My husband is working abroad this summer, and Buddy and I recently flew to Colombia to see him. I knew before we left that we’d have a lot of down time in our hotel. When I was looking for ideas, something that made me very excited was Coffee and Carpool’s blog on hotel activities. I especially loved the idea of drawing on the windows with dry erase markers.
*Disclaimer- this post contains affiliate links for your convenience. As an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.*
Before I offered the idea of drawing on the windows with dry erase markers, I tested it on a small part of the window, to make sure it would erase easily. We used Crayola washable dry erase markers. All dry erase markers should work for this activity, but I like the peace of mind with washable markers in general. If they get on something else besides the window, I know it will be easy to remove the stain.
Buddy and I both took a marker, and we looked out the window. We drew pictures of what we saw outside, such as cars, busses, trees, and bicycles. Then we drew everything else we could think of. I offered to play tic-tac-toe on the window, but Buddy just wanted to draw.
Buddy is not always into artsy things, but he had the best time with the activity. He drew happily for 50 minutes the first time we did this activity. The next day he wanted to do it again, and it lasted 30 minutes. Both times we did this, we erased our drawings with a Kleenex when we were done. Some parts took a little effort to erase, but overall, it was pretty easy to clean up.
Dry erase markers will be a regular part of our travel activities in the future. They take almost no space to pack, and they are so much fun! Do you have any other fun ideas for travel activities? Please share in the comments.
Buddy loves all sorts of transportation vehicles – cars, trucks, trains, and especially planes. We are traveling a lot this summer, and I’ve done a lot of research for activities to do with Buddy while traveling or at our location. I saw two different activities that inspired this one. First, I saw how to make easy paper tunnels on Mama.Papa.Bubba’s blog. Then, I found the idea for making tape roads on Learn To Play at Home’s blog. Together, they made for a great, stay in our hotel room activity.
*Disclaimer- this post contains affiliate links for your convenience. As an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.*
Before we left on vacation, I bought two rolls of washi tape at the dollar store. You can find similar tape here. I also brought some construction paper and kid friendly scissors. I cut one piece of paper into four sections, and then we were ready to go.
I showed Buddy how to put the tape down on the floor, and he was so excited. My original intention was to make a road, but of course Buddy wanted to make a taxiway and runway for his toy airplanes. We wound the tape all over the floor, and we each did one roll of tape. Then, I started putting up the tunnels. I folded the edges of the paper into flaps, and then I used the washi tape to tape the flaps down.
Once our airport was set up, Buddy and I took turns driving our planes around the taxiway and then taking off and flying around our hotel room. It was a great way to keep him entertained while we were stuck inside for the afternoon.
Do you have any other great ideas for travel activities? Please share in the comments.
Buddy loves games, so I’m always looking for new ones to play. When I came across the idea for a magnatiles dice game on Happy Toddler Playtime’s blog, I knew Buddy would love it. Magnatiles are his favorite toy right now, so a game with magnatiles was just perfect!
*Disclaimer- this post contains affiliate links for your convenience. As an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.*
To start, we each counted out 10 magnatiles, and we chose a dinosaur to race. We both rolled a die, and we counted out that number of magnatiles. (I bought my jumbo dice at the dollar store, but you can buy similar ones here.) Then our dinosaur raced out that amount of squares. The first dinosaur to get to square 10 wins the race.
Buddy and I decided before the game that we wanted to have to roll exactly 10 to win. However, you could also just have the first person who rolls more than 10 win.
After our first roll, Buddy and I talked about how many more we needed to get to 10. We also discussed how many more he had than I had. It was a fun way to work on subtraction and comparing numbers.
Buddy enjoyed the game, but he decided he wanted to use the tiles to build a home for the dinosaurs and the dice. If we play again, I would make the number of tiles in the race more than 10. It only took us three rolls to finish the game, which was a little too quick. It will be harder to do, “how many more until you win” with a number larger than 10, though.
