Toddler and Preschooler Activities for the Letter H

Last week we learned about the letter "H." We did a Hunt for colored shapes and placed them onto corresponding shapes on a sheet of paper. I got this idea from No Time for Flash Cards where she used dried black beans and had her kids "mine" for jewels.
Since I didn't have any black beans, we hunted for our shapes amongst corn kernels and of course we used some Headlamps.

Materials:
Corn kernels (or any type of dried beans)
tray or pan
foam paper
construction paper
pen
stick glue
scissors

Step One:
Cut a variety of shapes in different colors and bury them in your pan full of kernels. Draw corresponding shapes on a piece of construction paper for your kids to glue the shapes onto once they find them.

Step Two: For the headlamps, I measured their heads with two strips of construction paper and stapled them together. I cut two squares of foam paper, one smaller than the other, glued them together and wrote the letter H on the front.


Step Three: I told my girls to hunt for shapes and glue them to their sheet as they found them.


As they found each shape, we talked about what the shape looked like (a circle is smooth all the way around; it looks like the moon, etc.). We also talked about the color of the shape.

Step Four: Once we found all the shapes, we counted them together and congratulated one another on a successful hunt.

Spring Activities for Preschoolers: Little Love Birds

So today was a perfect example of why I started this blog. I wanted to come up with a service activity that we could do as a family this Easter, to keep it more Christ-centered. I found these little birds and thought we could make them for a local children's center called the Christmas Box House. I called the shelter and they told me that they currently had five children at their shelter, so our plan was to make five of these "love" birds (to show the kids how loved they are) with hand-written notes from my girls. Sounds simple enough right? And if I were to post the pictures of my girls making these birds, writing their notes, and taking this basket of love birds to the shelter, it just might have passed for a perfectly planned activity that was a great success.

Fledgling Friends from Family Fun

But the point of this blog is NOT to make activities like this look easy! Let me just pull the curtain and reveal the back stage realities of this activity. The birds were delivered with love, but not without a few little mishaps along the way. Everything started out so well. We had a lesson on the Easter story and the Resurrection. We talked about how we want to remember the Savior this Easter by doing service. We made the birds, wrote the notes, and all was on track. Then, right before we left, my three year old started crying because her love bird's wings were uneven. She refused to eat dinner and when she started telling my husband and I that she'd never be our daughter again, she was put in time-out.

(She chucked pieces of her magnetic calendar out from under her door one by one... and her underwear. She knows that really ticks me off.)

Once she calmed down enough to come downstairs and get in the car, we were on our way. Then my sweet little girl (same one) lost it again. Her little sister got to choose what movie was on in the car, and that was pure injustice. To give her credit, she had stayed up late with the babysitter the night before and needed to call it a day, but our goal was to DELIVER THE GOODS. We pressed forward. Once we arrived at the shelter, Hazel (over-tired 3 yr old) offered to carry the bag of candy. I should have known that that was a bad idea. Once she realized that after her behavior that evening she wasn't getting one bite of that candy, she started pouting again...

We did deliver the basket of love birds and candy and wished everyone a Happy Easter. We speedily drove home while our precious girl (yep, same one) cried about not getting the biggest carrot in the snack bag. She was sound asleep within 30 minutes of returning home and we are left with HOPE for a brighter, more sane tomorrow...and the age of 4. (I hear it's better than 3).

Easter Love Birds

Materials:

Styrofoam balls in 2 different sizes

soft fuzzy yarn

toothpicks

tacky glue

scissors

feathers

black ball-head straight pins

Step One:

Stick a toothpick into the smaller Styrofoam ball and drizzle the ball in glue. Wrap yarn around the ball, starting at the end and working towards the middle. Cut the yarn, move the toothpick to the opposite end, and wrap the remainder of the ball in yarn, again working toward the middle. Repeat with larger ball.

Step Two:

To put the bird together, press a glue-tipped toothpick into the end of the smaller ball, dap the other end of the toothpick with glue and connect it to the bigger ball (one is the head and one is the body...in case you weren't following). Use toothpicks to poke four holes into the larger ball (2 for wings, 2 for legs).

(My husband is the lovely hand model here)

Step Three:

For the legs, bend the end of a pipe cleaner into four zig zags and pinch them together in two's (for little toes). Trim the legs to about 1 1/2 inches and insert them into the holes with glue on the tips of the pipe cleaners.

Step Four:
Insert wings into the other holes you made in the body. Trim the feathers if needed to make them the same length.

Step Five:

For the beak, cut a triangle from a piece of folded orange felt and bead glue along the outside of the crease. Press into place on the face and add two straight pins for eyes.

Step Six:
My girls drew pictures and wrote "Happy Easter" on little notes with John 3:16, "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life."

Happy Easter!

Toddler and Preschooler Activities: Earth Day

Earth Day is tomorrow!

