Valentines Diamond Count

To kick off our Numbered Heart Activities for Valentines Day, I bring you…

This was a simple & fun activity for my kiddos! They love any chance they get to play with their new diamond beads.

There are a couple of ways you could play with this activity tray.
1) Draw a numbered heart and count out the correct number of diamonds
2) Place any amount of diamonds on the heart, have your child count them and then locate the correct numbered heart

Both ways are great practice for counting and number recognition.

RAOK Love Tokens

My kiddos effortlessly bestow kindness on everyone they come across outside of our home, but sometimes and in most cases here lately, kindness is far from the way my children are treating one another. I’ve seen so much hype about RAOK for Valentines and I got to thinking… we need RAOK at home! I want my children to treat one another the way they treat others and for it to become a habit.

I threw together “love buckets” for each of my children (not including Mr.B)

& another bucket filled with 50 love tokens which they will receive when they do a RAOK at home.

The idea is that when all the love tokens are dispensed into the love buckets the kids get to choose an at home family activity like family game night, movie night, dance night, etc.

Kindness begins at home!

Little Meteorologist

Our daily routine has been interrupted by several storms today, resulting in me keeping the tv on for weather updates from our local news station. Little Miss became extremely interested in watching the updates and later told me she wanted to be a “weather person and a mom instead of an astronaut mom.”

When my tech savvy husband arrived I asked him to set us up something so she could pretend and as easy as “123” he had our laptop hooked up to our tv using a HDMI cord and had the screen blown up to the local forecast so she could give us her own version of the news.

We had a lot of fun playing in our weather newsroom! Snow, hail & tornadoes are headed our way… It turns out she was dead on with that too! & if your in Mexico be on the look out for 30ft of snow 😉

Introducing…
Meteorologist Little Miss

and her wonderful (& bossy) producer, Miss Grace

Of course if you don’t have the items to hook up to your tv you could always use a map or let the littles create their own on poster board.

Shape Sort

My little guy is terribly ill and my tot is just busting at the seems to do anything, but self occupy. She was in desperate need of an activity that she could do on her own while I rocked her baby brother nearby. All that I was required of was conversation on shapes and a little quality time.

Miss Grace knows most of her shapes, but she loves to sort objects so this was a blast for her. If you don’t have foam shapes like we used you could always cut shapes out of paper.

Numbers Sensory Bin

Numbers Sensory Bin:
-colored rice
-4 different types of magnetic numbers (1-9)
-a set of invisible numbers (info at end of post)
-a set of dry erase tracing cards

1. Number Sort: excavate all the numbers and sort them in order.
2. Go Fish: With a magnet wand fish for the numbers. To keep the number you must correctly identify it or it gets tossed back into the bin.
3. Number Hunt: Seek the invisible numbers.
4. Find & Trace: Once a number is removed from the bin you must trace the number on the correct tracing card.

Hot Glue, Invisible Numbers via I Can Teach My Child

They are so fun in the bin 🙂

Tub Time Tunes {Bath Activity}

I haven’t, nor had I planned to jump on the Bath Activities for Kids, by Growing a Jeweled Rose, bandwagon until I picked up the Tub Time Tunes kit from my local Wal-Mart for only $4.00! I love bargains, especially when we get a fun adventure out of them.

This bath was so easy to prep. I simply cut out musical notes from foam and stuck them to the side of the tub, put our CD player in the bathroom and played lots of fun children’s songs, added the tub instruments & music sheets and lastly bubbles! I was so excited about sharing our bath activity and then I discovered Bath Activities for Kids already had a ROCKIN’ music bath!

My kiddos rarely take baths, they prefer taking showers instead, but after all the fun they had with this bath maybe I’ll find the time to make shower time a little adventure once in awhile. I’ve been inspired 😉

Visit Bath Activities for Kids to see all sorts of amazing bath adventures.

Wiggly Eye & Felt Piece Drawing Starters

When I saw House of Baby Piranha’s post on Wiggly Eye Drawing Starters I absolutley couldn’t wait to try this with my littles, who absolutely love anything to do with monsters.

I had a few wiggly eyes, but a ton of random, leftover felt shaped pieces that went to a sock puppet kit we received a few years ago. You could easily cut out felt pieces though.

I randomly places the eyes and felt pieces on construction paper to get the drawing starters made.

Then we grabbed the markers and started creating our very silly monsters.

My littles {even Dad & Mom} absolutely loved this creative activity. They can’t wait for me to make more starters for them.

Kitchen Sink Activities: CAR WASH

We have been stuck indoors due to freezing or near freezing temps along with the majority of our family having icky colds, so the littles have been very hard to entertain.

This afternoon we gathered all our toy cars and such for a kitchen sink activity. On one side of the kitchen sink I provided a container full of shaving cream and a sponge while the other side of the sink contained warm soapy water and a dishrag.

I then let the littles begin their car wash!

Those cars sure got squeaky clean and I had two happy littles with this easy adventure.

I can’t wait to throw together more kitchen sink activities. It was a nice change in pace from my usual unconfined messy activities.