Dog Park

Supplies required:
cardboard box or some other item to build the dog park in
modeling clay (again, I love Crayola's model magic)
miniature dogs (we used these:  http://www.amazon.com/Safari-695504-Ltd-Dogs-Toob/dp/B000GYZ3QG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1324142646&sr=8-1)

A few weeks ago E and I made a dog park out of modeling clay.  We put the dog park in part of a cardboard box.  We made a bridge, a pond, grass, a bowl of dog food, a bench, etc.  We also used some wooden blocks to build a little shelter for the dogs so they could be out of the sun.  After we built the dog park, E had a ton of fun letting the dogs play in the park.  We got out a small bouncy ball so the dogs would have a ball to play with.

Here's a picture of the dog park (and my son W peeking up over the box):

Glitter pinecones

Supplies required:
pinecones
glitter (white or silver work especially well, but any color will do)
glue
white paint
paint brushes
paper bag(s) (optional)

Last weekend E and I made glitter pinecones.  Luckily, we have a forest in our own front yard, so we were able to collect plenty of pinecones for this project.  (I'm pretty sure we could have collected enough pinecones for an entire school to do this project.)  Although the project was a little messy, it was easy, fun, and now we have beautiful pine cones to display in a bowl on our dining room table.

Once we collected the pinecones, we mixed together white paint and glue (equal parts of each, but I don't think it matters that much as long as you have enough glue) and then we used paintbrushes to brush the mixture onto the pine cones.  You can't spend too long painting, or the paint and glue will dry and you won't be able to put the glitter on.  We each painted one pine cone at a time, and then we applied the glitter.  I had gotten a variety package of different colors of glitter, so we used white, red, and two different kinds of silver.  I dumped each color of glitter in its own small paper lunch bag.  When a pinecone was ready, we dropped it in the bag and then shook it around to get it coated in the glitter.  We then took it out and set it on a newspaper to dry and started painting a new pinecone. 

E loved this project, and so did I.  The pictures definitely don't do the pinecones justice.  They are much more sparkly in person.

This was us painting the pinecones before we put the glitter on:

And this is the finished product (again, this doesn't adequately capture the pinecones at all):

"Camping out"

Supplies required:
Flashlight
Play tent or something else to make a tent (blanket and chairs, blanket and card table, etc)
Water bottles
Homemade trail mix
Sleeping bag or blankets
Candle

One evening a few weeks ago, I told E that we were going to camp out the next night after dinner.  I told her that she and her dad had an important job to do for our camp-out--make homemade trail mix.  Since my husband was going to the grocery store that day anyway, he picked out a bunch of things to go in the trail mix, and he and my daughter made it while I was at work.  He said she was so excited about it (probably at least in part because she was putting M & Ms in the trail mix.) 

After dinner the next night, I told E we had to get all of our camping supplies, so we went around the house gathering the things we would need.  We then "drove" to the campsite (which was in our living room).  I set up the "tent" which was a blanket draped over some chairs.  I put E's sleeping bag inside.  We collected "wood" for our campfire (a bunch of wood blocks that I had scattered all over the living room floor outside the tent).  When it was nighttime, we turned off the lights, lit a candle, and used our flashlights.  We "slept" in the tent and also ate the trail mix.  E had a lot of fun, and this was a pretty simple (and cheap, since we already had all of these things) activity. 

We "camped out" on a warm fall night.  If it had been cold out, we probably would have lit a fire in our wood-burning fireplace so that could have been our campfire.  We sometimes roast marshmallows and make S'mores when we build a fire in our fireplace, so that would have definitely added to the activity.  I think we'll do that sometime this winter.

You can just use things you already have around the house for this activity, but I have also seen a really neat play camping equipment set online:  http://www.amazon.com/Pretend-and-Play-Camp-Set/dp/B00021Z2FK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322622982&sr=8-1

I didn't really take any pictures of this activity, but here is our tent:

Grocery Store

Supplies required:
play food (or you could use real food that won't spoil/spill/get ruined)
grocery cart or shopping basket or reusable grocery bag
chairs (or something else that could be a "shelf")
calculator or play cash register

For awhile, "grocery store" was one of E's favorite things to play.  It's a little bit of work sorting out the food and then putting it back in place to play again, but well worth it if your child likes the activity as much as E does. 

