Rice Sensory Bin Challenge

My girls love sensory play and our Rice Bin has been one of their favorites since they were pretty young.  I have set up all different themed sensory bins with things that I thought the girls would find fun.  They always seem to enjoy scooping and pouring the rice from one container to the next.  When I found out about this child led Rice Sensory Bin Challenge I couldn’t wait to participate.  The awesome part about this challenge is that it is a child led play project.  All I did was fill one of our Plastic Storage Bins with some plain white rice and the rest was up to Juliette!

Here is what Juliette came up with:

She decided to add some of our Play-Doh toys to her Rice Bin.  This included, plates, a spoon and fork, ice cream cones, an ice cream dish, a whisk, candles and a paint palate.

She spend lots of time scooping and pouring the rice from one cup to the next.

  She also had fun making ice cream sundaes and singing “Happy Birthday!’

After awhile she came up with a Hide and Seek game for us to play.  She would hide one of the pieces under the rice and I had to find it.  Then I hid one of the pieces and she had to find it. 

I loved seeing and listening to her as she played with the rice.  She loved that she was in control of this activity, by picking everything out it was everything that she wanted and I loved that about this project!

For more great Rice Sensory Bin Activities check out these awesome blogs.  Don’t forget we all started with just a bin of plain white or brown rice and our kids did the rest!!!

• Little Bins For Little Hands
• A Mommy's Adventures
• Craftulate
• Creative World of Varya
• FSPDT
• Gift of Curiosity
• Glittering Muffins
• Here Come the Girls
• Kids Play Space
• Lalymom
• Life Over C’s
• Life with Moore Babies
• Minne-Mama
• P is for Preschooler
• Preschool Inspirations
• School Time Snippets
• Squiggles and Bubbles
• Still Playing School
  Suzy Homeschooler
• Teach Beside Me
• Teach me Mommy
  The Chaos and The Clutter

 

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Little People Lift-the-Flap Cars, Trucks, Planes and Trains and Magic Tree House Tonight on the Titanic: Sorting Land, Air and Water Transportation ~ Poppins Book Nook

This month the theme for the Poppins Book Nook  was Planes, Trains and Automobiles.  We enjoyed reading the Fisher-Price Little People Lift-the-Flap Cars, Trucks, Planes and Trains.  Emily read the book to Juliette and they both have fun looking under the flaps to see different pictures.  Since this was an easy book for Emily to read she also read Magic Tree House: Tonight on the Titanic.  She is currently working her way through the Magic Tree House series and was so excited to be up to this book and it fit in perfectly with our Transportation theme this month!

For our project the girls sorted different types of Air, Land and Water transportation which we turned into a little art project to make it a little more fun. 

This was nice and easy.  We used green and blue construction paper to make the sky, land and water. 

Then I printed some transportation clip art from the computer and then had the girls cut them out and glue it onto the construction paper in the correct spot. 

Finally, they decided that it would be fun to add the details in with crayons.

     Emily’s Transportation Sort (7 years old) Juliette’s Transportation Sort (4 years old)

 

Check out these other creative blogs to find more “Planes, Trains and Automobile” themed books and activities

