As a kid we used to have vacuum races. Now I know how that sounds, but it was pretty fun as a kid. No we weren’t racing actual vacuums around but doing what i have recently learned most people call the wheelbarrow walk.
This great activity works on both the bilateral coordination and helps kids seeking proprioceptive input. Proprioception is the perception or awareness of the position and movement of the body.
For the wheelbarrow walk the larger person (usually the adult) holds the legs of the secon near the ankles. The second person walks on their hands around the room.
If you feel your child has mastered the wheelbarrow walk there are other ways to customize this activity. You could set up a course, or you could race other siblings or even thier own time.
If you can come up with any other ways to customize this activity be sure to let us know.
We needed something fun at our house as we are about to hit major harvest season and be pretty busy, so I searched through multiple ideas and found a picture that turned a clothespin into a catapult. It seemed basic enough, so my thought was, “eh, why not.” To be fair, I probably would never bother if we haven’t been challenging ourselves to play with our kids intentionally.
I could easily reverse engineer what I saw in the picture, as it used a block of wood, a clothespin, a large popcicle stick (we always called them tongue depressors. Is that still a thing?), And a lid from a juice container.
The picture had the clothespin glued into the middle, but as we (my husband and I) tested it out before we showed our daughter, it was incredibly pathetic, hardly doing anything except shoot straight up; and not that far, either. So we pulled it off (as best we could. I gave up on the last piece after the clothespin broke and I had to go get another one.
Moving it to the end helped a ton. It gave much more leverage to the clothespin. Tossing anything heavier than the marshmallows turned out to be a disappointment, too, but marshmallows worked pretty well. So we showed the catapult to our daughter, and all took turns shooting the marshmallows to the target plates.
As far as catapults go, this one isn’t that great, but it was super easy, and my preschooler can operate it herself (although it definitely helps if I hold the base). If my preschooler were a little older, I would make a few other types of catapults and we could have a science day trying them all out and comparing them and then learning what works best and why.
But for now, we are just having fun. And there will be more chances to experiment. Interestingly enough, her favorite part wasn’t shooting the catapult… it was collecting the marshmallows. And it gave all of us a nice reprieve from picking apples, harvesting green tomatoes, and all the adventures of storing food for winter.
I didn’t exactly know how well it would go, but when my preschooler asked if she could play with chalk, I decided to see how well the toddlers did with it. It was nice weather (although the forecast said it was supposed to be cold today), and these two love to go outside! They beeline for the door if anyone grabs any shoes, so they were more than happy to get to go outside with permission this time.
And boy was that an adventure. I will say, they did “draw.” But it was about 10 seconds in duration. Then I spent the rest of the time chasing after one and then the other to keep them on the concrete instead of booking it to the rocks or the grass or eating the chalk. Part of me hoped that by leaving them barefoot, they’d be more apt to stay on the flat surface but the bumpy rocks didn’t even slow them down.
I mean, I didn’t expect much, they’re still really little for chalk, but I figured that exposing them is the first start. And since winter is right around the corner, now seemed like a good enough time. They knew that holding the chalk and touching the concrete was the general idea, and made a few marks. But, alas, the joy of being outside was much more of a pull than putting color on the cement.
The preschooler, however, did enjoy her time to be artistic, so all the chasing was worth it. She started with drawing lines (or 1’s), then we drew shapes. She just discovered that she can spin around with the chalk and it makes a circle. I was kind of impressed when she turned those circles into fruit. One was a pear, one was an apple and one was an orange, all with added green leaves.
I’m sure there will be more time to play with chalk, but it may not happen until next spring, so it was a good time to get in a little practice. And some sunshine. Around these parts, we could always use a little more sunshine.
Today I combined my Toddler and Preschool activities because you can use the same activity to focus on different things for the different ages. For toddlers we talked about the different animal sounds and following in a line. For preschool we talked what the different animals ate and worked on seeking/finding.
To set up your safari hunt hide animals around the house. I mostly used animals that you would find on a safari but you could use other animals as well. Make sure you make your animals visible so your child can find them, otherwise it won’t be a safari but will be more like hide and seek.
