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Kids Need Play

Bubble bath

Summer

Dear Reader,

As I have stated before, my kids love water. They will play in it any form that it comes in.

As toddlers one of their simplest joys is the bath. They also love bubbles. Adding bubbles to a bath is a great sensory play activity. Obviously since this is a bath this is one of the more involved activities we do, but my kids could play there for quite a while. The biggest perk I have to this is that if they are playing in the tub they aren’t making messes everywhere else.

Expect to get wet. Kids love to splash, especially when they are in the tub it seems. Sometimes this is not a bad thing, but if you want your floor to stay dry, this probably isn’t the right activity.

That being said, my kids could play in this for quite a while, long past the bubbles. If you need to sit down this is the perfect activity because the bathroom comes with the perfect seat to sit on while you are watching them!

Okay, so to sum up: You get to keep the mess in one area, you get to sit down, and the kids love it! Plus you get a little sensory play in as well. Have fun!

Summer at searchforseven.com
  • Depends on the child.
  • It goes without saying that you need to watch your kids in water, but just to say it “WATCH YOUR KIDS IN WATER!” As they get older you can step away a little more, but young children need more supervision.
Kids Need Play

Dice Roll

Summer

***Update: Since this article, we have created quite a few block activities and decided to make a printable dice game pack for you! Get that free download here.***

Dear Reader,

Today we played with dice. You can make your own, use what you have, or improvise with this one. To be simple all you have to have is a 6 sided die or two. You could make a list of six activities for your child to do, Or use an activity dice.

I made mine, but the girls had fun anyways.

The activity is pretty simple. First you start with rolling the dice (one for the activity and one for how many times you do the activity). Second you do the activity on the activity die the number of times it shows on the number die.

The activities can be simple, stomp your feet. Clap your hands. The possibilities can be endless, or as endless as your imagination ( I had to wrack my brains to figure out some and came up with some like do the cha cha.)

This gets your kids moving and you can even practice counting with them. A big bonus is that they usually like tossing the dice too.

My kids loved this for a while, then little sister wanted in and she didn’t know how to share. Cue crying. Oh well, definitely worth trying again.

Summer at searchforseven.com
  • This is more of a parent guided activity, you could also join in if you wanted.
Kids Need Play

**Freebie!** Stick Figure Models

Keira

Dear Reader,

I don’t know how it’s been for you lately, but my preschooler has been on one! She has been nagging nonstop and even yelled at her occupational therapist (we’re working on her pincer grasp. She struggles with fine motor skills. In my personal opinion, that is because everything she does is at 100 mph and she has no time to slow down and focus long enough to master said fine motor skills. This girl was born with a fire underneath her). I wanted to make an activity we could do together to hopefully reset the ‘tude she’s been dishing lately, so I made an activity that would hopefully let her slow down long enough and enjoy some time with me. I’m sharing it free with you (you’ll still need to grab a few supplies) in hopes that your kids will enjoy it, too. Scroll down to grab the freebie.

You’re gonna want to grab a few coffee stirrers (we call them hot chocolate stirrers) and save a milk lid for this activity, so plan ahead. But once you’ve gotten what you need, all you have left to do is to print out the page, cut the little figures apart (pretty important if your kiddo is easily distracted like mine. Not so important if that kiddo is older or less distracted), and sit down and build. I am pretty confident that an older preschooler would be able to enjoy themselves with little assistance, but younger kids definitely need some help figuring out how to move the pieces just right. It requires a bit of hand-eye-coordination and spacial relation. Bonus! This activity also works with the pincer grasp (we are becoming very familiar with those types of activities)!

Anyway, download the page and let me know how it goes!

Freebie from searchforseven.com
Click here to download

Keira at searchforseven.com
Kids Need Play

Toddlers like fetch, go figure

Keira

Dear reader,

Today I tried to teach my newly-minted-toddlers to roll the ball back and forth. I tried to roll the ball and they just kept handing the ball back instead of rolling it, and they seemed to have more fun bringing it back than anything else, so I improvised. Come to find out, toddlers really like playing fetch! I’m sure rolling it back will come later, but for now, … Well, we will class it up a bit and call it roll and go, haha!

One of the girls was a bit more keen on going and getting it, while the other was happier if I rolled it directly to her and let her bring it back to me, but that definitely comes down to personality; and let me say, it definitely fits with other aspects of their personalities. For instance, the one that loved going to get the ball is also the one that has been walking for a month and the one that would rather me roll it right to her is the one more quiet and interested in one-on-one interactions. That’s one of my favorite things about having twins: seeing how differently the same task can be done by a different personality. I look forward to more opportunities to observe that difference in the future.

