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Month: February 2015

Caterpillar Grapes Snack for Kids

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This caterpillar grapes snack is a cute snack for kids, but also a healthy and sensory snack.
Healthy Snacks for kids can be cute and easy.  This Green Snack and craft is a fun way to eat and the color green! We made green frozen grapes caterpillars for a cute food for kids and a green collage art craft.  Cooking with kids is a big hit in our house and these grape caterpillars were a fun recipe that we will be making again (and again, and again)!

Caterpillar Grapes Snack

Frozen grapes caterpillar healthy snack for kids.


Cooking with Kids : Frozen Grapes Caterpillars

 
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Frozen grapes caterpillar healthy snack for kids.



Little Sister helped with this cooking with kids snack.  I pulled out a few toothpicks and green grapes.  We threaded three grapes onto each toothpick. Little Sister really had fun with this activity…and what a great fine motor activity it is to thread grapes.

Frozen grapes caterpillar healthy snack for kids.



We popped the grapes into the freezer for a few hours until we were ready for a healthy snack.  I used
black gel icing to make quick eyes on the caterpillars and snack time was ready.

Frozen grapes caterpillar healthy snack for kids.
Frozen grapes caterpillar healthy snack for kids.
Frozen grapes healthy snack for kids.



To go along with our green snack, we made a Green Collage Art project.  Go on a color scavenger hunt around your house to gather green strings, ribbons, and scraps.  Happy playing and crafting with green!


Encourage healthy eating in your kids by eating through the colors of the rainbow.  Let us know if you make these caterpillars! We would love to see pictures and hear about it!


This post is part of an Eating through the Rainbow series with a few other kid activity bloggers.  Check out the links below for more snack ideas to eat through the rainbow!  Each blogger chose a color and came up with a healthy snack and a craft or activity to go along with that color.  How fun!  Get ready to play and eat your way through the rainbow!

Dyed Rainbow Lollipop Sticks

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 We made these dyed lollipop sticks last month and have been playing with them a lot.  Counting, patterns, fine motor play, art, visual perceptual work, and imagination are fun with these colorful rainbow sticks.  They are so easy to dye with just a little food coloring, and very fun.  We’ve used these rainbow sticks in a few different ways recently and will be sharing soon on the blog!


Rainbow lollipop sticks dyed with coloring for play, counting, busy bags, math with kids

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Dyed Lollipop Sticks for play and learning

Rainbow lollipop sticks
How gorgeous are rainbow lollipop sticks?  Don’t you want to play with them?  

Here’s How to dye lollipop sticks for play and learning:


We had a ton of extra lollipop sticks left over from various parties.  The idea to color them in rainbow shades came to me after seeing them in the baking bin next to food coloring.  A rainbow of manipulatives would be fun for all kinds of play.  I put a handful of sticks into small plastic baggies and added a few drops of liquid food coloring.  More food coloring will bring out brighter colors.  
Shake the baggies around to coat the sticks.


Spread the lollipop sticks out on wax paper and allow them to dry.
Use rainbow lollipop sticks for play, math, patterns and colorful learning with kids!

Once dry, you are ready to play!  These things are completely gorgeous and we had fun just naming all of the colors, rolling them back and forth, and sorting.

Dye lollipop sticks with food coloring for colorful play!

Practice fine motor skills with kids using DIY dyed lollipop sticks

Fine Motor Skills with Dyed Rainbow Lollipop Sticks

We pulled a plastic bottle from the recycle bin and practiced fine motor skills by dropping the rainbow sticks into the plastic bottle one by one.  Drop by colors and work on color identification.  Practice beginner math skills by counting one-to-one correspondence as the child names the number of each color.  Practice a tripod grasp on the lollipop sticks and pre-handwriting skills.

Fine motor rainbow play was never so much fun!

You can see another recent version of dyed lollipop sticks over at Stay at Home Educator.  These are so much fun!

More rainbow activities that you will love:

Rainbow Foam Sheets on the Window
Painting Rainbows
FIne Motor With Crafting Pom Poms
Color Matching Play Dough
Rainbow Snacks
Rainbow Fine Motor Play
Home Made Play Dough

Stress Reducing Sensory Bin

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Sometimes a mom (and the kids) needs a little stress-reducing.  We’ve done lavender scented sensory play before (a few times!) for a scented relaxation activity.  This stress reducing sensory bin is not scented, but it is stress relieving with it’s sensory play, resistive activity with proprioceptive input, and general slow-down-time-to-play-together-fun.
 


Stress Reducing Sensory Bin for Kids (and Moms)

Stress reducing sensory bin with strengthening, fine motor play, and proprioceptive feedback
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Gather your sensory bin materials:
field corn
balloons
 
Start to play!  We played in the corn a long time.  We pull this bin out all the time for sensory play and it’s common for the kids to ask for it at least once a week.
 
