We’re loving these easy crafts for the kids. Keep them occupied with easy (and super cute) art and crafts this summer…or save these ideas for a rainy day!
Potato Masher Fish Craft from Fantastic Fun and Learning
Lego Head Straw Toppers from What I Live For
Toe Print Caterpillars from Rubber Boots and Elf Shoes
Printed Ladybugs from Sparkling Buds
Today, I’d love to share a sight word reading and writing activity with you. Young readers and writers need lots and lots of practice reading and writing sight words. This quick and easy activity fits the bill. Add a fine motor component to boost the skills that kids need for pencil grasp and other skills, including the bilateral coordination component, visual motor skill work, and fine motor strengthening!
Here is what you will need:
1. Cut each of the toilet paper rolls into two pieces so that you have a total of twelve pieces.
2. Cover the top of each toilet paper roll with tissue paper and secure with a rubber band. On top of each structure write a number. Use each number (1-6) two times.
3. On the 12 strips of paper, write sight words that your child needs to practice reading and writing. Stuff each roll with a sight word strip of paper and place them all in the muffin tin.
4. Gather your die, tweezers, writing paper and writing utensil.
To play, the child rolls the die. Then with their finger or the tweezers they pop the circle with the corresponding number. Remove the sight word with the tweezers. This makes for great fine motor skill practice!
The child should read the word and then write the word the number of times that corresponds to their roll. Play continues until all circles have been popped.
There you have a fun and easy sight word game to practice reading and writing skills!
Looking for more sight word activities? Check out these other ideas!
Sight Word Scavenger Hunt
Muffin Tin Reading Games
I Spy Sight Word Sensory Bottle
Sight Word Horseplay!
What other hands-on ideas do you have for practicing sight words?
Jodie Rodriguez is a mom of two little boys (2 and 3), a National Board Certified educator and creator of the Growing Book by Book blog. Jodie has a passion for early literacy and all things related to reading. Connect with Jodie on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter or Google +.
This pipe cleaner busy bag is a creative way to use pipe cleaners while helping preschoolers to develop fine motor skills and visual motor skills. Add this pipe cleaner busy activity to your list of preschooler activities!
Working on fine motor skills, visual perception, visual motor skills, sensory tolerance, handwriting, or scissor skills? Our Fine Motor Kits cover all of these areas and more.
Check out the seasonal Fine Motor Kits that kids love:
Or, grab one of our themed Fine Motor Kits to target skills with fun themes:
Want access to all of these kits…and more being added each month? Join The OT Toolbox Member’s Club!
Many years ago, we made a mixed up snack mix to go along with some “The Mixed Up Chameleon” activities that we were doing with a group of preschoolers. It’s a fun way to engage little minds using a colorful snack, and is inspired by Eric Carle’s beloved book, “The Mixed-Up Chameleon”. Whether you’re exploring chameleon activities for preschoolers or simply looking for a creative way to engage kids in snack time, this mix is sure to be a hit.
Just like the mixed-up chameleon changes its colors to blend in with its surroundings, our snack mix offers a variety of flavors and textures to tantalize young taste buds. From crunchy to chewy, sweet to savory, every bite is a delightful surprise!
You’ll want to check out all of our cooking with kids recipes and all of the benefits of getting kids involved in the kitchen. A cooking task as simple as this mixed up recipe is great for little ones!
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We have been loving this Preschool Book Club Series! This week’s book is The Mixed Up Chameleon by Eric Carle (affiliate link) and one of our favorites. We decided to make a mixed up snack mix to go along with the story. And what a fun time this was!
