Toddler Sensory Activity: Play Foam (or Floam)

Have you heard of Zulily? It offers random items on clearance. Mostly clothes, shoes, etc. But sometimes it has toys, art supplies and books too! I had been contemplating ordering some play foam from Discount School Supply (DSS) because I thought it would be a good sensory experience for our toddler. But I wasn't sure how it was going to go over. Zulily had a whole pack of small pods on clearance and it was cheaper than the DSS foam so I jumped on it.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect. It wasn't as gooey as I thought it would be, which I think is sort of a good thing. Really you can just squish it around. I suppose you could build sculptures with it. But at age 2, I'm not sure my son is ready for that. Here's what we did do with it:

We used cookie cutters with it.

But I realized, we had to use large size cookie cutters. I wasn't thinking and tried to do our smaller letter cutters. I tried these before the larger cookie cutters. I thought it would sort of pop out of the cutter. Not so much. I had to use a toothpick to get it out of the "S".

The play foam definitely came out of the animal cookie cutters, much easier.

I rolled the foam into balls and he stacked them and squished them into plastic containers. But his favorite thing was when I gave him a metal pizza cutter to play with. He liked slicing through the flattened foam (no worries, our pizza cutter is as dull as can be!).

Overall, he enjoyed mixing the colors up. He enjoyed squishing it and cutting the foam. We probably played with this for about 25 minutes. I wish I could think of some other things to "do" with it. I would love to hear any ideas anyone might have. I'm not sure this is a 'must have' item for everyone's household, but it was fun to try out a new activity!

Craft Project: Dyeing Easter Eggs with Tissue Paper

HAPPY EASTER!!!!

Last week, I found a post on The Artful Parent blog that showed you how to use bleeding tissue paper to dye Easter eggs. It looked super easy and I thought it might help make the dyeing egg process last a little longer for the girls.

Here they are dyeing the eggs with a regular egg kit:

 

The girls were pretty excited to try the tissue paper technique. They each picked three colors to use and I cut up little strips for them. Remember to use the BLEEDING art tissue paper.

All you have to do is dip the egg in water, put the tissue paper over it and then brush a little more water on over the tissue.

 Let them sit for a bit to dry and have the dye soak in.

 Then peel the tissue paper off....

 And there you go! I think the stripes turned out pretty cool!

I don't have any major tips to add to this project. However, I do wonder if you brushed the eggs and tissue paper with vinegar, maybe the colors would be even bolder? Maybe we'll have to try that next year.

Craft Project: Tie Dye Easter Eggs

We created these super bright and fun Easter eggs for our deck window in the last couple weeks!

I combined two different ideas I saw on Pinterest to do this project. One from The Chocolate Muffin Tree where they made "tie-dye" Easter eggs (they used washable markers and sprayed them with a water bottle--a super fun idea!) and the other from the Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas blog where they made hearts with the same technique we used below.

Just take a coffee filter and fold it in half or quarters. Use Do-a-Dot markers to make a pattern.

Even my littlest guy could do this project!

The girls used egg-shaped cardboard cut-outs I made to make the eggs on the coffee filters.

 Here they are drying!

And voila! Cut-out and hanging on our window. Do you see the little bunny one there with the striped ears? Isn't that cute? My daughter decided to use two smaller egg tracers and then added a face below them. So creative!

The only tip I might add to this is that the dot markers didn't go all the way through the coffee filter when we folded it in quarters. We had to go over the pattern a couple times. So I suggest either folding it just in half or not folding it at all. This project could definitely be used for just about any shape/holiday! My 6 year old especially loved this one and even made more of them with her friend during a playdate.

Sensory Light Table: A Cover!

My awesome father-in-law made this wonderful cover for our light table!

 

Isn't it great?!!! Now I don't have to worry about sand, salt, liquid or anything else getting under the plexi cover and onto the light panel. He measured it when he was here a few weeks ago and it showed up on our doorstep on Saturday. I was so surprised and excited to receive it.

DIY: Discovery Bottle (Part 2) and Gel Board

Chasing Cheerios is a great resource of wonderful activities to do with your kids. Be sure to head over there and check her blog out! Her blog actually inspired us TWICE in the last week! First, I LOVED her Starry Night jar. Many people use these glitter/snow globe jars as calm down jars in place of time outs. They have their children sit and watch the glitter fall and once it reaches the bottom the child can get up and continue on with their day. I wanted to make one for a couple reasons. One, I loved that hers was a Starry Night jar and we could relate it to art and Van Gogh through the colors in it. And, I wanted to make another discovery bottle for my son (I have a plan for a few more liquid discovery bottles but just haven't had time this week).