If you happen to have any leftover egg cartons, you can put them to use with this cute Grassapillar from Family Fun. We're planning on making this for Earth Day since the kids get to plant grass seed and watch it grow inside this little critter.

Materials:

3/4 cup potting soil

2 tablespoons grass seed

1 egg carton

Black marker

Step One:

Mix your potting soil and grass seed in a bowl. Add water to moisten and set aside.

Step Two:

Cut out a three cup section of your egg carton, trimming the longer edges so it looks the same on both sides. Draw a face on the front of your caterpillar.

Step Three:

Fill the three cups with your seed mixture and set in sunny spot. The grass should sprout in one week.

This would be a great day to introduce gardening and the concept of spring to your kids, helping them appreciate our beautiful earth!

(That sounded cheesy, but it IS beautiful isn't it?!)

Happy Earth Day to you.

Preschooler Activities for Easter: Alpha and OmEGGa

For our activity time today, I wanted to put a new twist on dying eggs. This activity helps your preschooler practice matching their upper-case and lower-case letters. I highly suggest combining forces with a friend since you're dealing with dye and fragile boiled eggs. Even with my mom's help, we still ended up with tie-dyed hands and a smashed letter "I" egg. I think this activity is best for 3 and up.

Materials:

26 eggs

egg cartons

black marker

wax or white crayon

1 egg coloring kit

Step One: Boil 26 eggs and set them out to dry. Write each letter of the alphabet in lower case on the bottom of the egg cartons.

Step Two:
Use your crayon to write each letter of the alphabet in upper-case onto the boiled eggs. Have your preschooler write as many as they can on their own. I had my 3 year old write them on one side and I wrote the letter again on the opposite side of the egg just to make sure we could identify the letter once the egg was dyed.
(This is the crayon that came in our egg dying kit. I believe my mom bought it at Walmart.)

Step Three:
Dye your eggs! Best of luck to you during this part, my friend. My kids were naked.

Step Four:
Allow the colored eggs to dry. If any of the letters were illegible, I wrote over them with a marker. Then I placed all 26 eggs into a basket and told my preschooler that the Easter bunny needs her help to find the right spot for all those eggs. Then she had to pull out the upper-case letter eggs one by one and find the coresponding lower-case letter spot in the egg carton. Whenever she couldn't find a letter, we'd sing the alphabet song, pointing to the letters as we sang. On the unfamiliar lower-case letters, we talk about the shape of the letter and how it's similar to or different than the upper-case letter.

Have fun with this one! You could do numbers, shapes, or whatever you're needing to teach your little ones.

Tomorrow we're making little love birds for an Easter service project, so check back.

Toddler Activities for the Letter G

Well, we pulled into our driveway at 5:30am this morning at the end of a much needed reunion with my dad and sisters in Eugene, Oregon. I feel deeply tired; the kind of fatigue that hits you when you sit still for a minute and suddenly feel like you're spinning. We made the 14 hour trek in a speedy 17 hours on the way there, one week ago. It was one of those experiences that I hope to laugh about for a long time with my kids, when they're older. Anyone would know that driving that long with three kids under the age of four is risky, but it soon became HILARIOUS to me how much of an adventure we were having.
The plan was to leave by 10 am, so we left at 1:30 pm. Around 5pm, we were all getting antsy and anxious for Boise where we'd stop for dinner. About 50 miles outside of the city, we ran out of gas. My husband and I looked at each other in total shock. We had been so wrapped up in our book on CD (Hunger Games, book 2) and didn't even notice the little red light trying to warn us. Luckily we have AAA, so we waited on the side of the freeway for an hour while David took the girls way out into the grass and I nursed baby Eloise. At one point I looked out and saw my husband holding my three year old's legs while she went pee, trying his best to aim away from his feet. That was the high point of the trip for me.
We got back on the road, stopped for dinner and had our girls run circles (literally) around the Burger King. Around 2 am my husband pulled over for a rest (I wasn't helping much with the driving at that point) and just as he laid his head down onto a pillow, EVERYONE LOST IT. Our three year old was crying because she couldn't sleep, even though she'd just barely woken up; our two year old was miserable and wanted out, and the baby was just plain sick of being in a car seat. I could see the lack of sleep taking a toll on my husband's patience and offered to drive.
Around 3:30am, our three year old threw up and caught it in her hands. It was so unexpected and awful that it took me a second to even know what to do. We pulled over, cleaned her up, and got back on the road. Right as we pulled into my Dad's at 5:30am, she threw up again, just to end with a bang.

Needless to say, the vacation itself was much better than the drive! We're happy to be home and excited for Easter projects. I know, I'm behind but that's okay. I have our "letter of the week" from last week to share with you today. We talked about the letter "G."

We practiced upper-case and lower-case G's with " Glitter and Grains.

(It was kind of a stretch with the Grains part...)

We did some math with Grapes!

Glass slipper, goggles, glitter belt, golf ball, green flowers, girl...
Lot's of things to talk about with the letter G.

Check back tomorrow for Easter activities!