Do you have any other ideas of things to do with magnatiles? If so, please share your ideas in the comments section.
Happy Mother’s Day! This time of year I always think about how far I’ve come as a mom, and I think about my mom as well. My mother was a wonderful woman and writer, and she wrote a column for our local paper. Last year, I remembered her by sharing one of her articles about being a mom, and this year I’d like to do the same.
I found this article about the perks of being a parent, especially in the spring, appropriate. And I have added a few more of my own at the end.
Me at three years old with my parents at the zoo.
This is the season of kites and bubbles — all in all, not a bad time of year to be on a first-name basis with some small fry.
In winter, even the most pleasant and cheerful child can be a — pain. All those buttons and zippers, boots, scarves, and gloves. All those runny noses. All of the things that small children want to do — like run wildly and shout and climb on things — become increasingly intolerable indoors, day after dreary day.
The small child wants to like winter, but it is really too much for him. Snowmen are really hard to build, all things considered, and sledding is a wet and tiring business. It is certainly of dubious fun value for the parents who end up pulling the sleds and pushing the snowballs.
But spring — ah, spring pleasures are simple. A 15-month-old can handle dandelion-blowing, puddle-splashing, and flower-sniffing. And it isn’t long before he can move right on to bubbles, kites, pinwheels, a riding toy of some sort. The days aren’t long enough or balmy enough to hold it all: Paper airplanes. Balloons. Soap boats. Maple seed whirlies. Swings. Teeter-totters. Sand boxes and dump trucks. Marbles.
Spring diversions seem especially hilarious for parents who put childhood well behind them before they got into the child-raising business themselves. Somehow it’s a little more fun to rediscover the delight of folding paper into an airplane and making it fly if you have, in fact, forgotten how to do it.
There’s no good reason that a genuine grown-up couldn’t saunter down to the drug store and buy a Snoopy Delta-wing kite and one lime-green jar of bubbles for themselves if they wanted to. You could always do a reverse of the drugstore scene in “Summer of 42” and throw in some hardcore adult items to distract the clerk. “Yeah, gimme a pint of Jack Daniels, some single-edge razors, a pack of unfiltered Camels, a Playboy and — .” You point at the counter display of novelties.
“Oh certainly, sir,” the clerk croons. “Oops, no price. Mabel, I need a price on the Mickey Mouse Magic Bubble Wand. It’s for the man in Aisle 3…”
A small, preferably smiling child just makes the whole transaction a little easier. A little more likely, certainly. The same child makes it socially acceptable to visit the zoo. The playground. The kids’ section of the library.
For many of today’s parents, it’s been a long while between rides down the big slide. On the whole, the economists and psychologists seem to think this is a good thing. In our 30s and 40s, we’re not only better able to buy Oshkosh, Fisher-Price and Gerry, we are also — the surveys insist — more patient, more “settled,” more diligent about such parental chores as insurance-buying and putting little caps on all of the electrical outlets.
The experts, though, tend to gloss over what a bumpy transition parenthood can be for these selfsame people, who, after all, have spent 10 or 15 years acquiring a taste for avocados and fine wines, sleeping late and going out on impulse. A person who has spent their 20s buying white couches and endless (unscratched and correctly sleeved) records will probably not find the realities of parenthood in their 30s or 40s one long, uproarious chuckle.
No matter what anybody tells you, it’s simply not all that easy to get used to starting the day watching Bozo’s buckets instead of “The Today Show.”
You do not automatically — or ever — lose a desire for eight unbroken hours of sleep.
And you don’t forget the days when you chose your favorite restaurants by criteria other than whether or not they gave you a crayon with your placemat.
Still, it is these parents — the ones who are simultaneously coping with their first children and first gray hair — who seem to enjoy the fringes the most. Like rediscovering the culinary pleasures of graham crackers and milk. PBJs. Popsicles.
