Halloween

Halloween Sensory Tub

The boys LOVE playing with sensory tubs. And I must admit, I love putting them together! I especially love this time of year!  As soon as the first cooler day approached us, I figured it was time to put together a Fall/Halloween tub for the boys to play with.

I did my shopping at Dollar Tree, Michael’s & Joanne’s. I’ll show you the entire tub I put together, and then I’ll break it down so you can see where I got each individual piece.

The entire tub was less than $20!!

I usually use beans, pasta noodles, etc. for them to dump/play with in the tubs. This time I thought I’d change it up and get something more Halloween related. I found spider & pumpkin buttons, Halloween erasers, colored spikey balls, rubber eyeballs & skeleton people.

                               

    

    

For the actual tubs, again, I wanted to something more festive. I found a orange candy bucket and filled it with items they could dump all their above “treasures” into. Below I will list out all the items & where I got them at.

 

Shopping List:

Joanne’s—spider/pumpkin buttons $2

Michael’s—spikey balls $2, erasers $2

Dollar Tree (everything is $1)—Candy bucket, ice cube tray, pumpkin cups-2, goblet, haunted house box, funnels, ice cream scoop, mini tubs, measure spoons, rubber eyeballs/spiders, skeleton people

Everything totals $18!!

 

 

Shew Fly Don't Bother Me!

Learning about bugs is always a fun thing for little kids...especially little boys. What's better then dirt, tools and eewy, wiggly bugs!

After searching Pinterest and my favorite blogs, I found the best activities, recipes and games that are perfect for kids ages 3 and under.

Let's begin with the book list. Some of the top books include: The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Bugs! Bugs! Bugs!, Bugs Are Insects, A Firefly in a Fir Tree, Leo the Lightning Bug, Ten Little Caterpillars

 

 

 

Sensory Tub

The sensory tub included the following: plastic bugs, magnify glass, safari hats, rocks, sticks, bug nets & leaves.

 

 

 

 

Activities

 

1) Play with mud dough (mix baking soda, water & food coloring)  We also buried bugs in the mud dough. They dug them out with their hands or we got a squirt gun and sprayed water on the bugs to clean them off.

 

 

 



 

2) Go on a Bug Hunt! Use your binoculars, bug hats and nets to catch bugs in the yard

 

3) Play mosquito tag. Give each kid a few stickers to hold in their hands. On go, kids chase each other.  When you tag another person you have to stick the sticker on them. The sticker represents a mosquito bite. When we played it, I had the kids yell, "Mosquito!!" 

 

4) Glow in the Dark bug hunt. Go to Dollar Tree and get a bag of glow-in-the-dark bugs for $1. At night, I hid the bugs in our bedroom and bathroom. Shaye went "looking" for all the bugs in the dark. He thought it was so cool to hunt for bugs inside!

 

5) Read the Very Hungry Caterpillar. Then use the cut outs to have them sequence the food while you read the book.

 

 



 

6) Bug Movement Cards. Do movements according to the cards. For example, Dance like a Bee, Spin like a Spider, Roll like a Roly Poly, etc.

 

 

 

7) Animal Sort Activities. You can sort by size, color or attributes. One we did was sorting by bugs that had wings vs. no wings.

 

 



 



Gardening 101

This week we have focused our time on Gardening! Each day we read a different book and either did a craft or made a special snack that goes along with gardening! At first I wasn't sure about this theme, but the more research I did I kept finding cute things to do! I also got lots of my ideas from the Virtual Book Club for Kids that we are participating in online.
 
Below is what we have done throughout the week!

To begin, I created a sensory tub for the boys to play with all week. I got two $1 bags of shredded brown paper to use as dirt, a set of fake flowers and kid gardening supplies.

 

 

 



Day 1:
Introduce the Gardening theme by doing nothing other then...GARDENING! We went down to my brothers and planted vegetables in the garden. Of course we put these boys to work!! We talked about garden tools (tractors, shovels, cages, etc.), what plants we planted, of course we just played in the dirt!

 

 

 

Day 2:

We read the books A is for Salad by Mike Lester & Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert. Since it's so beautiful outside today I didn't want to do very much inside. We made a Rainbow Salad out of fruit and took it outside to eat! Red=Strawberries, Orange=mandarin oranges, Yellow=Banana, Green=grapes, Blue=blueberries, Violet=grapes

 

 

 

Day 3:

We read the book How Groundhog's Garden Grew by Lynne Cherry.  I had the boys draw pictures of a garden. I also created a color page that listed vegetables/fruits and their color!

