BYOB (Build Your Own Boat)

Happy Monday! We were home all day today which called for some kind of new activity, especially towards the end of the day. I don't know about you, but I get so stir crazy on days that we don't leave the house! We (I) got this idea while watching an episode of Curious George. :)

First we did a "Will it Float?" test with several different items to see which materials would be best for building our boats. Then we used tape to create several different boats. Here's what ours looked like.

Next, we filled the tub and added a few drops of food coloring, because who doesn't like a green bath?! Plus it's Christmas time. Some boats floated better than others and some fell apart, but Rowin was in there for a good half an hour! He didn't want to come out until he was shivering and wrinkly.:)

We will definitely do this again. He loved it! And I think this would be fun for any age. If you have older kids, you could make it more of a science experiment. Have them make predictions about which materials will sink or float. Discuss their schema (what they already know) about boats to help them build one that will float. Discuss buoyancy. Have your child rebuild a model that doesn't float, using what he's observed from boats that do float....can you tell I'm a dorky teacher-brain mom? :)

Christmas Tree Crafts

It's the most wonderful time of the year! Although, truth be told, while I have a million fun Christmas ideas that I had hoped to do with my kiddos, my son has been a bit of a Scrooge lately. (No one tells you that 3's are quite possibly much worse than 2's!) So many of my ideas have been received with a warm, "No, I don't want to do that!" Bahumbug. It's been a bit of a difficult season for me. I'm trying to learn when to make situations "teachable moments" about having a thankful heart/good attitude and when to throw my ideas and expectations out the window and just dance (for the 800th time) to Let it Go because that's what he really wants to do. Ah, motherhood.

We HAVE had a few crafty-mood days though so we've made a few different kinds of Christmas trees. As usual, all with supplies we had lying around.

Popsicle Stick Christmas Trees:

For these, we broke popsicle sticks, and glued them together to look like Christmas trees. We let them dry and came back to them the next day. I had planned on painting them green, but forgot we let a friend borrow our paints, so we used a green dot marker instead. (If you have paint, that would be cuter.) ;) After Rowin put some green dots on, we added some Christmas foam stickers. Then I drew on the garland with glue and Rowin poured the glitter on top. We may tie a string around one and turn it into an ornament. We'll see...

Scrap Paper Christmas Tree:

For this one, I cut a tree out of construction paper and had Rowin (and his buddy Ellie) color it. Then he glued on cut up pieces of wrapping paper and added a bow on top.

Handprint Christmas Tree:

For this tree, I traced Ro's hand and cut it out about five times. We glued them on, upside down, to look like a tree and added a trunk and a few stickers for ornaments.

Tape Roads

If you don't have boys, please don't give up on this blog! I know I post a LOT of car ideas because that's what we're into over here but I do have a little girl (5 months old) so I'm sure I'll have girly posts in the future. For now though, I'm sorry. This is another car activity. :)

The pictures are pretty self-explanatory, but just take a big roll of tape, and tape a bunch of roads all over your floor! You could add houses and buildings to make it a little town, you could make it a race track, an airport, train tracks...whatever mode of transportation your little one prefers! Have fun!

Magnetic Letter Match

I have several fun Christmas things that I want to share but I'm having some issues getting my pictures onto my computer, so those will have to wait. Here's a a quick little letter identification activity in the meantime!

All you need for this activity is a cookie sheet (this one is from the Dollar Store), magnetic letters, and a dry-erase marker. Write all of the letters A-Z on the cookie sheet and then have your child match the magnets. If your magnets are all capital letters, make sure you write the letters in all caps as well. :)

Cardboard Shape Stamps

Another super simple craft using stuff you have in your house...I found this idea at www.theimaginationtree.com. All you need is paint and a few toilet paper or paper towel tubes. We used three toilet paper tubes and cut them in half. Bend them into the shapes you want, dip in paint, and stamp away!
When you're done, if you think your little one will want to do this again, let the cardboard stampers dry, throw them in a ziploc bag, and store them away.

Thanksgiving Banner

I'm getting excited for Christmas already but I'm trying not to completely skip over Thanksgiving quite yet. Here's a little craft to get your kiddos to think about what they're thankful for. You could make this a million different ways, but here's what I used.

I ripped pages out of an old book and had Rowin color them. Then I cut those into triangles and cut larger triangles out of construction paper so that there would be a border. Next, we glued those together.

 After the triangles were all put together, I asked Rowin what he was thankful for. After he said, "bears and pictures" (who knows what goes on in that little head), I redirected the convo a little bit. :) "I helped him come up with "Daddy and Jesus" and then of course, Elsa and Anna made it on the banner too.

We punched holes, strung it with twine, and hung it in our dining room. Just something simple to start a conversation about being thankful this holiday season. Tweak it however you like!

Laundry Basket Race Car

Oh hello. Sorry I dropped off the planet for a while. No reason, I just did. I feel like we've done several fun little things since my last post, so I'll try to add a few more in the next week or so. 

Everything over here is either race cars or Frozen right now, so a few weeks ago, we made Rowin his own laundry basket race car. I dragged out the process of MAKING the race car, which I'm glad I did, because once it was done, he only played in it for about ten minutes. Ha!

First, I had him decorate his wheels (four paper plates) however he wanted. He went with the classic brown circles. Gotta love three year old boy art. I punched holes in them and he helped me string the yarn through the holes to attach them to the basket. Good fine motor practice!

Then I had him pick which number he wanted his race car to be. I wrote his number in a dotted line and had him trace over it-once for the front and once for the back. More fine motor practice, as well as number recognition.

 After we taped those on, we grabbed a helmet from the garage and a toy steering wheel that we had. If you decide to do this, make sure to include your little one in the process-that's where most of the learning happens! Plus, the anticipation is half the fun. Rowin was giggling the whole time we were "building" our race car because he was so excited!