In spring, the fringes pile up in a glorious fashion. There is something about going out on these first warm days, coatless and hatless, that returns all of us to our skinned-knee past. Getting a kite aloft, catching three bubbles on a wand — for the briefest, most shimmering of moments, listening to the satisfying sound of skate wheels against sidewalk: It’s a chance to roll back the odometer.
In spring, we get to laugh the giddy laugh of the child again. It’s a dizzying sensation. On a walk, jumping puddles, it’s hard to tell which reflection is which.
While being a parent isn’t always easy or fun, I agree with my mom that there are a lot of wonderful things parents get to enjoy. A few more of my favorite fun parent things:
Playing board games and card games
Watching Disney movies – with popcorn of course
Reading children’s books, and reading every day
Putting together puzzles
Being silly and playful
Building things with Legos and Magnatiles
Hanging out and playing at the mall
Watching planes fly above our house and guessing what they are
I love that Buddy gives me an excuse to work less and play more. I’m so grateful that I get to be Buddy’s mom! What are your favorite childhood experiences to revisit? Please share your ideas in the comment section.
Buddy turned four in April, and he asked for a “Hakuna Matata” party to celebrate. Because the Lion King is an old movie, it was a little more challenging to find party decorations and supplies than it was for previous birthdays. (You can follow the links to read more about our Thomas the train second and third birthday parties.) Fortunately, Buddy agreed to expand our theme to include Lion Guard characters.
Food
I set up a sign that said “Timon and Pumbaa’s Grub” by our food table. Most of what I set out wasn’t specific to Lion King, but I did buy some gummy worms to be our grub. I also made chocolate pretzel bites with hugs to look like zebra stripes. Our drink station was labeled with a “Water Hole” sign to add to the Lion King theme. The cupcakes were labeled with a sign “Kion’s cupcakes”. I bought Lion King toppers on Etsy to go on top.
Activities
I made stations for different things the kids could play with during the party. That way all of the kids can play with whatever they want. We’ve done this at Buddy’s last two birthdays, and I thought it worked out great. The majority of the stations were related to Lion King in some way. Our stations were: Photo Booth, binoculars craft, play doh, Lion King bowling, Lion King ring toss, Magnatiles, and Legos. We didn’t intend for our play kitchen to be a station, but it was a very popular activity at the party!
I printed and taped Lion King and Lion Guard pictures to the cups.
Hakuna Matata ring toss
I made binoculars by using duct tape to tape together two craft rolls. (Originally I was going to use toilet paper rolls, but I didn’t end up saving enough! So I bought craft rolls instead.) I hole punched holes in both and used yarn to make a strap. The kids had stickers and markers available for decorating. Once these were done, the kids used them to look for the Lion King and Lion Guard characters around the house.
Binoculars station
Games
Buddy loves games, so it was important to me to include games in his party. The three games we did were a bingo game, a cake walk, and a piñata.
To make the bingo game, I found pictures of Lion Guard and Lion King characters, and put them in 3 x 3 tables. As I read the names, the kids put a bead on the picture. As they finished their pictures, they got to pick a prize. They had so much fun!
For the cake walk, I put out a picture for each kid. When I pulled a card, that child got to pick a prize. I used the same set of pictures for both the bingo game and the cake walk, so I only had to make one set of cards to call pictures.
Finally, for the piñata, I prepackaged a few toys and some “grub” gummy worms in individual bags. I couldn’t find a Lion King Piñata, so I glued Lion King pictures to a generic piñata. The kids took turns pulling strings, and when the piñata broke each kid got to take one bag.
It was a ton of work, but it was a great party! Buddy and his friends had a ton of fun, and that was the most important thing for me. If you are planning your own kids party soon and have questions, please leave a comment!
Buddy turned four last week, and I can’t believe how quickly my little boy is growing up! The last week has been filled with fun birthday celebrations. I hope to blog about his Lion King birthday party next week. But for now, I’d like to remember my favorite activities from the last year.
We did this at Christmas, but it was so fun Buddy’s asked to do it multiple times since then. It’s a fun and easy way to paint. The best part is there are no brushes to clean at the end.
