Painter's tape road

Sometimes I feel like a great mom with a lot of ideas to keep my kids busy, but most days I sit on the couch thinking "what in the world can we do? I am bored out of my mind!" So when I come up with ideas like this on my own, I feel pretty proud of myself! ha!

This picture isn't great (Adrian had the camera that day so the pictures were taken later in the evening in the dark) but you can see the idea. We took painter's tape and made a road all around the living room which extended down the hallway and into the kitchen until we finally ran out of tape. Then we used cars, strollers, and what-have-you to drive on it. After Adrian came home we played a version of red-light/green-light and we also tried navigating each other through the roads while blindfolded. The kids loved it!

On a cold, wintery Saturday

A few weeks ago was cold and kind of snowy. We had no where to go. Those things are mix for trouble around here (getting annoyed with each other, not giving the kids enough attention, etc.) so Adrian and I brainstormed idea we could do with them. He came up with the tent idea and I knew it would be a hit!

We put our balls inside for some fun (throwing, kicking, bowling, etc.). Later they watched movies inside and loved it.

Especially Claire. :)

Valentine decorations

I saw these floating around on Pinterest and wanted to try it out. I love how they turned out and Peter loved helping as well! I am labeling it as a "preschool activity" though it needs to have a little more supervision than most due to the grater and iron.

Materials:
wax paper
crayons (with paper off)
cheese grater (Go out and buy yourself a cheap cheese grater from the dollar store. You will thank me later.)
iron
craft paper or old towels for ironing on
scissors

Step one: Lay out one sheet of wax paper and grate crayons on top. You can use whatever colors you want.

Step two: Once you have a generous amount of crayon shavings,
lay another piece of wax paper on top.Step three: Sandwich the wax paper in between craft paper or old towels. (The wax will melt onto the towels, so don't use your good ones! It will also melt onto your iron if you don't use anything!)
Step four: iron. I put mine on a high heat (almost hottest) because I was ironing through the towels and wanted to make sure the wax would melt. You get to be the judge on this one.

Now, if you want it to look REALLY neat, don't iron for very long--just long enough for the wax to melt enough to stick to the wax paper. It will look like this. So cool.If you iron too long, the colors all run together and you get something a little more like this. This looks better if your colors all similar (all shades of reds and pinks or something like that).

Step five: (no picture) draw a heart shape onto the wax paper. I found it easiest to use a black sharpie. I free-handed mine, but you can use a cookie cutter as a stencil if you need to.

Step six: Cut out the hearts and thread a string in the middle of each. (By the way, can you admire this boy's cutting skills? I had no idea he could cut so well. Ha!)

Step seven: Hang on your kitchen window and admire them while you do the dishes.


It might be a little late to make them as a Valentine decoration, but the best part is that you can use any color crayon and cut out any shape you want for other holidays. I'm imagining green shamrocks for St. Patrick's Day or fun striped eggs for Easter. The possibilities are endless!

Preschool activity: Shaving cream

If you want your kids to be able to make a huge mess that you can actually handle, this is a great activity. I don't usually like to post bath pictures, but I hope these are modest enough...

I stuck the kids in the bath tub with a tiny bit of water and gave Peter a can of shaving cream (from the dollar store). They had a GREAT time squishing it through fingers, rubbing all over the walls and bodies, and making pictures.


Plus, already being in the bath tub made for easy cleaning! Try it, your kids will love it!

Preschool activity: Paper Pumpkins

Every. Single. Day. Clark asks me what Halloween project we are going to do. He is obsessed with Halloween decorations and my family room wall is plastered with pictures he's drawn, colored, cut, painted, etc. for it. I'm getting quite Halloweened-out. With that being said, here is an easy craft we did.

supplies needed:
brown paper lunch bags
newspaper or magazines or other old paper to wad up
string
orange paint
black and green construction paper



The basic steps are to wad up the paper and stuff it inside the brown lunch bag. Then twist the top until it resembles a pumpkin. Paint the bag orange and let dry. Take the green construction paper to make the stem and leaves (or you could just paint it green) then use the black paper to glue on a face. Just easy enough for my boys to like it and time consuming enough for me to.

Marshmallows and toothpicks

Last week it was nearing bedtime but not close enough to start the routine. Everyone was feeling a little crazy and so I quickly went into "project mode" and recalled this activity. It was an absolute hit!
Peter really got into it and made shapes with his marshmallows and toothpicks (he made like 10 really large, awesome shapes)
Clark got a little frustrated because he wanted to build with them, but hasn't quite figured out the engineering behind it all. So he and I built together.

And Claire thought it was the best activity ever because she just laid on the table shoveling marshmallows in as fast as she could.

And we made it to bedtime melt-down free. I'd call it an all-around successful night.

Rice "bucket"

The other day we were at the park and a little autistic boy was there with his therapist. They had a rice bucket and let my boys play in it to find hidden treasures. Clark loved it so much that he has been asking to do it again almost every day since. So we did.

I laid a sheet on the ground and filled a (lego) tub about half full of rice and let them have a great time. They poured, scooped, hid (and found) treasures, buried their toes, etc.


It was a lot of fun with minimal mess...until I put it away. Apparently I didn't put the lid on tight enough and this is what ensued.


It was amazing how that rice ended up in every corner of the living room and in all the crevices of the couch (click on it to enlarge the picture and see the rice everywhere!). I'm pretty sure my vacuum vacuumed up at least 6 cups of rice, but at least they had fun, right?

Easter math

I gave each of the boys a handful of jellybeans. We sorted, counted, graphed, and ate! It was a delicious and fun math activity. (Don't worry, I didn't let them eat all of them!)






Try it, you'll like it, too!

Beans

When the sickies were at our house a few days ago, I was needing activities to do to keep me from going crazy. Hence the fort. We also did this activity during Claire's nap. (I had done something similar a couple of years ago). We moved all the furniture out of the dining room and I let the boys play with beans and cups/bowls/spoons/etc. The rule was that the beans had to stay on the brown floor (which mostly worked).


They loved the pouring, scooping, spilling, and throwing and I loved that they had a great time for like 40 minutes which gave me plenty of time to wash the gross laundry and do the dishes. It was a win-win in my book.

Butterflies in the sky

Clark had been begging for some Easter decorations. I wasn't ready for Easter stuff, yet, so we both settled on spring ones. I remembered seeing this post and made butterflies instead of bats.

Then, of course, Clark begged for flowers. I think it turned out okay, but the boys LOVE it. Plus, they loved collecting the cut butterflies and helping them "fly" around the room (or be thrown into the air). We were all occupied for quite some time.

(Don't ask about that mirror placement...we just rearranged furniture but haven't gotten around to the walls just yet)

preschool science activity

I got an idea from this blog to freeze toys in water overnight then put the ice in a bucket of water and watch it melt (while playing in the water). I thought it was a fun idea that could have a lot of teaching moments (buoyancy, melting/freezing, etc.) but my water didn't completely freeze outside overnight. But we tried it anyways. Needless to say, the whole ice-lesson was shot but we did play in the water talking about sinking and floating. We found a ton of things around the house to float (or sink) in the water.

Then Clark asked for a flashlight because he wanted to make a rainbow (like he saw on an episode of Curious George). So the floating/sinking activity was put aside and we used a cup filled with water sitting on the counter in the sunlight to make a rainbow on the kitchen tile.

Then we colored the rainbows we saw.

So, although my original idea didn't work, we did have a great time talking about water, playing with it, and seeing what it could do.

Something to do

I got this activity idea from my sister. And it was a hit. Items needed: a large bucket, a bunch of straws (dollar store!), scissors, and kids who are possibly bored and/or driving you crazy. :)

Just give them the scissors and let them cut away. My boys LOVED this, especially when the straws got cut and went flying across the table. They both stayed here until every straw was cut into at least 5 pieces. I highly suggest it!

Plus, it's good practice for those kids (like Peter) who are still working on perfecting cutting skills.

Melting crayons

This is a really fun activity that I remember doing as a kid. It also requires a LOT of adult supervision since you're using a hot skillet, so be aware.

1. Line a skillet with tin foil and turn on a low heat. Let your kids CAREFULLY color on the foil with crayons. If the skillet is warm enough, the crayons will melt instantly and create a really cool design.

2. Continue coloring for as long as you want and use lots of colors!

3. Place a piece of paper on top and use a hand towel to press the paper onto the melted crayon design.

4. Pull off the paper and admire the beautiful colors.

My boys loved it, and only got slightly burned a couple of times (by accidentally touching the hot crayon wax). We did this for almost an hour and either wiped up the crayon residue with paper towels to make a new picture or I replaced the foil completely.

Be careful and have fun!

Preschool activity: Glue art

**It's been a while since I shared some activities we've done so here is another "Preschool Activity"...and remember I've linked the rest of the activities we've done on our sidebar. I just went through them today and can't wait to do some of them again.**

I don't know about your kids, but mine are all into GLUE. That's their favorite part of any activity. So I bought a bunch of white glue during the "back to school" sales for $.25 each and decided to do an activity that just used the glue since they love to squeeze it and make big puddles of the stuff. This is what you need:

Wax paper, white school glue, and food coloring.

Add a bunch of food coloring and shake it around pretty well to color the glue.

Tape the wax paper to the table to keep it from slipping

Let your kids squeeze it and ooze it around. And make designs

And mix colors to create new ones

Ideally, you wait for the glue to dry (it takes DAYS if the glue is really thick) and the you can peel it away from the wax paper and hang it in front of a window for a "stained glass" look. We tried it, but the thin glue cracked and didn't work as well as we had hoped. But they still had a blast creating and squeezing the glue and mixing it all around. For that it was a successful activity.