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 14th, 2010 What to do when “there is nothing to do”? Posted by Melitsa in Education, Good reads, book review, language, play activities

How do you come up with play ideas for your kids? And, perhaps even more importantly, how do your kids come up with play ideas for themselves?

During holiday periods I, like many parents, plan ahead for games and activities we will get up to – using blogs I love (perhaps ones I’ve recently discovered via the Raising Playful Tots Index) but I also want to give my kids the tools to plan and create for themselves, and a rich vein of inspiration for my two kids comes in the form of picture books I read to them. Although it doesn’t always happen (and even when it does, it can be weeks after we’ve read the book) often my kids will create their own games and activities inspired by what they’ve read and listened to.

Three great books we’ve recently enjoyed (with my hope that they’ll sow the seed of inspiration when the time comes) are all about what can be done when it seems like there’s nothing to do.

Something to Do by David Lucas

Perfect for toddlers, this simply illustrated book is full of the adventures a baby bear gets up to having bounced on his dad complaining that there’s nothing to do until Dad finally gives in. Using a twig to draw, baby bear and his dad create places to explore, with no set agenda, just following the lines they make with their sticks.

Nothing to Do by Douglas Wood, illustrated by Wendy Anderson Halperin

Stunningly illustrated with immense detail this book is a delight for slightly older children. Nothing to Do celebrates how wonderful it can be to actually have nothing to do; instead of needing to rush to this activity or onto another class, instead of always being timetabled, days where there is nothing to do are actually something to be relished. Such days are full of endless, exciting possibilities – as you and your kids pour over the glorious illustrations you’ll all come up with ideas of your own, from making toy ships to watching clouds, from making paper airplanes to re-reading your favourite books.

Let’s do nothing by Tony Fucile

A great all-rounder this book will have everyone in the family laughing! Two young boys have done everything they can think of doing and all that is left to try now is – quite literally – doing nothing. It turns out, however, that doing nothing is much harder than anyone had realised! The comic strip style illustrations are full of energy and there are jokes for the adults as well as the kids in this pacey debut from one of the animators behind Finding Nemo and The Incredibles.

One of my stock go-to activities if we seem to have run out of anything to do is to put on some music and just dance with the kids. Here are some great songs that go wonderfully with these three fantastic books about doing nothing:

And if you do want to prepare some activities for your kids taking your cue from these books, here are some I think would work brilliantly alongside reading these stories:

Zoe Toft is a mum of two young girls and they really love words and they really love to make stuff.
Sometimes they make or do something and they want a good book (or poem / song / audiobook) that continues the game, that captures some of the magic we’ve enjoyed. Sometimes it’s the other way round and they read a great book which inspires them to get the glue and glitter out.

Either way, they’ve always got plenty of books around the house, boxes of “crafty stuff” and a desire to have fun. However, her memory is /terrible/ So Playing by the book is Zoe’s way of celebrating and reminding herself of many of the things they get up to as a family, of the books they’ve read and loved and that you might just fall in love with too.

July 7th, 2010 Winners of the Outdoor products Posted by Melitsa in Media, play activities

Congratulations to the 4 winners of the Outdoor products for the summer contest!

1. Katrina

2.  Angela

3. Janis

4. Dani

July 7th, 2010 Outdoor Toddler Child Craft Ideas Posted by Melitsa in Outdoor play, Seasonal play, Sites to visit, play activities

So I was thinking, when was the last time I let my kids go outside and just have fun playing with things that were not store bought? I mean when I was young the highlight of my week was gathering up cardboard boxes from anything and everything and uses those to make toys. Yeah, cheap thrills! Hehehe!

Here are some fun and purposely messy crafts for toddlers and kids. Oh yeah – and a lot of this stuff is pocket friendly!

Sheet Painting – ages 4+

We all have old mangy looking bed sheets, admit it– time to finally drag one out and let the kids use it for some fun. Grab some spray bottles and fill them with acrylic or tempera paint diluted with water.

Lay the sheet on the ground or grass. If you are able to hang it on a clothesline it could even bring a bit more fun spraying a moving sheet. Let them spray that sheet until their hearts are content!

Once completed the kids can turn this huge art piece into a tent for camping or whatever kids want to use it for. Try not to limit their imaginations or give them instruction on how to express themselves. When it comes to art especially messy projects like this the less direction the better!

Drop-and-Splat Painting – ages 2+

This is an incredibly messy but fun and easy outdoor activity for kids. This is a project for a warm summer day when you can put those little ones in an old bathing suit or clothes that are OK to get messy.

Items:

• Plastic cups
• Water
• Food coloring
• Old clothes to wear (staining WILL happen!)
• Newspaper>
• Paper
• Rocks
• Straws

Fill old yogurt cups with water (or plastic cups) and set them outside.

Add a few drops of food coloring to each cup to make different colors.

Lay out a sheet of newspaper or paper on the ground. Idea: add rocks to the corners of the newspaper/paper to keep it from flying away!

Put a straw in a cup of colored water, and show your kiddies how to place a thumb or finger over the top end of the straw. This will keep water inside the straw when you remove it from the cup.

Next, lift the straw out of the cup and over the paper and uncover the straw end so the colored water drops onto the paper.

Try experimenting by raising straws full of water to different heights and observing how the height of the drop changes the resulting splat.

Variations: Try soaking cotton balls in the mixture and letting the kids splat them on the paper. You can also experiment with foil balls, rubber band balls, pinecones, and whatever else you can think of.

Some more quick and easy ideas:

Got Extra Kool-Aid?

Painting with Golf Balls

Cut out a large piece of paper and put it in the bottom of a plastic pool. Place golf balls dipped in different paint colors on the paper. Together the children can hold the edges of the pool and roll the golf balls around. This makes a great design when you are done.

Bored with the sandbox?

Give the children spray bottles with colored water. When the children spray the sand it will change color until they shovel it up.

Look for more fun kid crafts ideas at Crafts for Kidlets!