Book Giveaway at Fantastic Fiction for Kids

Head over to Fantastic Fiction for Kids and enter her giveaway to win a book! I recently did a guest post on this blog.

Name Puzzle

I made this puzzle for Rachel a few months ago and thought I'd share it, as it's a great activity to introduce the letters in your child's name. Rachel is really interested in puzzles right now, so she enjoys this quick matching puzzle.





I simply re-used a file folder, and let Rachel decorate the front with stickers. Then I cut out the letters of her name twice, making sure they matched. I didn't have a printer at the time, but if I did, I probably would have used a thick font and printed it off the computer. I glued one set of letters to the inside of the folder, then stapled a sandwich Ziploc bag to the other half and we store the loose letters inside there!

Fantastic Fiction for Kids

I've written my first guest blog on Fantastic Fiction for Kids. This UK blog is all about kids books and activities and songs to do with them! The great thing about this blog is that you can browse the blog by subject or author to find the books you'd like to share with your children. My guest post is on the topic of books with songs, a particular combination I love! You can view my post here

More sensory fun!

Here's another idea for a sensory bin:

This time, I dug out the pool, which I've kept blown up all year round in our storage room, and put her tray in there, which even further eliminates the spreading of all those little things! This bin is full of Rainbow Rice. Put a few scoops of white rice in a ziploc bag, add a few drops of food coloring, seal the bag, and rub around until rice is mostly colored. Dump out, then repeat process until you have multiple colors! My photo isn't that great, but if you were closer, you'd see just how pretty it is!




My friend Alison saw my post on using Lentils, or other such cupboard fare to entertain little ones, and she picked up a 12 bean mix for Rachel she saw at the Bulk Barn that she just couldn't resist. Rachel LOVES her beans!





Thanks so much Alison!

No fancy craft supplies needed!

A fun new way to 'paint' - Eye droppers!

I used the dropper from an empty children's Tylenol container for this activity. Just take some little containers, add a bit of water, a drop of food colouring, and lay out a few pieces of paper towel (or coffee filters) for your child to drop different colours all over!



It took Rachel a few tries to get a hang of how to use the dropper, but then she went wild! Here is her beautiful watercolour!



Now I just have to decide how I want to use or display such beautiful colours. Any suggestions?

*Update: See more paper towel creations we made here and here!

Scooping Lentils so Mommy can cook!

Want to get lots of cooking done in the kitchen? I was able to cut the meat off 4 large bone-in chicken breasts, cook a chicken curry from scratch, cook a pot of rice, a pot of lentils and put a pot of homemade chicken broth to simmer on the stove ALL while Rachel played with a bin of green lentils on the kitchen floor! (I even got part of my cleanup done during this time!)

Anything small that is easy to scoop and sweep will work in a pinch ie. beans, rice, cereal, popcorn.

We grabbed some little spoons and she played for a good 45 minutes straight. She got her hands on my plastic dish gloves and would pour the lentils inside, dump them out, and do it over again. She ended up dumping the lentils on the floor when she was done, but I just scooped them up with some construction paper to save the bulk of them to do it again, then swept up the stragglers left behind!