 

I used a hot glue gun to seal the cap so my son couldn't get it open. :-)

 

All you need is glitter glue, glitter, clear Elmer's glue, and warm water. Mix all of these together in the bottle and shake. I shook often over several minutes to make sure all the glue dissolved well. If the glue doesn't dissolve (this is why you use warm water), I believe your glitter will get clumpy. I didn't measure anything out. Just sort of estimated the amounts. Glue is used to make the liquid a little thicker. This way the glitter takes time to fall to the bottom instead of just falling quickly after the bottle is shaken. My girls liked this so much they each wanted to make their own bottles. So we now have a sunset looking bottle in purple/gold and a magenta/purple bottle.

Then, I came across Chasing Cheerios' gel board idea linked from Dollar Store Mom. I thought my girls would LOVE this idea! And it's so great that it can be a gel board on one side and a dry erase board on the back. This project actually took me quite a bit longer to make (about 25 minutes each) than I thought it would. Here is what you will need:

When we need to mix glitter glue into something, I used our Lakeshore Learning Confetti Glitter Glue. It is a little more liquid-y and the kids love the confetti in it.

 

You will need about 5 oz. of hair gel (this took a bit of trial and error on my part to figure out the amount). I bought hair gel at Dollar Tree. Mix the hair gel with glitter glue, glitter, and food coloring. Carefully move the air bubbles up toward the top of the ziploc bag. Open the bag and gently force the air out. Use fun patterned duct tape (I found ours at Michael's) to attach the bag to a piece of foam core cut to the size of the ziploc bag. I made ours in gallon-size, but you could use quart-size to make them smaller and more portable (for restaurants or other places you may need something quiet to entertain your kids). If you want the back of the gel board to be a dry erase board, just add a piece of contact paper to the back side of the foam core before taping the gel bag. This was the part that took me a bit longer than I thought it would. I had a tough time getting the contact paper on straight with no bubbles or creases in it.

EDITED TO ADD: After playing with these for a couple days, I have two more suggestions to make them even better. I might use two pieces of foam core next time to make it a bit thicker and stronger. All our boards have bends in them already which isn't so pretty for the dry erase side of the board. The ziploc bags also have some crease marks and slight scratches in them. No holes for the gel to escape yet, but it made me nervous. So I added another piece of contact paper to the top for more protection. This step would be easier to do before the board was finished and squishy with the gel. I would suggest putting a piece of contact paper on the bag before filling it.

These can be used to practice writing letters or spelling words. Also great for just doodling with your finger or for kids that might need a sensory activity. Just pushing the gel/glitter around can be relaxing. Here are our boards in action:

 

 

 

 

Toddler Art Activity: Wiffle Ball Painting

I did it! I finally did it! I let Kellan paint today. I've been wanting to try wiffle ball painting with him. I wasn't sure how it would go because the second he sees a ball he THROWS it. And I was a little nervous about him throwing the ball with paint all over it. I ended up using smaller golf wiffle balls and a plastic toy golf ball because I couldn't find our regular sized wiffle balls.

Here's what we ended up with at the end of the project. :-)

He played with the paint bottles a bit when we first got them out.

He got mad at me when I took his clothes off. I'm not sure what that was about. He might have thought I was changing him to take him somewhere because he was still in his pajamas. And maybe he got mad because he thought I was going to take him away from the fun project.

I started off by putting two splats of paint on the paper and put the balls in the box. I picked up the box and shook it around to show Kellan what he could do. He shook the box a little and then stuck his hand in the paint. He didn't like having it on his hands very much. So I wiped them off and gave him a brush and he was much happier. This sort of surprised me. I really thought he would get into finger painting.

 

He kept asking for more splats of paint. He would point to which color he wanted and I would tell him the color and he would gesture for me to put it on the paper. Every now and then, we rolled the balls around. He batted them around with the brush.

 

Eventually, he got over his issue with having his hands messy. :-) He actually did amazingly well with this activity. I was really surprised he didn't throw the balls, he kept them in the box. And it was fun to watch him create with the paint. He really only got his hands and the table messy so that's not too bad at all. I was planning on giving him a bath this afternoon anyway, so clean up was easy. I'm really glad I finally did something messy with him and that it went much better than my expectations!