Tagged with 'activities'

What You'll Need:

• 2 paper or plastic plates
• Decorations (stickers, markers, or paint)
• Ribbon
• Hole Punch
• Craft Jingle Bells
• Scissors

• Using your paint or stickers, decorate the outside of your tambourine. Be colorful and creative!
• Next, match the plates up so the bottom part of the plate faces out. Punch 5-6 holes around the plate’s circumference, making sure your bottom and top plates match up.

• Cut the ribbon as long as you’d like. Longer ribbons always seem to add more drama! Then lace the ribbon through the jingle bells.
• Loop your ribbon around the holes punched in the plates, securing it with a double knot.
• Shake away! These small bells make a joyful sound!

What You'll Need:

• Clean Tin Can (be aware of sharp edges!)
• Baloon
• White Duct Tape
• Decorative Tape
• Two #2 Pencils
• Scissors

• First, cut the balloon at the base of the “stem”. You’ll need lots of balloon material to cover the wide opening of the can.
• Stretch the balloon over the tin can. Tape the perimeter.
• Then finish the whole can with the white tape, and add decorative tape if you so choose.

What You'll Need:

• Plastic Easter Eggs
• Plastic Spoons
• Dry Rice
• White Duct Tape
• Decorative Tape
• Scissors

• Fill the plastic eggs with about 2-3 pinches of rice. Filling them too full will not allow for the fullest sound: less is more.
• Close the eggs and stick some tape around them immediately. If these crack open, you’ll have a big mess.

• Next, situate two of the spoons to “cup” the eggs on either side. Wrap the tape around the spoon. Follow the spoons’ handles down with tape, as well as the top of the egg.
• Add some decorative tape or stickers of your liking.
• Shake it up!

Let's bid farewell to Summer in style by creating tie-dye beach towels with the help of the color wheel, rainbow order, mixing, and pigment strength. Set up the activity in the comfort of your backyard, and don't forget to grab some gloves and plastic coverings if you aren't on grass.

• Spray Tie Dye Kit
• Duct Tape
• Beach or Bath Towels
• Warm Water
• Twisty Droppers
• Color Wheel

This activity works best with the widely available spray tie-dye kits. They dry faster, making the application easier for even the youngest beach-goers.

Grab white beach or bath towels (the fluffier, the more color-absorbent), lots of duct tape, hot water for mixing the tie-dye, and the spray kit.

Lay your towel out on a flat surface, smoothing it out. Spell out your child’s name across the towel using the tape and moving slowly.

Keep the color wheel handy as a guide. It is a great visual tool for classifying spectral wavelengths from red to violet.

Depending on the options available in the tie-dye set you’ve purchased, look at your color wheel and separate your bottles into primary, secondary, and tertiary categories.

Next, put on your gloves on a covered surface or grass and mix the tie-dye with the warm water. What colors are made from primary colors? Working from the color wheel, which colors will look best near each other on the towel?

With those gloves on, let the spraying begin! Be glad you have on gloves! The bottles can get messy fast. If you prefer the traditional route of tie-dying, try using Twisty Droppers! Pigment strength was brought up: how do we intensify the color?

It’s perfectly fine to get spray on the tape. Once the towel is pretty dry, flip it over to spray the backside! Flip back over and allow to dry completely. Wash the towels separately twice, alone in the wash.

For this cute penguin craft, you will need:

• Room temperature butter
• Light corn syrup
• Powdered sugar
• Salt
• Food coloring of your choice
• Feel free to add sprinkles for the eyes or their cold-weather accessories

• Roll out some wax paper on a flat surface to make the dough.
• Add one teaspoon of butter to a bowl. This is no time to substitute – you will need the fat from the butter to make the dough come together. Margarine will not work.
• Add one tablespoon of light corn syrup. Not only will the corn syrup provide moisture, but it will also prevent the crystallization of the powdered sugar you will add in a few steps.
• Add 1/8 teaspoon of salt.
• Using a fork, mash the salt, corn syrup, and butter together.

• Next, measure out a cup of powdered sugar. Carefully add the sugar to the mixture, spoonful by spoonful, mixing it the entire time you go.
• Grab the dough out of the bowl and begin to knead it with your hands. Form it into a ball.
• Separate the dough into two parts. One part will remain white, while the other will get the food coloring treatment.
• Separate one of the halves again. You can use any food coloring you like for the flippers and head. Black or blue works perfectly. Then choose any color for the penguins’ accessories. Red was used here
• A drop of food coloring will go a long way with this dough. Work it through. Once you’ve completed one color, make sure you wash your hands for the next color!

• Then, squeeze a little dough off to make a beak with some orange food coloring. No orange? What two colors should you combine to make the shade?
• Roll the white dough into a ball for the penguin’s body. Then roll the black or blue dough into a smaller shape for its head.
• Fashion some flippers and a beak, and perhaps use sprinkles for the penguin’s eyes.
• This dough can get soft fast, so after we created our little black-and-white friends, we stuck them in the refrigerator. The kids figured the penguins felt pretty at home in the cold!

• All this penguin talk made them want to break out Penguins on Ice, one of their favorite math games from Learning Resources.
• This cool game helps the kids understand math patterns and sorting. There are little icebergs that the penguins stand on, which can form grids in groups of ten.
• The kids challenge each other by lining up the penguins in order. Taking away penguins or adding them reinforces basic math skills. Hours of fun!

