Letter T Play Dough Tray

Frugal Alternatives to Laminating

As a teacher, I know that laminating is AWESOME! It is permanent, it allows for things be preserved, and it makes it so the same printable can be used over and over again.

So what is the problem? For one thing, it gets expensive. When I am doing home school preschool with my son, I cannot afford to laminate all of his work pages that need it. Pages that, through natural interaction, get easily beaten up. Pages that, unless I want to make a TON of copies of it, can get a lot of repeated use.

For these pages, I have come up with a few alternatives:

Use plastic sheet protectors. Just remember that the higher quality of the sheet protector, the more use you will be able to get out of it.

Make use of an old binder that has a clear plastic sleeve. I cut off the front and the back of an old binder for this. The plastic is thick, and the backing helps provide some stability for your little one’s work.

Keep the Water Table Exciting ALL Summer Long

Where I live it gets HOT in the summers. It is on the scorching summer days that the only way that I am going to let my kiddos play outside is if there is a lot of water involved. Enter the water table.

If you do not already know, water tables are fabulous! They are exactly what they sound like: a table that holds water for exploring and play.

The one minor issue… like with all things, you kids can will start to loose their interest in it if you don’t change things up every so often. Having already personally experienced this with T last summer, I made sure to prepare myself this time around.

So, without further ado, I present to you… The jumbo list of water table activities!!! 

1. Turn it into a pouring station – give your LO (little one) all kinds of items to use to practice their pouring skills. (In addition, this is a GREAT fine motor skill activity.) Some ideas: watering pail, ladle, baster, measuring cups, funnel, and different sized & shaped containers.

2. Shaped colored ice – I LOVE having an excuse to use my silicone molds. I got one of bugs, and one of dinosaurs to use for my kiddos. For this one, place your mold on a plate for stability. Once you add water to each compartment, add some food coloring to each section. Then pop it in the freezer.

Bonus – Use colors that you know once they melt will turn the water into a brand new color. Ex- yellow and blue ice will turn the water green, and red and blue ice will turn the water purple.

This way your LO will get to have the sensory play of experimenting with the ice, AND will get to explore colors.
3. Car wash – This one is a classic. Get the water sudsy, add some toy cars and various sponges/scrubbers, and let your kiddo go to town washing their toys!

Added twist – use any water-friendly toy for this activity. T LOVES getting permission to take his little dinosaurs out with us to give them a bath.

*Note: Help protect the environment- look into using a soap that is environmentally friendly.

4. Squirt gun station – Let your water table multi task as a squirt gun refilling station.

Extra suggestion – set up targets not too far away from your water table for your LO to aim at.

5. I Spy ABC– Add some plastic ABC letters into the water, and make a game with your LO of finding and identifying them.

Bonus– Do the same with shapes and numbers!

6. Bath time! – Let your kids play with some of their bath toys in their water table! You may want to clean them off when they are done 😉

7. Sink VS Float – Use this opportunity to teach your kids some science. Collect random objects from your home to let your kids drop into the water table to see if they sink or float.

Remember – be sure to talk to your LOs about WHY each item floats or sinks. Keep the vocabulary simple for young children (“light” and “heavy” for example), and up the vocabulary for older children (such as “density”).

8. Explore Nature – Similar to “Sink VS Float,” let your children put nature items from around your yard in the water table to explore things such as if the item will sink or float, or if the item changes color at all when wet. Good things for this- leaves, flowers, different kinds of rocks, and sticks.

Science tie-in – This would be an awesome experiment if you want to teach your LO about plants and plant parts, or about the different kinds or rocks.

 

No-Prep Toddler Zipper & Button Practice

This activity really couldn’t be much easier.

All you need to do is find an assortment of jackets and/or bags around your home that have large buttons or zippers. Even better if you can include items with unique buttons or different types of clasps.

I took mine and put them in a pile for T to explore. I spent a few minutes showing him how they each worked, and after that he wanted to take charge and practice his new skills.

Happy busy toddler; happy parent 🙂

DIY Dinosaur Movement Game

I sometimes struggle with trying to find good, engaging, active, and fun indoor activities for my kids that I know will burn off a lot of their built up energy.

Basically, I wanted to find a quick, easy, go-to activity that I know my kids will love each time I pull it out. So I began brainstorming. I know that if the topic is about something they love, then the battle will already be half won. Enter dinosaurs.
What I love about this activity?

