Mud Day!

Apparently June 29th is "National Mud Day."  We decided to take advantage of it and get a little messy ourselves and making mud pies!  We chose to strip down for this one as I really didn't want to spend forever getting mud out of clothes later in the day.  My girls of course ended up not wanting to get too messy so that wasn't really a problem.  Obviously June 29th is over for this year...(I came a day too late) but we will definitely make sure to observe this holiday every year!  Or any other day for that matter! Kids love getting messy so get them outside and get them dirty! 

"Mess Free" Painting

Just a different way to play with paints and you can do it anywhere.  Place in baggies, tape to table and you're done!

Big K decided to try crayons on the bag since they were sitting out on the table, which actually kind of worked.

Little sis of course imitates EVERYTHING big sis does! Adorable

Flubber

This is a blast from the past post but boy is this goop fun!  We like to call it Flubber.  And the good thing is, as long as you keep it on a hard surface (note: ours got drug onto the carpet somehow at some point) it's actually very "mess free."

All you need is some Borax and regular old fashioned glue.  Go here for instructions on how to make:  http://www.ehow.com/how_4869447_make-flubber-borax-glue.html

We've invented a new way to play with flubber recently as well.  Make it the exact same way and then hide "treasures" inside for your little one to fine.  Creates it into more of a sensory experience.

Carnival Sensory Table

I must admit, this wasn't one of my most creative ideas but go figure, it was a favorite.

Materials Included:

Cotton filling (cotton candy)

Popcorn buckets

Balloons

Little People ferris wheel

Big K immediately knew it was supposed to be cotton candy because it literally looks and feels EXACTLY like it. Little K had a blast with this one too!

It quickly became a big fluffy blanket...

then a snowball fight... which is the way we have continued to play with it from here on out!

Cloud Dough Sensory Table

This was one of my favorite sensory tables of all time!  Ok, it was a favorite of all time for Big K too which is most important.  I mixed up some "cloud dough" and included some cupcake materials since it  was March in honer of Little K's 1st bday.  Big K had a blast making "cupcakes" for her sister.


Materials Included:

Cloud dough (recipe found below)
cupcake liners
candles
sprinkles (with lid still attached so only for pretend)

No it was probably not safe for my child to be placing candles in her ears but I let her keep them in long enough to capture a picture because I had to hand it to her that it was quite creative and cute. =)



Recipe for cloud dough:

8 Cups of Flour
1 Cup Baby Oil

That's it!  Mix it together.  It will be crumbly but when you play and form it with your hands it molds together and comes back apart easily too! 

Note: This one wasn't a great table for Little K to actually "play" in yet.  She just wanted to eat it all the time and as you can imagine, baby oil tastes quite nasty!  I plan on trying it again in several months when she'll hopefully be more ready! 

"I Spy" jars

This concept is nothing new.  Just a new one in our household that I have discovered Big K LOVES!  "I Spy" jars.  Items you will need: Glass or plastic jar of some kind, a filler (rice, sand, etc), small objects to place inside (we follow themes and a good thing I've found and used are those little erasers you find in the dollar bins at Target and lots of other places.  They are all around right now), printer to print off pictures of the items you place inside, and something for "markers."  This particular blog will probably be a continual add on as I add the new ones we make throughout time. =)

I didn't get a picture of our first jar but it was "Garden I Spy" with fruits and veggies.  My filler was rice...easiest.

She's so into it! She asks to do these over and over even though it only takes literally two minutes.  

Our second was "Ocean I Spy" with different ocean animals and sea creatures.  My filler was sand.  Again, she asks to do this over and over!

When we're done with a jar I just keep it all made up together and place it in a baggie with it's label so it's there to use it another time!  

Alphabet Soup Sensory Table

I totally forgot to take an actual picture of just the table for this one but obviously not too complicated to figure out and it's a really fun and imaginative one for the little ones too.  I always have spare pasta noodles at hand in our "sensory basket" at home.  So I decided to just add some foam letters and let the girls make alphabet soup!  There are lots of extensions you could do with this one as well.  Identify and match up letters to uppercase/lowercase, match letters to pictures that begin with that word, etc.  I just decided to keep it simple this time.  For one thing, Big K already knows all of her letters and she probably wouldn't have stayed engaged long enough to match them to pictures but mainly because I didn't have much time! haha

Little K making her soup. =)

And this is just oh so typical of what a big sister would do right?

Rainbow Sorting Collage

This was one of Big K's favorite crafts!  I painted the large rainbow for her then filled a bowl with whatever items I could find lying around our craft closet of all the different colors of the rainbow.  She matched them up and glued them all on herself. 

I know it's hard to see with the sun shining through, but this is the finished product. This is one she kept and hung on her closet door! Very proud of her work!

Homemade Bubbles

Want to make homemade bubbles so you can use a large amounts and not spend the money?  We followed this simple recipe:  1/2 c dish detergent, 2 c. water and 2 teas. sugar.  Multiply it times however much you want to make.  It works GREAT!  My girls were able to swing the wands and make bubbles themselves which often is hard to do with the store bought stuff!

Little K liked catching them on the ground.

Look at her cute little mouth.  She's saying "bubble!" 

Nice and sticky!

Iceberg Treasures

Fun activity for a hot summer day. Freeze some "treasures" inside a large tub, pop it out and let them have at it!  I gave Big K a couple tools like her kid sized hammer to try out.  

We even made a science experiment out of it to see if there were any items we could use that may possibly make it melt faster.  She eventually got a little impatient and let the sun work a bit of it's magic.  She was thrilled to see the difference the sun was making and checked back every so often to see how much more had melted.  

 The items I included in my iceberg were just a few plastic toys and I made some colored ice cubes to  give it more color too.  

Not to mention it was great language development to teach the little one "brrr cold!"