Chicka Chicka Boom Boom letter learning activity

This week’s post in the Preschool Book Series is featuring one of our all time favorite books.  We started reading this when Big Sister was just a little one and have enjoyed it with each of the kids over the past six years.  We LOVE Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
by Bill Martin, Jr. for it’s rhyme, rhyme, and fun story.  It’s so catchy and I’ve caught the kids singing the words to the story aloud many times.
We decided to make a palm tree to go along with the story as we read the book and identified letters.
This was such a fun activity for all of us!
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom book activity to combine letter learning with gross motor.

Chicka Chicka Book Boom Letter Activity

{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}
I started by making a palm tree on a huge piece of cardboard.  I will admit…  this tree turned out WAY bigger than I was planning.  I drew the palm tree and the next thing I knew, it was pretty much life sized. 
A few pieces of clear contact paper were taped to the tree, sticky side out, and we were ready to go!

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.

Baby Girl is not able to identify letters yet, but Little Guy is, and he liked this letter learning activity too.  He thought it was pretty cool that the letters could stick on the tree as they climbed the coconut tree.  But, he was quick to point out that I forgot the coconuts on our tree.  Ooops.

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.

Frogs and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Letter Learning Activity
Get the Book here:

You also might like our Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons snack post.

Snowball Fight Craft and Activity

A mom knows that snow days off of school are exciting.  The piles of snow outside make the backyard into an adventure-land.  I don’t think there is a kid out there who doesn’t LOVE a big old fashioned snowball battle.  And what better time to build a fort, pile mountains of snowballs, and attack the neighbors than before 8 am on a day that the school doors are frozen shut?  


We kind-of do a lot of fun activities based on our favorite children’s books.  This craft and activity is based on one of our new favorite books. It combines wintry snowball fight awesomeness with math and art…all from the warm living room!

We read Jimmy Fallon’s children’s book, “Snowball Fight!” and came up with an indoor snowball fight math activity and a pretend snowball fight painting craft.  

These are fun ways to extend a very cool book and to have a little snowball fight fun…before heading out to battle in the actual snow!


Winter Book Craft and Activity for Kids
 

Indoor snowball themed math and art activities for kids based on Jimmy Fallons book, Snowball Fight! These are great ideas for a snow day or winter days when it's just too cold outside for preschool and kindergarten aged kids.
Full Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.
We love to go to the library and come home with a pile of books. I went to the library one day and came home with a bunch of winter books for us to read.  The book Snowball Fight!
by Jimmy Fallon
was a hit with the kids and the definite winner when we were deciding which book to do for this series.

 

Little Guy, especially, loved the detailed pictures, the rhythm of the story, and of course, the snowball battle that happens in the book!  We decided to make our own indoor snowball fight to mimic the snowball battle in the book.  I had a few more snowball-y ideas to go along with the story, too…

Indoor snowball themed math and art activities for kids based on Jimmy Fallons book, Snowball Fight! These are great ideas for a snow day or winter days when it's just too cold outside for preschool and kindergarten aged kids.

The children in the story are excited to have a snow day from school and rush outside to play in the new fallen snow.  (It just so happened that the day we did our activities, Big Sister was home from school on a REAL snow day!)  The kids in the story build a fort of snow and make tons of snowballs to get ready for a battle.  They have a huge snowball fight with neighborhood kids and it’s just general old-fashioned fun!

We made our “snowballs” using foam packing sheets that were left over from Christmas packaging.  These thin strips were simple to tie into a knot and make a soft fake snowball.  We had a TON of snowballs, just like in the story! 


Snowball Math activity based on Jimmy Fallon’s children’s book, “Snowball Fight!”

In one part of the story, the young possibly-Jimmy Fallon-character says, “Fifteen snowballs flying at me! Attack!”  This was a fun part for my Little Guy.  He might have asked to read that part of the book 15 times, each time yelling, “ATTACK!!!” with the most adorable four year old attacking pose you can imagine.

Indoor snowball themed math and art activities for kids based on Jimmy Fallons book, Snowball Fight! These are great ideas for a snow day or winter days when it's just too cold outside for preschool and kindergarten aged kids.

So to mimic that portion of the book into our activity, I wrote numbers 1-15 on our fake snowballs.  We then did a little snowball math with them.





