July 21st, 2010 Fun with magnets Posted by Melitsa in Education, Homemade, Sites to visit, play activities

Most children are fascinated by magnets and their seemingly magical abilities to attract other objects. Little M (26 months) had a great time playing with this basic magnet kit I assembled for him:

Basic Magnet Kit for Toddlers and Young Preschoolers

These objects are large enough and smooth enough to be safe for small children. There are just enough items to be fun without being overwhelming.

Large wand magnet (can be found at Sewing/Craft stores in the notions department)

Assorted LARGE metal objects (to avoid choking dangers):

• cover from a holiday tin
• empty almond tins

(Blue Diamond tins have smooth edges with the added bonus of using them as stacking /building toys at another time)

• caps from glass bottles

(mine are from Knudsen Very Veggie Juice, but many pasta sauces and glass juice bottles have metal caps; also perfect are the metal ends from frozen juice concentrate container)

Young children like to explore new objects without a specific goal in mind, so let them do their own thing while you are close by. If they don’t seem interested, demonstrate how the wand picks up or sticks to one of the metal objects. Introduce new words like magnet, metal, and attract.

As with all activities, if children are not interested, it may be too soon. Children grow and develop rapidly, so try again next month!

Magnet Kit for Older Preschoolers and School-age Children

For older children who are no longer in danger of putting small objects in their mouths, nose, or even ears (it’s been done!) add smaller magnets and assorted household objects to those in the basic kit:

Small craft magnet discs (under $2 for stack of 8 at Wal-mart or craft stores)

Additional Metal objects:

• paper clips
• hair barrettes
• binder clips

It is fun to let older children experiment with objects that look like they might be attractive to a magnet, but are not. For preschoolers this is an important sorting and classifying exercise.

Help young grade school scientists make predictions about which items will be attractive to the magnet and which will not. Record the results on a handmade chart divided into two columns: attracts and does not attract.

This activity may lead you to the library or internet to find out more about magnets and why some materials attract a magnet and some don’t. Introduce words and concepts like repel, south and north poles, opposites attract, magnetic energy, and magnetic field.

Non-attractive metal objects:

• keys
• coins
• aluminum foil

Non-attractive objects composed of other materials:

• rubber bands
• plastic pens
• wooden sticks
• wooden spools
• plastic dice

Other activities to try with your magnets:

• House hunt for magnetic objects – (keeping away from computers and televisions, which may be damaged by magnet contact), hunt for items that are attractive to your magnet – metal legs of a chair, file cabinet, treadmill handles, and so on.

• Using a shoebox lid or plastic container cover, put a paper clip or other magnetic item on top and hold the magnet underneath to make your top item move around and back and forth. This demonstrates how magnetic energy flows through other objects depending on the strength of the magnet and thickness of the item between them.

Nanny Dee blogs about early childhood topics and activities at New England Nanny. In addition to being Little M’s nanny, she’s also a 47-year-old college student with one semester to go before completing her BA in Early Childhood Education. By next year she hopes to be an elementary school teacher.

July 1st, 2010 Summer vitamins and Watermelon seed spitting Posted by Melitsa in Homemade, Outdoor play, Sites to visit, Thought of the week, play activities

Do you have your PURTS the new summer vitamin?

Are your toddlers getting their vitamins?

With the start of summer more of us will be aware of covering up our toddlers to avoid skin problems. We’re careful that they eat their greens and munch an apple to get their Vitamin C.

It’s what caring parents do. Vitamins are vital to the health of us all.

I’d like to propose five new vitamins just in time for summer. Release date is worldwide with no known side effects–except possibly the big bi-product of laughter, smiles and contentment.

Give your child PURTS this summer.

Vitamin P

To read more about the benefits of these amazing vitamins please visit my post over at Steady Mom.

Drowning in Watermelon?

What will you do with all those seeds?

Keep your toddler and preschoooler happy with this Watermelon noise maker

Vitamin P

To read more about this craft please visit my Blissfully Domestic post..

Friday 2nd July 2010 is the final day to enter the Outdoor products contest. Easy entry and multiple bonus entry opportunities

June 25th, 2010 Playing with paper Posted by Melitsa in Education, Homemade, language, play activities

This is a repost from June 2007

If you don’t record them you’ll forget them.

Try this simple easy and cheap hour of fun!

So here is my son’s current favourite play activity. Running away from the crocodiles whoops that should read crocodimes ( pronounced croco- dime-es)

He had been drawing forever. We have a huge pile of papers. He let me reuse his drawings as stepping stones. Very environmentally friendly son. Thanks!
I set him the challenge of crossing the shark infested sea to get to the dry land without being eaten. He changed the story to crocodimes as these are his favorite chasing thing to be scared and running away from….other than monsters.

Here he is balancing on a sheet of construction paper A4 size……about to enter infested waters. Little brother tore up junk mail paper to keep himself amused so they became the crocs on the move.

He felt the boats had to touch…

Little brother still manufacturing ‘crocs’

Jumping…

… after some time…..

He made it!

The next picture should have been the leap to safety but little brother came to claim the boats as crocodiles. I had to make the mad dash over and that was that!

This kept us all amused for over half an hour.

He hopped, jumped, leaped, added more stepping stones, tried to go faster and then finally wanted to race me. His brother made a huge pile of crocodiles that filled the floor and just stepped on these. I had the feeling he was looking at us both and thinking…..you just have to do this it’ s much easier.

Other things to do

• make the paper smaller than A4
• have team races with play dates or family
• Try strips (rectangles) instead of squares
• play a song and see if you can get across before the song finishes
• make the infested area smaller/bigger over obstacles like cushions (mountains) etc

Before you throw away that paper, junk mail, flyer or your umpteenth bit of art from your little one- Challenge them to a crocodime race! You’ll have a lot of fun and laughter!

June 23rd, 2010 Pizza fun with kids Posted by Melitsa in Cooking, Homemade, language, play activities

We stumbled across this recipe from Our best bites. We often have a pizza night along with our family night where we often make pizza.

We decided to use the family night to make and eat the pizza. This was a great together activity. The boys cut, weighed, placed and worked on these pizzas.

We made two types of pizza balls; a cheese based one and a meat based one.

Our basic ingredients

• Mozzarella cheese
• Pineapple and sweetcorn

( slices of precooked chicken- leftovers)

Plus refrigerated pizza dough.

• Layout the dough according to package instructions.
• Using a pizza cutter. Divide into large squares.
• Add your filling

• Pinch each closed so the filling is inside and the dough is outside.
• Place seam side down in a greased dish.
• Brush top with garlic butter/oil and sprinkle liberally with Parmesan cheese.

We poured seasoned sauce in a ramekin for dipping.

Cooking with kids is a lot of fun. They can get really creative and usually eat what they make

As a recipe we all loved it. It was labour intensive having to roll up each bite but the time together was totally worth it.

Thanks to