Keira at searchforseven.com
  • for our youngest kids
  • the point is to teach and play together
  • just grab a ball and play!
  • this game is for little toddlers. Don’t expect much as far as attention
Kids Need Play

Freeze Dance Party

Summer

Dear Reader,

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!

Summer at searchforseven.com
  • If you want to involve yourself more you can and it will probably make the time last longer too, but it is your choice.
Kids Need Play

Ice Painting

Summer

Dear Reader,

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.

Summer at searchforseven.com
  • If you want to involve yourself more you can and it will probably make the time last longer too, but it is your choice.
Kids Need Play

Canning Rings Sensory Play

Keira

Dear Reader,

As I said in my earlier post, we are canning raspberries around here. So naturally, today’s toddler activity, fittingly, is playing with canning rings! they make a big clanking sound that my toddlers love, and it’s keeping them distracted while I’m helping my preschooler (aka my preschooler is helping me) turn raspberries into puree. They also make good bracelets and are easy for toddlers to hold. That’s totally educational, right?

I know there’s more than canning rings in my ring box, but they’re “hand-me-downs” from my grandmother, and that means that although they’re not as useful, I just can’t get rid of them! I’ll use them for something crafty eventually.

Honestly, the toddlers enjoyed it. And although they could damage them, I don’t think they’ll do any harm. And *bonus* it doesn’t take much mom involvement while they play!

Keira at searchforseven.com
A Day in the Life, Canning/Harvest, Kids Need Play

What We did with Our Berries

Keira

Dear Reader,

I’ve had a longstanding date with my friend’s raspberry patch set for about once a year. She only calls me when it gets desperate in her patch and she’s struggling to catch up; her main goal is to fulfill all the demand that others have for berries from her patch and I usually take about half of the berries I pick. This year has been a great year for raspberries and she said she had more than she could handle, so I bought extra from her. That meant I’ve been busy working raspberries for the past few days. Since my preschooler helped me pick the berries, I figured she would also be interested in helping me process them, as well.

Obviously, this activity would have to be tweaked if you don’t have a food strainer, but you could easily mash berries with a potato masher! It just doesn’t involve a cool crank, too. My food strainer is called a Victorio, but based on the internet search dive I just took, they must have changed their name? either way, it looks like this. My preschooler could both turn the crank handle and mash the berries, and it was kinda fun watching her get so excited at something that is really technically a chore. She loved making “squished berry juice” and I loved both the help and the time with her. All in all, she lasted quite a while! Equal to about 4 quarts of raspberry juice/pulp. We added a little sugar and canned it that way.

I’m adding the activity scales here even though it’s not the end of the post because if you’re only reading for the activity, the rest of this is a little dry, but since this blog is also a chronicle of my gardening/canning adventures, I need to include the following information (mostly for me…)

All in all we had 6 gallons of berries (6 large clam shells) and it made:

  • 2 batches of jam with lemon peel pectin (aka 8 cups of berries, 6 cups of sugar, an entire bag of my homemade lemon pectin – about 10 tablespoon cubes but they were old and nearly impossible to separate from the bag, hence the large batch, and 4 T lemon juice (it just needed the lemon). It set pretty well, but I understand why they tell you to do it in small batches. Some of the jars are extra firm gel and some are barely set).
  • 2 gallon ziplocks of whole frozen berries (filled 2 xl cookie sheets and 3 regular sized (they’re Pampered Chef large size)
  • 3 1/2 quarts of raspberry juice (it required a whole cup of sugar to make it not so tart) and then I went to the store and bought a regular sized clamshell of strawberries, a large clamshell of blueberries, a whole bag of grapes, and a small clamshell of blackberries and that plus the remaining raspberry juice (and half a cup of sugar) made another 2 1/2 quarts so I processed it all together – 5 quarts, 2 pints – and although the canning guides said 1/4″ headspace, I think I really needed a whole inch of headspace because they bubbled out everywhere and 3 didn’t seal (2 ended up in my fridge but I didn’t notice the 3rd until I didn’t wanna trust it),
  • pulp for fruit leather (filled a quart bag but its currently still in my fridge. I’ll update when it’s leather). I used the strainer and only ran it through once, so it’s really just pulp and seeds without any liquid. The liquid was bottled in the quarts above).
Keira at searchforseven.com
Kids Need Play

Glue Letter Trace

Summer

Dear Reader,

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.

Summer at searchforseven.com
Kids Need Play

Water Bead Bath

Summer

Dear Readers

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.

Summer at searchforseven.com