Weekly Learning - Textures

Day 1: Songs

- Sing the song, "If You're Happy and You Know it".

- Substitute lines that include touching things with different textures like, "Rub the carpet", "Touch the walls", or "Feel your hair", etc. . .

Day 2: Activity

- Paint with Veggies and Fruit!

- Cut different fruits or vegetables in half, dip them in paint and press them onto paper to see what kind of textures each fruit or veggie makes.

Day 3: Get Out

It is finally starting to cool off  a little bit here in Arizona! Which means walks to the park will become so much more pleasant!

Go on a walk or drive to a park and let your toddler FEEL what is all around them.

Day 4: Activity

-Get some crayons and various small objects from around the house such as a safety pin, coins, a paper clip, etc...

-Place the small objects on a table. Then place the piece of paper over the objects. Use your crayons to rub over the top of the paper to reveal the texture onto the paper. Hopefully that made sense. Here's a picture to hopefully help.

(Left: coins. Top: rubberband. Bottom: safety pin.
Right: the side of a textured vase)

Day 5: Library Day

Any touch and feel books - there are SO many! We have some called the "Touch and Feel Box Set" with books called Wild Animals, Cats & Kittens, At the Farm, and Dogs & Puppies.

We also like the DK Baby Touch and Feel books.

Just head over to the library and search for any kind of books with textures! Even pop up books would work (ex: All the Ways I Love You by Julie Downing)

Toddler Activities - Melted Crayons

My mom did activities like this with us kids when we were little. I thought I'd do it with Kimbri using a bunch of old crayons my mom gave me.  

And hey! It could be a fun activity to do when you want to review colors or shapes with your toddler!

What You'll Need:

- Wax paper

- Crayons

- Iron

- Cheese grater (or some other way to shred the crayons)

- Scissors

What You Do:

- Shred your crayons with a cheese grater. 

This takes some time and isn't super exciting for your toddler, but one way I had K help me out was by helping pick out the colors from the bin that we wanted to use.

- Place the crayon bits in between 2 pieces of wax paper 

- And then simply press the iron onto the wax paper to melt the crayons! 

(It only takes a split second for it to melt so be careful not to hold the iron on for too long)

- Then you can cut the melted-crayon-wax-paper into shapes. 

You can tape a string onto them and hang them from the ceiling or tape them to some paper to create a fun picture, etc...

And just as a side thought... this might be fun to do around Christmas time. You can use Christmas colors and help your toddler make their own Christmas ornament to put on the tree by taping a ribbon or string onto the cut-outs.

Toddler Activities - Balloon Experiment

What You Need:

- Baking Soda

- Vinegar

- An empty bottle

- Balloon

What You Do:

- Pour about 1 inch of vinegar into the BOTTLE

- Put 2 teaspoons of baking soda inside the BALLOON

- Stretch the balloon over the top of the bottle.

- When the baking soda in the balloon falls into the vinegar, the gas that forms blows the balloon up.

It's a pretty simple experiment but one that your toddlers will think is pretty neat!  

Vacation Time!

 Sooooo........ I don't know if anyone actually reads this but if so, I just wanted to say that I'm on a long family vacation which is why I haven't posted anything lately! But we'll be back in Arizona by the first part of October!! So we will start updating this blog again then :)

Toddler Activities - Finger Paint

This activity was SO fun!

And wait... there's only 4 ingredients? Yes. Which makes for another fun AND easy activity that I found in Gold Medal's Alpha-Bakery Cookbook.

What you need:

- Cornstarch (1/3 cup)

- Sugar (3 tablespoons)

- Water (2 cups)

- Food Coloring

What you do:

- Mix cornstarch, sugar and water in 1 quart saucepan.

- Cook and stir over medium heat for about 5 minutes or until thickened; remove from heat.

- Divide the mixture into separate cups or containers (I just saved a few baby food containers - then you can just chuck them when you're done)

- Tint mixture in each container with a different food color. Stir several times until cool.

Then let your toddler go for it!! 

It might be a good idea to lay down some newspaper to make it easier to clean up. And I took K's clothes off just to make sure the food color wouldn't stain her clothes.

She loved it! And it was seriously so easy that we definitely will be doing this again! 

Tuesday Treat Day - Turkey Stars & Cheese Hearts

My daughter LOVES turkey and cheese! I thought it might be fun to use cookie cutters and cut the turkey and cheese into fun shapes!

And for those of you who may have toddlers who are picky eaters...maybe this would be something fun for them to try! Maybe if they get to cut their food into fun star and heart shapes, they would eat it. Who knows?! But we sure had fun with it.

Weekly Learning - The Body

Day 1: Songs

Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes

Hinges

The Hokey Pokey!! - There probably is a YouTube video of this song but I think it's more fun to actually do it with your toddler! You can keep repeating the song as many times as you want, practicing all the body parts... we even did "tongue" and K thought that was funny :) So have fun with it!

Day 2: Activity

So it seems like most toddlers love stickers! This past week we got out the stickers and put different stickers on different parts of Kimbri's body. She's pretty good at the main ones like arms, legs, head, hair, feet, etc... so we used the stickers to practice new ones she didn't already know.

I put a sticker on her elbow and helped her learn the word and then I would take it off and let her put it back on her elbow, and had her say the word again. It was a simple and fun activity that helped her learn something new!

Day 3: Get Out

Go to the park or an indoor play place and let your toddler use their body to run around and have fun! After all, the theme this week is in fact, "The Body". So Kimbri and I met some friends at a nearby park last week and the girls had a blast playing on the playground! (And then, since we live in Arizona, it got SOOOO HOT so we had to leave and get out of the heat. But it was fun while it lasted!)

Day 4: Activity

Handprints & Footprints - get out some paint and go to town letting your toddler squirt paint on their hands and then helping them make a handprint on paper. Try doing footprints too!

I also saw THIS way cute idea on a website called CafeMom that is super adorable and I want to try it out sometime!  We didn't have time last week but I'll for sure have to try it out soon :)

Day 5: Library Day

We didn't do a library day last week because my kids picked up a runny nose from somewhere :(  So we just stayed home most of the week.

However, I did pick up a five dollar "Magic School Bus" DVD a couple weeks ago from Walmart that has several episodes on it about the human body (it totally took me back to when I was a kid... I used to love watching The Magic School Bus!)

So anyway,  it was kind of fun to just snuggle up and watch a movie this week :)