Kids Need Play

Water Bead Funnel Fun

Dear Reader,

I can’t believe spring is already here! I mean, I’m not complaining – I’m not a big fan of winter – but I am not ready for the busyness that comes with spring when you’re an avid gardener. I haven’t finished all of my winter projects yet! Plus, my preschooler has decided that spring means extra busyness, too! She has been wanting to do *all the things.* Which doesn’t exactly match with my need to get things done. So I needed to come up with something for her to do that was fun and exciting but didn’t involve me. I grabbed some water beads and a funnel and the pans we use for sand dough.

We filled an old juice bottle with water and watched the beads grow throughout the day, and then I poured a few in her tray and handed her the funnel.

Her OT and I have been talking a lot about retained palmar grasp reflex, and I can see it. Especially when we do fine-motor tasks like playing with small, slippery things. I Don’t know if tasks like this will really solve anything, but they definitely take concentration and focus, so I feel like they’re good for that aspect. And aiming for the funnel (especially the small end) takes hand-eye coordination. Just make sure you have a funnel with a big enough hole. This funnel was the only one that fit that bill besides our canning funnels, so I handed those to the toddlers (and watched them much closer) while I worked across from them and transplanted lavender.

Keira at searchforseven.com

Age Range

3+

Prep Required

lay the groundwork
(buy and prepare
the beads)

Time Needed

20 minutes

Supervision

3/10

Kids Need Play

Decorating Easter Cookies

Dear Reader,

First of all, I have no intention of these cookies making it until Easter. In fact, most of them were eaten by the end of the night. But We all just needed something fun to do. So we busted out some spring sprinkles, I whipped up some frosting, and some cookies, and we all just sat at the table.

I put a dab of frosting on everyone’s cookies and piled sprinkles on their plates and passed out plastic spoons. By putting the frosting in a dollop I kept from cross-contamination when my toddlers licked their spoons. Because that happened. And all the sprinkles were unceremoniously dumped on top. But I didn’t care. I wasn’t giving them to anyone but the designers, so it worked for me. I feel like usually when we make cookies, they’re going to someone and I cringe at all the sprinkles or the lumpy frosting. It was fun to just let them play. I wish I could say they ate all their cookies… But they ate the frosting and the sprinkles and I ended up throwing licked-clean cookies away after I sent them to bed.

Keira at searchforseven.com

Age Range

2+
(older if you want less licking)

Prep Required

lay the groundwork

Time Needed

20 mins

Supervision

7/10

Educational, Kids Need Play, Life Lessons

Sand dough place values

Dear Reader,

I know that place values are way above what my preschooler is ready for… but is it, though? I mean, do I actually expect her to understand and grasp entirely what we were talking about? No way. But she is has an incredible sense of numbers that I did not have at her age. And when the opportunity came up, I definitely seized it.

Anyway, I digress… today we played with sand dough. We play with sand dough regularly, but my preschooler got a set of letters and numbers for Christmas, and she is very proud of that ownership. And since she always loves numbers, when she made the one and the zero, she got excited about it making the number 10. And then the wheels started turning and you could see it. “What happens if I add another zero?” So, I told her to do it and see! Then I said, “look, you just made 100!” and it grew from there all the way to one million.

I know this wont be the only time we talk about it, because she’s not ready to completely grasp the concept of place values, but I loved seeing the brainwaves happen. [nerd fact: From a science perspective, it’s called myelination – reinforcing thought patterns in our brains. Basically the more you hear and see something, the more you will understand the concept. And from a teacher perspective, it’s called scaffolding – basically that when you introduce a new concept you need to build up to it].

Keira at searchforseven.com

Age Range

4+

Prep Required

on the fly

Time Needed

less than 5 mins

Supervision

9/10

Kids Need Play

Matching Marker Lids

Dear reader,

My toddlers love coloring. like, love it! They color something about once a day. It’s a crazy juxtaposition because my preschooler loathes coloring! While they were coloring today they ploughed through all the markers in record speed! They just became strong enough to yank the lids off so it’s fun new territory to not have to bring the marker to Mom to open. Not gonna lie, my normal response is to feel overwhelmed and surges of anger (triggered by the overwhelm), but today I had an ah-hah moment! It’s the perfect time to work on sooo many skills! First, there’s the responsibility aspect; we take care of the tools we use! But there’s also matching, and practicing our colors (which has been an key interest with them lately. Suddenly they’re not calling everything green or pink). So I sat down with them and made them match the lids and the markers, and we put them away right.

