Kids Need Play – Page 9 – Search For Seven

Rubber Band Bread Pan

October 13, 2020June 24, 2022 Keira

Dear Reader,

I have been up to my ears in canning, and I’m getting pretty tired of tomatoes, so it was kinda nice to have some other commitment and goal that took me away from jars and canners and boxes and boxes of tomatoes to play with my kids. We didn’t do anything fancy, today, just grabbed a few rubber bands and some bread pans and made … well, they’re not really guitars, lets be honest. But they would make some semblance of music while I was testing them out and getting them ready.

This activity was really easy to set up! It helps if you have plenty of rubber bands and can be selective, but the bigger variety, the more enjoyable it is. Just slide the rubber bands onto the bread pan, and then pass it to your kid.

At first, when I handed them to the girls, they kinda stared at me like, “okay, and?” But by the end of playing, they knew the general idea enough to explore on their own.

I was kinda hoping we could focus on finger isolation (using different fingers for individual tasks. Totally looked it up, haha!) because I noticed that although one girl was great at pointing, her sister hadn’t really figured it out, yet; so I wanted to strengthen her ability to point. This activity *could* help with that, And I showed them how to use 1 finger to strum, but in all honesty, it was more fun to just let them explore the world of sound and get all fingers involved!

I sat with them and showed them how to strum the rubber bands for about 15 minutes, and then just let them explore! They pulled on the bands, and pushed, and even turned the pans over to figure out what would happen by playing with the rubber band from the other side! I left them out while I canned, and they’d come back to play throughout the day.

And yes, I know my bread pans are well loved… I don’t make fresh bread enough that it’s worth buying a different set! In fact, I am terrrrrrible at making bread. even pre-made, Rhodes-type stuff! There’s a trick to getting it to rise, and I just don’t know that trick (send me all your tricks in the comments!)

Pony Bead Pumpkin

October 13, 2020June 24, 2022 Keira

Dear Reader,

My preschooler uses pony beads a lot in therapy to help her build strength in her hand muscles, increase hand-eye coordination, and to work on her pincer grasp (I’ve talked lots about the pincer grasp). It helps that she likes beads, I’m sure. She also loooooves Halloween. So, since it’s October, most of our activities will be tied to Halloween! Play to their interests, haha!

There was just one problem, although I have Orange beads, and orange pipe cleaners, they’re buried in storage while my basement is under construction (for-ev-er). I decided to give Joann online ordering and curbside pickup a try. Not my favorite, I’m not gonna lie! first of all, operator error, our pipe cleaners are only half sized! I mean, I should have looked closer, I guess, but, eh. They were bright colors! The orange beads were perfect, though. And now I have a ton of them.

I set up a little spider web-like-thing for her to string beads onto, by folding the pipe cleaners in half and wrapping them around each other for the smaller one and just making little loops for the bigger one. I’ve gotta say, I kinda prefer the shorter pipe cleaner but creating loops at the end so it is the size of a full-length pipe cleaner. So I guess operator error worked out in my favor. Below is a picture of the bigger one. I have set up 3, because she kept wanting to make more!

After that, I handed it to her and let her add beads! She added them all the way to the very end, so I had to take a few off, but obviously that’s not that difficult to do. You want to leave about an inch for the end. which is hard on the smaller pumpkin (hence why I recommend the larger size, but most of you wont buy the wrong sized pipe cleaner, anyway, so the recommendation is not important. You’ll just have to fold them around each other instead of looping them).

After they’ve added all the beads they want (and after you remove some, if necessary, to get enough room), twist and wrap the pipe cleaners together and then wrap a green pipe cleaner around the combined bundle. Take another pipe cleaner and twist it into curly-q’s and add it to your pumpkin.

This pumpkin is currently sitting on my piano (up high, because the toddlers like the bright colors and instinctively know it’s something they’re not supposed to have, so they kept trying to get it when it was lower, and I enjoy looking up at it. Maybe it’s the bright colors, maybe it’s how proud my daughter is of being good at stringing beads. Or maybe it’s because although I love Halloween almost as much as my preschooler, I just don’t have the time or the space to set up all the Halloween decorations this year, so a little pumpkin (and his itty bitty companion) are are going to have to count this year.