 

 

 Day 4:

We read the book Biscuit in the Garden by Alyssa Capucilli

Then we played with our sensory tub!

 

 



 

Day 5:

We read the book Growing Vegetable Soup by Lois Ehlert

As a special treat we had pudding (as dirt) and gummy worms.

 



 

 

Other Great Gardening Books:

Eating the Alphabet by Lois Ehlert, The Curious Garden by Peter Brown

 

 

 

 





I'm Shavin'...Part 1

As Shaye gets older, I continue to get entertained by his little sayings that he comes up with. "Shake milk" for milkshake, shavin' for using the razor like daddy, etc.

When my brother and I were younger he would always sing, "I'm shavin". What makes it even funnier now, is realizing that when he heard the Garth Brooks song Shameless, he thought Garth was saying 'shavin'. Therefore he would start singing the wrong words.

Seeing what kids come up with on their own, makes every parenting opportunity more special. After Shaye asking to shave like daddy, it inspired me to write this post about the fun that shaving cream can bring to a child! Who would have thought a $3 bottle could provide so much entertainment for kids!!

The first thing I wanted to do was find a pretend shavor that Shaye could use. I found one for $3 at Wal-Mart with a bottle of manly shaving cream!

 

 





Now came all the fun of shaving!!

Green, Yellow, Red Blue...I'll color the water with you!

This past week we finally got to try the fun Coloured Water activity from Happy Hooligans! The boys absolutely LOVED it!!
All I did was take empty dish soap, windex & gatorade bottles to add water to. With a couple drops of food coloring...our bottles were made!

 

 

Brock had more fun playing with the bottles then anything! He kept squeezing them and trying to chew on the lids. Of course he kept saying "water" and trying to drink it...no matter what the color!

 

He would say, "dump it!"

 

 

 

After dumping all the water out from the bottles, they had fun swishing it around in the tubs

 





Who would have thought such a cheap activity would entertain them for so long!

We all Scream for ICE CREAM!

As the summer months approach us, ICE CREAM is a go to theme! From homeade recipes, water tables, playdough and craft supplies...ice cream provides for hours of fun. Below are some of my favorite ice cream activities I plan to do with the boys!



 

Ice Cream Sensory-This is perfect for those days when it's VERY HOT outside! Enjoy ice cream fun inside!

 



 

 





Milkshake Party! As much as Shaye loves milkshakes aka "shake milks", I can't wait to have some people over for a big milkshake party!!



Gail Gibbons Ice Cream Parlor- This is part of the Virual Book Club for Kids on Facebook!

 

 

 

 

Ice Cream Goo! (Fun at home with kids!) - Edible ice cream dough!

 

Freezy Dough





Pom Pons



Pom Pom balls provide many hours of fun! Check out my next blog on ideas of how to use them at home with your kids!

1)Pond Dot Markers  Simply take pom pom balls and attach magnets to them. Now kids can place the pom pom balls in the dots to complete the pictures. For an extension you could also use dot markers, found on amazon or in any craft store. These paint markers are great for younger kids!
Check out  3dinosaurs.com   What an AMAZING webpage. She does an amazing job with providing free printables for you to use at home. If you go to the free pintables page, she has everything organized by theme. Below is a picture of her Pond marker pages which are in the Pond Pack.

2) Tweezer practice, More Tweezer Practice Using tweezers is great fine motor skill practice. You can use regular tweezers or you can get kids size tweezers! You can find them on amazon or I found ours at Mardel and US Toy!

3) Discovery Bottles- Simply fill an empty bottle with pom poms, or any other craft item like beads, pipe cleaner, etc. Then fill with water and seal the lid tight! Kids will enjoy this for hours!!

4) Color Sorting - Practice color matching











Wet n' Wild...Sensory Bins: Part II

Here is a list of my top 10 water activities to do with toddlers! I can't wait to do these with the boys!

10) Swamp  (Gelatin and Kool-Aid)

 



9) Washing dishes

 

8)  Ice Paint

 

7) Summer Snow  ( I LOVE this idea!!)

6) Gel Food Coloring

 

 

5) Funnels and Cups

 

 

4) Coloured Water

 

 

 

3) Water Painting   (How simple is this!! Just give them a cup of water and a paint brush and let them "paint" outside. They could paint the house, toys, etc..but it's just water!!)

 

 

2) Ice Fishing

1) Water Beads ( I know I've posted water beads before, but I LOVE these!!)
    Around here you can find them at Dollar Tree or Joanne's Craft Store.