I mean, I know this is something every kid needs to learn, eventually. But the more I thought about it the more intentional the activity became, even if it wasn’t planned. And you know what? They aced it.

p.s. color wonder is genius! I’m not getting rewarded for saying so, I just love that I don’t have to worry about clothes or furniture being colored on. Getting marker (especially dry erase marker) out of everything has not been my favorite mommy experience. Probably my second least-favorite right behind potty training. And that’s saying something because there are a lot of unpleasant mommy experiences…

Keira at searchforseven.com

Age Range

2-3

Prep Required

on the fly

Time Needed

5 minutes

Supervision

10/10
(it’s a teaching moment)

Kids Need Play

Mini School: /t/ sound

Dear Reader,

This lesson was definitely a learning curve for me! I’m not very familiar with plaster of paris… But I just couldn’t resist the alliteration in “tractor tire tracks!” When I originally came up with this idea I figured we’d do our tractor tracks in sand dough, but it’s just so muddy outside, I decided to be more authentic. I think sand dough would have been less of a learning curve.

Anyway, we did lesson 7 out of 100 Easy Lessons, and worked on Lesson 3 of Learn to Read, then we mixed up the plaster, put on our shoes, and headed outside to the mud!

Then we waited… and waited. The package says half an hour to cure and then 24 hours to dry. So we left it in the mud until the afternoon and then I tried to pry it out of the mud… and may have cracked it…

She definitely learned the /t/ sound making the plaster. and loved the activity… but I couldn’t really see how I was gonna get this letter sound to stay nicely in her book, so I grabbed a tire and some brown paint and painted a t onto some white paper. I mean, if you wanted to, you could just skip to the paint, but she was so excited to do the plaster and the tactile aspect really stuck. I’ll keep the plaster T by her book until she’s done with it or it really breaks, so she can keep tracing it (the whole point).

Anyway, apparently I need more practice with plaster of paris, but it served it’s purpose. “t” says /t!/.

Summer at searchforseven.com

Age Range

Preschool

Prep Required

run to a store

Time Needed

20 mins for lesson
3 mins for activity
1-24 hrs to set or dry

Supervision

10/10

Kids Need Play

Rainbow Soup for St. Patrick’s Day

Dear Reader,

A few weeks ago, when I was looking at color activities, I came across the book Every Color Soup. I decided it’d make a good activity for St. Patrick’s Day, so we checked the book out from our local library. Then I went ahead and cut all the vegetables and made my kids go wash their hands (I’m so over sicknesses this winter! I’m being a huge stickler on handwashing. No free passes!)

I read them the book, as well as one called Too Many Leprechauns (saw it as we were walking in and it was perfect!), and then said we were gonna make a rainbow for dinner. (*ps, not an amazon affiliate. I don’t get paid anything for sending you to them. Buy the book if and where you want! Maybe shop locally!).

I put the pot in the middle of the table, and we added the ingredients as they came up (note, not all of them are pictured below. They’re not in the rainbow, lol).

By the way, I bought French lentils from Amazon and they didn’t even stay blue! The recipe called for lentils du puy but a) I couldn’t find anything but orangey red or green lentils in the store, and b) google said French lentils were the ones considered blue. Shoulda trusted the book, I guess.

Either way, this activity was perfect! First because it talked about colors (something my toddlers are extremely interested in right now), and secondly, because one of my toddlers is very into “I cook like Mom,” right now.

Keira at searchforseven.com

Age Range

2+

Prep Required

run to a store
lay the groundwork

Time Needed

20 mins to prep
(once you have everything)

5 mins with your kids

40 mins to simmer

Supervision

10/10

Kids Need Play

Pipe Cleaner meets Wiffle Ball

Dear Reader,

We’re focusing on pincer grasp again in OT lately so we’re pulling out a few of our favorite hand-eye activities. The pipe cleaners help her remember to focus on her pincer grasp and the wiffle ball holes are great for hand-eye coordination. Plus, these colors just make me happy!

Sometimes we just weave them through the holes, sometimes we make loops and connect the balls together. The pipe cleaners are all different textures and they have been used over and over again so they’re all different shapes, too.

Plus, sometimes my preschooler just needs an activity to sit and reset. This is a great activity for that! Sometimes we all could just use a quiet activity.

