I am the mother of four busy children. I have two preschoolers and two toddlers (though one is only just a toddler). I have a bachelors in University studies with a minor in English and a cluster of child development. This means I was going for school as an English major but then decided that I really didn't want to be going to school until my oldest was two. My original plan was to go for a minor in child development.
My child development classes have helped tremendously with my family life. My oldest child has had some developmental delays, though they still have not diagnosed them.
My busy family life and busy life in general make it necessary that I take some time away to spend some time with my children doing something fun. I want to build a relationship with my kids, and this is done one activity at a time.
Life has been rough here the last little while, resulting in my surgery the other day. I really needed something simple and easy to occupy my kids, and having a dance party is the perfect thing.
Dance Party is a favorite activity here. It gets my kids active and I can basically just put it on and let them do the rest.
I find YouTube to be the easiest supplier of dance songs, but if you have dance music CDs (I know, old school but I grew up with them so I still have a few lying around) or even a playlist on something you can use those.
As I said this is mostly a hands off activity but if you want to join in you will more than likely get your kiddos to do more dancing. It will also keep them involved longer if you are joining in and bonus you get some exercise too!
If you want to involve yourself more you can and it will probably make the time last longer too, but it is your choice.
Today for the toddlers I decided to do ice painting. I have been wanting to try this for a while, I just haven’t gotten to it until today. Life has been crazy, and since I didn’t have an ice maker it does require some prep work for me.
The Girls really loved it, but it ended a little too soon for all of us. Perhaps next time I will try to thicken the “paint”. Another option is to have one for each of my kiddos and paint for each of them too, so more stuff.
The problem I have with thickening the “paint” is that I wanted an easy cleanup and water and food coloring seemed to be the best for that, though some of the colors were not very bright, so perhaps I need to add something to it.
As I said earlier I don’t have an ice maker, so I had to make the ice myself. This also meant limited storage for the ice. If you wanted to spend money I guess you could buy a bag of ice, but I just wanted to do something easy.
For the paint I did water and food coloring. The red worked the best, as it usually does. Next time I will add more color for the others to make them brighter and maybe some flour to make it thicker? Flour would also help bring out the color as well, but it would not be as easy to clean up if they spilled on the ground.
If you have any ideas let me know, and we will be glad to try them out. Or if you tried a variation and want to share your success be sure to let us know! We would love to hear from you.
If you want to involve yourself more you can and it will probably make the time last longer too, but it is your choice.
My oldest has been struggling making the different letters. Her occupational therapist suggested to have her make the letters in different ways. Today’s activity was tracing the letters with glue.
This activity is pretty self explanatory. All you need to do is write the letters you want your child to trace on a piece of paper. Then you give them a glue container and tell them to trace the letters.
I will admit that I went a little extra and colored my glue, but you don’t have to. I just knew that my children would fight over the glue if I didn’t differentiate them.
This is an activity you will want to monitor, unless you want glue all over everything that is. My children loved this activity and did pretty well at tracing. Make sure you have a lot of letters to trace if you want this activity to last longer than a few seconds though. My child finished in under a minute and was asking for more.
My children love playing in water. If they could they would be in water at least once a day. Every once in a while I try to spice it up a little and do something different with the water. Today I decided to try Water Beads.
Water beads are a simple sensory activity. When added to a bath it seems like it would be lots of fun. This was my first foray into the water beads, and perhaps I should have tried something else first. I didn’t realize that they squish so easily.
My toddler did have fun playing with them, for a while. After a while though they started “following” her in the currents she created. This child is afraid of things following her, terrified actually. It doesn’t matter what it is, she will freak out. Once that happened she was done.
This activity does require some preparation before hand, the beads need to sit in the water for 6 hours before they are ready to be used. Once they are expanded you can use them at your convenience. When you are ready just add them to the tub and let them play.
If you decide to do this activity I would suggest a hair catcher in the drain so that no beads go down the drain.
Kids love sensory activities, and today our rice trace was a winner. All the kids wanted to join in, so it made quite a mess. It may have been better had I had a tray for each child though.
