DIY Fine Motor Skills Craft for Toddlers with Pipe Cleaners

Posted in activities for kids by Rosemary Lynn

DIY Fine Motor Skills Craft for Toddlers with Pipe Cleaners at RoamingRosie.com

I like to make homemade activities for my girls by recycling things we have around the house.

We use pipe cleaners {or chenille sticks} fairly often, so we’ve always got those on hand. I usually get them at the dollar store.

For this project, I used 4 pipe cleaners and cut them into inch-long pieces with a pair of strong scissors.

Then, the goal was simply to put them into an old spice container.

This is the type of spice container that holds dried herbs, like parsley or oregano. You’ll notice the top has only 6 large holes.

It’s a great way to work on fine motor skills and helps with prewriting skills.

The only drawback to this is that the metal inside the pipe cleaners can be a little sharp. There are a couple of ways around this. One: ignore it. And two: use pliers to curve over the very ends of the metal pieces, making sure that the sticks still fit through the holes in the spice container.

We chose option one.

Really, it’s not terribly sharp and you can insert them without pushing the ends anyway if you manipulate the pieces by holding them on the fuzzy part. Or pushing gently, which is what I showed my girls.

Or, if you’re really worried about it, you could just use pieces of yarn instead.

My favorite part is that all the little pieces fit inside the container, and, thus, it is self-contained and easy to store.

For more kid activities using items around the house, check out:

Practice Measuring with Rice

Painting With Chalk

Our Colorful Backyard: Color Matching Activity for Kids

Blustery Day Water Play

Free Kid Activity: Developing Fine Motor Skills with Crayons

Pretend Play: Makeup

Free Kid Activity: Chalk on Construction Paper

Free Kid Activity: Painting Newspaper

Make Your Own Color Shadows

Dirt Soup: In Contact With Creation

Have fun!

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13Jul2014

Practice Measuring with Rice

Posted in activities for kids by Rosemary Lynn

Pretend Cooking And Practice Measuring With Rice Activity For Kids

This is one of those activities I love: easy to set up, great for learning, and free.

That’s a hard-to-beat combination. :)

Anyway, while busy in the kitchen/laundry room, I set this up for my girls and was amazed at how involved they became. We’ve done similar things with dried pasta, but we hadn’t used rice for anything in awhile.

I put two large, two medium, and two small bowls on an old cookie sheet. I provided two small measuring cups and two measuring spoons, and dumped some rice into the two big bowls. Then I stepped back.

There was measuring, scooping, pouring, touching, and a general sense of busyness.

And silence.

It was so strange. I’m not used to my 2yo and 4yo sitting so quietly together for so long. But they were involved in their project. There wasn’t even any arguing. No “she’s touching me!”

Just concentration.

It didn’t last forever, of course. Eventually the 2-year-old discovered that the rice made a neat sound as it sprinkled out over the tile floor, and so I wasn’t really able to keep and reuse most of the rice as I’d hoped.

But it was worth it.

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7Feb2014

Ocean Sensory Play Bath

Posted in activities for kids, alphabet activities by Rosemary Lynn

ocean sensory play bath

This was a wonderful activity – so easy to set up and so much fun for the girls!

I incorporated this into Letter O Day. (I know, I know: I’m a little behind in posting all of the Alphabet Activities and their free printables, but I’m getting there…) It’s an activity that I found on Pinterest, originally from Growing a Jeweled Rose.

The girls have always loved sensory bins where they search for small toys in a little tray or bowl, but I loved the idea of allowing them to immerse themselves in a giant sensory bin!

I made it in much the same way as my inspiration, with just a small change: I didn’t add food coloring to the water. I didn’t think it was necessary, and, as the bath went on, a little of the food coloring seeped from the noodles and colored the bathwater anyway.

ocean sensory play bath

As you can see, in the above photo, I started with plain bathwater. I threw in the noodles, spread them around, tossed in a few ocean-themed toys, and let the girls climb in.

To make the noodles, I took 3 pounds of spaghetti and cooked it in two pots. One pound went in one pot, with quite a few drops of green food coloring, to make the “seaweed,” and the other two pounds went into the other pot, with a LOT of blue food coloring, to make the “water.” Or “blue seaweed,” or “coral” or “algae.” Whatever.

After cooking the spaghetti, I rinsed it off in a colander in the sink to get rid of excess food coloring. I didn’t want to turn my girls blue, after all.

ocean sensory play bath

After spreading around the spaghetti, we threw in their ocean animal squirt toys and a handful of mermaids. It wasn’t a ton of toys, but it was enough.

They mostly played with the noodles, anyway.

ocean sensory play bath

Before climbing in, the girls stood outside the tub, feeling the spaghetti with their hands, then gently dipping in their toes. Lots of giggles.

Then they jumped right in.

They held the spaghetti in their hands, wiggled it between their toes, “wrote” on the sides of the tub with it, and dumped handfuls on each other’s heads.

ocean sensory play bath

We made all kinds of shapes out of the spaghetti on the tub sides and on the tile wall. My 20-month-old did a lot of swirling and slow movements with her hands and feet in the noodles. My 3-year-old made patterns on the edge of the tub for her mermaids to sit in. She concentrated pretty hard on her projects. But even with all that focus, there was so much laughter and endless smiles.

They even helped me dump the spaghetti into a plastic bin before draining the tub. They thought it was fun to use the little metal colanders with handles to help scoop it all up.

And, afterwards, the girls got a good scrub, and I made sure to dump some baking soda and white vinegar down the drain, because some noodles did escape me.

Overall, a great, great project. So much fun!

It’s been requested multiple times, although I may do it in a little blow-up pool next time. Kinda like our blustery day water play. We’ll see. :)

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2Feb2014

Make Your Own Snow

Posted in activities for kids by Rosemary Lynn

make your own play snow

Some of our friends had six feet of snow in their backyards during the polar vortex.

Here in Florida, we experienced a gentle misting of ice coating our cars and grass. Good for me (I didn’t have to abandon my flip flops) but bad for my preschooler, who still remembers romping through the snow during our vacation last winter.

Solution: make our own snow.

I found the Erupting Snow Recipe at Growing a Jeweled Rose, and I thought it looked like a great idea: realistic play snow and a science experiment, too!

make your own play snow

It was super simple to make, since it has only two ingredients. My daughter even helped me mix it.

make your own play snow

You just empty some baking soda into a container (we used an old Tupperware) and mix in some shaving cream until you reach a consistency where it will form snow balls that don’t fall apart.

We used two small boxes of baking soda and what I believe was most of a can of shaving cream.

We mixed it with our hands, which is why my hand looks coated in the stuff in the top photo, but once it’s mixed, it doesn’t stick to your hand too much.

make your own play snow

And we played with it on a disposable, plastic tablecloth, to contain the mess. And just vacuumed up any that spilled on the carpet.

Oh, and, incidentally, the girls decided that it was best to play in the snow while wearing their dress-up outfits. Just in case you were wondering about the frilly sleeves and skirts. :)

make your own play snow

The snow is great for sensory play. My daughters both loved sinking their hands into it…

make your own play snow

… and their feet.

make your own play snow

And when they were tired of playing with it, I put the cover on the Tupperware and we set it aside for a few days.

Then we pulled it out again to perform our “science experiment.”

Since I often use baking soda and vinegar to clean my house, my girls had seen the fizzle they produce. But now they were going to use their snow to create it.

make your own play snow