Keira at searchforseven.com

Age Range

Preschool

Prep Required

throw together

Time Needed

20 minutes

Supervision

1/10
but you could play, too.

Kids Need Play

Yea for Thriftiness!

I know playdough is not super-pricey, but I’m still a cheapskate. My girls would go through a million tubes if I’d let them. Playdough is not my favorite activity, honestly. Kids+playdough≠neatness. Plus, I figure that if they’re gonna make such a mess of the playdough, they can take care of it, too. It’s called responsibility!

Between that and the fact that I’ve been in a decluttering mood lately, it was time to go through the playdough. That bug seems to hit the second the sun comes out in spring and when my life feels out of balance. For me, my brain is all tied to my house; when my brain feels cluttered, the easiest solution is to declutter my house, and then somehow my brain seems less scattered.

years and years ago, I came across  this site. This person is a GENIUS! I’ve used this hack so many times.

She advises you to break the play doh into pea-sized pieces (if I bother at all, we used the extruder. Much less time-consuming. Or if it was too hard to go through the extruder, we just crumbled it. 2 of ours were that far gone.) Then we sprayed a spray bottle of water into the bag and shook the bag up to evenly coat. Then we waited a few minutes (more like a few hours, I got distracted), and then I hand the bag to my toddlers (and watch them! No exploded playdough bags, please. Also, make sure they’re not full of a lot of air). It’s a good sensory activity for them, plus it builds hand strength.

Sometimes I spray them again and shake them up, but most of the time, they’re as good as new by the end.

And if you accidentally add too much water (done that) either mix more dry dough in or leave the bag open and check it about once an hour.

And to think, Play Doh says it can’t be done and you’ll have to buy another tub…

Kids Need Play, Uncategorized

find the rhyme

Dear Reader,

While planning for our learning activity and looking at the rhyming worksheet in the dyslexia activity book, and seeing the paint bags I’ve been trying to decide what to do with now, I had an idea and decided to add a tactile element to today’s lesson. So I made my own worksheet! If you have the dyslexia workbook, this activity will work with it, too. (To see what workbook I’m talking about, click to read what books we use).

After creating the worksheet, I took an alcohol wipe to the logo on the ziplock bag of paint. It was really easy to get off, actually! And then I taped it to the worksheet and taped the worksheet to the table (I suggest painters tape but I took the risk since my painters tape is currently packed up while my craft room is under construction (don’t ask. It’s taken way too long). The tape is pretty important, since the bag is kinda slippery.

I put a lot of work into this worksheet, so it is for sale over in my products. The products part of my site is still very much in its infancy, so watch for more products coming soon!

Anyway, she had to show everyone that she could find the rhymes and has gone back to it off and on all afternoon, so I think it’s a success! The nice thing is that you can do it over and over without having to have a grownup reset it, because as you move the paint around it re-covers the pictures. I was worried that would be an annoyance, but I think it helped reiterate which words rhymed as she rediscovered them.

You could still play with this worksheet like the original idea and cut 1.75″ squares and play it like memory match. Or you could just cut the pictures out, too. But if your kids learn kinetically, this is definitely a better idea than I ever would have hoped, and I intend to use this learning method again!

Keira at searchforseven.com

Age Range

Preschool

Prep Required

print and go +
throw together

Time Needed

she keeps coming back! 15 minutes is a good start.

Supervision

3/10

Help to hear the rhymes and then just let them play.

Kids Need Play

mess-free painting

Dear Reader,

I think we are gonna have a lot of toddlers-want-to-be-like-sisters posts in our future. This one, included. When they say sister using paint for apples, they wanted to paint, too. I wasn’t in the mood to deal with that huge of a mess, even if I made sure to buy the washable paint, so I filled a few quart bags with the same red paint, taped them shut, and handed them to the twins.

They liked the squishy aspect, and kinda drew with the paint, but their favorite thing to do was to squish their handprints into the paint bag. It was a really good sensory experience for them, actually! And I totally just came up with it on the fly, since I was in the middle of helping big sister with /a/ apples.

And naturally, since sister was using an apple to stamp with, we had to eat apples at the same time. Since my toddlers are learning colors, it was also a good time to reiterate that their apple was red and their paint was red.

Keira at searchforseven.com

Age Range

toddler

Prep Required

throw together

Time Needed

30 minutes

Supervision

3/10