Kids Need Play

Spiderweb Watercolor

October 12, 2020October 12, 2020 Summer

Dear Reader,

It was interesting to see the different paint style of my children. Each had their own style, but each had fun painting.

The idea behind this activity was to have my children paint on a white piece of paper to find the spiderweb. The oldest traced the lines she could see of the white crayon. The middle child scribbled painted all over the page, until she saw the older child making spots on her paper so she had to do that too. The Toddler (who was really only participating because I didn’t want to fight her off and just make the activity miserable for everyone) painted, and painted, and painted on one spot until the whole page was so soaked it just tore.

You may notice that in the pictures they are using Q-tips to paint with. Why would I use Q-tips? Well the simple answer was that the girls lost their paintbrushes and these were the closest thing I could find. Q-tips can also help you practice the right grasp technique that you need for writing as well.

This Activity was simple and my girls loved it. I may just have to watch the water a little closer next time because the finished pieces got a little soaked in the end. Oh well, at least they dried out. Little sister decided to crumble hers into an unrecognizable mush after she got it so soaked that there was no saving it though.

Kids Need Play

Spiderweb Rescue

October 12, 2020October 8, 2020 Summer

Dear Reader,

When I made this activity I expected my youngest to be the one to play with it the most and my preschoolers to ignore it completely. Boy was I wrong.

The youngest did enjoy it, but I am glad I had him play with it first instead of have him have to fight his sisters to take part. I think it has something to do with how you have to constantly tell preschoolers not to play with baby toys.

I loved watching my youngest try to problem solve how to get the spiders out of the web. He decided to just tip the basket on its side so he could get them better.

To make this activity you need to create a web. I used yarn and a laundry basket. Place the items you want your child to rescue under the web. For this I cut out some spiders from orange and black paper but you can use spider rings, bug toys, or anything you have lying around.

As I stated earlier my preschoolers loved this game too, so I would suggest doing this with your toddler at a time when the preschoolers are preoccupied.

Canning/Harvest, Kids Need Play

Harvest!

October 8, 2020March 10, 2022 Keira

Dear Reader,

Well, tis the season. Things are busy around here. We are harvesting apples and tomatoes before the freeze! We didn’t get our tomato plants into the ground even remotely soon enough, so most of our tomatoes are still in the green stages so we picked a TON of green tomatoes. This season, our preschooler has been super helpful. She has been anxiously awaiting the day the apples were ready to pick, even sneaking out to go check them frequently. The day we decided it was time to pick, she was super excited! Does it really count as an intentional preschooler activity? Maybe not. But it is teaching her life skills I mean, doesn’t everyone need to know how to harvest and preserve? And if I can teach her now, then all the better.

There was a hard freeze warning a few nights ago so we harvested all the tomatoes, green or not. We filled every box we could find and I calculate it’s about 10 half-bushel boxes worth? I have been weighing the tomatoes as I use them (the ready ones and the ones I know are not going to turn red) and keeping a tally, and I’ll add an update at the end of this blog. So far, just in the past few days, we’ve got 2 boxes of ripe tomatoes, and I made 2 batches of green salsa with the ones I knew weren’t going to ripen. The pic with little fingers are the beginnings of the green, as my preschooler helped me sort them. Obviously, for the most part, she can’t tell what is going to ripen vs what isn’t, but she is good at making a pile and picking red and yellow from the green. The other picture is my brag picture. that tomato is huge! I weighed it and it weighs 1 1/2 pounds! It fills both palms! I prayed it’d ripen before the freeze. It’s not quite there, yet but it can ripen in the house now.

There are still apples on the trees (2 aren’t quite ready yet. They’re a later variety), but so far we have gotten 7 boxes (3 of which are coolers) full storing in cold storage while I work on the tomatoes. Although our preschooler loved harvesting all the tomatoes, she loves picking (and eating) apples more. We have plenty of applesauce, so I think most of the apples this year are going to go toward apple butter and pressed apple juice. I’m really excited about the juice. We bought a press a few years ago but didn’t have the time to finish putting it together before we gave up and made applesauce. This year, though, that press is getting assembled. We have soooo many apples! But with 3 littles, it will be such a blessing to have fresh apple juice all winter long. I was talking with my mom this summer about how I always thought it was such a luxury to have juice at our house, but now that I have so many kiddos it makes sense. Keeping that much juice in the fridge is expensive! and one thing of juice only gives everyone only a small glass full before it is gone.