This time, I showed Little Sister and Big Brother how to place the corn kernels into the balloons.  What a great fine motor dexterity activity!  Tripod grasp on the kernels,  bilateral hand coordination to manage the balloon, eye-hand coordination (visual motor integration) to place the kernel into the balloon…this was therapeutic fun!

Once the balloons were filled up, we had our own sensory bin full of DIY stress balls!  It was cool to manipulate the corn in the balloons with a resistive gross grasp (using all of the fingers together at once to squeeze the balloon)  A gross grasp of the hand is essential for many skills and requires strength and endurance to complete tasks like managing scissors or a hole punch.

Proprioceptive Sensory Bin

Proprioception is a sensory process of the body that allows input to be regulated and responded to with motor movements and positions.   The proprioceptive system receives input from the muscles and joints about body position, weight, pressure, stretch, movement and changes in position in space.  Our bodies are able to grade and coordinate movements based on the way muscles move, stretch, and contract. Proprioception allows us to apply more or less pressure and force in a task.  
 
This gripper activity will not only provide a strengthening exercise for the hands, it also provides feedback to the muscles of the hands. It can help busy hands to slow down given resistance and amplify the feedback of the muscles of the hands. 
 
This is a GREAT exercise to “wake up” the muscles of the hands before a handwriting task.  Kids that press hard when pressing too hard when writing with a pencil would really benefit from the feedback this proprioceptive activity provides.
 
Create a Proprioception activity for hands with a relaxing corn sensory bin
We threw the large balloons around the room and listened to the different sounds corn made when the smaller and larger balloons were shaken.
More relaxing activities for play:
lavender sensory bin 
 Calming Waterbead Sensory Bin
 Sensory Water Bin Play

Play Dough Scented with Body Wash

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Oh, how we love play dough!  This month on the 12 months of Sensory Dough series is scented dough.  I can’t wait to see what the other bloggers joining us have to share for scented sensory dough you can make at home.  The olfactory sense is a very powerful one.  Scents can be calming or alerting to children (and adults!) and can evoke memories.  Scented sensory play and activities are beneficial to children who are over-responsive or under-responsive to the sense of smell.  
 
We created our scented dough with an item that it seems we always have around the house.   Body wash smells amazing, comes in so many scents, and it seems to multiply in the cupboard.  
 
(OK, not really, but we do seem to have a TON of body wash.  All the time.)
 


Make Play Dough scented with Body Wash

Did you know you can make your own homemade scented play dough using body wash? This stuff smells amazing and is so easy to make!

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body wash play dough recipe

We’ve got a ton of body wash collecting dust in our cupboard.  They come in as gifts, samples, collected from hotel stays…and they are definitely used…but today, we made dough!  This dough can use any scent of body wash, although different brands may change the dough’s consistency.  We trialed two recipes with this dough and came up with a soft, moldable, scented dough that we loved!


For our dough, we used Bath and Body Works Velvet Sugar
and Bath & Body Works Beautiful Day
(which has a great apple-y scent).

Shower gel scented play dough made with flour and baby powder. A fun sensory play experience!
 
This dough is very easy to make.  The green dough used the Bath & Body Works Beautiful Day and baby powder and became a soft, moldable dough that was very soft to the touch.  The pink dough used Bath and Body Works Velvet Sugar and flour.  It was a firmer dough and not as soft to mold.
 

Body Wash Sensory Play Dough Recipe

To make the dough, add 1 TBSP body wash to 1/2 cup baby powder (or flour).  Mix together by hand to make a crumbly mixture.  Add 2 TBSP water and continue mixing.  The baby power will be difficult to mix with a utensil and mixing by hand is easier.  Add a few drops of food coloring and continue mixing.  The flour dough needed more kneading.  

Time to play!  The body wash gives these doughs a great scent.  Many dough recipes that have salt lose the scent.  This recipe seems to hold it’s scent for a while after playing.  



The pink dough (made with flour) was much more resistive and a greater workout for the hand muscles compared to the green (baby powder) dough.  If you’re looking for hand strengthening, the pink really worked those intrinsic muscles!

 

Pretend Play with Play Dough

Use your scented dough to make cookies with a great scent.  We made pink and green cookies.

 
**Always supervise your child when playing with scented doughs.  This dough should not be ingested and the scent may encourage any child to taste. 
Looking for more scented sensory dough ideas? 
 
These are fun: Almond scented salt dough,  orange zest salt dough, and gingerbread salt dough.
 

Turtle Thumbprint Art

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fingerprint turtle craft

Make a fingerprint turtle and work on fine motor skills! This turtle craft is a huge hit with kids.

