Crafts and Activities

Workboxes and Activities for “A”

Learning the Letter A What better way to start learning the alphabet than at the beginning?!These toilet paper tube apple trees are so easy to make. I made slits in toilet paper rolls and the kids were able to slip their green tree formed card stock into it after they had glued on red beads. Cute and super easy!

The Do a Dot in the picture, the apple sizing, and the Aa lacing activity are from the Letter of the Week Curriculum at Confessions of a Homeschooler.

apple activities The playdough mat is from Homeschool Creations and I printed them for every letter. I love how they incorporate the picture (phonics, spelling) and the sensory aspect. We also used a letter A word search, an “A is for Astronaut” Do a Dot, many of the other activities from the Letter of the Week curriculum, and we did some apple picking.

A completely unrelated to “Aa” workbox activity that was the hands down favourite of the week was ribbon weaving. Using a dish divider from the cupboard, the kids wove ribbon through the slits.

Penguin Sensory Bin

By Sharla Kostelyk

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

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

Dollar Store Sensory Bin

By Sharla Kostelyk

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.

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.

Muffin Tin Lunches

By Sharla Kostelyk

When the kids were younger, I found that the most effective way to get them to eat more variety was to serve lunch in muffin tin trays. I used to make them at least 5 days a week for the kids for lunch and they would ask me every morning, “what’s in our tins today?”

muffin-tin-meals-collage I’ve often been asked for ideas for what to put in the trays, so I’ve compiled a bit of a list here of some of our past muffin tin lunches. As you can see from the photos below, the muffin tin trays can be extremely simple, comprised of what I found in the fridge and pantry or the leftovers we had or they can be something that is quite planned out and follows a theme. Either way, your kids will really enjoy them and they are more likely to try new foods when presented in a fun way. This also eliminates those cries of “ewww, my corn touched my potatoes”!

carrots
grapes
Kraft Dinner crackers
Mexi fries (tater tots)
salsa
mini taco pies

cooked, cut up smokies
broccoli
Chocolate Cheerios
mangos
Ranch dressing for dipping
baby tomatoes

FISHING TRAY:

celery
bananas
orange slices
goldfish crackers
peanut butter
pretzels

The idea behind the fishing muffin tin tray is that the kids can take the pretzel stick, dip it in peanut butter, and “fish” the goldfish crackers up. My kids thought it was awesome and had competitions to see how many fish they could catch at a time (4 was the record). Peanut butter also goes well with celery and bananas. I had planned for raisins to go in instead of oranges, so that the kids could make ants-on-a-log, but I forgot to buy the raisins.

whole wheat bun
ham
lettuce
cheese slices
mustard
applesauce

My intention was that the kids would make bunwiches out of everything but the applesauce, but most of them chose to add some dressing to their lettuce and eat it as a salad instead of putting it in the bun. It’s fine with me as long as they are eating it! This lunch was a great way to use up ham leftovers.

fish crackers
pepperoni sticks
ravioli
hard boiled egg
applesauce
peas

Letter themed muffin tin trays:

I sometimes make muffin tins where all the foods in it start with the same letter. This is great for littles who are learning letter sounds. Here is a list of foods that could potentially go in a muffin tin tray for the letter “A”:

arrowroot cookies, apples, avocados, asparagus (my kids prefer pickled asparagus), animal crackers, animal crackers, applesauce, almonds, artichokes or artichoke dip, alfredo sauce on angel hair pasta, apricots, alphabits, alphaghetti, antipasto, alfalfa sprouts, ants on a log (raisins on peanut butter on celery), asiago cheese, albacore tuna, All Bran cereal, After Eights, angel food cake, anchovies (good luck on getting your kids to eat those though!), apple juice

letter F lunch