Mr. Turkey Color Recognition Felt Activity

This fun felt activity focuses on color recognition, it is a lot of fun to make and do with your preschooler. My son enjoys this one even though he is now a pro with colors. It fits the theme of Thanksgiving, but great for year around fun too! 

 

 Mr. Turkey is so sad, he has lost his beautiful colorful feathers. Have your little one help him find all of his feathers so that he can be happy once again!

 

 

Mr. Turkey was so sad.

He lost the feathers he once had.

Now he wants us to help him find all of the feathers of his kind.

We will look both high and low, we will fid them, don't you know.

Here's a red one and a blue.

Look, we've found a green one too.

Here's an orange one and a yellow, soon he'll be a feathered fellow.

Now we've found the purple one, black and white--we're almost done!

If we just look up and down, I know we'll find the feather brown.

Now, Mr. Turkey is so glad!

We found the feathers he once had!

PowerMyLearning.com Review

My kids and I are so excited to share this with our readers! I recently was made aware of this wonderful and very engaging educational website, PowerMyLearning-- It has become a fun part of our daily routine! Thanks to http://powermylearning.org/, a free non-profit website with everything Kindergarten-12th grade students need to get ahead academically! The site is home to hundreds of fun educational online games that are organized by grade level and subject. Many of the games incorporate characters and other fun things that your children know and love.

My youngest is 3 months shy of 5 years old and he cannot get enough of it! He will be entering kindergarten in September of 2014, so he is only in Pre-K, but there is so much for him to do! His favorite games are a series of Curious George games, that all work on different skills like number recognition, counting to ten, biggest to smallest, and addition. I cannot believe how easy it is for him to navigate and follow all of the games!  We have tried multiple educational websites that you have to pay for, in the end, I was not happy with the results. This website is completely FREE and I already have seen great results!

 

 

They even have a series of Sesame Street games! 

 

My oldest is in 7th grade and he also found a ton of fun activities and games. He watched a PBS video called "The Clemente Effect," about Roberto Clemente the famous baseball player and humanitarian that he did a report on for school earlier this year. He really enjoyed all of the games that have to do with learning foreign languages.

 

 

I encourage you to head on over and check out http://powermylearning.org/ with your children now! You will be amazed at how much fun your children can have while they are learning!

 

 

Easy Peasy Counting Busy Bag

 

This busy bag never gets old! Seeing that I get my little silicon ice cube trays in the dollar store, I can change them up often to keep it "new."

 

To make your own, head to the dollar store and pick up a silicon ice cube tray, a permanent marker, and some pony beads.

 

 

Use the marker to number the sections and your child is read to play! Have them add the appropriate number of beads to each section. As they get older, they can sort the beads by color and then count them out. Simple but fun!

 

Shape Button Snake-- Great for Hand/Eye Cordination!

 

This a fun and very simple busy bag activity that I put together for my little one. A busy bag, is pretty much exactly like it sounds,  an activity in a bag that will keep a child busy when need be. Some busy bags are educational, others are just fun. Think fun busy work in a bag! My kids have well over 100 busy bags, I keep most of them away, until we need them. I have a huge tote bag full of busy bags in my car for when we go out to eat or have a doctor's appointment. They really come in handy! I even have some that I keep for traveling and long car rides.  This shape button snake is great to help with hand/eye coordination, learning shapes, color recognition, patterning, and learning the basics of buttoning. This busy bag does not cost much to make, it can be made with scraps that you have on hand or you can pick up the items from a craft or dollar store.

Making this busy bag does require a tiny bit of simple sewing, you have to sew a button on to a piece of ribbon and sew the other end of the ribbon to a piece of felt. The rest is simple, just cut shapes out of felt and cut a small opening in the middle of each shape for the button to go through.

 

 

Give your child the ribbon snake and have them make the snake eat through each shape.

 

 

This activity could easily go along with The Very Hungry Caterpillar too!

 

While your child plays with this, you can teach them the different colors and the different shapes.

Older children could practice making a pattern with the shapes or the colors as they put them on. 

This is a fun and easy way to learn, don't you think?

Under the Sea Felt Fish Tank

This was our summer project last year, we just set it up again and are planning to continue to add to  it this summer. We started out with a few felt fish that we made and added a new fish, plant, or sea animal each week. It was a family project, the kids picked out a fish, my husband or I made the fish out of felt and then we learned a little bit about the fish before we added it to out felt tank. So far, we have a shark, angel fish, parrot fish, octopus, clown fish, lobster, sting ray, blue crab, sea turtle, sea horse, whale, and some others. This was a fun and educational project, my kids are looking forward to adding to it again, as am I. This also goes well with our Under the Water tote that I am putting together for July.

Pick Up the Worms-- A Fun and Easy To Make Busy Bag!

