Messy Kids: SAHM

Showing posts with label SAHM. Show all posts

Sunday, July 31, 2011

No Flour Playdough

*This post contains affiliate links

A Facebook fan of mine asked me about making rice four or flour-free playdough for those who are gluten sensitive. As I am lucky enough to have a family without food allergies, I turned to my network of preschool bloggers. Dawn from chasing the seasons shared a wonderful recipe with me using only baking soda, cornstarch, and water. This dough is silky, smooth, and easy to mold; a nice addition to sensory play.

Cornstarch, baking soda and water make up the basic ingredients of this lovely dough. You can also add color (we used a bit of tempera paint) and scents (essential oils or cooking essences).

First we added the color and orange oil to the water.

We placed the baking soda into the pot.

Then we added the cornstarch. Michael likes to touch everything so I encouraged him to feel the cornstarch.

I showed Michael how it can make his skin soft (makes a great body powder).

My son, who has no problem being dirty all day long, was distraught by the cornstarch on his arm.

After the dry ingredients were added, Michael poured in the colored water.

We moved the pot to the stove where we began cooking the dough. Michael quickly became bored and left me to stir.

The completed dough, still warm to the touch.

Michael enjoyed sticking his fingers in the warm dough. Soon after he asked to play outside with Playdough...the store bought kind! I'd hoped to capture him playing with the dough on another day, but alas, my daughter played with the dough and left the bag open, causing the dough to become dry. And of course, she played with it at a moment I was unable to shoot pictures of her enjoying it. I suppose I'll just have to make it again another day!

Recipe:

2 Cups Baking Soda (1 box)
1 Cup Corn Starch
1 1/2 Cups Water
Color (we added a bit of tempura paint until we received the color we desired)
Scents (optional): We added Orange Oil giving the dough a nice aroma

Add color (and scent) to water. Combine baking soda and cornstarch in a pot, then add water to the powdered mixture. Cook on medium heat until the dough forms a ball. Cool and knead.

**A gross side note- While stirring the dough on the stove my son and I discovered bits of bug floating around in the goo. Seems a pincher bug (or bugs) crawled into the paint somehow. Mind you, I've had this particular bottle of paint for over 8 years! It's never dried out but had apparently captured insects! What was left was quickly discarded and I had to spend several minuets fishing bug parts out of our dough. The moral of the story is beware of your paint storage area...oh and in case you don't know, cockroaches will eat dried tempera paint so beware of what you store that you have painted (classroom decorations and such)! Blah!

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Thursday, July 28, 2011

It's Playtime: Fabulous Favorites #2

Once again, I'm proud to host our readers' favorite posts from last weeks It's Playtime. This includes the blogs which were viewed or "liked" the most on the linky.

Play Create Explore topped our views last week with these lovely, rainbow, Playdough Filled Balloons. Fun for the kids and good stress relief for mom. I love the rainbow colors!

Our own co-hostess, Quirky momma, was popular this week with her Hairy Hotdogs! This yummy meal combines two child favorites: pasta and hotdogs! What's not to love??? A great meal for when mommy and daddy need a night out and the 16 year old babysitter is cooking.

Another top viewed post is this Salt Painting from Lightning Bug Literacy. The colored rock salt reminds my of little gems; like something you would see in pirate treasure. A great sensory/art project for little hands!

Seems many of you clicked over to Praises of a Wife and Mommy to learn how to make your own Puffy Paint. This is a great recipe because I guarantee that most of you have these items laying around the house! I usually find the best art supplies are those you don't have to buy.

Those of us who have been working with kids along time have made sensory bottles at one time or another. Well Come Together Kids stepped up the oil and water bottle idea by adding Alka Seltzer tablets, creating a DIY Lava Lamp.

So now your done with those Playdough Filled Balloons, right? Wrong! Share & Remember showed us how to reuse sensory balloons to create beautiful Sensory Balloon Paintings. Easy to hold, fun to squish, and perfect for creating unique process art!

And just when we thought cardboard boxes couldn't be any more fun, An Amazing Child gave us one more thing to do with them...A Messy Painting Box! A contained space for art exploration; what a wonderful idea! Now where can I get a new box?????

If you were featured this week, don't forget to grab your special "featured button."

Now, on to this weeks play date!

It's Playtime is a community and Thursday link-up hosted by:

* Rachele : Messy Kids (That's me!)
* Anna : The Imagination Tree
* Rachel : Quirky Momma
* Jamie : hands on : as we grow
* Jenny : Let the Children Play

How to Play :

* Link up a post about a playful learning experience enjoyed by kids.
* Give us love and pop a button into your post/blog. Invite your readers to the weekly play date!

Monday, July 25, 2011

Keeping Cool: Ice Excavation

Here in the U.S. it's summer. We are all looking for ways to have fun with our little ones while keeping cool at the same time. Recently, I had my play group over for some messy play, and since it was so hot, I decided to set up an ice sensory activity.

Here is what I did:

Freeze water with small toys in ice trays and plastic containers (tupperware).
At playtime, empty ice into tubs, sensory table, or large bowls.
Provide children with droppers, basters, containers of colored water, spoons, and salt. The salt speeds the melting process along and if you have large blocks of ice, it will also create cool crevices in the ice as it melts.
Stand back and watch the fun!