Check back in on a future post to see Canning totals! I like to keep track of them on my blog so that I can go back in next year and see what everything ended up equaling. It really helps me keep a better perspective on what the harvest is compared to the year before.

Kids Need Play

Lift and find

October 8, 2020October 6, 2020 Keira

Dear Reader,

I know, I just said I didn’t think my girls are ready for different sizes in nesting toys. And then my toddler brought me this game her sister set down for her and I thought, “eh, why not?” Obviously we didn’t play the real game, but I realized that although they’re not really ready to nest the objects themselves, a step to helping them get there would be to let them pull each toy up and discover a smaller one underneath. And, since we already had the game (found on Amazon, but I’m not an affiliate, so I wont get anything if you get it from there. we won our copy from a library reading program), and I was a few activities short in my planning (toddlers are hard, yo!), I took the game and ran with it (which is a much different visualization when you have toddlers, lol).

It’s pretty easy to get set up. Simply stack all the figures and then just let your kids lift them up. The felt “hair,” came in really handy in this case, because it is much easier to grasp than the figures. But if you dont have this particular game at your house, you could use anything Russian Doll-ish in it’s ability to stack. Or some of the toys I said we owned last week. I will say, though that these toys are uniquely situated to simplicity for little fingers and being able to … Un-nest. And the hair making it easy to lift is actually a good way to develop pincer grasps in toddlers.

Really, they enjoyed playing with the little figures, even if they didn’t stack them on their own. Every time I had enough to set together, I would, and the game would continue. It is interesting the different personalities of these 2; One liked lifting the figures better and particularly liked the bigger figures (she later stuffed a napkin in it and pulled it out, over and over). The other kept running off with all the littlest figures, as they were just the right size to fit inside her little fists (Disclaimer warning: they are much too small to be left with your children unattended as they’re about as wide as an extra-wide crayon).

I’ve put the game away again, since I don’t want to lose all the pieces, but I will definitely bring it back out and see what their minds do with it again! Maybe they’ll even be ready to stack them by themselves sooner than I anticipated.

Kids Need Play

Ghost Busters

October 7, 2020October 7, 2020 Summer

Dear Readers,

I have always enjoyed science. I love seeing how things react, so when I was trying to think of things to do that had a Halloween flare to them I just couldn’t resist making ghost shaped baking soda blocks and letting my kids melt them with vinegar.

The process was very simple. First make a paste with your baking soda and water. Second form into ghost shapes, I used a cookie cutter. Third let them dry. Fourth place in a cake pan or cookie sheet. Lastly give your child a way to drip the vinegar onto the ghost to melt it.

There is one thing I would do differently though. When I let the baking soda dry directly on the cookie sheet they were hard to remove. Next time I will let them dry on the cookie sheet I am giving to each child, or use baking paper for it to dry onto. That way they are easier to get where they need to.

My kids had a blast with this. They enjoyed watching the ghost melt away. My middle child didn’t want to stop and had I spun it out longer we probably would have been still doing for an hour.

This activity can be done with both toddlers and preschoolers. You just have to modify which tools you use. For toddlers pipettes would be the easiest, but you could also use a spray bottle. Preschoolers do well with syringes (the kind you get with liquid baby medicines) or spray bottles as well.

Kids Need Play

Q-tip painting ghosts

October 6, 2020October 5, 2020 Keira

Dear Reader,

It’s October! My Preschooler LiVeS for October. It has all her favorite things. Candy, costumes, and spooky things. Did I mention the candy? I don’t know where she gets the love of spooky things from, definitely NOT her mother.

I was pretty excited it was October, but for a totally different reason: Halloween activities! I’ve had a board on Pinterest for a while for all the fun things I’ve wanted to do with a kid for Halloween and they’ve always felt like a “someday” kind of project. But once again, spending intentional time with my children has another positive side effect. I get silly dopamine boosts for checking off an imaginary bucket list item. Said bucket list item 1? Silhouette painting.

