Tag Archives: Duplo

Disney STEM: Building Parade Floats

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Buddy and I love Disney World, and we’ve been missing the parks lately. We were supposed to go in June, but that trip was canceled. Instead, we’ve been busy doing Disney activities at home. (Read about our virtual Disney World here.)

*Disclaimer – This post contains affiliate links for your convenience. As an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.*

A friend of mine posted about doing her own Disney at home trip, and one of her activities was building parade floats out of Duplos. I knew Buddy would love it, so I wanted to try it.

Buddy’s been to Disney World twice, but we’ve never watched a parade there together. So before we built our floats, we watched a Disney parade on You Tube. (This is the one we watched, which is a parade from Disneyland.)

Once we had our inspiration it was time to build. Buddy and I searched through his Duplos to find as many wheels as we could. Then we went to build fun and inventive parade floats to carry different characters. We had to do some trial and error to find ways to make the float base large enough to carry the characters and still balance on the wheels. We also had the challenge of getting his Disney characters to stand while the float was moving since they weren’t Duplo blocks.

After we were done, Buddy and I put on some Disney music and made our floats go around his room and into the next room. We had such a blast doing this activity, that the following day Buddy wanted to make more floats before we did anything else. He loves the ones we made, and a week later there are still a few on his shelves that he can bear to put away. It was such a fun and easy activity, and I’m so glad we tried it.

25 Fun and Free Printables for Toddlers

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I love when I find easy activities to print and use with Buddy. There are so many mom blogs with awesome activities ready to use! This week, I wanted to feature my favorite printables that I’ve tried with Buddy, as well as some that I’m looking forward to using. Almost all of the ones I’ve used have been laminated with my Scotch laminator, which I love! It makes it easy to save these activities to use again and again.

*Disclaimer- this post contains affiliate links for your convenience. As an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.*

Matching Activities

Buddy loves matching activities! We tried this truck one from Royal Baloo’s blog, and Buddy loved it! There were a lot of cards and many similar ones (several different police cars, fire trucks, etc.), so the second time through I edited it down to one of each type of car. He’s so into cars right now, so this was perfect for him.

Other matching printables:

Scavenger Hunts

I blogged about our nature scavenger hunt earlier this summer (read about it here.) The printable we used was from Life With My Little’s blog. Her pictures made it really easy for Buddy to know exactly what we were looking for. And we both had so much fun finding the things on this list.

Other scavenger hunt printables:

Games

I loved this shape board game from Simple Fun for Kids’ blog. Buddy and I tried it out on one of our Time to Read Tuesdays after reading a shape book. We used shape buttons to be our markers. The shape die got a little crumpled, but the game was a lot of fun. This was Buddy’s first board game, and he really liked it.

Other toddler game printables:

Movement Activities

These construction movement cards are another amazing printable from Royal Baloo. Buddy had a lot of fun picking up one card at a time and moving like that construction vehicle. It was a great way for Buddy to work on his gross motor skills in a fun way.

Other movement printables:

Book Activities

Since I’m a teacher, I get really happy when I find great activities that go along with a book. It’s so important to read, and the activities make it extra fun. 1+1+1=1’s blog has so many great book related printables, including these ones that we used with the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? (affiliate link)

Other book printables:

Duplo Activities

Buddy loves Duplos, so I put together a Duplo Busy Bag for our summer plane trips. I took pictures of many different small Duplo scenes that could be made from the blocks in the bag. He really loved picking out a picture to make, and then putting it together himself.

Other Duplo activities:

After looking back through my Pinterest boards to find these printables, I’m reminded of a lot of new fun ideas to try with Buddy. Hopefully you found something that was helpful for you too! Please comment if you have any other great printable links for toddlers.

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Repurposed for Fun: Duplo Drop

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We had an extra couple of boxes at our house last week. Immediately,  I knew I wanted to use the larger one for some cardboard box coloring. However, it took a few days for me to figure out an activity for the smaller one. Eventually, I decided to make a Duplo color sorting activity for Buddy. I originally saw this idea on Toddler Approved’s blog, and I knew Buddy would love it.

First, I used a box cutter to cut five holes in the box. Then I used some paint to outline a different color outside the edge of each hole. Since I only needed a little of each color, I used a q-tip instead of a paint brush to make clean up easy. 

I let the box dry for a couple of hours. Then I showed it to Buddy. He immediately knew what to do with it. Buddy was very excited to put each Duplo into the matching hole for its color. We’ve been working on colors, and he’s pretty confident with them. 

After he played with it for a while, Buddy decided to be silly. He would attempt to put the block in the wrong color and laugh about it. “Red in blue?” Buddy thought this was the funniest thing ever!

Our box wasn’t the strongest, and I was afraid it was going to break. Every time Buddy reached across the box, he put all of his weight on it. Eventually, I decided to put it vertically, and it fixed the problem. Plus, it was a whole new way to play, which made it more fun. 

Overall, this was a fun and easy way to repurpose a box. Buddy loves his Duplo drop and plays with it often. We will probably keep this out for a while and then fold it flat to save for later. If you have any other ideas for a cardboard box, please let me know. I’m always looking for new ways to play with the ones at my house.

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