Paint with Water

When my son Zach was much younger (about 15 or 16 months) I wanted to do something fun and creative with him that didn't involve too much mess.  Being that young, I was too scared to turn him loose with regular paint...not to mention that he tried to eat everything I gave him (including crayons)...so I had to get a little more creative.  While cleaning out a book shelf one day I found an old "Paint with Water" book I had when I was younger and realized I stumbled across the exact activity I'd been looking for!  So I tore out a few pages, gave one to Zach and one to my 23-month-old niece (who I used to babysit on a weekly basis) and had an instant success!  The kids were fascinated with the colors that "appeared" with their wet paint brush, and they loved painting water all over everything, not just the paper.  Yes, water got all over.  But I really didn't care, water is easy to clean up.  Yes, the kids got wet.  But what kids doesn't love playing in water and getting wet without Mom getting mad!  So, we made it a regular activity at our house and Zach still likes to paint in his books.  My only complaint is that these types of books are almost impossible to find (and I looked EVERYWHERE) so I have to order them off Amazon.  But, they continue to be worth it!  If you have a budding little artist, or if you just want a fun, creative (clean) outlet for your kids, than this may be the thing for you!

Goo!

I'm OBSESSED with alphabet books!  I love them, I collect them, and I'm always on the look out for new ones.  Last week at the library I found this one:

It is such a cute alphabet book with great "comic-book" illustrations!  My three-year-old son LOVED it and we've read it so much he has it pretty much memorized!  One of his favorite "heros" from the book is Goo Girl:

who, you can see by the picture, attacks villains with goo!  He was fascinated with the idea of goo, so I decided to make some.  I remember making slime in one of my Elementary Education classes, so I googled the recipe and we made us some goo!!  

It is REALLY easy and only uses Elmer's school glue, water, borax, and a little food coloring.  The glue and borax have a chemical reaction and a sort of polymer forms.  (I found a great video that show how to make it, if you want to watch CLICK HERE)  You can use white or clear school glue, we used white.  [My son really wanted red goo but unfortunately the white glue made the concoction pink.  Clear glue would have given us the red we wanted.  Oh well, maybe next time.  Just keep in mind the white glue will tint your goo when you make it.]  Zach was completely fascinated with the properties of the goo and loved pressing his hand print into the blob and watching it ooze away.  It looks messy, but I promise it is really clean and leaves no traces of goo on your hands while playing.  Goo isn't just for the little ones either.  I had family at my house yesterday and all the kids, especially the eight-year-old, couldn't keep their hands off the stuff.  It is also a great activity for kids who are into science and is a great way to introduce and explore science concepts.  And, of course, let's not forget what a fabulous sensory activity this is because it is so fun to explore with hands (lots of oozing).  If you want to add even more education, compare and contrast the Goo's properties with similar substances like play dough or silly putty.  Comparing and contrasting is one of the strongest teaching tools you can use to enhance learning and create connections of information in the brain!  So go get your Goo on!!   

Here's the recipe and instructions:

Mix 1/2 cup glue (about 1 bottle) with 1/2 cup water.  Add food coloring if you choose.

In a separate bowl, mix 1 tsp. Borax with 1 cup water.

Mix the two solutions together.  Pull out the "slime" and begin playing.  

*Don't worry about extra water in the bowl, you can just pour it down the sink.  Any mess can easily be cleaned up with water!

*One recipe I read suggested to just let the two mixtures sit for one minute with no mixing.  My goo ended up a little tough, I think from mixing it too much, so this may eliminate that problem!            