We kept this activity pretty simple, but you can make it as complicated as you like.  We turned our dining area into a grocery store by lining up the dining room chairs so that the chair seats could be "shelves."  We then sorted E's play food into food groups  and put each food group onto a different chair.  Then, one of us would be the shopper and the other one of us would be the cashier.  E would take her pretend grocery cart around and pick out the food she wanted.  She would then bring it to me to ring up.  Before we had a play cash register, I just punched random numbers into the calculator and told her how much each item was and then gave her a total.  Once we got the play cash register (I found one for only a few dollars at a Goodwill!), I was able to scan the items and it would come up with a random price.  Then, I would take a turn being the shopper and E would be the cashier.  I enjoy "grocery store" because there is a lot of learning involved (numbers, food groups, etc.) and it doesn't take a lot of time/work to set up.  Plus, having E help me sort the food can be part of the fun. 

It's been awhile since we played grocery store, but E was very into this activity when she was between 2 and 3 years old. 

Animal/Doll Hospital

Supplies required:
stuffed animals and/or dolls
blankets (we have a couple of doll blankets but also use old receiving blankets)
cardboard box lids (or anything else that could be a bed)
pretend doctor's kit (we have this one:  http://www.target.com/p/B-Dr-Doctor-Medical-Kit/-/A-12026416#?lnk=sc_qi_detailimage and we love it; you could also just use medical supplies you have at home)

As E is getting older, she is starting to come up with more ideas for projects and for imaginative play.  One of my favorite things to hear her say is: "I have an idea!"  Back in August, she found some cardboard box lids that we had lying around for some reason.  E decided that she wanted to line them up in the hallway, put animals and dolls in them, and pretend that it was a hospital.  So she set to work doing this, and we also found some blankets for the "beds."  We got out her doctor's kit so she could treat the patients.  Although honestly, she had more fun just arranging the dolls and animals and covering and re-covering them with blankets! 

This isn't a very good picture, but it at least gives you an idea of what the animal hospital looked like:

Animal Habitat

Supplies required:
Cardboard box or some other container for the habitat
Modeling clay (we used Crayola's "Model Magic" that comes in different colors)
Items collected from nature (sticks, small branches, leaves, pinecones, etc.)
Miniature toy animals (we used animals you can find at craft stores in tubes.  Here is a link to an example on Amazon.  This wasn't the exact brand we got although the mix of the animals in this one is exactly what I was looking for but couldn't find at Michael's):  http://www.amazon.com/River-Otter-Adventure-Nature-playset/dp/B0038RQ57O/ref=acc_glance_t_ai_ps_t_3

Since we knew we were going to be getting a lot of rain on Labor Day and would need a fun indoor activity, E and I went out in our yard on Sunday to collect some things to make an animal habitat.  Although we live in a city, our neighborhood is very woodsy. We have tons of trees in our front yard (including both evergreen and decidiuous), so we have a never-ending supply of leaves, twigs, pinecones, pine needles, etc.  We collected pinecones, pine needles, leaves, rocks, and small stems/branches/twigs. 

On Monday, I searched in our garage for the perfect box for the animal habitat.  I found a shoebox that was just deep enough to keep the items contained, but wasn't so deep that E wouldn't be able to reach in it easily to set things up.  Because of how the box made, I was able to cut it so that it only had 3 sides, making it easy for E to reach in and build the habitat. 

We started off using modeling clay (we used Crayola's Model Magic and LOVED it) to make the ground and to make a pond.  Then we added some of the things we had collected in the yard.  We made trees by taking some of the small branches and putting clay around the bottom of them.  We made a bed of pine needles for the animals.  I made a shelter for the animals by finding four twigs of about the same size, mounting them in clay to make them stand up, and placing a huge leaf on top of them to make a roof.  Other than doing that and helping E with the trees, I mainly let her decide what she wanted to do with it. 

E had a ton of fun making the habitat, and when she decided it was done, I got out the miniature animals.  I got out a couple from a zoo babies animal tube (they can be found at craft stores like Michael's) that we already had for car trips, and also got out a pets animal tube that E's grandmother had been nice enough to get for her on Sunday.  Any small toy animals will work, however.  If you are talented (I am most decidedly not!) you can even make the animals out of the modeling clay and that would save money if you don't already have toy animals.  Below are pictures of the tube of animals and the animals placed in the habitat. 

