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 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.
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!
It’s emotions week for us. Today I did yoga with my toddler. Since she is only a toddler I chose to start with only 5 poses. The poses are inverted sitting, resting, sea lion, train, and downward dog.
I was amazed at how much my toddler loved doing this activity. She actually sat still for longer than she has ever before. If you know my child you know she id constantly moving and getting into things so any time I can get her to sit still it is a miracle.
My toddler’s favorite pose was the inverted sitting pose. She thought it was so fun to sit with her legs up the wall.
Resting pose is as simple as it sounds. Lie flat on your back with your hands resting beside you.
Sea Lion pose is one of the hardest I chose to do with my toddler. Lay on your belly and lift your top half up on your arms. Make sure you are leaving your legs resting on the floor and bending back at the waist.
Train pose is another fun one. Sitting with your back and legs straight move your arms around in a circle like they are your wheels.
The last pose is one I think is the most well known yoga pose. Downward dog you form a triangle with your body and the floor. Legs straight, bend at the waist and place your hands on the floor.
Your child’s poses might not be 100% correct, but know they will get better over time so don’t be a perfectionist on them. This is supposed to be calming, not stressed because they can’t get it right away.
Anyways, have fun. It is so much better when you don’t place too much expectations on it.
I’ve been reading a lot of child development resources lately, both to know some good activities for this blog and to better serve my kids (which is the point of doing activities for the blog… so, yeah), and in passing there was a mention about how metal bowls are great sensory tools because of how easily they make noise. I found that fact interesting and decided to test it.
I had already celebrated the childhood pastime of turning pans into drums, so I decided to put a ball into the bowl and roll it around and see what happened. I found that hard plastic balls made the best noise, and it didn’t take long for the kids to think so, too.
As you can see, the ice cream toy was experimented with, too. That was a toddler addition. And it did roll, so they liked it. Obviously not as well as an actual bowl, but the point is letting toddlers experiment and learn, so there really isn’t a way to go wrong.
The preschooler got in on the action, too, so although this activity is definitely geared toward toddlers, and I don’t know if it really would have been fun on her own, she enjoyed rolling the ball in the bowl. And since that was over the toddler’s ability to really get the ball going, really, it worked out well that she helped. I’d say maybe an older toddler would be able to roll it herself, say 2-ish? And if they’re rolling it themselves, my unprofessional guess is that it works on bilateral movements. It’s a fancy word that keeps popping up in developmental contexts, meaning that it works with both sides of the body and helps a kid learn to use their limbs together.
(yes, I know. Halloween jammies in September. I mean, I would classify myself as one of “those people,” that like Halloween – the cutesy side of Halloween. I don’t like creepy – but also, they were on sale at Walmart, and all of my girls needed new jammies. so, it’s a win-win. Especially for Minnie Mouse jammies. And my preschooler wishes Halloween could be every day, so she had no complaints! Seriously, costumes, fancy things, spooky things, and candy!?! You just read off all of her favorite things in one holiday! Needless to say, we’ll be sporting Halloween jammies in May, too.)
Today we played Color Scavenger Hunt. To play you have your child search for different color toys. Once they find a toy of the color they are searching for they place the toy on a piece of colored paper.
The supplies you need are construction paper of different colors and toys.
My child loved this game, though it took her a little to understand what I was asking her to do.
This is a game that is meant for older toddlers since sorting is learned around 2 years old. If your child doesn’t understand the concept at first don’t be afraid to revisit this game at a later date.
As you can see we had more yellow toys than any other toys, but yellow was also the first color we searched for and my preschooler was helping more for that color.
The first time you play this game will be more of a scaffolding to play. In other words you are walking right along the child and point out the different toys and the colors they correspond with.
The subsequent times you play you can stand back a little more, but just enjoy the ride with your child while they learn math precursors. That’s right it is an early math game since part of math is sorting into numbers. Enjoy!
