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Last Minute Toddler Class Gifts

December 22, 2015 By Callie Leave a Comment

It’s that hour…things are getting crazy out there! I am an amazon prime person completely. That being said sometimes you just don’t know what you want to get someone and so you want to go out and look. God bless all of you who venture out to stores this week. If you’re looking for last minutes toddler friends gifts I’ve got you covered.

I always try to do something new and fun for the kiddos. It’s also nice to have a nonfood gift for the littles especially since so many have allergies nowadays.

Row and I made these fun and easy snow discovery bottles to hand out to her music friends. Great for toddler, babies, and honestly my Kindergarten kiddos would have loved these too and probably up to second grade.

Supplies-

smaller sized water bottles

silver glitter

hot glue gun

tags-I found snow tags!

Remove the labels from each bottle.

Open and remove the equivalent of two gulps 🙂 out of the bottle. You want the bottle to be full and be able to put the glitter in so don’t take out too much water. Add 1-2 scoops of silver glitter to each bottle. Using your hot glue gun glue the cap of the water bottle onto the bottle-I simply applied glue in a circle on the cap.

Tag. Shake. You’re done!

Easy and the kids loved them! Oh and you’ll look super crafty and it literally took 15 minutes for me to make. That’s less time than if I bought goody bags and stuffed them! And… these are great because if children in the class don’t celebrate Christmas it’s not super Christmas specific! Sno

Merry Christmas!

Apple Printing

September 15, 2015 By Callie Leave a Comment

It’s Fall! Now for those of you in my beloved New England that means apple picking. For those of us in the deep south that means buying some apples at the store.

I decided to break out the apples and the paint to get us into the swing of Fall and Row loved it.

This was an activity I did every year in Kindergarten. I’ll share all the ways you can squeeze learning into this fun craft.

Simply gather an apple and split in half. I like to put Popsicle sticks through the centers so that they are more easily held for printing.

Place paint on your plates and dip. I also love to use a large restaurant sized cookie sheet for painting because it holds the paper in place as well as the mess.

It’s fun to press each apple onto the paper and lift to make a print and for toddlers it’s also fun to paint.

This simple activity lasted about 30 minutes-not to shabby for a 2 year old.

Now let’s bring the teacher out and talk about all the amazing teacher points you can hit on during this craft. We spoke about the colors of paint and I asked Row to dip in specific colors as we painted=color recognition. We talked about the way the apple felt=attributes-small, large, color and weight. We talked about the mass=weight, heavy and light.

How can you enrich this activity for school aged children? Add more colors and talk about primary and secondary colors as they print/paint. Talk about plants and discuss the parts of an apple, the skin, flesh, seeds. Discuss the plant life cycle. Oh and have fun!

Ice Cream Dough

July 28, 2015 By Callie Leave a Comment

Ice scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream dough!!!! Play dough!!! I just want to know why all these cool play dough recipes weren’t around when I was a kid??? Jelly!!!!

How cool is this-play dough that looks like ice cream? It was super easy to make too.Oh and it’s no bake….so I made it in five minutes.

Ingredients:

Conditioner-hair-the cheap kind

Corn Starch

Measure out 1 1/2 cup of corn starch. Dump into a medium mixing bowl. Add 3/4 cups of conditioner. Mix. The key is to not over mix until it’s smooth but just enough to mix the ingredients together. I also added a bit more conditioner-but just a tiny smidge.

You can add smells such as vanilla and chocolate, etc…with extracts, cocoa powder and jello. That being said we are still only 2 years old and I wasn’t about to have Row trying to eat it. I do however wished I had used some unscented conditioner because ours smells a bit like flowers. Hahahaha

The ice cream dough is so easy to make! There is also a cold version which I’m looking forward to making as well.

Row had fun…and yes she tried to eat it when I showed her it could go in a cone. Parenting fail….

Happy Mixing!