Tin Foil Christmas Ornaments

 You will need:

A recycled cereal box

foil

cookie cutters or stencils

tape

glitter glue

hole punch

ribbon

1. Trace Christmas shapes using your cookie cutters.

2. Cut them out and cover with foil and secure with a piece of tape on the back.

 3. Have your little ones decorate the ornaments using glitter glue.
4. Punch a hole at the top or your ornament and put a ribbon through the hole and tie it.

5. Hang your new creations on the Christmas tree!

Bento Box Picks

My sister sent my little ones these adorable bento box picks. They are just so cute! They made snack time extra fun! She also uses them for lunch time in those cute little plates for poaching eggs. They make great compartments for little diced up food. 

Beginning Sounds Balloon Game

You will need: two ballons, a sharpie, minimal artistic skills

Blow up two balloons. One one write letters, and on the other draw pictures of things that start with that letter sound. 

To play throw the balloon with the letters up in the air and have your little one catch it. Have him choose a letter he is touching when he catches it and tell you what sound the letter makes. Then throw the second balloon with the drawings and have him find the object that begins with that letter sound. We began with letter A-I and then gradually added more letters and drawings. 

This was a great activity for my active boy. He wanted to keep playing and playing!

Little Pintesters: Junk Match Busy Bag

 

We love Pinterest! I recently pinned THIS activity and threw it together in less than five minutes with stuff I had lying around the house.

They're called Junk Match bags. You pretty much grab an assortment of small objects you have around your house, trace them on cardstock and put them all in a gallon ziploc bag. That's it! Easy! Then have your little ones match the object to its outline.

Outline all the random objects

Place them in a large ziploc bag. You may need to trim the cardstock a little bit to make it fit.

 

Let your kids have fun!

This is probably the easiest activity to put together!
TIP: The cardstock can be laminated to make it last longer.

We give it a BIG 10!

Here are some more ideas to make this activity even more fun and educational:

• Make themed bags for holidays with small holiday objects from the Dollar Store
• Make alphabet bags each with objects starting with a certain letter for practicing letter sounds
• Bags can be themed around shapes or even color

Please let us know in the comments if you try this activity and if you come up with more fun ways to use it.
 

Falling Leaves ABC Game

You will need: 

Construction Paper

Scissors

marker

Basket

I made 26 leaves by cutting construction paper and wrote upper and lower case letters on each leaf. Then I gave them to my little one and had him throw the leaves and high as he could. He loved that part! He then made sure all the letters were facing up. I would call out a letter and he would put it in our little basket. Then we would talk about what words began with that letter sound. Great game for letter recognition and sound recognition. 

Little Pintesters: Toilet Paper Tube Fun!

Here are two activities you can make using empty toilet paper or paper towel tubes.

The first one is a fun game my boys absolutely loved. Found HERE. You take the tubes and cut them up into different sizes and you tape them onto a cookie sheet or tray. Then you take a small ball and the kids have fun tilting the tray and making the ball go through the "tunnels." To make it more complicated you can add more balls. FUN!

Our Score: 10

The second activity found HERE (This a great website if you're teaching your preschooler at home). You take six tubes and cover them with colored paper. Then you glue them onto a long piece of cardboard or cardstock and onto each other. I used a glue gun and it worked very well. You label each tube with its corresponding color. You can have your little ones sort all kinds of objects. We've used popsicle sticks, pompoms and beads so far.

Our Score: 10

 

The best part of these activies is that they cost little to nothing to make! 

 

Five Little Pumpkins Free Printable

Found a cute little book here on this website I love! DLTK'S Crafts for Kids has coloring pages, craft ideas, worsheets, etc for Holidays, and teaching. Great resource for early elementary grade levels and toddlers. This is a great little mini book the kids can color and learn the rhyme too. You can also print it out  in color if you'd like. 

Little Pintesters: Acorn painting

 This fun activity was found here as I was browsing Pinterest. 

You will need:

An empty oatmeal canister

construction paper

acorns

paint

 Line the oatmeal canister with your paper and add some dollops of paint to the inside or the canister also. Toss a few acorns inside. Close the lid and shake it up. That's the really fun part!

 I loved that this was a mess free painting activity. I also liked that my 1 and a half year old and my four year old could both do it. I often try to find activities that they can both do so neither of them feels left out. This was PERFECT! It's definitely a do over. My four year old especially liked it. For some reason he is really into collecting acorns and playing with them. Fun, fun, fun, fall activity! This can also be done for other occasions using marbles, similar to this activity we did a while back. 

Score: a big 10! 

Halloween Glass Jar Lanterns

This a less sleek and less perfect looking "kid" version of the jar lanterns found on one of my favorite websites here. 

