Legos are great for developing spatial reasoning skills, great for building grand castles, boats, even Rapunzel’s hair (yes, my daughter has demonstrated multiple times, you can make “hair” out of legos). Legos are also great items to use for developing addition and subtraction skills. Here are some of the ways we used our legos this [...]
Snow Crafts: 13 Fun Winter Activities
January 2, 2012 by 9 Comments
It’s winter, time to enjoy what snow you have in your area – of it you are like us, in Texas, to dream about a snow-filled winter with some of these fun kids activities. How many of you have had snow already this year? Let us live vicariously through you and your family and tell [...]
Thanksgiving Craft Ideas
November 14, 2011 by 15 Comments
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year – I think an attitude of gratefulness is so important to cultivate in ourselves and our kiddos. Here are just a few of the craft activities I hope to do soon with my kiddos. . . Turkey with Thankful Feathers (via Parents Magazine). They covered a foam [...]
Color Changing Milk: A Creative Science Experiment
October 17, 2011 by
Science experiments help us grow. Through experimenting and exploring we are able to ask questions, make assumptions, and then seek solutions. We are able to learn more about the world around us. Cerra is a company that is seeking to help people grow in seven different “intentions”. As Cerra says, “By nature, humans are creative [...]
Activities for 5 Year Olds
October 16, 2011 by 11 Comments
Five year olds are adding head knowledge to the wonder they have of the world around them. I love watching my kindergarteners play pretend, soak up learning through games, and create through arts and crafts. Here are some of my kids favorite activities when they were/are five. A play tent is super easy to make! [...]
What is Fire?
October 11, 2011 by 10 Comments
My first college Chemistry class lab was about learning to observe and take notes on what you see, feel, hear, smell, taste and experience. What that looked like for us was 3 hours of staring at a lit Bunsen Burner. Exciting, eh? Seeing what happened at my kitchen table yesterday with Rhett(5) brought back a [...]
Color Experiments – An It’s Playtime Round Up
October 6, 2011 by 4 Comments
Kids love to color, love mixing the colors, love exploring with color – the brighter the better. Here are a few of my favorite color experiments that were linked up during last week’s It’s Playtime. Many thanks to my co-hosts for making this a great kid’s meme! Be sure to check out their blogs to [...]
Concentration of a Solution
September 30, 2011 by 4 Comments
Don’t you just love this picture? I can almost taste the tartness that he is experiencing. Why would I have my child drink something that I knew would create such a silly face? He is learning about strength and concentrations of a solution. I tried drawing pictures explaining how we can take a can of [...]
Kinetic Sight Word Activity… With a Beach Ball
September 26, 2011 by 11 Comments
Have I told you about our Fridays? We are homeschooling our oldest two kiddos and Fridays are our fun learning day! We count with legos, we have “PE at the park”, and we play sight word ball. Even our two and one year old kiddos join in the fun!. . . What do you need [...]
Activities for 3 Year Old
September 25, 2011 by 18 Comments
Three year olds are curious, active – at least mine seem to have an endless supply of energy. They are beginning to make comparisons and differentiate patterns, colors and love to play pretend. Here are just a few of our favorite three year old activities. These activities were gleaned in part from from our weekly [...]
Activities for Boy Scouts in-the-Making: It’s Playtime
September 22, 2011 by Leave a Comment
I look forward to our kids meme each week! Thanks to all of you who faithfully participate and make it a grand success! Our Kid’s Meme runs every Thursday and can be found on the following blogs: Let the Children Play Messy Kids Hands On: As We Grow The Imagination Tree When you link up [...]
Exploring Mixtures vs Solutions
September 7, 2011 by 4 Comments
In Science we have been working with water & reading about all the things it can do. Today, we read about solutions & mixtures and set out to make our own! We gathered our materials. Reese chose what we would mix into the water… oil, flour, sugar, blue food coloring drops, sand, & red powdered [...]
It’s Playtime Linkup Party Round-up
August 4, 2011 by 5 Comments
We team up to run the kids play activities link-up, It’s Playtime, each week with Hands on : as we grow, Let the Children Play, The Imagination Tree and Messy Kids. Each week you, our beloved readers submit your favorite play posts to show up on all of our blogs. This week I have the [...]
Ice Activities for Kids
July 27, 2011 by 10 Comments
Ice is a necessary outdoor play ingredient in Texas summers. Temps haven’t dipped below 100 this week. Ice Play Solid frozen water is my preschooler’s friend. They can drop cubes, watch ice melt on their chalk drawings, chomp on cubes, throw them down their shirts. Pretend cook, stirring icy slivers. Here are several ways that [...]
Chore Charts & Allowance: Teaching Kids Financial Responsibility
July 18, 2011 by
It is important to start teaching kids at a young age how to earn money, save money and spend it wisely. One of this month’s sponsors, Manilla, wants to hear about our financial struggles and successes – sign up for Manilla, tell them about your money mountains in the comments for a chance to win [...]
