Summer Activities and Upcycled Jar Project #2!

Summer is officially here! Time to break out the baby pool, lather on the sunscreen, and sweat your buns off while coming up with new and exciting ways to entertain your kids! 

We have been trying to get outside in the morning when it’s cooler and the patio is shaded for some bubbles, sidewalk chalk, and sensory time. The afternoons have been pretty hot and once they start to get sweaty, they also tend to get a little cranky. The easiest way to get them inside at that point is straight bribery with popsicles and ‘special treats’. I have been pinning new and fun craft ideas and this weekend I need to sit down and put together some ideas for the upcoming weeks (and also plan Lily’s 2^nd birthday…eek)!

I found a recipe for cloud dough and decided to give it a whirl this week. The recipe calls for 8 cups of flour for every cup of (baby) oil. Simple, easy and fairly cheap. I opted to use baby oil because it smells better than cooking oil and makes our hands soft. I made a big production out of mixing the flour and oil together and the kids had a blast stirring and stirring and stirring. Then I separated the dough into two Tupperware containers, gave the kids some small spoons, shovels, and other little cups to scoop the dough into and let them go wild. They were very cautious on day one. They barely got any on their hands, while I was wrist deep trying to mold shapes. It doesn’t leave as big of a mess as you would imagine and you can simply dust it off. The second day of playing with it, Lily used her hands a little more but Tristan stuck to utensils only. It was a fun and new sensory activity that I am sure I will be using a lot of this summer. I want to invest in a small sand table and possibly fill it with cloud dough for a period of time. Gotta add that to Lily’s birthday list!

I recently posted one way to upcycle pickle and salsa jars, and I came up with another fun idea. I have been saving the lids to the food pouches (or squeezes as we call them) for quite some time because once a preschool teacher garbage hoarder, always a preschool teacher garbage hoarder! I finally decided to use some to make a sorting game for the kids to play with and practice matching, colors, and fine motor. I took the labels off as best as I could and then covered the outside of the jar with construction paper. We are in week two of our colors and just learned orange so I opted for an orange jar, a red jar (last week’s color), and a green jar (I have A LOT of green lids). I took a picture of a group of each color lid and taped that to the label as well. We started by just identifying the color of the orange jar and all the orange lids inside and practiced putting the lids into the jar. Then I introduced the red and green jars and dumped the lids into the pile. I showed them the objective of the ‘game’ and tried to block off the jar when they put in the wrong color. That cracked them up and caused them to start throwing the lids everywhere. Yikes. After we calmed down and regrouped, I dumped the jars again and just watched them play. It’ll be interesting to see them learn how to sort and match over the course of the summer. And once we eat some more pickles and/or salsa, I’ll introduce another color!

Happy Summer!!