-
Repurposing and Reusing Infant Toys
We’ve finally gotten to that stage where most of the infant toys are not being used any longer – sure we’ll still shake our sillies out or start a marching band with the shakers or the rattles, but it’s pretty much time to go for the rest of it. Except that I hate the idea of throwing out all this stuff! I’ll donate some of it, but I always like to have some toys around for all ages whether for future fosters or just entertaining when we have friends with kids over. Rather than just putting them all in storage and wasting lots of money on new toys – I’ve…
-
Holiday Activities
We’ve been working up a storm over here getting ready for and learning about the Holidays! I’ve had a lot of fun with the kids doing some crafting and some play and these are just a few of our favorites! Felt Christmas Tree This was a great activity for my kids to keep them busy and away from our real tree (which is still standing with all ornaments intact thank you very much!) They had their own ornaments to play with and could decorate and undecorated their tree as many times as they liked! The felt just sticks to itself when they push down which makes it a perfect task…