What you will need:

empty glass jar

mod podge

brush

tissue paper

black construction paper

tea light

 Instead of cutting in strips like the original post we decided we would rip our tissue paper apart into little pieces. Then we "mod podged" it onto our glass jar trying to cover every empty space. We then we cut out eyes and mouths out of construction paper and also adhered them with mod podge. 

We let the mod podge dry and then put a battery powered tea light inside to make it more safe for kids. Spooky, don't you think!

Little Pintesters: Homemade Finger Paint

 Back for another Little Pintesters post where our little ones test out pins we find on Pinterest. 

This recipe was found here. 

Ingredients:

3 T. Sugar

1/2 t. salt

1/2 c. cornstarch

2 c. water

food coloring

Combine ingredients in a small sauce pan. Mix and warm until mixture reaches desired consistency. Let cool. Pour into containers. Add food coloring to make desired colors.

The verdict: this was easy to make. I like that you can adjust the consistency to make it thicker like finger paint, or less thick for painting with brushes. The blogger of the original post suggests doing so if desired. It came out pretty thick. Next time I'll add a little more water if they will be using sponge brushes. 

This activity actually really entertained both my four-year-old and my 1 and a half year old. They were entertained for almost 45 minutes. Which is a long time for them!! So much fun.

Score: 10 out of 10 !!

That's all for now! Let us know if you try this activity and if it's successful for you :)

Chalk Roads

Here's a quick and easy idea my little ones enjoyed for several days. They still ask for it now! All you need to do is draw roads using sidewalk chalk. They had a great time playing with their trucks and cars. If your little ones are a little older you can even have them help draw the roads and maybe even add stop signs, lights, houses and buildings.

Little Pintesters: Wacky Sacks!

I found THIS fun idea I wanted to try for the kids I teach in the nursery at my church. It looked simple and fun so we gave it a shot.

All you need are balloons (larger are better), playdough (I made my favorite recipe. Found HERE), and a permanent marker

You start by stretching the balloon open as much as you can. The adult has to do this. It's too hard for little hands. The orginal post said to shape the playdough into a snake and have the child stuff it into the balloon. We just did little chunks. It was easier for the little ones.

 Now close the balloons and draw some funny faces with a permanent marker.

 Now have fun with them! Squish them, toss them, play hot potato, play catch, shape them into funny shapes, and when you're done playing with them you can take the playdough out and let the fun continue!

I would give this project a 9 out of 10.

Why? They were super easy to make and the kids loved them so much we had to make more for siblings. My little ones even wanted to keep them during their nap. It doesn't earn a perfect 10 because the faces started to wear off. My little one kept asking me to redraw it.

There you go! Wacky Sacks! So fun!



How Many Gum Balls?

I bought a cookie sheet at the dollar store and wanted to find a way to incorporate it to our preschool Tot tray weekly activities or "juegos" as my little one likes to call them. I once saw a printable on this blog that I thought my little one would enjoy. I decided to draw my own and hot glue some magnets to  pom poms and, voila! We now have a fun activity to practice numbers and counting. The numbers we used are just made from old milk jug lids and I used a sharpie to write the numbers.  

Little Pintesters: Bubble wands and Homemade Bubbles

Bubble wands and homemade bubbles

My little Pintesters were eager to try out these homemade bubble wands and bubbles. The bubble wands are made using pipe cleaners and plastic beads. They were fun to use on a pinch, but they soaked up a lot of the bubble solution so it was a little wasteful. 

Bubble wand score: 8 

why not a ten? Because they soaked up more solution than necessary which made my Little Pintesters and I all wet. 

The bubble solution:

4 cups water

1 cup dish soap

1/4 cup corn syrup

container

Mix the ingredients together in a container to store in such as a gallon jug. Pour the bubble solution into a shallow dish and give your little cookie cutters, water bottles with the bottoms cut off, and bubble wands to explore with. 

Now for the review: This solution was fun to play with the water bottles and cookie cutters. It made big bubbles that would not float away so it was not as useful for the bubble wands. The most that would come out of the wands were about 5 bubbles. 

Bubble Solution score: 8

Why? Because it did entertain the little ones for a good 15-20 minutes, but I would've liked for us to be able to use the bubble wands and produce lots of "floaty" bubbles to play with. 

That's our review for now! Have a nice day!

DIY Angry Birds

If your little ones are anything like mine they would love this angry bird game. My 4 year old loved tumbling down structures with his new homemade toys. 

Materials:

balls

red material

rubber bands or string

sharpie

Wrap the balls in red material and secure with a rubber band or string at the top. Draw an angry bird face on the material. Now you're ready for action!! 

We used our building bricks from a previous post, and they worked perfectly for this angry bird game. The pigs can also be made a similar way.