Tagged with 'moms'

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.

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!

Who doesn’t love a good snow globe? Each one is a spellbinding combination of swirling, swishing liquid, and falling glitter that is perfect for sensory play. As mesmerizing as they are, did you know that snow globes are actually an experiment regarding the scientific principle of viscosity?

Let’s apply the standard of viscosity by creating a Snowman Snow Globe. We’ll put it together and then explain why it works.

You will need the following:

• A water bottle (a clear glass water bottle was used here)
• Clear glue
• Tap water
• Glitter
• Black tape for the snowman’s top hat
• Markers, paper, and pipe cleaners to make the snowman face
• Craft items for the “floaters” inside the globe, like snowflakes, stars, buttons, or jingle bells

First, let’s get our snow globe looking like a snowman. Using a sharpie marker, draw on the eyes and buttons.

Second, you can draw on the carrot nose, but we used leftover orange sticky craft paper here.

Next, select a pipe cleaner to tie around under his carrot nose for a little scarf.

The man needs a top hat, right? Wrap the cap in black tape for his hat.

Now that he’s dressed and ready to go, squirt the clear glue into the bottle. We added more glue to one of our bottles. Will more thick glue make the glitter move slower or faster?

Next, sprinkle in your glitter and drop in the items that will float.

Now it’s time to watch the snow fly!

So what does viscosity mean for the snow globe?

The viscosity of a fluid is its relative “thickness.” Think of glue or maple syrup. Both are thick and slow. Viscosity is measured by its resistance to a stress factor. In the case of our snow globe, the stress is the water and shaking motion. Compared to the water, it is much thicker, slowing the fall of our glitter, snowflakes, and jingle bells.