Under the Sea Sensory Activities

Last week we had two activities with an "Under the Sea" theme. Both activities involved sensory play. I'm sure over the years we will have many more "Under the Sea" themed activities! 

Activity #1: 

The first activity involved a bit of messy play! We are still somewhat new to messy play, so there's a bit of hesitation with one of my littles. For this activity, I purchased cheap shaving cream and use food coloring to color it blue to represent water. I gathered several of our sea animal collection and added it to our tray of shaving cream. I thought there would be hesitation (and I was right), so I had a bowl of warm water beside this. They could "save" the animal and wash it, which eliminated some of the "mess" - fine by me! By the end, I had one little alllllll in the shaving cream with her hands! 

I can't wait to try other messy play ideas when it's warmer out and we can do them outside!

Activity #2:
The second activity consisted of a sensory bin with rice, sea animals, scoops, and mini bowls. For this activity, I dyed rice different shades of blue and added the animals. Later I added scoops and bowls because my littles LOVE to scoop and pour! They are still learning  pretend play and they much prepared scooping and pouring! It still made for a cute activity and they loved it!

 We used the same sea animals from the previous activity.

Mini Shape Book

Happy Thursday! I'm here to share a mini shape book I made that is the perfect size for an activity on the go! We are still working on shapes and colors, so I wanted to add an activity that would work on both.

On each page I added a new shape, but kept the same language "This is a...". Repetition is SO good for little ones and it's the way they learn. Here is an interesting article about why toddlers love repetition. So when your little one asks to read the same book for the 100th time - remember it is good for them (even if it can drive a mama crazy at times!).

I wanted repetition in this book so that once they mastered identifying shapes, they could begin to "read" the book themselves and feel success! To add a little bit of matching fun, I cut out felt shapes so they could identify and match shapes for an activity to go with the book.

I love to have various activities in my diaper bag to use at long appointments, at the baseball field, or anywhere on the go! This makes an easy activity to grab and throw in our bags and it doesn't take up a lot of space!

Shape Fun Outside

Last week while the weather was nice we should our SHAPE fun outside and combined it with a little bit of gross motor fun! I drew 6 shapes on our driveway in chalk: square, rectangle, circle, triangle, heart, and star. 

How did we work on MATH with GROSS MOTOR skills?

• We identified shapes.
• I called out shapes for them to run to.
• We jumped on shapes. This works on jumping in a stationary position. 
• We jumped from shape to shape, working on the skill of jumping forward.  

After some shape fun, the littles wanted to play basketball with big brother and draw with chalk (worked on pre-writing skills!). There are so many fun ways to work on various skills outside!

Shape Hide & Seek

Happy Monday! We are still working on shapes, so I wanted to share this easy Shape Hide & Seek game with you all. Last week, I shared that I cut felt shapes for a DIY puzzle and used them again for a giant shape puzzle. We used those same felt shapes again for this activity! That's three activities you can do with those felt shapes! 

We haven't played hide and seek much, so I wanted to make sure all of our shapes were visible so that they understand the basics of the game. Find the shape and match it to the DIY puzzle. Eventually we will move towards hiding the shapes a little more, but I didn't want it to be frustrating in any way at first. This also works on visual skills as well - looking vertically and horizontally for a given object. You could also hide your shapes in a bigger area (maybe a specific room), but I wanted to keep it simple for this activity! 

You can play hide and seek with SO many objects/themes! The options are endless and it's great practice leading up to Easter egg hunting!

Shape Sensory Bin

We've had this Melissa & Doug puzzle for a while and I love that not only can you work on shapes, you can work on colors with it, too.



I saw on Fun with Mama blog that she used this puzzle for a fun Shape Hunt Sensory Bin, so we recreated it using black beans. The beans were less than $1 and it took less than two minutes to throw this together. Literally just dump a filler (you could use rice, too) and added the shapes.

Before the activity, I hid the shapes under the beans. Once they found a shape, we talked about what shape it was and they placed it in the puzzle. My little ones really liked this activity and played with the beans for the longest time (with and without the shapes)! 

Visual Scanning Activity

We work on visual scanning quite often, so I thought I would share this easy activity for working on visual scanning skills. One easy activity is to use a book with various pictures to "find" certain objects. "Where is the cat? Where is the dog? Where is the banana?" etc.

My little ones LOVE this book, but when I would hold it up they would see two pages at a time and that can be visually distracting. So, I ordered a second copy from Amazon and used a box cutter to cut out each page.

Each page varies in the number of objects, but overall it's much less visually distracting! I'll hold up each page and ask them to find certain objects. For older kids, I would suggest the Look & Find Books, Where's Waldo, etc.