What they are learning/developing:

Exercising fine motor skills as they use the droppers
Science: observing change
Science: hypothesizing (especially if playing with friends)
Math: volume
Socialization & Cooperation (when working with friends)
Color mixing (blue water + red water= purple water!)
Patience

Check out these other ice sensory ideas:

Baby Play: Ice Sensory hands on: as we grow
Ice sculptures with salt and liquid water colors The Artful Parent
Creative play with ice for toddlers Sixty Second Parent

And look for more "Beat the Heat" ideas this week at hands on: as we grow!

Linked with:
NurtureStore

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Child Led Learning: Reading and Writing

My daughter is 8 so my almost 4-year-old is familiar with the idea of homework. Last week he came to me saying, "Mom I want to do my homework." "Homework?" I asked. "I want to write letters. I want the blue sheet, " He told me. The blue sheet? Blue sheet? What was he talking about? After printing some worksheets with his name on them for letter practice and much frustration from him that it wasn't the "blue sheet", my daughter finally figured he was talking about the blue letter stencil we have. So we sat down together to practice writing letters.

My son knows most of his letters. Between books, educational TV, and the LeapFrog letter magnets (Best learning toy ever! I've had it since my daughter was a baby and it's given both children hours of letter learning fun!) we have, he has learned them well over the years. His interest now is in writing letters and learning their sounds.

I don't like this particular stencil but Michael loves it. The letters are small and it doesn't really teach how to write proper letters. But as a child-led activity, it's good fine-motor skill practice. We started with a pencil because, well, that's all that works with this stencil.

We practiced holding the pencil together so he could feel how to form the letters using the stencil.

Once Michael understood how to write using the stencil, he moved on to asking questions about letter sounds as he wrote each letter. "How do you write ta-ta-ta 'F'? How do you write ga-ga-ga 'O'?" I gently corrected each sound with him as he wrote. Sometimes he repeated me, sometimes he didn't. At least he heard. Eventually he began asking me about nonsense sounds/letters and we laughed but it was obvious he was ready to move on. He then showed interest in writing his name with the worksheet I printed online.

We started with pencil. I showed Michael what to do with the first letter then he tried it on his own.

Then he tried crayon, which is easier for little hands. Orange is Michael's favorite color.

Michael thought he'd try writing with glue. He quickly realized it wasn't easy.

Then he tried glitter glue which was a little easier.

Michael's completed worksheet.

Fine motor skills, letter practice, name practice, and letter sounds, all rolled into one...and all led by a 4-year-old! I didn't push, prod, or nag. Young children should be encouraged, but if you push a child to do something, before they are ready and willing, you risk the chance of creating a child who struggles with learning. Something I don't want with my kids.

Other child-led letter/reading activities we do:

While driving my son will spot an item then ask me what letter it starts with (for instance "tree" or "sign"). We then try to think of other words that begin with that letter.
Magnet letters- Michael has access to cheap-o magnet letters and an old cookie sheet. The LeapFrog magnet letters recites the name and the sound(s) of the letters. It also sings the "ABC" song. Those are on my fridge.
Michael loves to "read" signs, DVD covers, book titles, etc. He often tells me what it says. I then take my finger and point to the words and gently read the true words to him like, "oh, you mean right here where it says, 'blah, blah, blah.'" He will either argue with me or agree with me. If he argues, I just say, "oh, ok then". He thinks he's reading and I want to encourage that. If I argue all the time with him, he'll stop, then I'll have a bigger problem on my hands then him pretend reading the wrong thing!
Free drawing is also a prewriting skill. Michael is always welcome to grab scratch paper and his crayons, markers, or pencils and draw.
Of course we read, read, read together. My children and I love to read together. And of course I get tired of reading the same books over and over, but I do it, because that's how we learn; through repetition.

Do you have other reading/writing ideas to share? Please feel free to leave me a comment below! I'd love to hear from you.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

It's Playtime: Easy Experiments

I love science! I don't do nearly enough science activities with my children. We've watched tadpoles change....

and read about bugs and spiders. I've made oil and water sensory bottles...

and we've grown plants, but that's really the extent of our science time. It's not bad, but there is so much more out there that can be done! On last week's It's Playtime, some great experiments were posted which I hope will push me to do more...and you too!

There are so many fabulous science experiments with eggs! Over at Sun Scholars, they made Rubber Eggs. This simple science activity involves 3 household items and will give you a weeks worth of observation and hypothesizing. Kids love to "wonder" what will happen!

Kids love bouncy balls! Why not Make-Your-Own! Come Together Kids posted about the fun they had creating their own bouncy balls, along with the recipe. A perfect summer time activity!

Logan and Kalia's Blog posted several Fun things to do with glow sticks. My favorite activity involved adding them in the bath. I have a bunch of glow sticks laying around; why I haven't I thought of that? A cool experiment for my list!

Toddlers need science too! Gratefully Growing in Grace attempted to make toys fly using planes and fulcrums. Of course, my son, being an energetic boy, would immediately jump on the plane launching his stuffed animal high into the air. An experiment I'd love to do, but need strong materials for. As for the little lady above, she seems perfectly content simply pushing on the plane to launch her animals.

If you were featured this week, don't forget to grab your "featured" button!