Tinker Toy Catapult Experiment
July 16, 2011 by 22 Comments
Last week we made a Lego Catapult and my boys started making catapults out of everything in sight. They made this one make out of Tinker Toys. A Tinker Toy catapult is pretty simple construction and soon marbles were zinging across the house. Let’s go outside! Ryan(10) had mentioned that he had changed the angle [...]
Lego Catapult
July 9, 2011 by 15 Comments
Last week my family visited the Genghis Khan Exhibit at the Iriving Arts Center. As part of the exhibit, there was a real life size trebuchet and a smaller model catapult made out of wood that the boys could send ping pong balls shooting across the museum. It was a crowd-pleaser. Ryan, my 10 year [...]
It’s Playtime with Play Dough
July 6, 2011 by 5 Comments
We have tubs of playdough around here and love making our own batches. Just last week we had fun creating coffee playdough. Here are four creative posts that inspired me to play with playdough. Thanks for submitting them to It’s Playtime! Kate of Picklebums, had fun with her kids, some jungle toys and props, and [...]
Car Marionette Puppet (a video)
June 1, 2011 by 8 Comments
.The kids and I made our first video (well, that I can remember) using car marionettes. Chevy DFW inspired this post, they dared me to make a video with my kids and cars. My minivan isn’t quite movie worthy, let’s just say its got more than it’s fair share of dings and is it’s typical [...]
Story-Telling Activities to do with your Kids
May 31, 2011 by 15 Comments
Kids have the most vivid imaginations; I just love hearing the stories my preschoolers come up with and the worlds they create in their pretend play! Here are several ideas of ways you can help get the creative juices flowing from the minds of your little tykes:Made by Joel has a great collection of printables [...]
Learning is Fun: It’s Playtime Link-up
May 25, 2011 by 2 Comments
This week Jenna’s, of Happy Little Mess, post on the way her boys interacted with the alphabet resonated with me! Her son enjoys playing with a laser light. So does mine! Her son drew with chapstick last week – and so did mine! The only difference was that she was able to channel that enthusiasm [...]
Preschool Play Based on Literature
May 4, 2011 by 3 Comments
Preschoolers love to be read to and to play pretend; combine the two and you are sure to have a great afternoon activity. Here are some of my favorite link-ups from our Kids Meme, It’s Playtime, that featured families reading and playing with their kids: Preschool lesson plans: If I got to award a “prize” [...]
Toddlers and Textures
April 24, 2011 by 5 Comments
Textures are so much fun for preschoolers to explore with and about! We have found that modeling clay is the best medium to “test” textures.DIY Silly Putty is the easiest to clean up after, and playdough is a great standby, but modeling clay is perfect as it holds it shape really well, being stiffer than [...]
DIY Pretend Cookware Storage and Stove
February 22, 2011 by 29 Comments
Last week’s post was on how to create your own felt pretend food, but once you have the food you need a place to store it, along with all the other pretend kitchen accessories. We no longer have a pretend play kitchen, it was taking up too much space and it has found a new [...]
Paper Plates: Ideas to play and learn with plates!
November 17, 2010 by 8 Comments
The combination of packing to move (we move into our new home in 2 weeks!!!) and preparation for a busy holiday season means that we have moved to being a disposable, paper plate loving family. Dishwashing with our preschoolers is not as feasible as it has been in the past. Hefty must have known the [...]
Literacy Resources used in the Activity-a-Day Calendars
November 8, 2010 by 4 Comments
Wondering what resources we are using in our Activity-A-Day “Learn to Read” Calendars? Here are a bunch of our favorite resources that we use each month! . Homemade Learn-to-Read resources: Phonics Flip Chart – Make this nifty tool to help your kids learn the way that letters sound together. We have several. Once for three [...]
Consonant Vowel Consonant (CVC) Reading Wheel
October 26, 2010 by 13 Comments
I love homemade learn-to-read resources. This is a throw-back from my teaching days. I had seen wheels like this in our reading curriculum (don’t ask me what it was – it was over a decade ago). Basically, the concept of the wheel is that one letter is stationary and your child can rotate the wheels [...]
99 Family Conversation Starters
October 1, 2010 by 23 Comments
These conversation starters are great for help during dinner to keep the conversation going with your kiddos! My hubby and I often fall into the trap of talking to each other about our day and failing to purposefully engage the kids during meal times. I love this! Our jar of 99 Conversation Questions is not [...]
Fantastic Finds: All things “B”
September 20, 2010 by 3 Comments
Have you noticed a theme this past week? We have been learning about things that begin with the letter B in this months Activity-a-Day Calendar. These are just a few of the “B” things I’ve come across this past week: . If it weren’t for the fact that my youngest preschooler has recently decided bath [...]
B is for Bedtime… I love books for preschoolers!
September 14, 2010 by 7 Comments
This week we are having fun playing and doing things that begin with the letter B during our playtime, lots of blocks, lots of banging and bouncing, and lots of quiet-down bedtime stories! Candlewick Press must have known that this week was the letter B in our Activity-a-Day calendar as they sent us several bedtime [...]