 

This is a really simple busy bag to make and the kids love it! All you need is a clothespin, a small piece of green felt, and some pipe cleaners.  The green felt is your grass, the pipe cleaners are your worms, and the clothespin is your bird.  The kids use the bird to collect all of the worms. You can even use this to practice color recognition and simple counting by asking your child to pick up 2 blue worms and 1 red worm.

 

 

Lemonade Stand Sensory Tub

 

Just in time for summer, we put together a Lemonade Stand Sensory Tub. A sensory tub/tote is a tub or a bin that you fill up with various items to let your child play with and be hands-on. Sensory activities provide children with another meaningful avenue of learning. My son is really enjoying this one!  He even made me promise him that we would make real lemonade this week! The tub contains a bunch of different lemons in a plastic produce basket, felt lemon wedges, clay lemon wedges, cups, yellow pom poms, yellow pony beads, tongs, straws, mini drink umbrellas, play money, lemon juicer, a lemonade mixer, play money, a yellow "table cloth" (I gave him a yellow microfiber towel that I picked up at the dollar store for him to use to cover his work space)  and more!

 

He cuts the lemons....

 

Squeezes and juices them too...

 

and serves them!

 

I must say,  he serves up the best pretend lemonade that I ever had!

Check out our recipe for real lemonade-- it is amazing!!

Who Wants To Play With Bugs? Our Bug Sensory Tub

 

I am not a huge fan of bugs, but my son has been begging me to put together a bug sensory tub for him. A sensory tub/tote is a tub or a bin that you fill up with various items to let your child play with and be hands-on. Sensory activities provide children with another meaningful avenue of learning. Our bug sensory tub has a few pound of dried beans on the bottom and is covered with a variety of bugs. There are glow in the dark bugs, plastic bugs, stuffed bugs, and foam bugs-- plenty bugs to go around!! I added in a magnifying glass, plastic tweezers and a little bug carrier. My son is loving it and I am thankful that he is playing with fake bugs! 

 

 

 

Tweet Tweet-- Birds Sensory Tub

 

In order to convince my son to get out of the heat and come inside and enjoy the air conditioning, I told him that I would put together his Bird Sensory Tote. A few months ago I participated in a swap with a group of women to create the perfect bird themed sensory tub. I ended up holding off on putting this one together because we had so many set up. For those of you that do not  know what a sensory tub/tote is, it is a tub or a bin that you fill up with various items to let your child be hands-on. Sensory activities provide children with another meaningful avenue of learning. There are handmade birds, bird houses, a wooden cutout of a bird cage, a bird bath, owls, bird eggs, birds toob, nests, feathers, and more. My filler is colored rice because I forgot to pick up bird seed, otherwise it would have been bird seed. My son is enjoying this-- all you hear is TWEET TWEET!

Check out our spring sensory tub and our butterfly sensory tub too!

Vegetable Garden Busy Bag

 

 

I made this busy bag to go along with our Vegetable Garden Sensory Tub that we are working on for next month. I printed the free printable, which you can find here, along with other great free garden themed printables from Home School Creations.  After it was printed, I laminated and cut the pieces out. I added magnets on the back so that it can be used on a magnetic board as well. We are using it for vegetable recognition. Can you add the squash to the basket? How about the cauliflower? My son loves his vegetables, but he doesn't know the proper name for all of them. With this, he is learning and having fun too!

Make Your Own Dinosaur Fossils!

To go along with our Dinosaur Sensory Tote and other dinosaur activities that we are working on, we made some dinosaur fossils. These were simple to make and the kids really enjoyed making them. My kids have big smiles on their faces and my house smells like a coffee shop!

 

To make your own, all you need is:
1 cup used coffee grounds
1/2 cup cold coffee
1/2 cup salt
1 cup flour

Mix the coffee grounds, coffee, salt, and flour together in a mixing bowl.

 

Mix until ingredients are combined and a dough is formed.

Form small balls of dough in your hands and flatten them out into circles that are about 1/2 inch thick on a cookie sheet.

 

 

 

Lay small dinosaurs on their side to make dinosaur imprints and you can use larger dinosaur dinosaurs to make footprints.

 

 

 

When your baking sheet is full or you are out of dough....

 

 

 

Bake them in the oven at 200 degrees for 30 minutes.

 

 

 

Take the fossils out of the oven and carefully remove them from the cookie sheet with a spatula.  Once they are cooled, turn them over and let the bottoms dry out overnight. Ours were still a bit soft after a few days, so I decided to put them back in the oven for 30 minutes at 350 degrees and they are nice and hard now.

Dinosaur Train Dinosaurs A to Z Busy Bag

 

I had to put together a Dinosaur themed busy bag this week. While searching for ideas, I came across a link to the PBS Website. Dinosaur Train, which is one of my son's favorite shows, is on PBS, so I thought it might be a good place to find some inspiration. I found the lyrics to the Dinosaurs A to Z song along with matching pictures. Jackpot! There was my busy bag! I printed out the 3 pages on cardstock, laminated the song lyrics, and cut and laminated the dinosaur cards. This busy bag will  help the kids practice their ABC's by putting the alphabet cards in order and help them recognize 26 different species of dinosaurs while they have fun singing the song! If you haven't seen the show or the episode that showcased that song, they have the video on the PBS website for you to check out.