We have a love for print crafts.  From creating with handprints to pipe cleaners, stamping art is fun for kids and a creative way to explore shapes, colors, and textures.  
 
 

Fingerprint Turtle

 
 
We made this turtle thumbprint art one day while playing with green paint.  They are so cute that you’ll want to make a whole turtle family!

 
Turtle thumbprint craft for kids
 

 

 
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To make Turtle Thumbprint Art, you’ll need a few supplies: 
 
  1. our favorite green paint
  2. white paper
  3. orange paint
  4. Sharpie Permanent Marker
 
 

How to make fingerprint turtle art

This turtle fingerprint art is a simple craft that develops fine motor skills. Here are the instructions to make a fingerprint turtle, but you can modify the activity as meets the needs of the individual. 
 
  1. Paint your child’s thumb pad green with green paint. 
  2. Press the thumbprint onto paper.
  3. Add four legs and a head by pressing fingertips into the green paint.
  4. Lightly tap the fingertips onto the green turtle back on the paper.
  5. Once dry, use the Sharpie Permanent Marker to make smiling faces.
  6. You can also add details to the turtle’s shell by adding orange fingerprints onto the green shell. The orange paint on a fingertip can add details to the shells. 
 
 
 I loved that this craft was a collaboration between my kids, with Big Sister making the shells, Little Brother making the heads and feet, and Little Sister adding orange dots. Everyone had to get in on the fun.  They are just too cute to resist!
 
Try more thumbprint and fingerprint art:
 
 
I love Ewe handprint art | Olive You fingerprint art.

Flip Flop Math Commutative Property of Addition

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Big Sister is moving right along in math!  She says it’s her favorite subject in school and loves when she has math homework.  (Is this child mine?? 😉 )  Some of the things she is learning in first grade throws me off as a parent going through this for the first time.  Is my baby really learning these pre-algebraic concepts? In first grade??  It’s hard to believe she is growing up so fast and learning so much!  It’s just a little nervousness from this mom as her first baby grows.  She will always be my baby.  Even when she does algebra 😉

One of the concepts that Big Sister learned in math this year was the Commutative Property of Addition.  She had to learn the term and the meaning of the property, and use it in math worksheets.  One of the ways we practiced the Commutative Property was with this flip flop addition activity.  It was fun to extend the homework and practice some math facts with our flip flop game!


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Flip flop math: This is a fun math activity for first graders to practice the Commutative Property of addition with flip flops!


What is the Commutative Property of Addition?

In the commutative property of addition, we can switch order of numbers and still get the same answer.  For example, 5+1=6 and 1+5=6.  Using the Commutative Property, 5+1=1+5.  


Flip Flop Math Activity

We made this Flip Flop Adding activity after we talked about how the numbers can “flip flop” and still add up to the same answer.  

Flip Flop math for adding in first grade.
I started by making flip flop sandal shapes on cardboard.  You could also do this activity on paper with flip flop shapes, but I wanted to make our Flip Flops actually flip!  


I wrote out some a + b=c math problems on the flip flops.  On the reverse side, I wrote the numbers using the Commutative Property (b+a=c).

Write addition problems on flip flop shapes. Practice the commutative property of addition with a flip flop game!
Line the flip flops up on the edge of the table.  Practice the math facts.  You could have your child fill in the answers, flip the shape, and then fill in the answer on the opposite side.

This was a TON of fun!

We decided that our flip flop math equations needed some details.  We used plastic lacing cord to make straps on our flip flops.  Poke a hole in the cardboard with a pen.  Push the lacing cord through the hole, wrap it around the shape, and tie a knot in the back.

Have fun with your flip flop math!

Try more of our math activities:
Nature Math
Shape sorting and patterns
Bottle Caps Math | Snowman Math
skip counting | number order

How to Make Homemade Blender Baby Food

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I’ve got four babies and have been making baby food for what seems like a decade.  Ok, so it’s only been for about seven years, and with chucks of non-baby food time in there.  Regardless, with four babies, we’ve had a TON of splattered sweet potatoes and mashed bananas smeared on the high chair! (And spit in mom’s hair, spewed across the table, and crusted on the wall.)  Over the years I’ve had a lot of friends ask how to make their own homemade baby food so I thought I would share my technique.  


How to make Homemade Baby Food (the easy way):

How to make baby food at home? Use a blender and a couple of easy steps!

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How to make homemade baby food. In a blender! SO easy.
Baby food starts with the basics.  Whether you’re starting with fruits, veggies, or a combination of foods, homemade baby food is easy.  Many recipes call for a food processor  but I’ve never used one.  I use my second-favorite kitchen appliance (can you guess what my first favorite appliance is? I’ve got four kids who don’t like to sleep all night…). 


