DIY Earth Day Sensory Art

Patria Lincoln Posted On Apr 19, 2018 | STEM

Happy Earth Day! A wonderful way to celebrate our one-of-a-kind planet, this Earth Day art project is alive with color. Engaging the senses of even your littlest conservationist, recreate this masterpiece with a just few items you probably already have at home.

You will need:

A baking sheet with sides
Shaving cream
Food coloring or watercolor paints
Chopsticks or craft sticks for swirling
White cardstock
An old gift card or credit card for scraping

Earth Day Sensory Art Craft

On the cardstock, trace circles about 8-9” in circumference using a bowl or plate. Cut out and set aside. Earth Day Sensory DIY Craft

Spray the shaving cream directly into the baking sheet. Now spread the shaving cream evenly in the pan. It almost feels like frosting a sheet cake.

DIY Earth Day Sensory

Using a generous hand, drop your food coloring or paint all over the shaving cream in the pan. Then, with the craft stick, swirl the pain around. Be careful to swirl, not mix. This step is rich in sensory for the children – the smell of the shaving cream, the drag of the foam, the mixing of the color. Fantastic! DIY Earth Day Sensory

Grab one of the circles. Gently lay your soon-to-be-Earth on top of the shaving cream, pressing down gently. You want to make sure all the Earth’s surface is touching the paint/shaving foam mixture. DIY Earth Day Sensory

Grab a little section and gently peel up your circle off of the foam. Find a spot to lay it flat. DIY Earth Day Sensory

Next, using the former gift or credit card, begin on one end and scrape the paint off, getting very close to the surface of the card stock. Revealed under all that shaving cream is a beautiful, marbled, Earth-from-outer-space look!

DIY Earth Sensory Craft

Add some additional paint or food coloring to your mix if you feel like either color is coming through strong enough. It seems like it’s almost impossible to add too much color. DIY Earth Day Sensory Craft

Enjoy this sensory-rich activity with all ages of kids.

Happy Earth Day!

DIY Earth Day Sensory Craft Sensory Earth Art

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Patria Lincoln | Posted on Sep 10, 2019

DIY Fall Sensory Bin!

Fall is here! Which means I get to put together one of my most favorite sensory bins of the year. Who can resist the smell of apple cinnamon and pine cones mixed with the texture of corn kernels, right!?

Every year I try to add in components that align with the developmental stage my daughter is in. Being almost 3, she is refining her fine and visual motor skills every day, so we added in lots of fine motor challenges and visual perceptual options this year. Toddlers also seek independence in everything they do, so sensory bins are always a great task to get them involved when putting it together.

Fall Sensory Play 4

Sensory Bin Materials

First, we gathered all of our goodies. For this bin, we are using corn kernels, play apples, pine cones, flat marbles, and play leaves as our main “ingredients”. You can control the amount of scent you include in your bin by sprinkling apple pie spice, or adding cinnamon sticks. My daughter does not have any aversions to scent, so we went with pre-scented apples and pine cones (you can often find these in the fall section of your local craft store!).

Fall Sensory Play 7

Next, I had her scoop and pour the corn kernels into her bin, and add in all of the goodies. I let her play for a while and explore the different scents and textures. She loves to explore using kitchen utensils (spoons, bowls, funnels, cups, etc) – she made our whole family some apple soup with a side of leaves and pine cones for dinner! All of this is working on their imagination skills which is fantastic for this age.

Then, the fun begins for me! Here are some fun challenges I incorporated into our purposeful play!

Fine Motor

Corn kernels are awesome because when a toddler plays with it, they are naturally practicing their pincer skills just picking them up and moving them around! I also love to incorporate various tongs, tweezers, and clothespins for her to use while she picks up apples or “catches” leaves.

Fall Sensory Play 8

Visual Motor

Sorting tasks are always a big hit. I had her sort out red apples, green apples, yellow leaves, and green leaves. You can also work on patterning or visual model copying. For my daughter, I lined up a couple objects (red apple, green leaf, pine cone) and had her find the matching objects in the bin and line them up in the same order.

Fall Sensory Play 5 Fall Sensory Play 6

Stereognosis

This is a high-level perceptual skill that I love to throw in when planning activities. Stereognosis is the ability to perceive an object from touch – sensory bins are perfect for this because you can hide a pine cone underneath the corn kernels, have them dig in, and see if they can find the pine cone only by touch. I can’t tell you how intrinsically motivating and fun this is for them, all while working on some amazing developmental skills.

Fall Sensory Play 3

The thing I really love about sensory bins is that they are easily adaptable to any age group. If your little one is younger, try adding the corn kernels to a clear bottle with some leaves and pom poms and have them roll it all around. Watch them in awe as they see the goodies move all around inside the bottle and hear the sounds of the kernels as they slide!

Save it for later!

Patria Lincoln | Posted on Apr 20, 2018

Celebrate Astronomy Day with Kids

Each year Astronomy Day is celebrated worldwide. The stars have fascinated humanity for literally centuries, and even to this day captures the imagination of kids of all ages. Celebrate this event with them this year and don't worry if you don't own any expensive telescopes. These DIY activities use real life discoveries to inspire your little astronomers!