Mixed-Up Chameleon Snack
To create your own Mixed-Up Chameleon Snack Mix, gather an assortment of colorful ingredients. Think vibrant green pretzel sticks, golden cereal squares, red and blue dried fruit, and perhaps even some chocolate candies for an extra treat. Encourage your little ones to mix and match the ingredients just like the chameleon mixes up its appearance. You could actually use any ingredients that you prefer or have on hand. This could be fruit to make a mixed-up fruit cup, or a trail mix type of snack. As you prepare the snack mix together, take the opportunity to engage in some mixed-up chameleon activities. Discuss the chameleon’s unique ability to change colors and blend in with its surroundings. Encourage your children to use their imaginations and pretend to be chameleons, adapting to different environments as they munch on their colorful snack mix. For added fun, consider incorporating story time into your snack session by reading “The Mixed-Up Chameleon” aloud. As you enjoy the story together, point out how the chameleon’s adventures parallel the mixing and matching of ingredients in your snack mix. This post contains affiliate links.
Have you read The Mixed-Up Chameleon
 (Amazon affiliate link)by Eric Carle? We love this story, just like we love all of Eric Carle books. This was a great book to read with a little snack. First, we needed to do a little cooking with the kids. Our snack mix used all of the colors for the different animals in the book. As the chameleon decides he wants to be a different animal, we added the ingredient to go along with that animal, and mixed it up, of course…with a mixing spoon!
In the book, first the Chameleon wants to be like the Polar Bear. We added coconut flakes to our bowl to represent the polar bear’s fur. Not a fan of coconut? Try marshmallows.
Next the Chameleon wants to be like the Flamingo. We added pink sprinkles. Because sprinkles make everyone happy 🙂
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Next the Chameleon wants to be like the Fox, so we added red M&Ms.
Green Fruit Loops represented the Turtle in the book.
Next, the Chameleon wants to be like the Elephant and again we used our imagination to use dried banana chips for elephant ears. It was a little stretch, but worked for us. And was a tasty addition to our snack mix!
The final addition to our snack mix was the umbrellas for the people.
The snack mix was stirred up and all done! Ready to eat, while we read the book. Again!
Have fun with your snack mix and the Mixed-Up Chameleon!
We had so much fun creating this Mixed up Chameleon activity!
Be sure to stop by the other bloggers in this series to see how they are playing and crafting with the Mixed-Up Chameleon:
Here are more kids crafts based on children’s books.
Colleen Beck, OTR/L has been an occupational therapist since 2000, working in school-based, hand therapy, outpatient peds, EI, and SNF. Colleen created The OT Toolbox to inspire therapists, teachers, and parents with easy and fun tools to help children thrive. Read her story about going from an OT making $3/hour (after paying for kids’ childcare) to a full-time OT resource creator for millions of readers. Want to collaborate? Send an email to contact@theottoolbox.com.
Have a new baby in the house? Maybe you are preparing for the newest little one to add to the family fun in the house. A new baby can make for a big change in any home! Use these books about siblings to help big brothers and big sisters adapt to the change that a new baby brings.
We’ve got a 6 year old, 4 year old, and 2 year old, and are waiting on the newest little one to join us. I’m hearing daily from the ladies in the grocery store/preschool/doctor’s office how full my hands are 😉 Oh yes. This I know! But as full as my hands (and laundry baskets, to-do lists, and grocery carts…) are, my heart is fuller. I am so blessed to have these three and soon-to-be FOUR little handfuls.
Watching them play is so much fun. These kiddos have got the sibling thing down…there are collaborations on very imaginative scenarios that happen daily. They are building forts outside, getting muddy and grass stained together, and building memories. Of course they fight with each other. I mean, they are siblings. There are fights and tormenting happening daily! It’s all part of the family thing.
One thing that we love to do as a family is visit our local library. We LOVE our librarians in the children’s department and bring home a big old stack of books each week. Lately, we’ve been pulling books from the shelf with a similar theme…Brothers and Sisters! With the new coming baby, what better topic is there to read than brother and sister books?
These are our favorite Sibling Books that we’ve been reading over and over lately. Some, we have, and others we’ve checked out from the library. All are awesome for introducing a new baby to the family, or just celebrating brothers and sisters!
{This post contains affiliate links. In other words, this blog will receive monetary compensation when any purchases are made through the links in this post. Our opinions and ideas are in no way affected. You can read our full disclosure policy here. As always, we thank you for your support and community here at Sugar Aunts}
Do you have any favorite books about brothers and sisters?
