DIY Binoculars

Here's another quick and easy activity you can do with things you have in your house. You'll need:

*Any kind of clear, plastic wrap

*Two toilet paper rolls or one paper towel roll, cut in half

*Washi tape or colored duct tape (if you don't have either of those, no big deal)

First, I taped two small pieces of plastic wrap to one end of each tube to make the "lens". Then I gave Rowin a few different kinds of tape and let him decorate the tubes however he wanted. 

Once he was done, we taped the two rolls together and TADA! Binoculars!

He was using them to spot animals in our backyard. Could be fun to take on a nature walk too. Ours lasted about two days until Rayna found them and poked a bunch of holes in the plastic with her fingers. Oh well. On to the next thing!

Fancy, right?

Frozen Dinos

If you know Rowin, you know that he's a bit obsessed with dinosaurs right now. Every time he gets a new interest, he's all in. So right now it's dinos. He plays with his little dinosaurs every day. They eat with him, ride in the car with him, sometimes even go to the bathroom with him. I was trying to think of something else to do with dinos and came up with this.
We have a little bag of tiny dinosaurs-probably from the dollar store. I put them in an ice cube tray, filled it with water, and froze them. (They didn't fit all the way in, but that didn't matter. If you had bigger ice cube trays or molds, that would probably be better though.)

Once they were frozen, we gathered our play tools-mostly hammers and screw drivers, and took everything outside. Rowin took one frozen dino at a time, and hammered all of the ice off until the dino was free.

We let Rayna play too. Her method of choice with licking the dinos free.

They both loved this! As soon as we were done, I got a, "Mommy, we should do this again!!"