Track the Phases of the Moon

Bone sticks from across Europe and Africa dating back as long ago as 35,000 BCE that tracked the moon’s phases. Use a simple number line with your kids to track the phases of the moon over the course of a month, from full moon and back again. Do it for several months and see what patterns they begin to observe.

Depict a Celestial Phenomenon

A celestial phenomenon is a astrological event that involves one or more objects. The earliest example depicted was discovered in Germany in 1999. The Nebra Sky Disc dates back to 2000 BC and it depicted a star cluster, phases of the moon and the rising sun.

Use a black paper plate, or even just black paper, and encourage your children to depict their own star formations. If they can’t stay up to observe them at night, project some indoors with this Shining Stars Projector.

Astronomy to Keep Time

The Chinese astronomers kept detailed observations beginning about 600 BC, for the primary purpose of timekeeping. Their records allowed them to predict eclipses, and include the first record of events such as supernovas and comets.

On the other side of the world, the Mayans developed their own astronomical tables for predicting the phases of the moon, eclipses, and the appearance of the other planets. They used these and the cycles of the Sun, the Moon, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Mars and constellations to establish the Mayan calendar.

All of the above astronomy was without a telescope, and you can still observe these astronomical events with your kids today. Check out this astronomy calendar and pick a full moon, eclipse, planetary event, or meteor shower to observe as a family.

Try this simple astronomy experiment to help kids as young as preschoolers understand what makes night.

Just because ancient astronomers did all of this without a telescope doesn't mean your little ones have to! All of the above activities can be done with the naked eye but if you feel like shooting for the stars check out Learning Resources Big View Telescope. How will you celebrate Astronomy Day?

Patria Lincoln | Posted on Mar 7, 2018

The Busbys' 6 Simple and Fun Coding Activities for Kids! Right now it seems everyone is talking about the benefits of exposing kids to STEM and Coding. I hope to give my 6 girls every opportunity possible, and spark their curiosity and passion. I like teaching them to understand a path of thinking that will help them learn. And that’s what these fun activities will do!If you don’t know where to start, are your kids out of luck? Not at all! Here are some tips to start with easy activities around the house:

BEE-autiful Colors and Coding

One of the quints’ favorite activities is coloring. With a little tweak, coloring can become a terrific coding activity. The key is to get the kids to color by number. Remember the fun of that? There are lots of color-by-number activities online or you can just DIY with your childs’ favorite coloring book. When you assign a specific number to a color, and have your child color a picture based on the number sequence, they are actually learning early coding skills!

Coding in the Kitchen

Sequential thinking is key to coding. This may sound a bit intimidating, but it’s actually as simple as following the steps of a recipe for cupcakes. When I am in the kitchen cooking or baking, the quints are always interested in ‘What is Mommy doing’. Even though cooking with the quints always makes for a huge mess, I love seeing their little minds work. I get them thinking by asking silly questions. I might finish mixing the dough and while it’s still raw and in the bowl ask, “Should I put the frosting on now?” I get a lot of giggles and get the girls thinking about the right order for the task at hand.

Coding with Clothes

“Sorting and ordering” is a basic concept of coding, and in our house there’s always a pile of laundry to sort. The quints actually love to help with laundry, lets just hope this lasts till they are teenagers! Since they have a fair amount of matching outfits, I pick out one of the outfits, lay it down on the floor and have the girls add the matching outfit to the pile for me to fold. If items match, they go in one pile. Otherwise, the girls continue to search and sort. We also change things up and ask the girls to sort clothes by color or type, such as tops and bottoms. To the quints, sorting laundry is a fun game, they have no idea how much they are actually helping me! organizing socks

Busby Queen Bee

One thing we try to do daily is let the kids burn some energy, in hope that they all take a good long nap. We’ll set up a little obstacle course using the couch, pillows and toys. Then we let Blayke navigate one of her sisters or me around the room with simple “commands” like “walk forward 2 steps” and “turn right.” The girls may not like to listen all the time, but when it is in a ‘game form’ they get a kick out of trying to follow the rules correctly.

If I say “Buzz,” Then You Say “Bee”!

When we want to get all the girls involved at once, we get up on our feet and play a little “If-Then” game. Again, this is a computer programming basic concept, brought into our own playroom. Our little Queen Bee will shout a statement and everyone else must listen, and then act. Blayke loves saying, “If I say Buzz, then you say Bee! Buzz!” and all the girls shout back “Bee!” The quints will often say, “If I jump, then you jump!” and that’s ok too, but when Adam and I get a turn we try to mix things up. “If I point up, then you jump.”

Busbys Meet Botley

The girls love animals and have asked for a pet for quite a while now. As a Mom of six, I’m sure you can guess that I don’t prefer to take care of pet right now. So I got the next best thing, Botley! Botley is a coding robot from Learning Resources. What better “pet” to have than a robot. He teaches coding in a really fun, friendly way the girls love. Blayke has been doing most of the coding with him, though all the girls love to see him in action, completing obstacle courses, and making funny sounds.

The great thing about coding with small children is they learn to think like programmers naturally and easily, even without sitting in front of a screen.Check out more easy to do coding activities here!
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