Cloud Dough

My kids love playing with Play-doh. I like it and loathe it at the same time. I like it because it keeps them entertained for 45 minutes (not bad for a 5 year old and 3 year old) but loathe it because every time they play with it more ends up on the floor than on the table. I always have them play with it on a table on a tile floor....but with carpet nearby I feel I'm constantly nagging at them "Keep it on the table!!!", "Don't drag it onto the carpet", "Pick it up if you drop it", and "When you're done put the cap on it or it will dry out".It's tiring!!!

Last week we had a nice day so I decided to try a different type of dough - cloud dough. I thought I'd take it outside and they could play with it out there. That way if it drops it's no biggie. Camden always loves dragging his construction vehicles in things so I figured he would love to do that and sure enough that's how he spent the entire time playing.

The recipe for cloud dough is simple with two ingredients: flour and baby oil. I found a recipe that where you use 1/4 cup oil for 2 cups flour. I started with this and just added more oil or flour until it felt like I could mold it.

It was definitely a hit! Alex and Camden seem to love sensory play! I'll be breaking out this recipe again sometime when the weather is consistently nice and we can head out back on the deck!

Cloud Dough Recipe:

1/4 cup baby oil

2 cups flour

Mix until combined. Add more oil or flour until you can mold the dough.

Starting Back Up

I know it's been a few months since I've blogged on this blog but I'm hoping that will change now. I've been wanting to get back into it more but just haven't made the time. Staying at home with two kids has kept me pretty busy. I was a previously a teacher and used to being on a schedule. Now that I've been staying at home I've gotten used to the fact that I don't have to have one....but I think I still need one. I do random activities with the kids but don't plan way as much as I used it. We used to have a schedule up of our day and having blocks of time dedicated to crafts/learning activities kept me consistent. Then Kindergarten happened. While my oldest was at PM Kindergarten my youngest would nap so my goal of doing activities with him didn't always work out. Then when he wasn't napping we would be running errands. When I would try to do activities he wasn't really into them. Now he just turned 3 and I'm going to try a little harder to make it part of each day. 

Notice I said try. I'll do my best! 

Puffy Snowmen

Last week we had some frigid weather so I thought I'd have the kids do a snowman craft. I found a cute snowman made out of "puffy paint" here that is made from equal parts shaving cream and Elmer's glue.  I had the kids use paintbrushes but once we were into the craft I found hands were just easier....but then I have Camden who hates messy hands so that didn't work for him! 

The best part was that it was super easy to clean up. One would think that because there is glue it in that it's going to be a sticky mess. But it wiped up extremely well and I was very pleased with that! After looking at the picture can you tell which snowman was done by the 2.5 year old??? =) 

Lightbulb Sentence Sort

Whenever I'm looking for something different for Alex to do it's always nice to be able to go downstairs to our basement to my "wall of my first grade/second grade classrooms" and pull out an activity. I always bring up thematic books and look through my seasonal binders to see what I have.

I happend to find this sentence sort activity that I made on lightbulbs for the Christmas season. I wrote out sentences about Christmas, mixed them up, and asked Alex to put them in order. It was great to watch her read the words and realize that the period goes at the end, the capital letter goes at the beginning, and the other words go in between (in an order where they make sense). As she did two of them she kept asking "Can I do another one????"

For example for one of the sentences I arranged the bulbs so they read:
Christmas 25. is on December and then she had to make it read "Christmas is on December 25."

Who knew something so simple could be so fun?

Letter C Word Cloud

Alexandra is working on letter C this week so when she got home from school and did her homework we thought of some words that begin with the letter C. Then when we were done with our list we typed (she started I finished) our list and made a word cloud with the list. She chose the design. I think we'll do this each week she brings home a new letter packet. I did type an apostrophe in the word "can't" but it looks like it wasn't added.

Halloween Muffin Tin

I made the kids a Halloween muffin tin lunch for the kids and they really loved it!

Letter P Week

This week in Kindergarten Alex was working on the letter P so we had our own letter P week at home. We made pumpkins, pizza, and mini cherry pies and I made the kids a letter P lunch. Camden is getting a little more into doing crafts now so I'm going to try to work it into our daily morning routine - I guess he is going to preschool next September after all so I should get him used to using some glue and scissors! 

I actually made this with leftover orange paper strips that I had but the kids carried it around and played with it for the day. 

 I drew a pumpkin on a white piece of paper and then I squirted glue and had the kids "paint" the paper with glue. Then they stuck the orange and green squares to the pumpkin. It was a total team effort!

Finally, I made a muffin tin lunch for the kids. I made a pentagon peanut butter and jelly sandwich, put in pretzels, popcorn, pears, and pudding. I showed Alex that she could have a peanut butter cup if she finished her lunch. And she did!