Buddy loves Magnatiles, and he plays with them almost everyday. Using Jingle Bells to decorate them was a really fun twist to an activity he already loved. We have done this several times, and it’s always a lot of fun.
Buddy had so much fun with this sensory bin! He loved scooping the cotton ball “ice cream” and topping it with bead “sprinkles” and pom pom “cherries”.
You take turns pulling sticks and reading letters. If you pull a Kaboom, all of your sticks go back in the cup. Whoever has the most at the end of the time (for us it was one song) wins!
This is a fun game that practices letter recognition, engineering thinking, and fine motor skills. You build a coconut tree, and then take turn adding letters. When the tree falls, you lose the game.
I made cloud dough with flour and vegetable oil. Then I buried Buddy’s dinosaurs, and called for him to come and dig for them. It was a mess, but he really loved it.
We pretended that foam letters were cookies. Then we served the cookies onto matching letter plates. It’s a fun pretend activity, and Buddy thinks it’s great. We actually just did it this past weekend!
I’m a seventh grade math teacher, and my husband and I have always both been mathematically inclined. (We even met in a math class!) Needless to say, both of us naturally see ways to incorporate math with Buddy. However, it isn’t something that comes naturally to many parents. We have all heard to read to young kids, but how many parents think about setting a foundation for strong math skills? Not many, I’d suspect. So I’m here to share my experiences with having fun building Buddy’s math skills.
*Disclaimer- this post contains affiliate links for your convenience. As an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.*
The Common Core math standard topics for Kindergarten are: counting and cardinality, operations and algebraic thinking, number and operations in base ten, measurement and data, and geometry. These are the skills that I’m working on with Buddy through play and everyday life experiences.
Counting and Comparing
Playing games and keeping score is my favorite way to build this skill. Buddy loves games, and I’ve blogged about some of my favorites here and here. We also predict and count different items as we play (how many animals do we have here?)
One of Buddy’s favorite games is Cars and Trucks, which is a kid version of war. When we are done with the game, at least one of us will have to count into the twenties to figure out who has the most cards. That game also involves special +1, +2, and +3 cards that help kids practice addition.
Adding and Subtracting
We started the idea of addition and subtraction with the game Uno Moo. You start the game with five animals, and after each game one person is out of animals, and everyone else has some left over. We just let the people with animals left over pick some more to get five. So I ask Buddy questions like, “I have two left over, how many animals do I need to take?”
Sometimes when we play games, we add how many we have together. Playing memory and Let’s Go Fishing are two great games for that. “I have three matches and you have five. How many matches have we found together?”
We’ve also started to do some addition/subtracting with Buddy’s physical therapy exercises. I’ll set a certain number of times that we are going to do an activity and then we count how many we’ve done. Part way through, we’ll figure out how many more we still need to do.
Understanding Two Digit Numbers
Buddy made the connection between counting past twenty with Advent calendars. Something clicked in his head, and he understood that once you hit twenty, you continue counting normally. Soon after that he started noticing two digit numbers everywhere, and he wanted to learn how to read them.
We practice reading and comparing two digit numbers at basketball games!
We point out numbers in the world around us, and Buddy points them out too. The grocery store is a big one for us. He will count the checkouts up to 28 on our way out of the store. And he’ll read the aisle numbers as we are in them. He also makes note of large numbers on packages (that package has 12 towels!). Other places we practice reading two digit numbers are restaurants with table numbers, street signs, and basketball scores. (March madness is very important in our house!)
Shapes
Since I’m a math teacher, I’ve always been very conscious about naming shapes correctly with Buddy. When he was learning names of shapes, if he called a square a rectangle, I’d say, “yes, but it’s a special kind of rectangle.” Some of my seventh graders have the hardest time understanding that squares are also rectangles.