I had Big Sister and Baby Girl grab all of the snowballs with numbers on them.  Baby Girl was good at this job. She handed them over to Big Sister, who would put them in numbered order in our sled.
Indoor snowball themed math and art activities for kids based on Jimmy Fallons book, Snowball Fight! These are great ideas for a snow day or winter days when it's just too cold outside for preschool and kindergarten aged kids.

A second math activity was beginner adding with the snowballs.  Big Sister stood and tossed snowballs into the sled and bucket.  We gave points for each snowball that did not hit the carpet.  Snowballs in the sled earned her 1 point and snowballs in the bucket earned her two points.  Once all of the snowballs were thrown, we added them up.  Big Sister and I counted by 2’s for the bucket snowballs and then counted to add the 1 point snowballs to get her total score. 


This snowball math activity was a bit hit.  We played over and over again.  And when kids want to do math facts on replay, it’s a Mom-Success.





Indoor snowball themed math and art activities for kids based on Jimmy Fallons book, Snowball Fight! These are great ideas for a snow day or winter days when it's just too cold outside for preschool and kindergarten aged kids.
We even made our own snow fort using a duvet blanket over our ottoman!

Jimmy Fallon’s children’s book, “Snowball Fight!” & a snowball fight painting activity

Indoor snowball themed math and art activities for kids based on Jimmy Fallons book, Snowball Fight! These are great ideas for a snow day or winter days when it's just too cold outside for preschool and kindergarten aged kids.

For an arty craft to go along with our book, we did some snowball painting with ping pong balls.  I grabbed a big box, some blue paper, a couple of ping pong balls, and some white paint in a bowl.  A bit of white paint was added to the bowl.  We swirled the ping pong balls around in the paint and were ready for a paint-version of a snowball fight!

Indoor snowball themed math and art activities for kids based on Jimmy Fallons book, Snowball Fight! These are great ideas for a snow day or winter days when it's just too cold outside for preschool and kindergarten aged kids.
This paint activity was big time fun!  The kids threw their ping pong ball “snowballs” down onto the paper and we created snowball fight art.  The ping pong balls did not bounce out of the box (I think because they were weighed down with the paint), but it would be possible for a big mess to occur if your little snowball thrower has a strong arm.

Indoor snowball themed math and art activities for kids based on Jimmy Fallons book, Snowball Fight! These are great ideas for a snow day or winter days when it's just too cold outside for preschool and kindergarten aged kids.
Our beautiful snowball art looks just like a snowball battle in action!
Indoor snowball themed math and art activities for kids based on Jimmy Fallons book, Snowball Fight! These are great ideas for a snow day or winter days when it's just too cold outside for preschool and kindergarten aged kids.

We ended our activities with a living room snowball battle.  “Snowball, snowball, Snowball Fight!
”  Then, we went outside to have a REAL snowball fight on our snow day!


Stop by and follow Sugar Aunts Winter Fun and Play Pinterest board for more winter ideas.

This post is part of a winter book series with some of our favorite kids’ activity bloggers.  Together, we’re sharing crafts and activities based on our favorite Winter children’s books.  You can read about the series here.  We are so honored to join Frogs and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails, Crayon Box Chronicles, House of Burke, Mamas Like Me, and All Done Monkey in the first series of the year for this group.

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Get the book
we read (it will be a hit in your house too!)

Snowball Figth Craft and Math Activity

Snow Maze Outdoor Kids Activity

A few weeks back we had a nice snowfall.  It was great snow for making snowmen and rolling snow.  When we rolled the snow it rolled all the way down to the grass!  We ended up with a nice path in the snow and decided to make it a little more interesting.  Our Snow Maze was born!  This was the perfect outdoor activity for the kids as we made a maze all the way up to the base of our snowman.  Finishing the final touches on our snowman required a bit more navigating, to gather up the scarf, sticks, carrot, and rock…but it sure was fun!  Little Guy had a lot of fun making his way through the maze.  He’s a big fan of mazes on paper, so this life-size backyard maze was even better!  There were even a few “bad guys” to negotiate around, too.  We’ve had fun with Snowball Experiments in the past and LOVE getting outdoors with snow activities for the kids, so our snow maze was no exception!