Teaching Colors

I'm back to share a few activities that we have done lately to work on colors! We are working so hard on sorting and matching colors, as well as naming colors.

Activity 1: This is such a simple activity to create at home and cost less than $3 total. The goal is to work on fine motor skills while matching colors!

Materials:
cardboard box (I bought this box so I would have a deep enough box for the popsicles to go into)
colored popsicle sticks (linking similar ones)
markers (to color around the slits you make in the box)

Activity 2: This activity uses dot stickers, which are seriously the best! We use them all the time. We actually did activity on the go in a waiting room. It's perfect to add to a busy bag for on the go, or to do at home! I just laid out construction paper and had my girls match the dot sticker to the paper. So easy and it works on colors and fine motor skills with the stickers!

Materials:

construction paper

dot stickers 

Activity 3: For this activity we used our counting bears to match colors using a printable from Life Over C's. I printed and laminated the sheet and we placed the bears on top matching colors. There are so many ways to use counting bears - counting, matching colors, patterns, etc.

Materials:
Printable from Life Over C's 
Counting bears 

Activity 4: This activity comes from Kelly at Lattes and Lunchrooms. She is the sweetest and I always love to see what she is teaching her girls! For this activity, the child drives the colored car to the matching construction paper. She shared it on her Instagram and I just had to pick these cars up to try it. My two LOVED this activity. We started with the papers close, moved them apart, and eventually spread them all over. So fun!

Materials: 
set of 6 cars (Wal-Mart Valentine's section for $1.97)
construction paper 

Activity #5: This activity also comes from Kelly at Lattes and Lunchrooms! Told you she was awesome! She used dot stickers on an egg carton and had her kiddos match colors using popsicle sticks. Fine motor and colors - it's a win, win!

Materials:
egg carton
dot stickers
colored popsicle sticks (linking similar ones)

Teaching Colors

We have been working hard on colors lately! Identifying colors, naming colors, sorting colors, you  name it. I thought I would share a few sorting activities that we have done recently. 

Activity #1:

I printed off this cereal sorting mat from I Can Teach My Child. I have a laminator at home (best purchase ever as a former teacher and I still use it all the time!) so I laminated it so we could use it over and over. I did this activity at our morning snack time, so it was the perfect color sorting activity that ended in a treat! 

Activity #2:
I purchased a pack of foam blocks from the Dollar Tree months ago and we've used them multiple times. For this activity, I simply printed colored squares to match the foam blocks. After we sorted by colors, we worked on stacking and knocking down the towers. These are tricky to stack because they are small, so it's good fine motor work.

Activity #3:
For this activity, I printed this free Goldfish color sort. Just like with our first activity, I paired this around snack time so we could enjoy the snack after the activity. This was a bit tricky because the yellow Goldfish really look more orange, but my two year olds were still able to sort accordingly!

I'll be back soon to share more color activities!

Decorate a Christmas tree with dot stickers

Susie over at the Busy Toddler always shares fun ways to use dot stickers. We love dot stickers and use them often. I even purchased a large pack for stocking stuffers this year for my littles.

I used craft paper from our easel and taped it to the wall. I drew a Christmas tree and made yellow, orange, and green dots (those were the only color dot stickers I had at the time). 

Our goal was to decorate the tree by placing dot stickers over the coordinating colors. This was a great fine motor and visual scanning activity.

We had a beautifully decorated tree at the end! I love activities that are quick to put together and you get the most bang for your buck with skills being addressed!

Christmas Crafts with Do-a-Dot Markers

Do-a-Dot markers have been a favorite for all three of my children. Do-a-Dot markers are excellent for hand-eye coordination and visual scanning. My girls can't get enough of them! Today I am sharing two Christmas activities we did with Do-a-Dot markers. 

We recently decorated Christmas tree printables with them. I love how bright and colorful they turned out! It's a fun, festive decoration for our refrigerator now. 

I also drew a Christmas tree on paper and let the kids use Do-a-Dot markers to decorate it. They all enjoyed that. 

Christmas Sensory Bin

We are having so much Christmas fun the month of December and I wanted to share with you one of our Christmas sensory bins! This was so easy to put together and my girls loved it.

Materials needed for this Christmas sensory bin:

• Red and green dyed rice
• Red and green pom poms
• Christmas tree cookie cutters
• Miniature trees
• Wooden peg people 

The beauty in sensory bins is that you can put whatever you like in them! For this bin, I stuck with a Christmas theme and added some pom poms from the Dollar Tree, cookie cutters, peg people, and trees. My girls very favorite part of this activity was the Christmas tree cookie cutters. They loved putting it down in the rice and then filling it up with more rice.