Ride the train around to seek the animals out. We used a jump rope to form the train, but you could just hold hands.
As you find the animals discuss the different aspects of the animals.
As we have said before, we are focusing on feelings this week. It actually started by accident when we were talking about activities we wanted to do, and both of us mentioned activities that had to do with emotions. We just decided to make a week of it! Today’s feeling activity is a good game to help get wiggles out while also thinking about “others” and their feelings.
It’s a pretty simple game, but that makes it fun! Roll the dice, and act like the animal if it felt like what is on the feelings dice. I even made this free printable to go along with it!
I just printed mine off on regular white paper, but I highly recommend cardstock, because by the end of the game, our dice were pretty hashed. And I just have to vent my frustration at how awful Elmer’s Gluesticks have become. It’s a brand new gluestick I bought for back to school and it is sooo worthless. Doesn’t glue anything. Therefore, I also recommend tape instead of glue. Super frustrating.
Anyway, I put a lot of work into this activity, so I’m glad the preschooler loved it. I’ve never designed animals on the computer before, but now I think it’ll be fun to make more!
She played with them while the twins napped, so it survived their little fingers, and I loved her budding acting skills. An angry elephant stomped through my living room. A sad monkey swung his arms in despair.
It was fun to think about how an animal would behave when it was feeling surprised or scared or angry. I may have even gotten in on the action.
What do you think? What would a happy flamingo do? Or a sad penguin?
As we have said in previous posts, we decided to take a week and focus on emotions and feelings with our kiddos this week. This is easier said and done when said kiddos are still super little. While thinking about what toddlers need as far as emotions, I realized that what toddlers need fairly regularly is redirection and distraction when things just aren’t going their way.
I’ve had these for a while, but I decided to pull them down and see how my toddlers responded to them. Of course, they love them, and they are a great diversion. I usually just pick them up while I clean the house and set them out of reach but somewhere central and easy to access when babies just need a distraction.
Although they’re kind of heavy for littles, they can roll and shake them and that is enough for their little attention spans.
There are multiple recipes all over the internet and I highly encourage you to play around with the exact proportions because it is nice having multiple jars that “calm down” at different intervals. My dark, “galaxy” themed one takes the longest to get all settled, and my patriotic jar goes the quickest. But you can see the trinkets in the patriotic one better, making it ideal for toddlers.
Also, I used clear glue for my patriotic bottle and regular white glue in my winter hearts bottle, and it has totally different vibe, so don’t count out the regular white glue! It makes the hearts kind of appear and disappear.
… okay, I can’t really take credit. My mom made the winter one, but I added the teal because she had it in a cute little bottle and it broke 🙁 But when I put it in the smart water bottles (seriously perfect for this project), it just looked so blah, so I added the teal (that was the color of the bottle she had it in, so it didn’t change the feel of it, really). Actually, she made it and my kids loved it so much that I made the other 2. They worked really well while I was watching my brother’s kids. I intended to make a bunch and keep experimenting but 3 seems to be a good amount and I’m not constantly picking them up if there is only 3. Maybe when my toddlers get old enough that these are “old news,” I will make the others.
So, to make a calm down jar (I know, finally, a recipe… but I wanted it at the end because these aren’t rules, they’re “guidelines”), you will need:
a clear bottle (Smart water bottles are seriously great, but as long as it’s mostly solid and will hold up well, it doesn’t really matter. We have some distilled water bottles from a local grocery store that I think will work well and they’re not so huge.
glue. Best choice by far is clear glitter glue, but there is flexibility here.
water. HoT water!
Glitter (yes, more glitter).
Little sequin and trinkets to go in the jar. My patriotic one actually has little beads I had been saving just because they were cute, so this was a good use for them!
Food coloring
I’ve found for me, personally, the sweet spot is about 1 part glue and 2 parts water. And then as much glitter as you want. I personally like lots of glitter, but I have 3 different variations and they all have obviously different amounts of glitter. Just know, you want hot water so the glue mixes in!