Snow Maze Outdoor Activity for Kids

 

Snow Maze: Outdoor Activity for Kids

Mazes are such a great activity for visual motor integration skills when done on paper.  Scanning with the eyes and coordinating the hand to make the correct and accurate motions can be very difficult for a child with visual perception problems.  When a life-size model is introduced, the visual perceptual skills multiply as the child needs to negotiate whole body movements.  Also, they need to scan the scene from inside the maze unlike looking down at a maze on paper.
{Note: 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.  As always, we thank you for your support and community here at Sugar Aunts.}


Plus, negotiating “bad guys” tends to up the difficulty of any maze 😉

We enjoyed our snowy day and our snowy maze.  If you make a snow maze this winter, be sure to share with us.  We love to see what you’ve been doing!

Looking for more fun ideas?  We’ve got tons of fun activities, crafts, and more planned for this winter.  Be sure to follow along on our social media outlets: on Facebook, Google+ Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram!

 

Thanksgiving Felt Board Patterns Direction Following Turkey

This Thanksgiving Felt Board activity was just the thing we needed one afternoon when Little Niece and Nephew were at our house.  It was a super cold day and we were happy to stay inside warm and cozy playing and having fun with a few Thanksgiving activities

Thanksgiving Felt Board

This felt board was super easy to put together.  I have a big sheet of orange colored fleece fabric that we use for all kinds of activities and play.  It makes the perfect fuzzy background for felt play, pretend play when we need to have an impromptu living room teddy bear picnic, and the perfect baby doll blanket!

This time we used our fleece to make an easel cover for our Felt Board Direction Following Turkey.  
We’ve been doing a lot of turkey crafts and activities leading up to Thanksgiving, and this one was even more fun for the littler ones.  Baby Girl (age 2) and Little Nephew (age 2) both loved moving the felt pieces all over the board.  And worked on fine motor skills and direction following and patterning at the same time!  


This post contains affiliate links.
Just a few supplies are needed for this activity. 
  • The Orange Fleece worked perfectly to hold the felt pieces of our turkey. 
  • The rest of the turkey was easy to make using Assorted felt pieces
  • A few brown circles, feathers of different colors, little turkey feet, a beak, and a wattle and our turkey was ready for creating! 
I snipped a few little pieces of felt and glued them to the backs of Googley eyes.  Then the googly eyes could stick to the fleece.
The fleece was perfect to throw over our Easel.  The fleece stayed in place pretty well without sliding much.  With the material up on an included surface, the kids were able to manipulate the pieces of the turkey while using an extended wrist. 
This positioning of their hand while managing small pieces prepares them for handwriting with a proper position of the wrist and fingers while holding a pencil.
I put one turkey together so the Toddlers could see where all of the pieces went. 
This task required visual scanning and direction following.  We put our turkeys together with multi-step directions to add a little difficulty to the task.
Little Guy (age 4) worked on some patters with the feathers.  We used an AB pattern for our turkey feathers.

Little Nephew is a smarty when it comes to identifying colors.  He told us all of the colors of the feathers easily!

Working those little pieces was a great fine motor task for these guys!
They needed to use a pincer grasp to pinch the littlest pieces, all while maintaining that extended wrist. 
We had such fun day with our Turkey patterns, direction following, and fine motor play.  This would be an easy activity to put together in these last days before Thanksgiving!

Motor Planning Spider Web Maze: Fine Motor Eye-Hand Coordination

This is an updated post from years back.  Create a life-size indoor (or outdoor!) spider maze that kids can climb in, on, around, and through. This is just one of our favorite spider activities for building skills. Add a fine motor portion to the activity and work on vision activities like visual motor planning and hand-eye coordination as kids play this Fall and Halloween.  Happy climbing! 


Visual motor planning and hand-eye coordination with a Halloween or spider theme using this room-sized maze that kids can build and get into and climb around.  This is a fun indoor play activity for kids who have a lot of energy. A great fine motor activity for kids too!

Hand-Eye Coordination and Visual Motor Planning Spider Maze

Motor Planning Spider Web Maze with Fine Motor and Eye-hand coordination
(This post contains affiliate links.) Little Guy asked one afternoon, if we could make a Living Room Spider Web.  We made one of these last year, and he remembered.  He remembers every time he sees the skein of red yarn
.
He says he has to work on his “skills” when he’s crawling over, under, and between strings.  All the better to get the bad guys!
We pulled out some chairs and started spinning our web!
Motor Planning Spider Web Maze with Fine Motor and Eye-hand coordination
This time, we added a twist to our Spider Web.  We strung a few Halloween spider rings
along the web.  Little Guy had so much fun pulling the rings along the length of the yarn
, around chair legs, down the slopes, and up and over other pieces of yarn.