I loved this activity:  it involved some outdoor time but was a good rainy day activity (as far as the actual creating of the habitat), it wasn't very messy, E had a lot of fun both creating and playing with the habitat, and I could just let her create whatever her imagination could come up with.

Yogurt Fingerpainting

Supplies required:
Yogurt or pudding
Food dye

This is a tried-but-true activity that both my children enjoy.  I've usually heard of people using pudding for this activity, but I decided to use vanilla yogurt so it would be more nutritious.  I separated the yogurt into three different dishes and made blue, green, and yellow by mixing a few drops of dye into each dish.  I decided not to use the red dye because I know some people are allergic to it, and we had not tried it with W.  I set E up in her booster seat and poured out some of each yogurt onto the tray.  I did the same on W's highchair tray.  Then, I let them paint their trays (and later themselves--a bath was definitely needed after we were done!)  This is a cheap, easy activity.  It's obvioulsy on the messy side, but definitely worth it.  W and E both got hungry while they were fingerpainting, so halfway through I added some Cheerios to their tray, figuring they could play with it and eat it.

Tall Painting

Supplies Required:
Wooden blocks (2 or 3 square blocks stacked on top of each other, or tall wooden blocks if you can find them)
Acrylic paints
A big piece of paper or cut up paper bag or something else to set the blocks on top of to catch the paint

The idea for this art project came from anothr website, which for the life of me I can't remember the name of.  If I do, I will pass it along--it has lots of fun art project and other creative ideas.  I bought all of the supplies I  needed at Michael's. I am on their e-mail list, so I get coupons e-mailed to me every week.  They often have 30% and 40% off coupons.  I used one of those coupons to buy the wooden  blocks.  I found the perfect blocks for this project in the unfinished wood section of the store.  The tall blocks came in a package of three, and they were for whittling.  They were pretty pricey (I think it may have been $7.00 or $8.00) but with a good coupon, it wasn't a bad deal at all.  I managed to find acrylic paints that were on clearance (they had a bunch of different colors on clearance when I was there) so I got the paints for $0.29 and $0.49 a piece.  All in all, the project ended up being just under $5.00.

This is a fun (but very messy) project that I think would appeal to kids of varying ages.  I easily could have done this project with E when she was 2, or maybe even 18 months (if I thought I could have kept the mess at least somewhat under control).  Basically,  you set the block (or blocks, if you have smaller blocks stacked on top of each other) on a large piece of paper or something else that will catch paint spills.  Then, let your child pick a paint color and squeeze paint over the top of the block so that it runs down the sides.  Keep doing this with different colors until the block is covered.  It creates a neat effect (although ours didn't turn out quite as well as the one I saw on the website I got the idea from), and it was fun for E to be able to squeeze out paint.  Of course, that's also one of the downsides of the project, that it does use up quite a bit of paint!  After E was finished "painting" the block, we took smaller pieces of paper and made prints out of the paint that had dripped onto the big piece of paper.  We basically just set the paper face down in the paint, and then picked it up and set it somewhere to dry.  (If you skip the print-making, this project is not QUITE as messy.) 

I should give one warning about this project:  Do not attempt it on 5 hours of sleep, as I did.  Paint somehow ended up on the carpet (probably because I idiotically had E do the project on her little white table that is in our living room rather than having her do it in the kitchen) and cleaning paint off the carpet is an especially frustrating task when you are exhausted!  Of course, the carpet in our living room is already a huge disaster, so it was really not a big deal.  (Stay tuned for the "painting carpet" project we will no doubt engage in some day right before we get new carpet or new laminate flooring.)
This project would be a great activity to do in the driveway on a nice day.  (We did this project in the evening after I got off work, making doing it outside an impossibility.  See the gorgeous green backdrop out the window, one of the reasons I fell in love with our house?  That also means lots of mosquitos on summer evenings!)

