Happy New Year Messy Kids and It's Playtime readers! We all had a wonderful Christmas brake but now we're back and ready to rock. We appreciate all our readers and participants and can't wait to see what the New Year brings.
This week on It's Playtime I'm celebrating....CHOCOLATE!
Stuck inside on a rainy day? Open a Play Dough Chocolate Shop and see how creative your little baker can be. What's Fun Today? shares the recipe for chocolate scented dough and other ideas for bakery play fun.
Teach Preschool dedicated an entire day to Hot Cocoa Play! Check her post for art, sensory, and play ideas celebrating this delightful winter treat.
Why buy Cake Pops when you can make your own? Rockabye Butterfly shows you how. I bet your kids will love mushing the cake!
If you were featured this week, don't forget to grab your special "featured button."
Day 10 of the 30 Days to Hands On Play challenge brought excitement to my little world. The challenge was Concoctions, and boy, did I know what I wanted to do with my kids....Elephant Toothpaste! If you've never seen Elephant Toothpaste then check out this video:
I checked my ingredient list and found I had everything...except the beauty supply bottle of hydrogen peroxide...but regular ol' hydrogen peroxide should work...right?
According to the video we needed hydrogen peroxide (HP from now on), dish soap, warm water, yeast, and food coloring. I was thrilled to find we had an empty soda bottle in the garage as we hardly buy the stuff.
Ariel pours the HP into the empty soda bottle.
Michael adds the dish soap.
I mixed the yeast with the warm water. It became a bit pasty.
Then we added the yeast mixture to the HP mixture. Here's how it goes....*spoiler alert* it's a dud!
We waited...and waited...and waited...then we gave up.
But the kids were able to play in the bit of foam we created.
They felt it, splashed it, and practically took a bath in it.
And Michael, being the tool man he is, experimented with the funnel.
What we learned:
Regular HP is only about 3%. Beauty Supply HP has a higher concentration, at least 6%. The higher the concentration, the better the reaction. You can purchase 8%
from Amazon!
If at first you don't succeed....we'll be trying this one again!
Halloween may be over but these It's Playtime science activities are good all year around...
Science Sparks shared their post about Making an Eerie Sound Device. This simple activity can be spooky or just plain silly. I love the video she posted demonstrating the device!
Whole Child Creative Curriculum posted this Science Experiment for Preschoolers. Don't have a rubber glove laying around the house (or school)? Try using a balloon for a similar effect.
If you were featured this week, don't forget to grab your special "featured button."
Aside from some pre-measuring and cooking activities, I haven't done too many math activities with my son. With the possibility that he will begin Kindergarten next year (he'll be eligible but barley 5, so I may hold onto him one more year) I figured it was time we start. Of course, as an advocate for play, I wanted it to be somewhat open ended, but I wanted a bit of structure as well.
I started with a chart sectioned into 4 distinct areas. I'd purchased some Halloween foam stickers from the $0.99 store for such an occasion. I placed one sticker in each section, then separated matching stickers into muffin tins.
I wasn't concerned with colors (although, I was secretly hoping for some sort of pattern!), simply shapes. I told him he could peel the stickers and place them into the matching section, as many as he wanted, then we'd count them.
Peeling foam stickers is excellent fine motor practice!
Michael is extremely active with a short attention span. He did match his shapes, but would only place 1 sticker in each column, so, I went with it. After all, it's his first time and I did want this to be play-like and fun.
Once he placed his stickers, we counted how many he placed in each column. I reminded him what a "1" looked like and let him write the number on his own.
For some more Halloween math ideas check out:
Little Lucky: Halloween Activities (this site is in Romanian but she has Google Translate)
from Amazon! 