Dump Meals

It has been way too long since my last post, but I have been a very busy Momma battling the flu and nursing my two very sick little ones back to health!  But, things are starting to calm down and I am definitely ready to rejoin the world and I wanted to post something that has saved me the last couple of weeks...Dump Meals!  I got this idea from Hannah Keely, a mom coach and professional organizer who has a weekly show called Hannah Help Me.  She also has a fabulous website that has lots of great tips for Moms, including a whole bunch of quick and easy recipes...among which are Dump Meals.  What are Dump Meals?  They are recipes where you dump all the ingredients in a large ziploc baggie, smoosh everything around, and then cook by grill, crockpot, or oven.  Hannah recommends doing a few meals at a time and then freezing the ones you didn't use for another day...which is exactly what I did a few weeks before I got sick.  Since I rarely had time to make it to the store, and absolutely did not feel like cooking, it was sooooooo nice to just pull an already prepared meal out of the freezer, throw it in my crockpot, and have a tasty dinner for all of us.  My favorite part of Hannah's recipes is that you just throw the raw chicken breasts (or thighs or legs) into the bag and freeze...no pre-cooking!  This makes it a great way to use big family-size chicken packs that occasionally go on amazing sales and then sit unused in the freezer because when it is actually time to make dinner on a later day you remembered you forgot to pull out the chicken to let it defrost and have to resort to something else.  At least, that's how it is for me.  Did I mention no pre-cooking?!!  I especially love this part because the one thing I don't love about freezer meals in general is that, for me, it is really hard to find time to cook for the present let alone for the future.  Oh, and I'm sorry I don't have any pictures of the meals I made, but Hannah's website includes pictures with her recipes...so whether or not I've completely sold you or you are only a little curious  CLICK HERE to see some of Hannah's Dump Meals and I promise you will not be disappointed!!  P.S.  Right now Hannah has a free download of a cookbook on her Free Stuff page with fast, easy recipes that look delicious!  You may want to check it out!

Texture

I have been doing a lot of research about sensory play and have found a lot of fun activities to try with my three-year-old...along with a lot of benefits gained by using sensory play with children.  Sensory play is any activity where a child uses his senses (taste, touch, see, hear, smell) to learn and explore.  Children are wired to receive input through their senses from day one...which is why they usually dive in hands (or mouth) first when given a new activity or toy.  The senses are the most basic and familiar way to explore, process, and understand something new... not to mention that it is so much fun!  Plus, when children are asked to communicate what they are experiencing (this feels squishy, this feels cold, this smells spicy, this smells warm) they develop stronger language skills and reinforce the cognitive concept they are learning.  They also increase their ability to learn from their senses, making them more attuned to the environment around them!  A common sensory play activity is a sand/water table.  You rarely find a preschool or kindergarten room without one because Early Childhood Development specialists know how important sensory play is to young children.  So, as I mentioned above, I've been searching for a variety of activities to do with my three-year old and I found a lot of fun things to do with texture and the sense of touch.  Exploring different textures is a great way for children to learn so I created a make-shift texture table for my son using a large cookie sheet and a variety of dry staples from my cupboards.  I put rice, elbow macaroni, sunflower seeds, dry beans, and Golden Grahams in different cups (I used a set of stacking cups from IKEA, but measuring cups of different sizes would work too) and let Zach play!  

Zach loved dumping the different things back and forth from each cup and spreading them around on the cookie sheet.  I also gave him a few measuring spoons so he could scoop and stir too.  Zach also loved listening to the different sound each made as he poured them back and forth.  He played quietly for over 30 minutes, a record for Zach.

   

Besides learning about different textures, this activity introduces the concept of volume.  As Zach would pour a big container full of rice into a smaller one he realized it didn't fit, and vice versa a smaller cup could not fill a bigger one.  It's also easy to stimulate conversation with this activity, which helps promote language.  Some questions you could ask are "How does the macaroni feel different from the rice?" or simply "What does this feel like?"  If you want to focus on sound you could ask questions like "Which one sounds loudest when you dump it on the pan?"  If you wanted to reinforce the volume concept you could ask "Which cup empties fastest when poured at the same time?" or "How many spoons does it take to fill a big cup vs. a small one?"  Sensory play is really about them exploring on their own, so don't direct too much, but asking a few guided questions to get them on their way is a great way to model how to question and explore.   Better yet, play along side and ask yourself the questions out loud and then explore the answer and announce your discovery out loud.  Children will follow your lead and learn those inquiry skills by copying what you do.  Other things you can use in your texture table are dry split peas, popcorn kernels,  spiral macaroni, bow ties, or whatever dry ingredients you've got hanging around.  If you have a small child who likes to eat anything you put in front of them (Zach was almost 2 1/2 before he quit stuffing everything in his mouth) you could use edibles such as Cheerios, Fruit Loops, Lucky Charms, Corn Flakes, Gerber Stars, etc.  What 2-year-old wouldn't love playing in all that cereal.  I have one caution...you may want to put a towel under the pan to help catch the items that don't make it back in the pan while all the pouring is going on...I swept up dry rice for about three days after we played.  But that was a small price to play for how much fun my three-year-old had playing in all that texture!!