Motor Planning Maze:

Moving over, under, and around requires gross motor skills and motor planning to plan out, organize, and carry out an action.  With the added twist of moving the ring along the length of the string, we added a could of extra developmental skills…

Eye-Hand Coordination Maze:

This was a life-sized puzzle for him as he crawled over and under the string to manipulate the plastic ring along the length of the yarn.  What a great visual motor activity for him!  He had to visually scan where the ring would go next, and manage his hands to work the ring along the yarn.

Fine Motor and Bilateral Hand Coordination Maze:

Working both of his hands together in a coordinated manner was essential for this activity, and to move that little spider ring along.  He had to hold the yarn with one hand and string the ring along with the other hand.  All while moving over and under strings below him and above him.
Little Guy LOVED the spider web in our living room.  And asked to make another the next day.  Try this one…you’re little guy or girl will have so much fun!
Visual motor planning and hand-eye coordination with a Halloween or spider theme using this room-sized maze that kids can build and get into and climb around.  This is a fun indoor play activity for kids who have a lot of energy. A great fine motor activity for kids too!
More Visual Perceptual Activities you will love:

Autumn Baby Sensory Table

Try this toddler activity or baby activity is a tactile sensory play using a train table surface, perfect for encouraging gross motor skills, fine motor skills, eye-hand coordination, bilateral coordination, and more!

Babies and toddlers of all abilities love this Fall occupational therapy activity.

autumn sensory activities for babies

We had a couple of nieces and nephews over this weekend for a cousin sleep over.  While the big kids were off playing, the littlest and I had some fun with some autumn sensory play.

sensory table for toddlers

I pulled out a bunch of fabrics scraps and felt leaves and scattered them all over our train table.  This was the perfect height for this little guy who is just standing and beginning to cruise along furniture.

He loved scattering the leaves all over the table, picking them up one by one, and dropping them on the floor.  Then picking them up  and putting them on the table again!  The bright colors really grabbed his attention. 

baby activities autumn

Why is this such a great activity for babies and young toddlers?  The varied textures of different fabrics are neat for them to explore with their hands (just watch those mouths so felt leaves don’t end up in there!)  

They are able to see what happens when the drop the leaves and can do it over and over again from the low surface.  Babies love the drop and pick up game!  This was a great fine motor activity and eye hand coordination task for this little guy.  He could work on grabbing at the thin fabric of the leaves and picking up the leaf after it was on the ground.  Plus, it was something new and fun!

Play and Learn with Apple Activities

Happy Share It Saturday! 
It’s that time of year when we just want to go to the apple orchard…
…or pick up a 3 pound bag of apples at the grocery store 🙂
Apple crisp, apple painting, apple pie, apple cider…We love fall and all things apples!
Our round-up today on Share It Saturday features activities, play, crafts, learning, and cooking all with an apple theme.  Perfect for this time of year!
We’re ready to try some of the activities shared this week and enjoy the season of apples!

Apple Crafts and Activities

30+ Apple Activities by Reading Confetti
Apple Scented Dough by Munchkin and Bean
Apple School Day and Teacher Gifts by 3 Boys and a Dog
Apple Magnet Play

Learning with Apples

Fill The Bushel Spelling/Sight Word Game by Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational
Apples, Apples Color Chant and Printable by School Time Snippets

Apple Cooking With Kids

Word Scavenger Hunt

Sight words written in chalk on bricks of a sidewalk. Text reads Multisensory word scavenger hunt

This word scavenger hunt is a hands-on play activity to work on sight words, spelling words, or common words. Use this creative sight word activities for kindergarten and active learning. While we used this activity many years ago to practice sight words, you can definitely use the idea to practice reading words and spelling words. Kids love these sensory word ideas to practice reading words with multisensory learning and gross motor play.

word scavenger hunt

We started practicing sight words.  One day we took them outside for a little movement and learning. 


