So, first and foremost, thank you Pinterest for some really fun ideas and for sparking our creativity this winter! Charlie and I have been fighting sinus infections lately , plus it has been super cold outside, so we have been cooped up indoors a whole lot lately. We've played dress up for countless hours, played with all of his toys SO MANY TIMES, and I now know nearly every word of The Wiggles DVD he likes best (I think I have even started to develop real feelings for Anthony, the blue Wiggle...haha).
So what's a mom to do? Well, check out what we came up with...
1. I filled the bottom of a cake pan with dry rice and put his little construction trucks inside. We played construction site and had a lot of fun scooping the rice into the diggers and dumping rice from the dump trucks. Rice was a fun texture to play with but it was a little tricky to keep in the pan. Pinterest suggested using popcorn kernels but I like popcorn too much to waste those! What I went with next was some dry beans. I used white beans and they were really fun since they look like little rocks in there! I always keep an eye out for sales in the dry bean aisle now and look forward to experimenting with different textures! Finally, having a reading specialist background, I always try tie a book (or 2 or 3...) into everything we do... A good one to go with this activity is "Goodnight Construction Site" by Sherri Duskey Rinker.
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| Beep Beep... |
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Having fun playing construction site!
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2. Using masking tape, I made a "spider web" in Charlie's door way with the sticky side facing out. Then we took little pieces of paper (tissue paper works best) and cotton swabs and put them nearby. Next, we pretended to be spiders and tried to catch as many bugs (the paper and cotton) as we could by throwing them at our web. It was really fun when they would actually stick! Older kids would enjoy throwing the paper more, but Charlie had fun just walking right up to the web and sticking the "bugs" on. The books I like using with this activity are "The Very Busy Spider" by Eric Carle and "Aaaarrrgghh! Spider!" by Lydia Monks.
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| A view from inside of the spider's room :) |
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| Charlie, the spider, collecting bugs in his web! |
3. Using milk and food coloring, we did a little experimenting with colors. It's really fun to watch the colors swirl around and eventually mix together. It was a good lesson in RED + BLUE = PURPLE and that sort of thing. He had a whole lot of fun with this one! We also carried the fun on with some Bath Fizzies - colored tablets to change the water in the tub (sorry no pics of that!). Some good books for these color activities are "Blue Goose" by Nancy Tafuri and "Mouse Paint" by Ellen Stoll Walsh.
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| Swirling so many colors ... it ended up a little gray by the time I got around to taking out the camera! |
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| "Hmmm... What colors should I make next?" |
4. We did a little experimenting with sink and float. I got three plastic containers. I filled one half way up with water and labeled the other two SINK and FLOAT. Then Charlie found things to drop in the water (toys, silverware, etc.) To go along with this activity, we read a non-fiction book from our library called "Will it Sink or Float?" I don't know the author but it is in the Rookie Reader series, which is good for preschool.
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| Testing out his hypothesis... "I was right! It floats!" |
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A good way to practice sorting too! :)
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These are just some of the fun activities we tried (and that I was lucky enough to get documented with the camera) and liked! Hope to share more soon! Hope you enjoyed these!
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