Fun Learning Activities for Preschoolers and Kids

Purple Toes: The Book, An Activity & Giveaways

Rachel — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 16:07:26 +0000

We love to read and love to do art & are participating in Michelle’s st+ART activities found in her blog, A Mommy’s Adventures, with the book, My Purple Toes, by Blair Hahn. My Purple Toes is about a Dad who decides to be silly and enjoy being different by painting his toes purple . He then discusses the reactions of his family members (embarrassment and giggles) to his purple toes and the fun places his toes get to go wiggle. Want your own copy? Leave a comment below for a chance to win!

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We traced our toes on papers and then colored in our feet with crayon. And then to be ultra-silly, we fingerpainted our papers with our shaving cream fingerpaint recipe using pink and blue paint (making purple). Just like the Dad in the story liked feeling the grass wiggle between his purple toes, our kids had fun wiggling their toes in finger paint. I will say that this is a one-on-one activity. We had purple paint all over our kitchen floor by the time they were done!

And of course, after reading a book about how a Dad painted his nails, we couldn’t end the day without painting our own! Too bad we don’t have any purple nail polish! Quirky E enjoyed getting to “work on fine motor skills” as she painted her toes nails “all by herself”, just like the Dad in our story, she wasn’t embarrassed a bit!
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Want to have your own fun reading and recreating My Purple Toes? We have two copies of the story available to two lucky kiddos! Leave a comment and I’ll let one of the kids draw the names of the winner randomly.

Have a blog, kids and like books? Join up in Michelle’s link-up tomorrow morning!

Unconventional School Supplies

Rachel — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 13:52:24 +0000

What do gel food dye, borax, shaving cream, cornstarch & cream of tartar have in common? All of these are on my “must buy” list when it comes to school supplies (in addition to the obvious things like glue, markers and construction paper). You can make so many things with those five ingredients!
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Gel food dye – I use it in edible paints, like the ones we have made to paint our pancakes. We have also used it to dye anything that has to be bright, like paintable chalk and of course playdough.
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Borax – This is a necessary ingredient in goop. We are obsessed with goop over here! I love how mess-free this play medium is and am amazed with all the ways we use it to learn.
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Shaving Cream – this is the base I use to make our fingerpaints. It is a lot of fun for sensory learning! And you can even clean wood surfaces with it – have crayon on your table, no fear, shaving cream to the rescue!
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Cornstarch – We have had lots of fun learning about germs and how they are spread (in place of glitter), making and molding with moonsand, and of course it is another ingredient in both goop and in numerous of our paint recipes, like bathtub paint.
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Cream of Tartar – this elusive ingredient is hard to find at our grocery store. We use it in creating playdough. I have made playdough without it before, but it wasn’t as elastic. Cream of Tartar is great for playdough!
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So, what fun things were on your back-to-school list?

Thanks Laffy for the picture!

Scientific Method with Preschoolers and Sunscreen

Rachel — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 20:10:52 +0000

This post idea, to test our sunscreen by painting on our paper with sunscreen and leaving them out in the sun, was inspired by the comment by Lady in a Small Town in my earlier post, Sun-bleached Alphabet Puzzle. She said that she’d heard of an experiment where they painted with sunscreen and watched the sun bleach the paper except for the painted portions. It sounded like fun! We added the Scientific method as I have always wondered which type of sunscreen was more effective: rub-on or spray-on.
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What is the scientific method? It is a way of finding a problem and searching for the solution, as provided by evidence. The Scientific Method requires four basic steps:

Ask a question
Make a hypothesis or a statement of truth
Test hypothesis with experiments.
Determine if your hypothesis was indeed true.

Question: Which sunscreen is more effective: Rub-on or Spray-on

Hypothesis: Rub-on is more effective.

Setting up our Preschool Sunscreen Experiment:

We used the same brand of sunscreen for both experiments and with the same SPF. As there were variations in shades between the various pages of construction paper, we folded each page in half. On one half the kids free-style painted with sunscreen. We created a smiley face stencil and on the other half of paper we sprayed sunscreen over the page. Then all the papers were left out in the sun for a few hours.

Solution: As you can see, they are both equally effective.

Goop and the alphabet

Rachel — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 20:52:31 +0000

What do you have when you mix school glue, cornstarch, water, food coloring and a tiny bit of borax? Goop! This homemade silly putty is marvelous stuff! We use it like playdough as it doesn’t leave residue! Yay for mess-less play! Last week a friend came over and we popped the goop. Many of our activities are things I come up with, but I can’t take any credit for this alphabet review. Quirky Kid Z decided that making prints with his letters was the greatest thing his goop could be doing. All I had to do was grab the camera. It is so much fun watching them learn and explore. All you need is some goop and some magnetic letters.
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Ways to add to the learning fun:

Have one child press the letter into the goop and have another child (with eyes closed) guess what the letter is using the sense of touch.
Cover the letter with a sheet of goop and dig it out again.
See if you can make the letters stand up using the goop.
Sing the alphabet song while you work – Do you know any phonics songs? Review the sound that each letter makes.
Make long “snakes” with the goop and form letters with them. Watch the goop meld back into a blob as your letter dissolves.

