Spray paint silhouettes

You are almost guaranteed to have all of these items right now: paper, spray bottle, water and food colouring. Yes? Well you can do some spray painting too!

Ladybug has been noticing all the crunchy leaves on the ground lately and especially likes the big maple style leaves. Whenever we pass any she can't help but pick one up, so this time we took some home to make some silhouettes. After showing her what to do Ladybug enjoyed finding items in the kitchen and garden to use (we found different shaped leaves, flowers, stones, scissors, spoons, a hair comb and our hands!) This is a good fine motor activity as well shape recognition and hand and eye coordination. You could even talk about different colours if you use more than one.

Fill a spray bottle with water and add a few drops of food colouring (if you have more than one spray bottle you could do assorted colours - unfortunately we only had one bottle spare!)

Place the items on the paper and spray (make sure the nozzle is on spray and not jet!)

   

We got the best results by holding the bottle further away from the paper and only lightly spraying the paper, not drenching it! ...but let the kids work this out for themselves ;-)

   

Pin It Now!

Flower experiment (Mother's Day gift idea!)

I LOVED doing this experiment! So easy and so interesting! All you need are some white flowers, glasses/vases/cups, water and some coloured food dye!

Fill each glass with water and put a few drops of food dye in each one:

Place one stem in each glass then wait - that's it!

Check back on the flowers periodically - or if you're like us, constantly! After a few hours the flowers will begin to change colour:

After 24hrs there is a significant change!

After 48hrs the flowers are beautifully coloured:

Why do the flowers change colour? The flowers change colour as part of a process called transpiration. Transpiration is the process by which moisture is carried through plants from roots to small pores on the underside of leaves, where it changes to vapor and is released to the atmosphere.

Colour matching

Here is an easy to make colour matching game using items you're likely to have laying around the house.

All you need is some coloured paper, coloured textas, an egg carton, paddle pop sticks (coloured work well, but they don't have to be!), glue (I used super glue) and I also used a laminator.

First draw flowers on your coloured paper:

Then colour in the bottom of an egg carton (obviously using the same coloured textas as the paper you have) then use a knife to cut slits in the middle of each colour - not too big otherwise the paddle pop stick wont stay up!

Cut out the flowers, then laminate (you don't have to laminate them if you don't have a laminator, but it will prolong the life of your flowers!)

Use super glue to attach the flowers to the paddle pop sticks (I used super glue - I find craft glue and kids glue don't hold strong enough for rough little hands!)

Match the flowers and to the coloured patches on the egg carton:

Ladybug loved trying to match the colours. She would hold a flower up to each colour and say "Match? Noooo", "Match? Noooo" until she found the correct colours and say "Match? Yes!"

Sometimes she needed some help getting the paddle pop stick into the hole but good practise for her fine motor skills:

She also practised naming her colours, apparently this one is "Yellow green"

And she also practised her counting:

Pin It Now!

Felt board counting chart

Ladybug has been surprising me with her counting lately and now I find myself counting out everything! I wanted to make her a chart to exemplify each number to help her understand what each number 'means'

At Christmas we made a felt tree to stick on the wall. Ladybug loved taking off all the felt decorations and re-decorating it over and over again. I love how felt sticks to felt! ...and what a perfect way to make a counting chart for her!

You will need some felt squares in various colours (atleast 6 colours), scissors, glue and a pencil.

Use one colour as the backing and then cut out the numbers 1 - 10 using each of the remaining colours.

I used a hot glue gun to secure the numbers in the right place (I though about having these removable too, but decided this could confuse things)

  

Then cut out the coloured dots accordingly. I decided to match the colour of the dots to the numbers so that Ladybug would be able to identify which dots go with which number.

I used blutak to hang it on the wall and let Ladybug explore her new chart. She loves brushing them all off and then we sit and count all the dots back on matching the colours with their right number.

Pin It Now!

Pom pom sorting

So, I'm not the only one who has this happen when I try to cook?

Emptying out of the cupboards

Or this?

Emptying out of the tissue box

It happens to us all, right!? (please say yes!) Well the easiest way to keep my little one entertained is to give her some things to 'cook' herself. I keep a ziplock bag full of pom poms in the kitchen cupboard right for these moments (and trust me, you want them in a ziplock bag!)
If she wants something to do while I get dinner on, then all I need to do is take out some pots and pans and wooden spoons and she can cook her own little masterpiece!

Mixing and stirring with wooden spoons and whisks are her fave, but you could also use scoops, tongs, jugs, etc (NOTE: If your child likes to mouth things you might want to keep an eye on them the first time they use pom poms to 'cook'!)

When we do this activity together we also spend time talking about the colours (she remembered "yellow" from the other day!) and sort them out using muffin trays (I've also seen people use ice cube trays or egg cartons)

At 16 months she doesn't do this herself yet, we talk about each colour and sort them out together

She also spends time practicing her fine motor skills by pushing pom poms into a container. I used an empty punnet of strawberries and cut a cross on the lid. She loves to push them all in then open it up and tip them all out again.

  

This activity used to be one of my Ladybugs favourites but she is beginning to grow out of it now and doesn't ask to do it as much, so I thought I had better get a post done quick before she moves on to new things with it... As she gets older we will begin doing trickier activities like creating patterns and sequences:

You could use pom poms to create patterns and ask your child to follow the sequence

Or using them as counters like this

There are many other variations of this activity you could try to mix things up a bit. Check out these blogs for a bit of inspiration:

Toddler pom pom push by Learn with Play at Home 

Surprise pom pom sorting by Toddler Approved

Sorting colored pom poms with tongs by Tot School

Easy peasy travel game by Just For Daisy

Pin It Now!