Toddler Red, White, and Blue Easel Art

Use this toddler red, white, and blue easel art activity to address skills needed for fine motor skill development, visual motor skill, bilateral coordination, and visual processing. An easy easel activity like this one is a vertical surface activity that can be done indoors or outdoors for a low-prep developmental activity for kids. 

We have been doing a few red, white, and blue crafts and activities this week.  Baby Girl had fun with this

Easy Patriotic Activity for the 4th of July.

I put a piece of contact paper on our easel (sticky side out) and took it outside.  How is it that an “inside toy” brought outside is immediately super cool and new and fun??
We have a bunch of construction paper scraps in our craft supplies and I pulled out the red and blue ones.  We had some white tissue paper pieces in the bag too, and they were added to the easel trays, too.
 I stuck a couple of pieces on the contact paper and left it there in the yard for a while.  The big kids were busy playing and I was pulling a few weeds.  When Baby Girl saw this set up, she knew just what to do.
She got busy making art work!
(While her big brother camped out under the easel.  There are Bad Guys everywhere!!)
This is a great Fine Motor activity for toddlers.  They manipulate the small pieces of paper, and grasp the edges with a tip to tip grasp (think about the tips of their pointer finger and thumb grabbing at the paper).  While they are holding onto the scrap paper, they must use an extended wrist to place it on the elevated slope of the easel.  This is so good for fine motor dexterity and development of the small muscles in their little hands. 
We had fun enjoying the sunshine and making art.  Have you done any Red/White/Blue crafts?

Relaxing Lavender Water Bin

We have big plans for our Summer Play series this month!  You may have seen our post  Play The Summer Away: Water Bin Play by The Sugar Aunts post last week where we let everyone know we are joining Jaime over at Frogs and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails  in this fun water bin play series.  Each Monday in July we are planning a different themed water bin.  You will be able to see Jaime’s version and ours.  We are very excited to see the two different versions of a same theme and by the end of July, share 10 different water bins with you.

Relaxing Lavender Water Bin

 
We started July off right with a Relaxing Lavender Water Bin.
This was very easy to throw together:
water
purple finger paint
purple glitter
beads
 scraps of purple plastic table cloths
clear plastic cups for pouring and transferring…and scooping, and dumping…
dried lavender/cloves/rosemary
 and a few drops of lavender oil
The scent was the best touch for this! Completely relaxing and we all played in the water loving the smell of lavender and cloves!   We just used an under the bed storage bin and it was perfect for scooping and pouring the water.  Baby Girl loved dumping the water, scooping it up, and pouring the purple water into cups.
 We’ve used this storage bin before for water play and Baby Girl knows where the fun is…getting right in the water!
I love the glitter on Baby Girl’s little legs 🙂
And the driveway is only slightly glittery.
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