We play with magnatiles often at our house. It’s one of Buddy’s favorite things to do. At first, we were calling the triangles: little, medium, and big. And then I realized that it would be so easy to call them by correct names. So we call the small ones with equal sides equilateral triangles, the ones that can be made into squares right triangles, and the tall, skinny ones with two equal sides isosceles triangles.
Pattern blocks are another fun way to play with shapes, and learn different names for shapes. There are trapezoids and parallelograms and hexagons, which are all shapes that are not often seen in kid’s shape activities. If you don’t have your own set of pattern blocks, you can have your kids use digital ones or print ones out.
Measurement and Data
Buddy and I sometimes pull out a ruler or measuring tape, and he measures different things. Occasionally, we will measure to see which item is longer or taller. But most often, he just wants to see which number is closest to the item’s length or width.
We also use measurement when we cook or bake together. Buddy and I made a Boston Cream Pie last weekend, and we needed 6 tablespoons of cornstarch for the filling. I asked him to help me count, and after we did four tablespoons, I asked him how many more we needed to add. Moments like that one combine several of those math standards (counting, addition, and measurement) into things we are already doing.
The kindergarten data standard is about sorting things into categories and then counting how many things are in each category. We’ve done something similar when we did a sort with attribute links. We also sometimes do something similar when we play with counters. Buddy loves to grab a handful to fill up one of his magnatiles creations, and sometimes I’ll ask him how many of each he has. (Two squirrels, three owls, and five apples!)
Buddy playing with attribute links, which can be sorted by color, shape, or size.
Great Math Resources
Hopefully I’ve helped you realize that you can easily incorporate math activities into your normal life without buying anything else. But I wanted to share a few more things if you are looking for something else to supplement the math in your home.
My favorite math books are Countablock and 123 Count with Me. Countablock is perfect for helping kids count to 100. It’s a chunky board book, and it’s so much fun! 123 Count with Me is great for helping kids read, write, and add numbers. There are grooved numbers to trace and flaps to lift to engage kids. The book counts up to 20, and then there are addition problems with flaps as well. (The alphabet counterparts to these books, Alphablock and A is for Apple respectively, are also great!) Buddy also loves watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, and there is at least one math topic built into every episode.
Those are a few examples of some of the ways my family does math together. Some of those math moments might take a little extra thought initially, but then it will become second nature. If you can help to establish a comfort and curiosity with numbers before your child starts school, it could serve as a foundation for a lifetime of strong mathematical thinking.
Buddy isn’t always interested in making crafts. However, I like crafty activities, so I always look for ones I think he’d like too. When I saw the pattern snakes idea on Frugal Fun 4 Boys’ Blog, I knew Buddy would love it. As soon as I suggested it, Buddy wanted to do it right away!
To start, I pulled out some pony beads, pipe cleaners, and some sticky google eyes. I twisted the end of each pipe cleaner to make a knot. Then, Buddy and I pulled out the beads we wanted to use for our snakes.
Buddy’s concentrating so hard – look at his tongue sticking out!
The original activity was designed to practice patterning, but Buddy wasn’t interested in doing his snake in a pattern. We did have some patterning discussions with my beads though. Buddy liked finding the next color for my pattern, but he didn’t want to do his own snake that way.
A close up of my snake.
It was really fun and relaxing putting beads on our snakes. We both genuinely enjoyed the process! Plus, it was a great way for Buddy to work on his fine motor skills. Once our snakes were full, I twisted the end to make a head. Then we added two google eyes. I wasn’t sure they would stick, but they did!
Making snakes is fun!
Buddy’s enjoyed playing with his snake this week! The google eyes did fall off after a week – I might try hot glue next time to make them stay a little better. Buddy enjoyed this activity so much that he wants to make them at his birthday party!
Do you have any other fun craft ideas for preschoolers? If so, please leave your suggestions in the comment section.
Buddy has been studying the book Chicka Chicka Boom Boom at school recently, so he’s been extra interested in the alphabet. He notices letters around him everywhere! We’re constantly talking about letters and their sounds at our house. We have done a lot of different activities over the last couple of years to help Buddy learn his letters, and I thought I’d write a blog post so they could all be found in one place.