Enchanted Homeschooling Mom ~ 3 Dinosaurs ~ To the Moon and Back ~ Planet Smarty Pants ~ Farm Fresh Adventures ~ Growing in God's Grace ~ Chestnut Grove Academy  ~ Learning and Growing the Piwi Way ~ The Usual Mayhem~ Preschool Powol Packets ~ Monsters Ed Homeschool Academy ~ Adventures in Mommydom ~ Teach Beside Me ~ Life with Moore Babies ~ Kathy's Cluttered Mind ~ Are We There Yet? ~ Our Crafts N Things ~ Hopkins Homeschool ~ ABC Creative Learning ~ Joy Focused Learning ~ P is for Preschooler ~ Laugh and Learn ~ A Mommy's Adventures ~ Inspiring 2 New Hampshire Children ~ World for Learning  ~ Ever After in the Woods ~ Golden Grasses ~ Our Simple Kinda Life ~ A glimpse of our life ~ Journey to Excellence ~ Happy Little Homemaker ~ Little Homeschool Blessings ~ Simplicity Breeds Happiness ~ Raventhreads ~ Water on the Floor ~ Learning Fundamentals ~ Tots and Me ~ As We Walk Along The Road ~ Stir the Wonder ~ For This Season ~ Where Imagination Grows ~ Lextin Academy ~ The Canadian Homeschooler ~ School Time Snippets ~ Peakle Pie ~ Mom's Heart ~ A Moment in our World ~ Every Bed of Roses ~ Finchnwren ~ At Home Where Life Happens ~ Suncoast Momma ~ The Library Adventure ~ Embracing Destiny ~ Day by Day in our World ~ Our Homeschool Studio ~ A "Peace" of Mind ~ Thou Shall Not Whine ~ SAHM I am ~ eLeMeNo-P Kids ~ Simple Living Mama

An InLinkz Link-up

Plastic Easter Egg Sensory Bin

This Easter sensory bin is such a simple idea, yet it has provided HOURS of fun for all three of my girls.  As I have mentioned before we have a HUGE collection of plastic Easter Eggs and I am always looking for new and different ways to use them.  This sensory bin was a spur of the moment attempt to keep Clara (11 months old) occupied while we decorated the house for Easter. I filled our sensory bin, which is just a large under the bed storage bin that I picked up at A.C. Moore, with all of our plastic Easter Eggs and the Bunny Egg Dipper Tongs that we use when we color Easter Eggs.  (I was excited that they get to use that more than once during the season too!)  Later I added an Egg Carton that they enjoyed filling up with eggs. 

Since there are a variety of sizes of eggs Juliette especially liked putting the little egg in the medium egg inside the large egg and surprising Emily with it. 
I thought it was pretty amazing that this bin kept a 7 year old, 4 year old and 11 month old busy and playing with each other.  These pictures make me smile every time I see them!

After a few days Clara discovered that is is also a lot of fun to climb into the sensory bin of eggs!!

Check out some of our other SENSORY FUN activities.

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Hopping Clothespin Bunny Puppet Craft For Easter

I just have to say I think this Hopping Clothespin Bunny Puppet  is one of my favorite bunny craft projects ever and is the perfect project to get ready for Easter!! I host a toddler/preschool art group at my house once a week and I was browsing Pinterest looking for some ideas.  I was planning on doing some Easter  Bunny themed projects and then I found this adorable Hatching Egg Craft and the inspiration for this project.  I thought if I attached the bunny on to the clothes pin it would move up and down like it was hopping.  I made a quick sample and it worked perfectly, both Emily and Juliette thought it was the cutest thing ever and I couldn’t wait for the girls to make their own!

To make this project we used a Clothespin , 4 Jumbo Craft Sticks , card stock, wiggly eyes, pom poms, markers, craft foam, green construction paper, glue and a hot glue gun.

First I cut out a bunny shape for each of the girls to decorate.  Juliette decided to color the ears and draw the face with markers.  She also used various other craft supplies to decorate it.  She used a cotton ball for the tail, wiggly eyes and craft foam for the teeth and nose.  She also cut out a carrot from scraps of construction paper.  I loved just watching to see what she created.

Once they were finished with the bunnies, they cut fringe on a strip of green construction paper to use as the grass.

Finally I used hot glue to put everything together.  I glued two of the jumbo craft sticks together to make one longer craft stick.   I did this 2 times so that I had one for the top and one for the bottom.  Then I hot glued these onto the clothespin as you can see in the picture above.  Next, I glued the grass onto the bottom craft stick being careful not to let it stick to the top one.  Then I glued the bunny onto the top craft stick making sure that it didn’t touch the grass.  Finally I trimmed the top craft stick with a scissor so that it ended with the bunny.    We found that the hot glue holds everything together much better and I like that it dries so quickly. They were able to play with their bunny crafts right away!