The concept is really simple: Cut out a shape (I printed our ghost free printable at 25%, printed 2, and cut them out), and use masking tape (or painter’s tape, or double sided removable tape and tape your ghosts to a sheet of black construction paper. We used Masking tape and it worked better than I thought it would. Then hand your kid a Q-tip (cotton buds? Does anyone actually call them that as opposed to Q-tips? ) for each color of paint (multiple if your kid forgets and accidentally sticks it in the wrong color) and some paint on a plate (white is a given, but not a requirement) and tell them to paint anywhere they want! Make sure there is plenty of paint around the ghost, or he will not show up after the white paper is removed. Once they declare it “perfect,” let it dry and remove the ghosts!

This is a great activity for that Pincer Grasp we keep working on. I noticed she started off a bit shakey, but when I reminded her to use her “monster grip,” as her OT calls it, it got a lot more controlled. As you can see, our ghosts got quite the paint job, too. It doesn’t matter. Just let them paint. I DID, however, have to convince her to put paint along the outside of the ghost. She either wanted to pain him or the “negative” space, and it took multiple reminders to paint around the ghost outlines to have enough paint that it’d even make sense after the ghosts were removed.

Kids Need Play

Monster Dance Party

October 6, 2020October 5, 2020 Keira

Dear reader,

Ever have one of those days where everyone just wakes up grumpy? We had one this morning. I’m pretty sure the twins didn’t like the soy milk I tried to see if it would help their unending diaper rash (spoiler alert: it didn’t. It SOOO didn’t). And I don’t know what’s up with my preschooler. She’s been needing more attention lately. So, within half an hour of waking up this morning, I knew we needed something to change the mood.

Cue the music! Halloween music of course. We take October very seriously around here. But I hate spooky. So, maybe it’s more accurate to say we take October very cute and humorously around here. My preschooler loves monsters and ghosts and skeletons; always has. October is her jam. Her sisters didn’t care what kind of music it was, to be honest, but they loved clapping (instead of snapping. way above a toddler skill set) for the Addams Family song. And they loved wiggling for Spooky Scary Skeletons.

I have one girly that loves to groove, at any hint of a song. she’ll even randomly drum on her tummy or wiggle if you hum. The other takes some coaxing. She’ll eventually get groovin’, but only if everyone else is doing it, and if she likes the song. She has never been the active mover, though. She’s already declaring herself a people-watcher. We will have to see if that changes.

Here is a list of our Favorite Halloween songs, in case you wanna get in on the dancing (although we just use Pandora to create a Kid’s Halloween station:

5 little pumpkins (I remember singing this in grade school!)
The Addams Family (It’s all about the snapping)
Sesame Street’s Monster Mash
Grim Grinning Ghosts from Disney’s Haunted Mansion Ride (We are supposed to be there right now. Boo!)
Spooky Scary Skeletons
This is Halloween from Nightmare before Christmas (although I hate Oogie Boogie and leave the room when my teen puts it on)

What songs do you dance to? I’d love to add them to our list!

Kids Need Play

Travel Dough

October 5, 2020October 1, 2020 Summer

Dear Reader,

I have been struggling to get my child to stop playing with her spit. I don’t understand why she started in the first place, but she will spit on her hands and rub them everywhere.

As you no doubt know, this is very unsanitary and really really gross. Nothing I have tried so far has worked.

I have been at my wits end so I finally asked my other childs Occupational therapist for some ideas. Thankfully she had some.

The therapist suggested that we play with things like slime or playdough when she has the need to play with her spit. There was a significant drop in playing with spit when I finally let her play with the playdough.

A problem occurred though when I realized that some of the time she plays with her spit is in the car. Playdough/slime do not go well with a car.

That’s where this idea comes in. Placing the playdough in a ziplock bag she gets to play with the playdough without making a mess in my car.

There has been even less playing with her spit since taking the playdough in the bag, with only one instance where I had to tell her to take her hand out of her mouth. Even with this instance though she wasn’t sliming up her hand in spit, just placing it in her mouth.

So if you are struggling with a child playing with thier spit, like i was, or just want something for your kids to do in the car this is a good idea. Just place the playdough in a Ziploc freezer bag, tape it up, and let your kids have fun.