Alphabet Kaboom Game
All of the letters are written on popsicle sticks, along with a few sticks labeled Kaboom! You take turn pulling sticks, and saying the letter. If you pull a Kaboom stick, you have to put back all of your sticks. Whoever has the most sticks at the end of a set amount of time wins. Read more about this activity here.
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom STEM Game
The STEM part of this game is to build a strong tree for the letters to climb. Then, you take turns pulling a magnetic letter and putting it on top of the tree. Whoever knocks down the tree loses the game. It’s so much fun! I’d like to play this one again soon. Read more about this game here.
Alphabet Easter Egg Hunt
We did this one at Easter and then again over the summer. I hid eggs that were filled with magnetic letters. Buddy found the letters and matched them to a pan. It’s so easy, and a lot of fun. Both times we did this activity, we had to immediately repeat it. Read more about this activity here.
Serving Letter Cookies
I wrote letters on paper plates, and Buddy scooped up the foam letter “cookie” to match it. We revisited this activity a few weeks ago, and Buddy had so much fun he made me make a plate for every letter! We also enjoyed pretending to eat our cookies. Read more about this activity here.
Magnetic Letters Sensory Bin
Buddy loves sensory bins, and rice sensory bins are his favorite! I hid magnetic letters in rice, and Buddy had to dig through and find all of the letters. The last time we played in the rice bin, Buddy asked me to pull out the letters to throw in the rice because he had so much fun digging for them. Read more about this activity here.
Magnetic Letters Busy Bag
Last summer I put together a tin of magnetic letters and some words to spell. Most of the words were names of family members, but there were a few other simple words in there too. Buddy really enjoyed being able to “read” and spell the names of his family. This was a great activity to keep him busy on long car trips. Read more about the magnetic letter busy bag here.
Floating Letters
I cleaned out the kitchen sink, and then I asked Buddy to find and scoop different letters. He loved this one! It’s been a long time since we’ve done it, so I want to try it again soon. Read more about floating letters here.
Fishing for Magnetic Letters
We started fishing for magnetic letters when Buddy was little. Buddy was not quite two in the picture above, and at the time, he didn’t know the names of the letters. But he loved fishing for magnetic letters then, and we still do it from time to time now. Read more about this activity here.
Spider Web Spelling
We did this activity at Halloween time. I put magnetic letters in different parts of a giant spider web. Buddy picked out a spelling card, and then he went trick or treating for the different letters. This was a lot of fun, and a great way to combine gross motor skills into literacy practice. You can read more about this activity here.
Do you have any other ideas for fun ways to practice the alphabet? Please share in the comments sections.
One of our favorite family activities is to play with a beach ball while we hang out in Buddy’s room. Over the years, we’ve played with the beach ball in a variety of ways. When he was little, we just rolled it around. Now, we often use it to play variations of basketball, volleyball, and soccer. We recently took Buddy to his first hockey game, and since then he’s wanted to play hockey with the beach ball.
I bought two fly swatters from the dollar store a long time ago, after reading about doing balloon tennis from Little Bins For Little Hands’s blog. However, we never got around to doing that activity. When Buddy asked for a hockey stick, I realized that the fly swatters would work perfectly.
Fly swatter hockey is simple. My husband and Buddy were the hockey team, and I was the goalie for the other hockey team. I stood in a narrow space between an ottoman and Buddy’s bed, and they had to knock the beach ball past me. A door opening would also make a good goal. We only had two fly swatters, so I just kicked the ball away instead of swatting it.
This was a fun and easy activity that provided a perfect way to get rid of some energy while stuck inside. We have played this several nights this week, and Buddy loves it! I’m sure this will be a frequent activity for the rest of the winter at least.
Do you have any other ideas for fly swatter activities? If so, please leave a suggestion in the comments section.
