Crafts and Activities

Penguin Sensory Bin

Since we are studying penguins right now, it seemed only fitting that we make a penguin sensory bin this week. Also, Granola Girl has been crazy about penguins for years now. She is obsessed!

This sensory bin was the easiest one to make to date and the least expensive. I only used things I already had in the house.

Penguin Sensory Bin:

Materials:

cotton balls
penguin TOOB
penguin puppet
stuffed penguin

I used a blue tub so that it would look like water. I filled it with a bag of cotton balls, creating one hole in the cotton balls for a swimming area for the penguins. Then I added some toy penguins from a Safari Penguin TOOB, a penguin puppet and one of Granola Girl’s stuffed penguins.

Even though this penguin sensory bin is about as simple as it gets, the kids got hours of play out of it. They created stories and even filled the puppet with cotton balls at one point. You just never know where their sensory play will take them!

The addition of the puppet gives extra opportunity for kids to create stories and use their imagination.

If you’re new to making sensory bins, this is a great one to get started with. It’s mess free. It’s easy to make and it’s super cute!

If you are looking for more sensory ideas or information, you may be interested in my book.

For more sensory ideas, grab a free sample of our Sensory Play Recipes eBook.

Bubble Painting!

By Sharla Kostelyk

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Bubble painting is something I’d been wanting to try for awhile, but it sounded complicated, so I wanted to wait for the right time. The right time came along one afternoon last week when only the girls were home. As it turns out, it was easy and I could have done it with all the kids!

All you need are a few simple items. Most of them you may already have around the house. You can see in the video below how easy this project is to do.

Bubble Painting:

Supplies needed:

Bubble Painting Recipe:

Use a ratio of 4 Tbsp. dish soap to 2 Tbsp. of the paint.

Directions:

Put newspaper or butcher paper down on the table to protect it from mess.
In shallow bowls, mix the dish soap with paint. Make up a separate mixture for each colour.
Have your child blow bubbles in the paint mixture using a drinking straw until the bubbles are at the top of or above the bowl.
Gently place a paper on top and allow the bubbles to pop before removing the paper. Do the same with other colours. The more coloured bubbles you create on the paper, the cooler the effect.
Once the desired look is achieved, allow the paper to dry flat.

I was hoping that by using primary colours, we would also get some colour mixing, but even when overlapping, the colours don’t mix on the paper because the paint is so thin with it being created with a bubble.

This was a fun and easy craft and used household items. It’s an inexpensive art project for kids. I wish we had done it sooner and I am sure that we will do it again soon because the boys want to try!There were lots of giggles while the girls were blowing the bubbles. This project incorporates visual, tactile, proprioception, and gustatory (oral) sensory input.

As for all kids’ activities, adult supervision should be used.

Join me for a free 5 part email series Sensory Solutions and Activities and get a sample of our Sensory Play Recipes eBook.

Check out some of our other sensory play activities for kids:

Rainbow Soap Foam

How to Make Coloured Moon Dough

Unicorn Fluffy Slime

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Dollar Store Sensory Bin

By Sharla Kostelyk

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Sensory bins can be great fun for kids of all ages. Though normally used for Preschoolers and kids with Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD), the bins are a big hit with all of my kids. Four of my kids have SPD so I make them every week, but they can get expensive. Yesterday, I visited the dollar store and picked up these items:

feather boa, cork coasters, brightly coloured scouring pads, sponges, non-slip pads, sandpaper, squishy balls, textured ball, netting, coloured corrugated cardboard

I paired those items up with things from around the house such as a beaded necklace, tin foil, bubble wrap, cotton balls, buttons, screws, rocks, beads, plastic leaves, dry pasta, sequins, velcro, and a few toys to make a sensory bin.

The bin ended up costing about $11 to make and most of the items can be re-purposed or re-used in future sensory bins.

You can find other great sensory bin ideas in my book and by following my Sensory Bins board on Pinterest.

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Under the Sea Theme Party

By Sharla Kostelyk

Just for fun, and as a kick off for our homeschool “under the sea” unit, I decided to throw together a little party. We invited a few friends at the last minute, which only added to the fun and it was a great day.

Sensory bin: rice (easier clean up than sand), seashells, various undersea creatures, colourful seashell beads, glass rocks

Obviously, I wasn’t going to buy 20 bags of Goldfish crackers to fill the pail with, so I stuffed the pail with plastic grocery bags to almost the top and then added the fish crackers. The popcorn represented coral. The goggles and seashell necklaces we had around the house. The blow-up fish and octopus I found for .99 cents each at Michael’s. I found the cutest seashell cupcake liners and filled them with guppies (candy). That was about the extent of my decorating other than the Finding Nemo cups, plates, napkin, bowls, and placemats that I happened to have in the storage room anyway. I had planned the day already and was in the midst of setting things out the night before when I remembered that years earlier, I had bought a Finding Nemo party set for $9.99 that was still in the storage room!

various fish shaped fruit snacks
octopus chicken hot dog
applesauce ocean w/ blue whale swimming
goldfish crackers
shark and fish cheese
crab seashell pasta salad

These cupcakes were super easy to decorate. I just iced them with buttercream icing tinted blue, added a pretzel stick fishing rod and a candy fish, then drew the fishing line with edible markers. White icing would have looked better for the fishing line though.