FYI it is really hard to get a picture of all 3 at their prettiest! Which is your favorite jar? What would you put in a jar? Let me know!
Today for our emotions week I played egg-streme emotions with my toddler.
Egg-streme Emotions is simple enough. All you have to do is draw faces on the plastic eggs you get from Easter. Draw sad, happy, mad and many more that your toddler will recognize (we don’t want to make it too difficult for them).
For a Toddler I would do around 5 eggs a child. So some options besides the 3 I listed earlier are: silly, sleepy, sick, disgusted, scared, surprised.
Once You draw your faces and let them dry separate the top from the bottom of the egg and let your toddler try to put the faces back together.
Discuss the different emotions, help your child understand them. You don’t have to stop at what I listed for emotions either. Just remember to have fun.
Today we did rubbings of emotions. A rubbing is when you color over something and it leaves an impretion behind.
To do this I made pictures out of glue on a white piece of paper. Let the glue dry. Once your pictures are dry you will need crayons to rub the picture into sight.
My children love coloring so I thought this would be a great way to start our special week of emotions.
The glue adds a new dimension to coloring and my kids enjoyed it.
I suggest having the glue on the back of the picture (glue facing your table) because you will get a better result.
I can’t really take much credit for this activity, since we printed off someone else’s idea, but it was such a good and entertaining activity, I saw no point in reinventing the wheel. To see this great activity at the source, click here. It comes from Mr. Printables, and I had a pin that sent me on a goose chase to find the original owner, but I’m glad I did (when in doubt, do a reverse image lookup, haha). Anyway, head on over to his (I’m assuming it’s a him, since it’s called Mr… but I actually only know that he had a printable that I liked and nothing more) site and download the printable.
I modified what they had a little based on the supplies we had at our home, so I printed off his pattern, then traced the shapes onto colored cardstock. For the asterisks in the eyes, I just used a marker (that didn’t seem like a fun shape to cut out. Marker was way easier!) Then I “pre-drilled” the holes and handed my kid a lot of 6 brad’s. (Bonus! More pincer grasp practice!)
As you can see, I totally cheated on the cardstock. I printed 1 sheet of plain white paper and glued it to the back of a capri sun box (so that the color doesn’t shine through). Then I used the same white paper to do the background of the teardrops and the eyeballs.
For the record, she wasn’t determined to keep this one on a sad face, that’s just the best picture I got of her holding it, go figure. We made all kinds of faces and talked about how different parts of our face move when we feel differently. Sometimes I’d say make a mad (or happy or worried) face! Then I’d show her on my face and see if she could see what moved.
When we were talking about what activities to do this week, we noticed a common thread occurring. We both picked out activities that had to do with feelings. Maybe it’s the change of season, or maybe it’s just part of growing up, but it sounded like a good time to talk about feelings. And when we got to talking, we decided that it wasn’t something exclusively for preschoolers. Even newly-christened-toddlers are learning emotions in full force!
But my littles can’t handle some big grand activity on emotions, it’s all so new and undiscovered territory; However, they can definitely mirror your expressions and try copying your face. So, we just did that on purpose for an activity. That’s a lot of what this whole experiment is about – doing things with intention.
Really, it’s super easy and you’re probably already doing some form of this activity with your babe. I have found it easiest to either turn the camera around on my phone so you can set baby in your lap, or do the same but with a good old fashioned mirror. Letting baby see your face and theirs at the same time. You can just make faces across the dinner table, or even from any place your kid can make eye contact. It just ends up more fun when you can snuggle and when they can see themselves. Note: babies love seeing themselves!
Anyway, the post is short and sweet, but it is definitely fun to make faces on purpose. Try smiling and pulling silly faces and winking (don’t expect them to even come close on that one, haha). Definitely stick with happier emotions if your kids are still little like me, because they don’t understand the difference between pretend sad and real sad.
Since this is a fairly common practice even subconsciously, I’d love some feedback if anyone has actually thought about playing monkey see expressions with their kids!
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