Word Scavenger Hunt

Setting up a word scavenger hunt is easy. We used bright yellow cards to write the words to make it easier to spot the letter cards, but you could use any type of paper, or even letter rocks to spell out sight words. 

Another idea is to use clothes pins in the scavenger hunt. This is a great adaptation to the activity because you can foster hand strength, too.

I wrote our sight words on the sidewalk and had the kids match them up with our cards. 
 
They jumped on the word as I called it out and then could put the card on top.  This was a good gross motor coordination warm-up for our Scavenger Hunt.

 



Sight Word Scavenger Hunt

 
Big Sister went off and closed her eyes so she couldn’t see (with a little peeking…) and I hid the cards in different places in our yard.
 
Sight Word Scavenger Hunt
 
When all of the cards were hidden, I had her come back to the sidewalk and I would say one of the words.  She ran off and tried to find the word.
 
We had sight words hidden all over!  The kids had so much fun with this.  Even Little Guy, who hasn’t been practicing the sight words, got in to the action.  He loved helping Big Sister hide the words for me to find too.
 
 
 
When it was my turn to find the words, Big Sister would read one of the words on the sidewalk and I had to go find it.  I would ask her, “is this pan…?”  So she could read the word on the card, too.
 
 
 
After the Sidewalk Sight Words and Scavenger Hunt, we put the cards in the water bin with some bird seed for fun sensory play.
 
 
We’ve been doing a bunch of different activities with our sight words.
 
Looking for more ways to practice building words and spelling using letter cards or manipulatives? Grab our Letters Fine Motor Kit.
 
 
 

Want printable handwriting and sensory motor activities to target the visual motor skills needed for letter writing? Grab a copy of our Letters! Fine Motor Kit. The printable PDF contains 100 pages of hands-on letter writing practice for multisensory handwriting!

Letters Fine Motor Kit

Inside the Letters Fine Motor Kit, you’ll find:

  • A-Z Multisensory Writing Pages: Roll a ball of dough letters, ASL sign language letters, gross motor movement, small-scale letter box writing task, finger isolation letter trace, and writing practice area
  • Alphabet Fine Motor Clip Cards– Clip clothespins or paper clips to match letters with various fonts to strengthen the hands and focusing on eye-hand coordination, bilateral coordination, visual processing skills, and more.
  • Cut and place Fine Motor Mazes– Cut out the letter pieces and trace the maze with a finger to work on eye-hand coordination and finger isolation. Place a small letter on the letter spots to address in-hand manipulation and dexterity skills.
  • A-Z Cotton Swab Cards– Includes upper case and lower case letters. Dot the cards using a cotton swab or laminate the cards and use them over and over again.
  • A-Z Pattern Block Cards– These cards include a section for tracing with a finger tip for separation of the sides of the hand, eye-hand coordination, and finger isolation during letter formation. There is also a space to “finger write” the letter using the fingertip. This multisensory letter formation activity can be a great brain break during handwriting or literacy tasks. Learners can then form the letter using parquetry blocks.
  • Fine Motor Letter Geo-Cards– These geo board cards include A-Z in upper case forms. Users can copy the letter forms in a variety of multi-sensory strategies.
  • A-Z Color and Cut Letter Memory Cards– These upper case and lower case letter cards can be used to color for letter formation. Then use them in fine motor matching tasks or in sensory bins.
  • Color By Size Sheets– Help learners discriminate between tall letters, small letters, and tail letters. This visual perception activity invites learners to color small areas, using hand muscles for strengthening and handwriting endurance.
  • A-Z Building Block Cards– These LEGO block cards invite users to copy the cards to form letters using small building blocks. Users can place the blocks on the cards or copy the letter to address visual shift and visual memory. This activity set comes in upper case and lowercase letter forms.
  • A-Z Play Dough Letter Formation Cards– Print off these cards and laminate them to create play dough mats. Learners can form the letters using the arrows to correctly form letters with play dough while strengthening their hands and visual motor skills. Each card includes a space for practicing the letter formation, using a dry erase marker if the cards are laminated.
  • Graded Lines Box Writing Sheets– Users can trace and form letters in boxes to work on formation of letters, line awareness, starting points, and letter size.
  • Alphabet Roll and Write Sheets– Roll a dice and form the letter associated with the number of dots on the dice. This is a great way to work on letter formation skills using motivation. Which letter will reach the top first? This activity is easily integrated with a rainbow writing task to increase number or repetitions for letter practice.
  • Pencil Control Letter Scan– Use the letter bubble tracks to scan for letters. Users can fill in the letters of the alphabet to work on pencil control skills.
  • Color and Cut Puzzles– Color the pictures to work on hand strength and letter formation skills. Then cut out the puzzles and build visual perceptual skills.