I wasn’t fast enough. When you have twins and a busy preschooler, you find yourself saying that a lot. Today’s reason? I left the lid on the rice bucket open too long and my kids got into it. So I had a handful of rice that I didn’t consider safe for human consumption, but it still had some use to it… somehow. So I tried to think of what I could do with the rice. Usually it ends up as heat packs, but I don’t need a heat pack right now (they’re all freshly re-filled) and I DID need an activity for 2 busy toddlers, so when I walked past the teeny tiny containers that always come with storage containers but are hardly useful, I thought about making a few noisemakers for the girls. It took all of 2 seconds (really, grab the stuff and shake) to make and the girls loved them!
When I grabbed the colors I was thinking I was grabbing pink and teal, but honestly the dark blue and purple I ended up getting were pretty. I added 3 drops. It might have been a little overkill if I wanted lighter colors, but I wanted to make sure I had enough to color all the rice, and past experience said that was more than you’d think because the rice just sucks up the color. I didn’t have to add any color, I know; but I figured that a) the rice wasn’t edible anyway, and b) why not? Colors are fun.
I taped them closed. Never trust a toddler to keep a lid on! I was not in the mood to clean up colored rice all day. The colors actually turned out well, although this picture is slightly too exposed to really show it.
I considered making 4 instead of 2 because the girls kept stealing them for each other because the containers are small enough to fit in one hand, so they’d shake each container in one hand but then their sister would steal them back, etc. But they got along well enough passing them back and forth that I didn’t worry about it.
They really liked the cause and effect aspect of shaking the containers; liking that when they shook them something (noise) happened. And adding the colors made it fun, but also meant I could talk about how they were different – one was blue and one was purple. I mean, they really didn’t care, but maybe subconsciously they’re building new synapses. Truth is, I like color.
My kids love to play in boxes. I think all children love playing with boxes. Give a child an expensive toy and they tend to want to play in the box.
With all the diapers I have bought over the years there is always a box every couple of weeks. The fun thing about boxes is that it could be anything.
It could be a boat, a cradle for a baby, or even a robot’s head. The possibilities are only as limited as you and your child’s imaginations.
Another option is to give your child something to color with and let them loose on the box.
Be prepared for your boxes to be destroyed, whether by accident or on purpose. Don’t let your kids play with any boxes that you want to keep.
As I stated earlier, you can play with your kids and the boxes or let them play by themselves. This is a great activity they can do with self directed play.
I confess that the idea for this activity really came spur of the moment. I’d been keeping these coins as a prize system for a certain stubborn preschooler who needed a little motivation to go potty, and we had finally gotten past the need for a reward system (translation: Mommy is over rewarding something that should be standard procedure by now), so the jar was just sitting on the shelf, waiting for me to come up with a different need for plastic tokens. When I walked past it today while cleaning my house, I thought, eh, “I’ll let the toddlers play with these.If I’m watching them (the coins are easily inserted in mouths while backs are turned), I bet they’ll have fun!
It was definitely more of a hit than I anticipated. I ended up sitting and watching them play with these coins for easily 20 minutes, but probably close to a half an hour!
They even took turns reaching into the jar! Bonus skill! I guess I could say I planned that, I mean the jar is only big enough for 1 little hand to fit inside, and there were about 12 coins total so enough for them to still have something to do and hold while the other is putting coins in or pulling them out. I totally didn’t though. Maybe they did so well at taking turns because it was right as they woke up from a nap. Either way, I was kind of impressed and in awe at how well and how long they played with something so basic as plastic coins in a half-pint jar. I guess it just emphasizes the fact that play can happen with just about anything. No need to spend big green or hours of time. Once you start looking for ways to spark intentional learning experiences for your kids, the whole world takes on a new unexpected light.
I will definitely say that has been my favorite part of this activity challenge: anticipating the joy of a toddler, intentionally playing with or introducing something new to your children, embracing little moments – all of this has made me start looking at even simple things things with a new light.
for our youngest kids
mileage may vary
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