This activity is one that was suggested by my child’s therapist and teachers. It helps them get a tactile feel for what they are learning, say letters or shapes.
All you need for this activity is rice (or sugar, or some other substance) and a tray. I used a small cookie tray I had, but you could use a bigger one or something similar.
Place your rice in the tray and spread it out evenly. Help your child learn the shape you want them to trace, then let them start tracing.
As I said earlier the kids loved it, but be prepared for a mess. They weren’t very good at keeping all the rice in the tray.
Today we made Bubble Snakes. My kids have always loved bubbles. I think most kids do. Most kids seem to be fascinated with them from an early age, which is why this is a good activity for all toddlers and older.
My youngest toddler did not get to experience this yet, but to be fair he is only just in the toddler stage. We did this while baby was napping.
All you need is an old sock, water, soap, a bowl, and some sort of bottle top. The original place I saw this had water bottles that they cut up, but I don’t have those plastic water bottles lying around. I did however have water bottle lids from a kids water bottle (I also wonder if a sippy-cup lid would work. If you try it out, let us know how it works for you!).
One recommendation I have is to make sure the sock’s heel is all the way on your lid. The bubble snake came out like a blob when I let the heel be off the lid… but it worked like a charm when it was on.
So, once you get the sock situated all that is left is making your bubble solution. Put dish soap in a bowl (I didn’t measure, I just poured a little in) and add water. Mix up your solution and then take it and your kids outside.
While my toddler loved this, it was definitely over her head on the blowing part. Since she is just barely figuring out how to blow regular bubbles I guess this shouldn’t be too much a surprise. She did however love the bubble snakes and would giggle with glee every time.
As your kids get older you will have to be less involved and be able to let them enjoy themselves, but even after they figure out how to blow the bubbles you may want to be the bubble station if you want it to last more than 5 minutes. My kiddos always end up tipping the bowl.
Today I really wanted to focus on letter recognition with my preschoolers. They know their numbers really well (both can count at least to 20). This activity would have been perfect for that, had my toddler not interfered.
My preschoolers loved it, what we were able to do. They were able to take turns and grab a letter. Then the toddler, who is working on turns, just kept bringing random letters thinking it was her turn. Soon it turned into utter chaos.
I would say the idea was definitely better then the execution on my part. I think it would have been a lot better, and they would have had more fun with it, had I been able to distract the toddler.
The idea for Dump Truck Alphabet is to have letters spread out on the floor, give the preschooler a letter they had to get, have the preschooler drive the dump truck to the letter and bring it back.
I happened to have some fabric letters that my sister made me for the kids, but if you don’t have something like that you could always use letters that you make out of paper or something to that effect. Also if you don’t happen to have a dump truck you could use a basket or something to that effect, maybe an Easter basket. If none of those options work then you could just have them grab the letter and bring it to you in their hands.
Whatever you decide to use, I know you and your kids will have fun.
Today was overcast and not too hot yet, so the perfect day for sponge target. It was already hot and humid at 9:00 so if you are looking for a good activity to get your kids to go out and play in the sun, but still stay cool, this is a good option.
This activity was great for both the older toddler and the preschoolers. That being said I focused mostly on my toddler for this one.
My toddler loved playing with sponges, and what is even better is that it is an activity that I didn’t have to monitor too closely. It kept them busy for a good 20 minutes and they would have been longer had I been willing to add more water to the bucket.
Another plus was that it took minimal setup (busy mom can’t afford to spend all day planning activities). All you need is a bucket (or something to hold the water), sponges, and some way to mark targets. I chose to use sidewalk chalk because it would be easy cleanup for me, (just the bucket and sponges to clean up) but you could use whatever your heart desires. My only caution is to make sure it is easy to clean up after yourself (Painting a target with paint that won’t wash off probably isn’t a good idea)
The steps are pretty simple:
Draw a target on the ground or wall.
Put out a container filled with water and sponges.
Demonstrate what is expected.
Sit back and enjoy.
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