Want more molding fun? Joy at Joyful Learner, wrote a post about how her preschooler used playdough and magnetic numbers!

Sunbleached Alphabet and Shape Puzzle

Rachel — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 13:30:20 +0000

I was inspired to make these paper puzzles after reading the post by S.B. of, S.B. Creatively, she took advantage of the summer sun to create a mat where her kids practiced letter identification. We adapted it to create a few puzzles for my youngest. We created one with alphabet magnets and another with different shaped blocks from around the house.

How to make a bleached puzzle?

You need construction paper. The cheaper the better. I used high quality art paper the first time and it didn’t bleach well.
A sunny day, being in Texas, we have lots of those!
Shapes (alphabet magnets, blocks, coins, etc.)

I love how the block shapes helped my toddler work on early geometry skills. It was fun watching her rotate the blocks to try and replicate the image. Hope your kids enjoy puzzle making!

Thanks to Nicole of Activity Mom for sharing this post with us!

Favorite Preschool Learning Resource Sites

admin — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 13:20:00 +0000

Want to know which preschool-related sites from the world wide web regularly wow me? Where I get some of the inspiration for my posts? Which sites do I regularly hound? These are my top ten favorite early childhood education sites! Please know that this is not all inclusive, there are tons of other sites that I love and follow but if I have to pick, these are the first that come to my mind.

Let the Children Play – Not only is her preschool blog a lot of fun, but Jenny’s facebook fan feed is one of my all-time favorites! I love to read all of the sites she finds!

Teach Preschool – love Deborah’s facebook and twitter feeds! She also has some great kids music!

Teacher Tom - really, who else lets 4 year olds use power tools! I thought I was daring with the kids, I have lots to learn from him!

ABC123 - The Katie’s who run this site help balance my love of play with an educational bent. Love browsing the blog hops they have!

Crafty Crow – Looking for a fun kid craft? They have hundreds! Its a great place to browse when you have a few hours of spare time! I get sucked in!

No Time for Flashcards -So many fun activities and resources! I love her focus on children literature!

Irresistible Ideas for Play Based learning – Many of these ideas are based more for preschool teachers, versus moms of preschoolers, but I have been able to adapt many of her ideas in our home.

We Play Childhood 101 – Notice a trend with Australia? I love the movement down under to incorporate real life into learning. I love her blog hops too! Tons of playing activities!

The Activity Mom – Nicole has a lot of fun creating lessons and activities for her kids, she also troves the net and features lessons she finds.

JDaniel’s Mom – D’s Saturday “Great Posts of the week” collections are great! I have found lots of great sites on there!

Thanks to Wit for the web photo!

Labeling our Dolls: A Starfall Activity

Rachel — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 19:23:48 +0000

My oldest preschooler loves Starfall and loves her dolls, why not combine them into a review lesson? Remember our funky painted clothespins from yesterday? Well, today my oldest was playing one of her favorite sections on Starfall, All About Me, and when she was finished we decided to review the words together with a few of her dolls and our clothespins. As she was playing her computer game I wrote down a number of the words she interacted with on sticker paper: Girl, boy, head, face, hair, eyes, yellow, brown, arm, leg, etc. Then attached the stickers to the clothespins and we “matched” the word to the corresponding part of the doll.

Do your kids like clipping and pinching each other things with clothes pins? Mine do! I am pretty sure this will be a review activity we will do often. It combines three of Quirky Kid E’s favorite things: Starfall, dolls & clothespins!

Fun and Funky Clothespins: A Preschool Painting Project

Rachel — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 19:25:23 +0000

My preschoolers love to paint – and I love to spice up life a bit! Who wants to eat pretzels from a boring bag clothed up with a plain old clip? Not me!
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…and viola! We have some fun and funky clothespins!
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Do you have any fun painting projects you’ve done with your kids lately?

Letters: D, E & F

Rachel — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 20:43:13 +0000

In preparation for school this year we have been reviewing our letters. My daughter had fun tracing the letter we printed then we sat and thought about all the words we could that began with those letters. My son helped by doodling afterward. Are you doing anything fun to help your kids prepare for this upcoming school year?

Color Race: Preschool Game

Rachel — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 19:11:26 +0000

My toddler is learning her colors! This was a fun activity that we did together. The older two kids rushed around the house independently, while Quirky Kid A and I looked for all the red items. Unfortunately, this is not an original idea, only I can’t remember where online I read about another family having a color race (but I know you are out there). If your family has done a color race, let me know and I’ll link up to your fun! Haven’t had a color race yet? We used a paint chip as our “color standard”, but you can easily make your own color cards. Turn on a peppy song (see below) and race! See how many objects you can find in your home during the course of the song!
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