To make things go as smoothly as possible, I made up the craft table ahead of time with the glue, scissors, paint, paintbrushes, googly eyes, toilet paper rolls, tissue paper strips I had cut out, and jellyfish bodies my boys had cut out.

To make the octopus craft, make slits all the way around a toilet paper roll about halfway up. Curl each one around a thick marker or your finger. Paint it blue, including underneath the “arms”. Allow to dry and then decorate with googly eyes, bingo dabbers, paint, or clay.

To make the jellyfish craft, cut the body shape out of construction paper and tape or glue strips of tissue paper to the bottom. (when we cut out the body shapes, we used scalloped scissors along the bottom) Decorate by glueing googly eyes and making spots with Bingo dabbers or paint.

The crafts were the biggest hit of the party. Even the youngest kids (2 and 3 years old) enjoyed making these.

I sent each of the kids home with a little bag of just a few things including more seashell beads, a stencil, ring, and sea life grow creature. I got a pack of 12 ocean themed stencils for .99 cents at Michael’s.

Here are some more pictures of how the day went. There were 14 kids there and no major mishaps, so that qualifies as a big success with me!

If you are looking for information on making sensory bins, you may be interested in my book.

5 Easy Crafts Made from Household Items

By Sharla Kostelyk

I am always looking for ways to entertain the kids and allow them to use their imagination and creativity while also keeping the cost to a minimum. Here are some easy craft ideas we like using items most people have around the house. This is also a good exercise in reusing!

A Memory Box

Have the kids create and fill their own memory box. All they need is a box with a lid, old magazines or catalogues, tissue paper, or wrapping paper, and glue. Have them tear out pictures or strips from the magazines, tissue paper, and wrapping paper and glue them onto the box and box lid. Once it’s dry, they can fill it with their treasures such as photos, souvenirs, report cards, cards, and letters.

A Centrepiece

Fill an empty, clean 2 Litre plastic bottle (such as a soda bottle) with water about 3/4 of the way full. Have the kids add strips of foil, ribbon, sparkles, pieces of drinking straws, pipe cleaner, and beads. For extra colour, you can add food colouring if you wish. Glue the lid on and you have a very unique centrepiece for the table for that night’s dinner.

A Textured Collage

Have the kids create a collage of different textures using glue, yarn, dry pasta, dried beans, styrofoam, sandpaper, tin foil, pipe cleaners, cotton balls, corks, feathers, ribbon, glittered greeting cards, and anything else you can find around.

A Mobile

This craft dates back a long way, but it is still a classic that each child should make at least once in their lifetime! Using ribbon or string, hang things on a coat hanger to make a mobile. Your child can cut shapes out of coloured paper and hole punch them or hang toys or cookie cutters. The only limit to this is the limits of the imagination!

Marble Maze

In a box lid that has raised edges, such as a shoe box lid, have the kids haphazardly glue popsicle sticks on their sides. When the glue dries, this box can now be used as a marble maze for them to play with. This is a great craft for boys, who may not like some of the more sparkly crafts!

Here are some other craft ideas you might like:

African masks

Creative Mail

Snow Day Activities

Titanic Party

By Sharla Kostelyk

Einstein is obsessed with Titanic (obsession takes on a whole new meaning when you have a child with Asperger’s!). I have long learned that it is best to just go with his current obsession of choice rather than fight it. April 14 is the anniversary of the day the Titanic sank and he wrote it on the calendar and wanted to know how we were going to commemorate that day.

I told him that we would do something, but as it got closer, I realized that that day I had a hair appointment and that night was The Husband and my date night, so I sat Einstein down and let him know that we would have to do something on Friday instead. In a very serious voice, he told me that Friday would work because the 15th is the anniversary of the day that Titanic first touched down on the ocean floor!!!

On the night the Titanic sank, they were serving a 7 course dinner in the first class dining room, so I decided to do the same for our Titanic party. It may have been a bit on the ambitious side as I forgot to calculate that a 7 course plate service meal for 11 people would mean 77 dishes, so we were mixing and matching plastic plates with our fancy ones!

Here is the menu I made and cooked up for the evening:

The Husband made a playlist that included string quartet music (including the song the orchestra was playing while the ship sank) and songs from the Titanic movie, which we listened to during dinner and danced to. I taught the kids which fork to use for which course and they sipped ginger ale out of wine glasses and loved that their napkins were folded into fans! It was a very fun night!!!

Einstein, Snuggle Puppy, M., and Miss Optimism

Snuggle Puppy and Dancing Queen take a break from dancing in “the ballroom”!

(sorry M. about the eyes closed thing, but this is the only dinner picture I have of the “grown-ups table”!)

Dancing Queen, Granola Girl, and Einstein finish their salad course and sip ginger ale. Note the crayons and Titanic colouring sheets for when boredom set in between courses!