Juliette was so excited to test out her hopping bunny puppet and she was able to entertain Clara with it for quiet a while!!

Also check out our cute Hand Print Bunny Napkin Rings

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Tic-Tac-Toe with an Egg Carton and Plastic Easter Eggs

My girls love playing Tic-Tac-Toe!!  It is definitely a stand by waiting game for restaurants, waiting in Dr. Offices or in the car or just for fun at home.  We usually play with paper and pencil or as on a board that came with a set of princess games.  The other day though as I used the last egg in a carton of 18 eggs I realized that if I cut it up it would make the perfect Tic-Tac-Toe board.   

So after a little cutting I gathered up some of our plastic colored Easter Eggs and showed our new Tic-Tac-Toe board to the girls.

I played a couple of rounds with each of the girls.  It was different to have to place the egg into the container than to draw and X or an O, which made it a fun twist.

The girls also had a great time playing against each other!

This was a fun new way to play and a great way to recycle our old egg carton!

For more fun with Plastic Easter Eggs Check out our Plastic Easter Egg Chicks and Bunnies

 

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Crafting Kites with Kids

The start of spring and the windy weather we have been having always makes me think of Kites.  We don’t usually have much luck when we try to fly our own kites, but we have had fun crafting some very pretty ones.  When Emily was little we make a Triangle Shape Kite, but this time we tried something a little different.  

To make our kites we used Bleeding Tissue Paper, cardstock, straws, yarn and some colored construction paper.  The girls always love working with bleeding tissue paper, it has a somewhat magical property to it which is always fun.  If you have never tired it before we definitely recommend it.

First, I cut out cardstock in the shape of a Kite and then Juliette got to work with the bleeding tissue paper.

She covered the paper with a little bit of water then placed the pieces of bleeding tissue paper over the water.  They like to brush over them with a little more water to make sure they are sticking down to the paper well.

Once the paper is covered to satisfaction we just set them to the side and let them dry.

Now for the fun part, Juliette pulled off all of the bleeder paper to see the beautiful colored design that was left behind…MAGIC!!!

To put the kites together we cut pieces of colored straws to glue horizontally and vertically across the kite.  Then we glued on a long piece of yarn and construction paper bows for the tail.  Juliette was very excited to help me glue it together with the glue gun.  Since we have had a hard time gluing straws to paper in the past I figured this would be the best way.

  For another windy day project check out the Windsock Craft we made to go with the book The Wind Blew.

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Creative Challenge: Plastic Easter Egg Chicks and Bunnies

When I read about  the Creative Challenge from Tinkerlab I knew it was for us and something we would want to join in.  Emily and Juliette love to work on projects and I loved the idea that it was open ended and up to them to figure out what to do, which fosters their creativity and problem solving skills

This month’s challenge is EGGS, so we could do anything we want with any type of egg.

I explained to the girls that we had to come up with a project that has to do with eggs.  We conveniently decided to decorate our house for Easter which meant we had a huge bag of Plastic Easter Eggs (I’m talking like easily 75-100 eggs) just sitting waiting to be used in some fun and creative way.

Emily suggested the idea of turning a plastic yellow egg into a chick, she thought our bin of pipe cleaners would be perfect for his feet and Juliette totally agreed and added that we needed to make a bunny too.  They picked out yellow eggs for the chicks and pink eggs for the bunnies. Then I helped them gather whichever art supplies they thought they needed to create their projects.

Our supplies included plastic eggs, pipe cleaners, beads, craft foam, sharpie markers,feathers, construction paper, pom poms, wiggly eyes and our hot Glue Gun .

The girls noticed that there were holes in the top and bottom of each part of the egg which was perfect for adding the feet. 

After they added the feet they figured out worked on adding all the other details.  Daddy got in the fun to and decided to create a party egg :)      Emily’s Princess Chick!

 

Check out our cute Handprint Bunny Craft and Hatching Chick Craft for some more Bunny and Chick Fun!!

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