It was so simple to dye rice for this project. I used 1 cup of rice to 1 tbsp of vinegar with a few drops of food coloring. I added all of that to a gallon size bag, shook it up, and then let it dry flat on parchment paper. It is so easy to do! I recommend making multiple colors while you have the supplies out. After making this Christmas inspired dyed rice, I made rainbow rice using multiple colors and mixing them together.

I have so many Christmas themed activities to share with you soon! 

Gift Guide for Boys (ages 8-9)

A few days ago I shared my Gift Guide for Toddlers, ages 1-3. If you missed it, you can click here to read it. Today I am sharing my gift guide for boys ages 8-9! My son will be 8 1/2 at Christmas this year and I am sharing some of his most requested toys, as well as some of our favorites. Some are tried and true toys for us and some will be new to us this year.

We'll divide this into 6 categories:

• Experiences
• Science/STEM
• Outdoor
• Multi-use (indoor/outdoor)
• Books
• Stocking Stuffers

Let's start with experience gifts. 

• Zoo - Purchase a family membership to your local zoo for year-round fun! We have found this to pay for itself after only a few trips to the zoo and is well worth the price! Plus, everyone in the family gets to enjoy!
  
  
• Museums - We are lucky enough to have several museums around us: a history museum, a science museum, and a children's museum.
  
  
• Tickets for a special event - Movie theater, water park (for summer fun!), amusement park, a special show, concert, etc. Last year we surprised my son with an overnight stay in a hotel in a neighboring state with tickets to see his favorite wrestler, AJ Styles, at a WWE Smackdown show. Hands down - this was my favorite experience gift we've given him! 

Now let's look at Science/STEM related gifts.

• Sphero ball - This is one of my sons highly requested gifts this year. You can control this robot using an app.

• Vex Robotics - These robotic kits seem to be the rage this year! You can find them in multiple places. This is a fun project you can do WITH your child.

• Circuit kit - We purchased this circuit kit for a friends birthday recently. When I taught 4th grade science, my students LOVED working with circuits!

Let's move on to OUTDOOR gifts.

• Scooter - Scooters are always a fun gift! You can buy push kick scooters or electric ones.
  

• Go-Kart - We don't have room for it, but I know older kids would love this!
  
  
• Drone - Drones can be a fun toy and they even come with cameras now. 

My longest list of toys for boys ages 8-9 fits into this MULTI-USE category.

• Nerf guns - Nerf guns are ALWAYS a hit at our house! We have a space in our garage where we hung pegboard to store them.

• Vortex ball - This is one of my sons most requested toys this year. The Vortex ball is made by Nerf. 

• Magnetic dart board - My son recently received this dart board as a gift and it is so much fun! I love that the darts are magnetic. Even his two year old sister enjoys it!

• Lego kits - Lots of kids love legos, whether it's a classic set or Lego set.

• Remote controlled car - Classic and always fun!

• Sports equipment - Does your son play sports? Need a new baseball bat? Cleats? Glove? Basketball? Basketball goal? New soccer ball? Soccer goal? Christmas is the perfect time to stock them up on the sports equipment they need/want. 

• Action figures - Last year was the year for action figures at our house! My son got oodles and oodles of WWE action figures. You can get action figures for whatever character/people your son is interested in.

• Qixels - My son loves to create with Qixels sets!

• Hoverboard - You may think this was a popular option a few years ago, but if your son is just now at the age to enjoy a hoverboard, it may be a good option!  Do your research on the best brand! 

Next, let's discuss BOOKS & BOOK SERIES:

• Kindle - I'll be honest. I'm a book-in-my-hand type, but a Kindle is a great option to have!

• Diary of a Wimpy Kid series - My son is ALL about this book series and is a must have gift for him!

• Geronimo Stilton - This is another series my son is loving this year! 

Lastly, let's look at stocking stuffers:

• Rubik's Cube - Such a classic! 

• Special pens/pencils - This is the perfect time to stock your son up on new pencils or pens. My son loves Flair pens (like his mama!).

• Markers - Need new markers? Perfect time!

• Small Lego sets - Sometimes you can find small lego sets that make great stocking stuffers! Even Dollar Tree has little sets that would be great.
  
  

• Movies - A movie is an easy stocking stuffer!

• Small cars/trucks - Matchbox cars or other small vehicles make easy stocking stuffers, too!  

There you have it! LOTS of gift ideas for boys ages 8-9! I hope this was helpful to you. What items are on your sons list?