R is for Rocks

For R week in preschool, we spent one day on Rocks. This is great for preschool, but it’s also fun for kids (particularly the rock loving ones) to do anytime, especially on a rainy day. They boys had lots of fun writing our names & making shapes with the rocks.

Then we “drew” pictures with the rocks.

They came the really fun part. We made animals with the rocks. I helped them design the animals and little G (3.5 years old) CAREFULLY used the glue gun to glue them together. *First I had to warn him about how hot & dangerous the glue gun is and he did a great job being careful & safe.

We colored the animals to make them look even more like animals. You could use paint of course, but we stuck with washable markers. To finish them off, we glued on some googley eyes.

And our finished products – a pig, a monster(?), a duck, a frog, and a caterpillar.

They were favorite “toys” for the day. But the hot glue didn’t hold as strong as I thought it would. Next time we might try E6000 instead. What kind of rock animals can you come up with?

Rocket Shooters

This is one of the cheapest, easiest, and most entertaining craft/toy for the kiddos. Rocket Shooters. All it takes is a straw (per person), some squares/rectangles of scrap paper (preferably construction paper or thicker), tape and scissors.

I got the idea from straws themselves. I’m never good at shooting the wrapper off of restaurant straws, but this makes it pretty fool proof. It’s pretty self explanatory, but just in case you are a visual learner, here you go:

1. Wrap the paper, fairly tight, but not too tight, around the straw. Tape it.
2. Put tape on the end
3. Fold it down a little
4. Wrap the rest of the tape around the paper.

Ta Da! Rocket Shooters (named by little G)

These are pretty plain and boring looking, but they do their job. I’m sure you could put some fins on them and dress them up a bit, if you have older kids (and more patience than me!).

 

My boys, especially little G – the 3 year old – loved playing with these and he was very entertained for hours.

Then I made some targets for him and the fun started all over again!

Not only are these Rocket Shooters cheap, easy & entertaining, they are easy to replace and if they get broken or lost it’s no big deal. Have fun!

 

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Rainy day fun – RICE (and wheat)

The whole family has been down and out this week. It started with a cold and then little B man and Grant got a bit of pink eye to go along with it. It has been cold outside and we didn’t want to spread it to anyone else, so we were in the house A LOT this week. That means some very antsy kiddos.

Little G man didn’t get hit as hard as the other two so he was constantly needing some entertainment. [Unfortunately] we watched a lot of movies and cartoons, but we also did some preschool activities and other random stuff. He begged for me to pull out the rice/wheat for him to play in it. Along with playing in the kitchen sink, this is one of his absolute favorite inside activities. 

Growing up, my mom had a couple large Tupperware containers filled with rice that we could play with. It really is fun, like playing in the sand at the beach. But it does make quite the mess with little kids. When little G man was really little, I made him do it on the floor on top of a huge plastic table cloth. That way I could just pick up the table cloth and dump all the spilled rice back into the container. He is getting a lot better now that he is older and knows how to keep it in the bowl and pan.

I let little B man join the fun the next time we pulled it out and resorted to the tablecloth on the floor. Surprisingly it works really well and they keep most of it on the tablecloth.

I did have to threaten little G man a few times, “Everything not on the tablecloth gets swept up and thrown away”. He did a pretty good job keeping it on the tablecloth, and even though he dumped ALL of it out on the tablecloth, it was really easy to clean up. The rest of it on the floor was swept up and thrown away.

I added wheat to the rice because we got A TON of bags full of red winter wheat a couple years ago from the local university ag research program that was giving it away. So I figured why not use that to play with (since we obviously aren’t using it to make whole wheat bread…that’s a lot of work!).

I just need to get some fun toys for him to play with when they’re digging in the rice/wheat, like THIS or THIS. Not many things keep these guys entertained for very long, but playing in the rice is definitely one that they loves when, especially when they are stuck inside.