One of the go to activities my daughter has enjoyed lately is beads and pipe cleaners. Everywhere we go, I try to remember to bring out bead box! She and other children her age enjoy putting the beads on pipe cleaner to make “bracelets” and “necklaces.” I also found a simple strainer for her to put the pipe cleaners through. Continue reading
It was a tired night for me. The kids were cranky, but we still had dinner to go before I could send them to bed! To make matters worse, it was a leftovers night (spaghetti) and I knew that my kids would whine about that too. My husband would not be home for quite some time.
It was up to me to change the mood of the evening. It was up to me to not go crazy as I did so.
It’s a good thing I have been reading The Giant Book of Creativity for Kids. I don’t see myself as a very creative person, but the author of the book certainly is. On a whim, I took up Bobbi Conner’s brief suggestion: I unrolled butcher paper on the table and grabbed some crayons. This was our tablecloth for the night.
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If there is one thing parents know about toddlers, it is that they have a short attention span. They are unpredictable, too, so if you are headed somewhere and you want to keep them busy, it is best to have a number of options for them to choose from.
Busy boxes for toddlers, then, need to have a variety of different options. If you are taking them with you, it also must be easily portable! Here are some of the things I do to keep organized when preparing a busy box for my toddler. Continue reading
I love how I get great ideas from Pinterest and from great blogging moms who have fantastic ideas. Other moms have been there before and have great ideas and words of wisdom to share. Making letter people is one idea I found that I simply love! When I stumbled upon No Time for Flash Cards‘ post about Alphabet Peg Dolls, I knew ABC peg people were something my daughter would love to play with, especially as she begins to learn her letters. Continue reading
We will certainly go over the river and through some woods, but our journey to grandmother’s house will take at least two days of solid driving in the car before we make it!
We have traveled across the country with our two kids twice before. We will take plenty of breaks, and I do have a tablet set up with plenty of applicable movies. But I am also realistic about tablet time not always being a possibility, and so I also have prepared for the fact that we are going to be squished in a car for a long time, and my two kids (ages 7 and almost 3) are going to be bored and uncomfortable.
To add to the holidays, I also wrapped the games I am bringing for the kids. I was not thinking about this post at the time, so I already wrapped it all! Much of what I wrapped up were things we already owned, but I am excited nonetheless for it to be a “surprise” for the kids as we go along the road.
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This week I thought I’d send some fun numbers activities and games in my daughter’s workbox. I’m finding that because she’s such an active one, I’ve got to give her lots of active games each week. I can picture her spreading these games out on the floor to enjoy.
What do you do to introduce number concepts to your young child?
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It’s so easy to say but it is true: anything can become a learning game. When I opened a box to find a dozen air bubble mailers, my daughter oooh’d and aaaah’d over the them. So I grabbed the sharpie and complied with her curiosity. “Letter POP” is the impromptu game that resulted. Continue reading
We found some rubber duckys at the Dollar Store the other day. My daughter was very excited to play with them! We had to stock up on a lot of them.
Of course, rubber ducks are a fun friend for the bathtub. But we decided to make a game so we could play and count with duckies anytime. Here are some ducky counting mats for rubber ducky fun outside of the bath!
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Enter: The Reid School’s new weather bear! A weather bear is a fun addition to our daily calendar time as we track the weather day by day and practice putting the correct clothing on Berry the Bear.
When my husband was young, his mother taught preschool. One thing he mentioned remembering was a weather bear in their basement classroom. A few months after we had a conversation about his childhood weather bear, his mother sent it to me!
But after 30 years of life, Grandma’s Weather Bear was definitely past his prime. The seal of the lamination no longer was tight. The Velcro tape had come off the back, and the sticky residue had somehow left stains that seeped through to the visible side of the bear. It was time for Grandma’s Weather Bear to retire.
We call our weather bear “Berry.” I bought a large set of bear plus clothes clip art to dress our dear Berry, created by Teacher Laura. We printed off our favorite clothes (sized just right for Berry). I planned to use small Velcro dots (affiliate links throughout this post) to attach the clothing and felt to attach the bear to the felt board. Magnets could also work for this, if I had a magnet board!
I decided to create her by printing on light fabric transfer paper
and ironing it directly on to felt
. I printed a lot of clothes for Berry. Right now I keep her clothes in a small box next to the weather bear board.
As my kids and I put Berry together, I started to thinking about you, my blog readers! While I obviously can’t include all the clothing options for all of you (WAY too many!), I wanted to share some with you. This free download for blog list subscribers includes the weather bear and clothes for five different kinds of weather.
With my preschooler and her Spanish preschool class, I also developed some more for weather learning fun. I include seasons and weather cards (in both
English and Spanish!), cards to practice the vocabulary for clothing, and also some places we can use to sort clothes: what do we wear to the beach? What do we wear to the mountain top? What do we wear in the pool?
In my Spanish class we also played listening games. I described the clothes of a child in a photograph, as well as the location, and they had to figure out which picture i was describing. It was amazing how much Spanish those little preschoolers have learned in the past 6 months!
I put all these items (the weather bear and clothes, the photograph discussion images, and the vocabulary/weather cards) together for those who would like a more complete weather set for their home or school. Get the full Weather Bear set at my Shop or TeachersPayTeachers.
[product id=”45151″]Whether you decide to buy the more complete product or you simply enjoy the subscriber freebie, I hope you and your kids have a fun time tracking the weather in your school or home!
Do you track daily weather with your toddler or preschooler?
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Weather bear sampler
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