1. It is free
2. It is engaging
3. It teaches a little bit about dinosaurs
4. It only requires a little bit of space
5. And it burns off a TON of energy

Materials needed: 

• Paper plate
• Marker
• Ruler
• Paperclip
• Brad
• Dinosaur stickers (optional)

Directions: 

1. Use the ruler to help yourself draw lines to section off the parts of the plate. Decide how many sections you want. My sample has 8 sections.
2. Write a movement in each section.
3. If you have stickers, match them to the movement; this way your little one can use it on their own without needing to be able to read yet.
4. Put the brad through the paperclip and through the center of the plate.
5. Game time!

List of dinosaur movements: 

1. Chomp like a T-Rex
2. Stomp like a stegosaurus
3. Twist like a tricerotops
4. Fly like a pteredactl
5. Spin like a spinosaurus
6. Shake your tail like an albertasaurus
7. Stretch like an apatosaurus
8. Show your claws like a therizinosauraus
9. Run like a velocoraptor
10. Swim like an elasomasaurus

Do any of you have any dinosaur movement suggestions? Comment below!

Simple Toddler Schedule

I don’t know about your kids, but mine THRIVE on following a set schedule. This works out great for us when our kids go to daycare during a normal work week, but it quickly turns to chaos whenever we have vacation time or even a three-day-weekend.

Myself, I am totally a lists person, but following a super strict schedule on a daily basis never has worked out for me. So I began experimenting with schedules that help my kids get the structure that they need each day, but that are flexible enough for me to keep my sanity.

My Method: 

STEP #1: I checked their daily schedule at daycare. Being that they typically spend 5 days a week there, it just made sense to try to match our home schedule to theirs.

STEP #2: Find your “big ticket” must have items from the schedule.

To me it seemed obvious that their snack, meal, and nap times should stay the same. The issue? I was not factoring in the HUGE value that play has in their days. I don’t mean playing with toys here. I mean physical, non-stop, outdoors if possible play; and according to their daycare schedule they need at least 30 minutes of it 3x a day. This was the game-changer! 

The Challenge: Weather. It has been very rainy this year, and it seems like we have had more rainy days than sunny days lately.

The Solution: Indoor high-energy activities. You can check out my list of suggestions for that here:

Once the focus-areas were figured out, I just needed to plug-in the times. Any time not-specified on the schedule can be used for whatever works best for you and your family.

Again, “Active Play” here refers to playing outside or doing an active indoor activity for a solid 30 minutes. 

This routine helps us out a TON, and it is realistic for me and my family to follow. I do not follow this schedule perfectly everyday, but the attempt has made each day better.

45 Indoor Activities for High-Energy Toddlers and Kids

I don’t know about you, but I have seen quite a few lists online of ideas of things to do with your high-energy kiddos when you are stuck inside all day. So why am I bothering making another online list? Because anything to do with families is not a “one-size-fits-all” scenario.

Due to many variables there may be things that you can realistically try at home with your own families and things that just will never work for you. So here is my list of things that work for me and my family. It is my hope that you can find something in this list that may work for you as well.

That all being said, here is my list of energy-burning activities to do with your little ones when you are stuck inside:

1. Simon Says
2. Wii physical activity games or Nintendo Switch physical activity games
3. Road Rally! (I have both of my toddlers scoot around the kitchen and living room on their ride on toys)
4. Red Light Green Light (obviously space is a factor for this one)
5. Dance Mat
6. Play music and have the kiddos dance while you blow bubbles (babies and toddlers LOVE this one!)
7. Sit and roll a ball back and fourth
8. Inside bowling (there are kid bowling kits and some good DIY ones you can make)
9. Make a fort
10. Put up pop-up tents and let the kids play around in them
11. Indoor obstacle course
12. Pretend play (T likes to pretend to be a dinosaur)
13. Movement Songs (You can Google a whole ton of these. YouTube is especially great for this, because you can see the lyrics and see how to do the movements.)
14. Scavenger Hunt
15. Yoga
16. Exercise video
17. Brain Breaks (Again, YouTube has a lot of options for this one.)
18. Clean the house
19. Hide-and-Seek
20. Mother May I?
21. Push a Tonka Truck (or large toy car) around the house
22. Balloon Volley Ball
23. Ring Around the Rosie
24. Pretend to be an animal
25. Juggle
26. Mommy’s Helper (they basically follow you around and help with chores or whatever you can come up with)
27. Marching Band
28. Give them a big box to play with
29. Indoor balance beam or have them practice walking across the room on pillows
30. Race pull back toys across hard floors
31. Bouncy balls
32. Baby Godzilla! (Build up blocks as high as you can and as quickly as you can before your baby knocks them over.)
33. Jumping jacks contest- See how many they can do without stopping
34. Jump rope
35. Practice a life skill (changing clothes, tying shoes, buttoning a shirt, etc.)
36. Make something big!
37. Play with trains
38. Indoor hopscotch made with masking or painters tape
39. Jump on a bed or mattress
40. Pillow fight
41. Nerf guns
42. Color hunt
43. Do a dance like the Mocarena or Gangnam Style
44. Make a play
45. Puppet show