This is the time of year to be grateful, not wasteful. Used wrapping paper can tend to pile up during this special season of gift giving. Who amongst us hasn’t looked at a trash bag full of giftwrap and shook their head? There’s got to be a better use for all the paper, right? Below are a few clever ideas to get the kids involved in upcycling used gift wrap.

MYOB: Make Your Own Bunting. A delightful holiday design trend for several years now, bunting can be placed around the house to spruce up your season. Cut up your old wrapping paper in triangles using a template, tape it to a string, and have the kids come up with clever phrases, adding some deck to your halls.

Insist Your Toddler Cut Corners. For the toddler set, a whopping pile of paper and a pair of safety scissors is like heaven on Earth. Getting your preschooler practicing this important fine motor skill with all your leftover gift wrap. The paper is thinner, which might spark some cutting confidence. Pile it all up in a sensory bin and let them have at it!

A Little “Thank You” Goes a Long Way. So many presents, so many people to thank! Utilize the season’s remaining wrapping paper by having your kids fashion the cutest homemade thank you cards. This is a great busy activity in the dog days of winter break (you’ll thank us later).

A Place (setting) for Everything… Upcycle wrapping paper to create festive placemats for your holiday table. Not only will your tablescape showcase some extra holiday cheer, clean up will be a snap!

Winter Break Weaving. Paper weaving is a fun activity suitable for many age levels. Shred your remaining wrapping paper into strips. Using an x-acto knife, cut slits into construction paper. Be sure to do this step over an old magazine or cardboard. Weave the strips in and out of the slits. Use the creation for thank you cards, decoration, placemats, or anything where around the house that could use a little extra holiday style.

Exercise Those Engineering Skills This Winter 

Hooray! The holidays are here! Time for snuggly sweaters, snowy sleigh rides, hot apple cider, and… STEM? Yes! Winter break is a great time to slip in some STEM learning and the Learning Resources Playground Engineering & Design Building Set is a great way to do it!

First, a quick refresher on STEM.

STEM is simply a nationwide push to put more emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and math in schools, to better prepare our kids for careers in these fields in the future. By exploring these subjects at home, in a playful, low-stress way, you’ll ignite your kids’ curiosity, fuel creative thinking, and problem-solving, and inspire confidence that will carry through to school and support what your kids are learning there.

So, what are you waiting for?

Pour a cup of cocoa, call the kids to the table, and get ready to build your own polar playground!

Open the box, and you’ll find lots of packaged parts and pieces, as well as a set of double-sided instruction cards and a little workbook. Start by unpacking all the pieces in groups and checking out the different playground equipment you and your kids can engineer! You’ll find posts, platforms, gears, connectors, and more – everything you’ll need to design your own simple machines!

Next, choose a card and review the pieces you’ll need to build that structure. Work together to gather them and set them aside. Then follow the photos on the cards to assemble the structure, piece by piece. Once it’s finished, test it out by placing one of the included figures inside.

Now, flip the card to find a building challenge related to that structure. This is a great time to introduce the engineering design process – you know, ask, imagine, plan, create, and improve. Let your little one take the lead on solving the problems on the back of each card – you’ll be impressed with their creative solutions!

Take your time building the different playground pieces. Talk about the process and share some of the science behind the fun. Gravity draws the figure down the inclined slide. Momentum keeps the merry-go-round spinning. You get the idea.

When you’re done with building fun, it’s time to get creative with some playground pretend play! Your kids will love walking the included figures through the playground and helping them try out each piece of equipment.

Building sets like the Playground Engineering & Design Building Set are a great way to engineer some serious STEM skills and to spend a snowy afternoon together.

In fact, there are lots of playful ways to help your kids love learning and develop the skills they need for success. Work a holiday-themed puzzle, dissolve a candy cane, freeze and melt colored ice cubes… There are always ways to learn where you play – especially during the holidays!

The kids’ table is THE place to be this holiday. Allow time for the adults to enjoy seconds at the big table by breaking out some STEM fun with the kids. Mini marshmallow and gumdrop structures are this holiday’s time enhancer–and it couldn’t be easier!

Simple setup + simple materials = BIG scientific impact

You will need:

• Lots of toothpicks
• Gumdrops
• Mini marshmallows

Without realizing it, your kids (and kid guests) will begin to think like engineers who are facing a two-part challenge:

What to make?

How to improve on what you’ve already made?

Begin by challenging kids to create simple structures, like shapes. Try octagons, triangles, ladders, etc. Will these serve as building blocks to something more three-dimensional?

Without the children realizing it, building these gumdrops and marshmallow shapes is a unique way to practice fine motor skills. Dexterity, grasp, and coordination are necessary to construct up, up, up – no matter the age!

Next, watch kids as they critically examine how to improve upon what they’ve already created. What step is needed to take it (literally) to the next level?

What about the structural composition of the connectors? As the kids begin to build, are the marshmallows easier to stab with the toothpick? Which seems to keep your three-dimensional shapes in place better?

As they build, remind children that failure is definitely an option, here. That your shape may shift and your tower may topple! The attempt to rebuild by lessons from their first misstep is just as important of a takeaway.

Lastly–and most delightful to watch as parents–might be the natural drive for table collaboration. “If we attach our structures together, it will be even bigger and better and more interesting!

The possibilities are endless (and so are the fun and laughs!). 

Season’s Greetings from Learning Resources!