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Back before her birthday, I found a deal on Zulily (awe yes, the website I run to and run from all at the same time!) for this fabulous set from Learning Resources (Get yours here! Affiliate Link)
I honestly can’t tell you where the idea came from. Between all the pins on my boards and all the educators/education groups I follow blogs for, somewhere out there was the idea that giving toddlers glue bottles to squeeze helps their grip and develops fine motor skills. Then I saw another one where you put food coloring in the glue and let them paint with it.
So, this afternoon, when racking my brain for something new to do INSIDE to beat the heat, I remembered that I had seen the idea, pulled out a couple bottles of glue, and we went to town!
Note- when you add food coloring to the glue, you’ll have to have something to stir it up with bc shaking the bottle doesn’t mix it. I just used a straw. And because her grip is still so weak, the glue will last a LONG time. She had to have help to get very much glue out at all. I’m thinking we’ll try to do this activity at least once a week to work on that grip!
She had so much fun and was so proud of her work! She didn’t like having to wait for it to dry, so I know she’ll be anxious to see it in the morning!
Got a fabulous idea from No Time for Flashcards to make magnetic sandcastles! I grabbed some old partially used sandpaper from Cody’s shop, borrowed his shop scissors, cut a bunch of shapes, and added some magnet tape strips! The whole thing took less than 5 minutes. (Ok, well, more like 12 bc I started searching for the magnet tape and sorta started cleaning my craft cabinet…)
Becca LOVED getting to build sandcastles… And bonus… She learned about magnets, and began experimenting about what magnets stick to and don’t stick to! Then, she discovered that the upside-down cake pan we were using also makes a really fun drum!! She also enjoyed sitting on the counter-top… That’s only allowed for special projects like cooking, so she knew this was gonna be a really fun, special activity. 🙂
Hoping we can make it to the beach soon to build REAL sandcastles, but until then… We’ve got the cool air conditioned version! 🙂
I love to scrapbook and make greeting cards, and I recently got a fabulous deal from Consumer Crafts on a bunch of embossing folders (they were 50% off of their regular $2.97 price!!). Something just hit me yesterday as I was thinking how I needed to find a place to store all of them now… These would make awesome crayon rubbings!! And, let the paper peeling begin!
I took the paper wrappers off of several of Becca’s broken crayons, and showed her the awesomeness of making crayon rubbings. It took a while for her to get the hang of it, and to figure out that yellow probably wasn’t going to produce the same bold results that purple and orange produced, but in the end, she had a blast and it was a great way to kill about 30 mins of a hot summer afternoon- all while working on her hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills! She even thought it was fun to attempt to color with her right hand instead of her left! (She’s a lefty.)
You can find your own embossing folders on this page from Consumer Crafts for less than $3 a piece, or at your local Hobby Lobby or Michaels craft supply store. JoAnn’s probably has them, too.
Butterbees and Bumbleflies 