Get your copy of the Letters Fine Motor Kit today!

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.

Honey Bee Games and Activities Inspired by The Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh

We used our honey bees in a fine motor game where we matched the number of bees to the number on a honey pot.  The pinching motion to open the clothes pin is great for strengthening the muscles in little hands.  It really develops the arches of the hands and allows the child to improve his or her tripod grasp and handwriting.  This was a great activity for Little Guy (age 4), who is learning one-to-one correspondence in counting and number awareness. 

When we were given the opportunity to work on a Winnie The Pooh post, the three of us Aunts were SO excited!  We (and our kids) are huge fans of Pooh Bear and all of his friends. 
 
Did you watch this video as a child like we did?  You might remember the catchy songs and the cute and cuddly friends.  Now you can experience again (and with your own children), the friendships, imagination, and adventure of the Hundred Acre Woods when all of your favorite characters come alive in this timeless motion picture.
My kids were delighted with the bee scene in the movie, when Winnie The Pooh is trying his hardest to stop the “rumbly in his tumbly” with a little honey.  Little Guy has been singing this tune over and over again.  We decided to make some honey bee games and activities to go along with this scene.  We love to encourage fine motor, gross motor, and sensory development with our kid’s activities and crafts, and had to include those skills here, too!
I created honey bee pinch pins that were perfect for our little screening party and could be used in so many ways.
Materials: clothes pins, yellow and black pipe cleaners, googly eyes, wax paper, hot glue gun and glue.
Directions: 1. Pinch together one black and one yellow pipe cleaner.  Wrap these around the end of a clothes pin.  We used about half of each color pipe cleaner and cut the excess off.

2. Cut wings from wax paper.  Use the hot glue gun to glue the wings to the backs of the bees. 

3.  Hot glue the googly eyes to the front of the bee.  Your bee is now ready for play!

Honey Bee Fine Motor Game

We used our honey bees in a fine motor game where we matched the number of bees to the number on a honey pot.  The pinching motion to open the clothes pin is great for strengthening the muscles in little hands.  It really develops the arches of the hands and allows the child to improve his or her tripod grasp and handwriting.  This was a great activity for Little Guy (age 4), who is learning one-to-one correspondence in counting and number awareness. 

Honey Bee Gross Motor Activity

The honey pots were used again when we played a faster paced gross motor game, encouraging the kids to use their large muscle groups.  This time, I spread the honey pots out all over our living room floor.  I called out a number and the kids would have to race off to find the honey pot with that number.  Once they found their honey pot, they then had to run over to a large bee hive that we created from a recycled snack container and crepe paper.  I asked them to count out the number of bees to match the number on their honey pot, and drop them into the large bee hive.  To make it harder for my preschooler and kindergartener, I had them close their eyes.  This gross motor activity was just what they needed to get some energy out on a rainy afternoon!  As a bonus, they were developing their eye-hand coordination, and visual scanning skills as they scanned for numbers and counted out the bees.  They have already asked to play this game again!  This would be such a fun game for a Winnie The Pooh themed birthday party…and I have two little ones to attest for it being fun!

Honey Bee Sensory Play

Our honey bees were really loved when they were added into a themed sensory bin.  I poured in a bag of dried split peas, a few fake flower petals, and a handful of plastic flower beads for fun sensory exploration.  A sensory bin is such a great way to explore different textures, manipulate small objects, and develop language with little ones.  My kids loved using the honey bees to pinch the flower petals and buzzzzz around, only to drop the petal back into the bin.  This sensory bin stayed out in our dining room for a few days and was played with quite often!

Honey Bee Treat

We had such a great time watching The Adventures of Winnie The Pooh and then playing all of our honey bee games and activities, that we worked up an appetite.  I threw together a quick bee hive snack made from a marshmallow and melted butterscotch chips.  This was the perfect ending to a fun day.  If you are planning a Winnie The Pooh party or movie play date, I hope you will use some of our ideas!