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, by Leo Lionni. When we saw this book on the series, I knew we had to do some color mixing. This Kool-Aid paint recipe smelled so good and the creating mixtures of blue and yellow was a ton of fun.
To make the BLUE paint, I mixed 1/4 cup of flour, one packet of Ice blue raspberry lemonade Kool-Aid
The YELLOW paint was the same recipe, only using a packet of lemonade flavored Kool-Aid
These paints were very sensory! The texture and scent were such a fun painting experience.
The paints made a pretty green color.
After we mixed a bit of the blue and yellow together, I put the paintings into the microwave for 30 seconds. These paints puffed right up. Your microwave oven may vary, so keep a close eye on this while the paints are cooking!
We had to do a bunch more of these. Baby Girl loves her painting activities!
These puffy paints were very fun. We painted for a while making puffy blue and yellow mixtures. And loved the scents!
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Happy Mother’s Day!
Wishing all of the moms a wonderful day full of snuggles and love! This mama is celebrating with three blessings and (still) waiting on number four to make her presence. Only five days late now! I’m guessing she can hear all of the crazy chaos happening out here and is staying nice and safe and cozy inside mommy’s belly until she is forced to make her way out!
Mother’s Day with little ones is about the giggles and wiggles, the reading of a favorite book 5,245 times, watching T-ball games in the rain, hearing “Happy Mother’s Day to Yoooooooou, CHA CHA CHA!” 17 times in a row, and using the Hello Kitty shampoo/conditioner/body wash because someone dumped all of Mom’s shampoo down the bathtub drain. All of these things happened this weekend, and it was wonderful! I wouldn’t change a thing!
We’ve got a few quotes from favorite children’s books that are perfect for Mom’s. I hope you are having a fantastic Mother’s Day, and enjoy!
{This post contains affiliate links. You can read our full disclosure policy here. As always, we thank you for your support and community.}
“Life will never be the same because there had never been anyone like you.”
From the book On the Night You Were Born
by Nancy Tillman
“I love you forever. I’ll like you for always. As long as I’m living, my baby you’ll be.”
From the book Love You Forever
by Robert Munsch
“We’ll eat you up, we love you so.”
From the book Where the Wild Things Are
by Maurice Sendak
“I am your parent, you are my child. I am your quiet place, you are my wild. I am your calm face, you are my giggle…I am your lullaby, you are my peek-a-boo. I am your kiss goodnight, you are my I love you.”
From the book, You Are My I Love You
by Maryann K Cusimano
“If There Ever Comes a Day We Can’t Be Together…
…keep me in your heart, I’ll stay there forever.”
From The Complete Tales of Winnie-the-Pooh
by A.A. Milne.
I love you through and through, yesterday, today, and tomorrow too.”
From the Book I Love You Through And Through
by Bernadette Rossetti-Shustak
Get the books here:
Baby Girl LOVED this activity. I threw a bunch of foam letters
from our foam puzzle and she started going through them. This is a great way to work on letter identification, visual scanning, and crossing midline with little ones.
We read the book and looked for the letters in alphabetical order as they went up the coconut tree.
Of course we had to make our tree fall down after all of the letters were in the tree, just like in the book. And hilarity ensued. This is one activity that we will be doing again and again! the palm tree has taken residence in our basement and we have been sticking all kinds of fun things to it. I mean, maybe the next installment of Chicka Chicka Boom Boom could include feathers 😉
Be sure to stop by and see what the other fabulous bloggers in the Preschool Book Club series did to go along with Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.
You also might like our Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons snack post.
Babies love to hear voices, and there is no time like right now to introduce books. These favorite Board books and printables (Totschooling) are sure to be a hit with your Toddler, too.
Put together a Kitchen treasure basket for babies (Living Montessori Now) to explore textures sounds, and shapes with baby-safe household items.
Explore colors, emotions, painting, and more with some homeschool ideas for Toddlers from 3 Boys and a Dog.
Create a Simple Alphabet Book for Babies and Toddlers from The Measured Mom for letter learning fun.
Some of our favorite baby and toddler activities:
