Potato Stamp Easter Eggs

I saw this idea last year and we never got around to doing it, so this year we tried it out. All you need are potatoes and paint!

I just bought two baking potatoes and made sure I picked ones that were nice and oval-shaped. Cut them in half and then carve whatever designs you want into them. You don't have to cut very deep.

Then use the potatoes as stamps. We started out with four different colors, but then we started mixing colors which turned out pretty cool!

 The beautiful thing about this project is that there's no clean up! Just throw the plate with all of the paint/potatoes away!

This was a great little Easter project. Easy enough for little ones but older kids could have fun with it too. 

Counting Critters

If your little one is learning how to count and/or learning how to identify numbers, this is a great little activity! All you need is felt (or you could use construction paper), googly eyes, and a permanent marker. 

First cut out ten (or as many as you want) different "Critters". (I knew if I called these monsters that Rowin wouldn't like it and would also probably try to climb into our bed in the middle of the night. Very impressionable child.) Then number each one. If your child is really into dinosaurs or some other animal, you could do that instead of Critters. I knew there was no way I could cut out animal shapes. Made up, random creatures, on the other hand, I can do.

Give your child a handful of googly eyes and have them put the right amount of eyes on each little Critter. 

 Throw everything is a ziplock bag to pull out and play on another day!

Number Grab & Run

This was one of those games that I made up as we went along. We played this before the weather started getting nice so Rowin needed to run around and burn off some energy. 

First, I wrote numbers, 1-9 on pieces of paper and lined them up on one side of the room. Then I found our magnetic numbers, also 1-9, and put them on the other side of the room.

Rowin started by the numbered papers, and I would yell, in a nice loud, dramatic voice, "Find number four! GO!" He would run, grab the number four magnet, run back and put it on the number four paper. We did this until he had grabbed and matched all of the numbers.

He kind of loved Round One, so we added another round. We had some Winnie the Pooh number flashcards from the Dollar Tree, so we did the same thing with the flashcards. He ran and grabbed them, ran back and added them to the matching pile.

After two rounds, Rowin was done. :) However, here's another round you could try-use or make flashcards with pictures on them. These are from our Winnie the Pooh deck (honey pots). We never made it this far but maybe we'll play this again on another day.

Paint Bags

I've seen this activity a few times and have been meaning to try it for a while. Don't know why I waited so long because it literally took two minutes. This is a good one to just leave out for a while until your child loses interest. Ours have been taped to our back window for about a week. 

You just need gallon or quart size ziplock bags, masking tape, and paint (we used Crayola Washable Paint). Squeeze a few globs into the bag. We did a red/yellow/blue bag, a pink/purple/white bag, and a plain brown bag. Yes, the brown bag turned out to be as boring as expected. 

Seal the bag and tape it to a table or window. We started on the table but then decided it was kind of cool on the window wit the sun shining through the paint.

You can mix it to see how the colors male new colors. You can make designs in it with your finger. You can use it to practice writing letters, numbers, words, etc....and there's no mess! Just pull it off and throw it away when you're done with it!

Pancake Number Flip

Rowin, for the most part, recognizes numbers 1-10 now so we've been playing lots of number games. I saw something like this on Pinterest and since pancakes are one of Ro's favorite foods, I thought we'd give it a try.

This game works on number identification and 1-1 correspondence with numbers (understanding that three dots=3).

I used a plastic cup and traced/cut circles out of brown construction paper. You'll need 20 circles. Next, I wrote the numbers 1-10 on ten of the "pancakes" and then drew dots (1-10) on the remaining ten pancakes. We have a play spatula and frying pan that we used. If you don't have play ones, you could use real ones. Here's what our game looked like all set up.

To play the game, Rowin had to scoop up matching pancakes and flip them into the pan. You keep scooping/flipping matches until you have all of the pancakes in the pan.

I don't think this will be one of those games that Rowin is dying to play over and over, but it took about five minutes to trace and cut out circles, so this is one we'll tuck away and pull out every once in a while. :)