To make baby food, I always use my plain old blender.  It’s always handy on the kitchen counter for making smoothies so it’s in easy reach for baby food making.  

Boil the vegetable.  I made sweet potatoes recently.  If you boil first, the skins will peel right off (saving time and steps by avoiding the vegetable peeler).  Before boiling, cut the potatoes into chunks for quicker cooking.  You’ll want to cook until soft.  You’ll know when they are done by sticking a fork into the potatoes.  Drain the veggies but save the liquid.  That’s where some of the nutrients went when cooking, so you’ll want baby to get them too!
Make homemade baby food in a blender. SO easy and good for baby!

Next, toss the cooked vegetables into the blender.  Our in a little of the water you saved from boiling.  Blend a little, stir, and blend some more.  Depending on the stage of food your baby is eating, you can add more water or less water for a thicker or thinner consistency.  You’ll want to ensure all of the chunks of food are blended and the consistency is smooth, so use a spoon to scrape the edges of the blender.  Other liquids you can add to the baby food are pumped breast milk, formula, water, vegetable stock (watch the salt content on stocks!)

Serve a little to baby and store the rest for later!


How to store baby food in the freezer:

Next, pour/scoop the baby food into ice cube trays.  I love using water bottle ice cube trays because they stack really well in the freezer.  Lay a piece of plastic wrap over the ice cube tray and pop it into the freezer.  Once frozen, pull it out and run a little warm water over the back of the ice cube tray.  Pop the frozen baby food cubes out and dump into a large gallon sized plastic bag.  Keep these in the freezer and pull out one or two at a time for future meals.  Baby will love it!

Storing homemade baby food in the freezer

Homemade Baby Food Recipe Ideas

Start with the basics like peas, sweet potatoes, butternut squash, and acorn squash or fruits like bananas, apples, pears, and peaches.  The possibilities are really endless with homemade baby food. I’ve even blended meats or parts of our dinner to make baby’s dinner. Have fun blending!
 Be sure to follow your doctor’s recommendations for foods.  

Rainbow Smoothie Recipes for Kids

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We LOVE healthy fruit and veggie smoothies in our house.  When the kids hear the blender blending, they come running!  So when I saw this smoothie recipe below, I knew I had to feature it.  I love the rainbow of colors in the smoothie recipe.. Then I started thinking that we need more colors of smoothies here! I can’t wait to try all of these smoothie recipes with my kids.  We’ll sip our way through the rainbow!


Kids will love these healthy smoothie recipes! Sip your way through the rainbow with red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple smoothies. From Sugar Aunts.

A Rainbow of Smoothie Recipes:

RED SMOOTHIE: Watermelon and Lime Smoothie from Housing a Forest
ORANGE SMOOTHIE: Tropical Orange Delight smoothie from mom Endeavors
YELLOW SMOOTHIE: 
GREEN SMOOTHIE:
BLUE SMOOTHIE: Blueberry Kale smoothie from Coffee Cups and Crayons
PURPLE SMOOTHIE: Very Berry smoothie from Crazy Adventures in Parenting



And make a rainbow of colors with a Rainbow smoothie recipe from Jodie Fitz

What is your favorite smoothie recipe?

Books to Say I Love You to Kids

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Is there anything better than snuggling up under a fuzzy blanket with your kids and reading “I love you” books?  This time of year (and all year long!) I love you books tell our kids that mom and day love them always, forever, and no matter what!  We love these books for Valentine’s Day and any day!


Books to Say I Love You to Kids

Valentine’s Day I Love You Books for Kids


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I Love You Because You’re Youby Liza Baker is the reason we put this little collection of love books together. Little Sister had this book read to her preschool class this week. She told me all about this book on the way home from school. When I told her we actually have that book in our collection, she was so excited! We’ve been reading I Love You Because You’re You a feeeeew times since then. (A LOT of times.)

 

Love You Forever

by Robert Munsch has the words, “I’ll love you forever
I’ll like you for always
As long as I’m living
My baby you’ll be.” This book is pretty much a tear-jerker for moms.


Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney

 


I Love You Through And Throughby Bernadette Rossetti Shustak is one of my favortie books to read (and recite) to my kids. One of the Aunts got this book for me as a baby shower gift and it is a special one for all of my kids (even after they’ve grown beyond the board book years)!

I Love You, Stinky Faceby Lisa Mccourt is a book about a mom’s unconditional love for her child. We love this book for it’s message…and for the chance to say “stinky face”.

 


You Are My I Love You by Maryann Cusimano is another mom-tear-jerker. LOVE this book!  We first read this book at the library and I loved it so much that the kids (aka their dad) found it as a Mother’s Day gift one year.


Looking for more ways to say I love you through books? 


Children’s Book quotes for a mother’s love.


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