10 Toddler Activities that Require No Prep for Busy Families

Anyone who knows me would tell you that I am ADDICTED to Pinterest. Let’s face it, Pinterest is amazing. What I love most about it is all of the awesome DIY activities for kids.

The difficulty that I have, however, is the following:

1. I am not a naturally crafty person, so I really relate to a lot of those “Pinterest fail” photos online.
2. Time, time, time! Even the simplest crafts, DIY toys, and many of the activities take more time that I (most of the time) realistically have.

So, if I can find no-prep activities with household items, I am all for them! I have not been able to find as many as I would like on Pinterest, so here is a list of my own created no-prep activities for babies and toddlers.

1. Sensory Basket– Basically just fill a basket (or box, or just lay it all on the floor, whatever) with a ton of baby/toddler safe items from around the house for your little one to explore. I sometimes like to do this around a theme. For example, I might have a kitchen themed basket for them to explore while I cook, that contains measuring cups, plastic kid utensils, a spatula, tongs, etc. This allows your tot to safely explore items of your choosing, and they can get creative as to how to play with those items.
2. Button and Zipper Practice – There are a ton of great DIY toys to make that give your toddler plenty of practice with buttons and zippers, but why make those when you can just give them an assortment of items from around the house to practice those skills with?
3. Dance Time! – Just turn on music and have them dance!
4. Coloring– This one seems super obvious, but I feel like no one ever mentions it…
5. Singing Nursery Rhymes– Especially those that have hand movements with them such as The Wheels on the Bus or 5 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed can be super entertaining.
6. Book Basket– This simple no-prep activity also encourages a love of books. Check out more about it in my post:  Why Your Toddler Should Have a Book Basket 
7. Toys!– Seriously, another super obvious one that is never mentioned. Pretty much the entire purpose of toys from a parent’s perspective is to give their little one something to play with, obviously…
8. Pretend Play– T loves pretending to be a T-rex. Pretend play is no-prep, free, and has endless possibilities.
9. Play with the Pets– This one depends a little bit on how old your child is, but pets are meant to be played with and loved, and talking/petting them is no-prep and free 🙂
10. Stacking– Have your little one practice stacking things to make a tower. Blocks, boxes, toilet paper, Tupperware, cups, and so on.

Potty Training Sign (Free Printable!)

Potty training is a lot of work, and it can be frustrating at times. That is why it is important to have a sense of humor through it all.

Accidents happen, and there are especially a ton in the beginning. I was ecstatic when T had gone his first day without any!

That is when I thought of this sign, so I thought that I would share it with you.

Enjoy!

potty-training

Christmas Sensory Box

Here are a few Christmas themed sensory bins I have made. This first one was the fist sensory bin I ever made. I thought the whole idea was kind of strange. I mean, I know that young children are easily entertained, but really? Boy was I wrong! 

T LOVED his bin. The idea is you give the tot a themed bin and some tools to help them explore it (tongs are a big hit, but cups and spoons work nicely as well), and they just go for it. It is unstructured play that encourages them to explore how they see fit. 

This bin contained the following: 

• Cotton balls 
• Mitten 
• Bells 
• Cookie cutter
• Plastic ornaments 
• Cinamon scented candle (for smell only) 
• Red and green caps

This second bin just has a red and green theme to it. I made it for my 10 month old, K, who is too young for tongs and also still puts EVERYTHING in her mouth. As you can see, it mainly contains different kinds of blocks. 

A suggestion I have is to make a few of these bins, and use large tupperware to store them so that you can quickly and easily pull them out when needed. One bin can useually be pulled out a few times before your little one will start to get board with it. 

Other fun Holiday themed items to put in your bin: 

• Bows 
• Ribbons 
• Red and green pom poms 
• Dreidle 
• Toy snowflakes 
• Most things in the holiday section of any Dollar Store 

What are some ideas you have? Comment below!