Visit PBS for the free printables and make a Dinosaur Train Busy Bag for the dinosaur lovers in your life!

 

 

Our Magnetic Discovery Box-- Dicovering and Learning While We Play!

 

Today, we put together a Magnetic Discovery Box. We used a magnetic wand to discover what is and what isn't magnetic. I filled a plastic bin with beans, some magnetic letters, nuts and bolt, an Altoid tin, pieces of pipe cleaners, twist ties, coins, erasers, crayons, pom poms, and more. Before we started, I asked my son to make a hypothesis (he actually knows what that means thanks to Dinosaur Train on PBS) and guess which items he thought would be magnetic and which wouldn't be. Then we began to explore!

 

 

 

He stirred the mixture up to see what would stick.

 

We tested his hypothesis to see if it was correct.

We learned a lot and had fun in the process!

 

 

Bath Time Alphabet Scavenger Hunt!!

 

 

Bath time is not only fun, but it is totally educational when it includes an Alphabet Scavenger Hunt!

Who doesn't like learning when it is fun? My son had a blast with this activity!

 

I placed a set of plastic alphabet magnets that I picked up at Wal-Mart for $1 on the bottom of the bath tub and filled it with water and bubble bath.

 

 

I gave him a magnetic wand to aid him in his hunt....

 

and the hunt was on!

 

 

I painted a metal baking sheet( I picked it up for $1 from the Dollar Tree) with chalk board paint and gave it to him to collect his letters on.  I told him which letters to find and he searched until he found them. Another way of doing this is to write the letters you want him to find on the chalkboard. This can also be done with number magnets, which will be our next scavenger hunt for sure!

 

Music Fun Sensory Tub

 

Our music sensory tub is set up and the house is anything but quiet!! It contains a bunch of different homemade instruments, including a popsicle stick harmonica, a straw flute, and a few egg shakers. There are some wooden instruments that I found in Target's Dollar Section, an inflatable microphone, a recorder and a tambourine.  I used beans for a filler. This tote is a fun and noisy one! LOL

A Rainy Day Band with Homemade Musical Instruments!!

We gathered all of our homemade musical instruments today and had a rainy day band! Our band was loud to say the least and was made up by a variety of musical instruments.

We had a popsicle stick harmonica, bells on a ring, straw flute, and egg shakers. We also had a set of wooden cymbals, some shakers, a drum, a den-den daiko drum (like the one from the Karate Kid) and a giaro (a Spanish instrument). All of these instruments are sure to end up in our Music Sensory Tub that we will be setting up in the next day or two.

Number Matching Eggs, Another Fun Way to Upcycle Your Plastic Easter Eggs

There are so many cute educational and fun activities that you can make with plastic Easter Eggs. This one practices matching the number with the word. Using a Sharpie marker, write the number 1 on the top half of an egg and the word one on the bottom half. Continue with as many numbers as you like. I made a set of 1-20. You can also make a set with the number on the top half and the matching amount of dots on the bottom half.

 

 

For more educational plastic egg activities, check out Capital & Lowercase Matching Eggs and

Number Snakes.

Who Knew Play Dough Could Smell So Good?-- Kool-Aid Play Dough

My son wanted to play with play dough today, I decided to one up it by letting him make some. It only took 10-15 minutes to make, it kept him busy for hours, and my house smells nice and fruity!  I had everything I needed on hand, with the exception of the Kool-Aid, which I picked up a generic pack of 24 last night for $1.00.

Recipe:
1 packet Kool-Aid (any brand works)
1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
1 cup boiling water

 

We made 2 batches in about 20 minutes.  Because of the boiling  water, it needs some time to cool before you can knead it properly with your hands.  I used the cooling time to work on my second batch.

The first thing I did was put1 cup of water on to boil.  Feel free to boil it on the stove or in the microwave, whichever method is easiest for you. Now it is time to measure our ingredients.

 

 

Pour the Kool-Aid packet into a medium-sized bowl and add your flour and salt. Mix these dry ingredients together really well.  The better you mix it when it is dry, the less you will have to knead it to even out the color when it’s hot.

 

  

Once your dry ingredients are mixed well, add  the 1 cup of boiling water and 2 Tablespoons of oil.  Stir contents with a spoon. DO NOT try to knead this with your hands right away, it is way too hot! Once you can no longer make any progress with the spoon, set the bowl aside to cool.

 

Look at that smile, he is so proud of his work!

 

If you are making multiple colors/batches, use this time to start the next one. When the dough is cool enough to handle, knead the dough until everything is thoroughly combined and the color is evenly distributed throughout the dough.

 

 

 That's it, it is that simple! Now, it is play time!