Bean Box

Advanced Preparation Required:  Yes
Supplies Required:
Dry beans
Scoops or other containers
Box (cardboard or plastic)
Bowl (optional)

There is a kids' play place nearby that we take E and W to.  The play place has a table that is filled with dry rice and toys.  E has literally spent 45 minutes at a time playing with the rice table.  So a few months before her brother W was born, E's grandmother and I made her a bean box.  We bought a plastic box from Target (I tried to look for something that was deep enough, but not too big so we wouldn't need to buy tons and tons of beans for it) and then bought several bags of dry beans.  Here is a picture of the box to get an idea of the depth of it:

We filled the box halfway full of beans, and then put measuring cups inside that I had purchased from the dollar store.  We picked out a variety of different beans, which made it more colorful.  E loved the bean box from the first time she played with it.  She loved scooping the beans with the cups, transferring them from the box to a bowl, and later, she started burying things (such as Little People) in the beans and then digging them out.  Sometimes she would bury things in the beans and have me find them, or vice versa.  I like the bean box much better than if we had done a rice box.  Rice is cheaper, but it is MUCH harder to clean up because the pieces are so little.  Although this project is on the pricier size (due to having to buy several bags of beans), the cost can be reduced by using a cardboard box instead of buying one.  E has gotten hours and hours of fun out of her bean box.  When we are in the car, E sometimes pretends to call Grandma or Grandpa (I play Grandma or Grandpa).  Almost every time, when I ask her what she did that day, she says "I played with my bean box."  (Even though she hasn't.)  So even when it's not being used, it's being talked about.

 

A Kid-Sized Waterfall

Just a few miles down the highway from us is a national recreation area where we like to hike.  Last summer my husband and I took E there with the intent of letting her play in the river that runs beside part of the trail.  However, it had recently rained and the river was too cloudy to let E play in.  So instead, we found a little creek with a small waterfall and let her play in that instead.  E has always loved playing in running water, and the creek's waterfall was the perfect size for her.  She loved finding leaves and sending them down the waterfall, and she also loved throwing rocks in the little pool at the base of the waterfall.  She had so much fun that we took her back one weekend in September when her grandmother came to visit.  This time we brought a bucket with us and some bathtub toys.

Today we went back to the same creek to let E and W play.  They loved sitting on top of the waterfall.  W spent most of his time splashing, and E filled up the bucket we brought.  We also sent some toy boats down the waterfall.  I love doing this activity with the kids because they have such a great time, and it's completely free (other than the $20 yearly parking pass for the national recreation area, which I am happy to pay).





E's Restaurant

Requires advanced preparation:  Yes

Supplies required:
Play food
Camera
Paper

Additional optional supplies:
Play plates/silverware/cups (or you could use real items)
Calculator or play cash register
Fake credit card
Something to put the "bill" in, such as an old checkbook holder
Tray
Contact paper to laminate the menu (or you can go to a copy store such as Kinko's and get it laminated)

About a month ago, I asked E if she wanted to play restaurant.  I described to her what it involved, and she seemed excited about the idea.  First, we gathered all of her play food and some of her play plates.  We then put meals together and arranged them on the plates.  I took pictures of each meal.  I then downloaded the pictures onto our computer and made a menu using Microsoft Word.  I kept it simple, with a basic decription of the meal, a price, and a small picture.  I went through each meal and asked E what the price should be.  As you'll be able to see from the picture, eating at E's Restaurant can be fairly cheap or super-expensive, depending on what you order!  Her ravioli must come with a gold sauce.  I printed out the menu, which was 2 pages.  I printed it out double-sided so it was only one piece of paper.  I then took it to Kinko's to laminate it.  (They have a self-help lamination machine there; I believe the cost per page is $1.95 or something like that; I made two copies of the menu.  It actually didn't end up costing me anything because the Kinko's guy didn't charge me for it.  And no, I wasn't wearing anything tight or low-cut, so I have no idea why he was so nice.  Perhaps it was just laziness on his part.)  Here is the back page of the menu:

After the menus were finished, I showed E how to play.  I was the hostess/server/chef first.  I showed her to a table (which happens to be the only table at the restaurant--it's a little while table she has).  I gave her a menu and asked her what she wanted.  I wrote down her order on a paper tablet.  I then went and got the food and put it on plates.  Our real estate agent gave us a serving tray as a present when we moved into this house, so I put the food on the serving tray and brought it to E.  I think this is one of her favorite things about playing restaurant--carrying things on the tray.  I got her more food (she was apparently very hungry), and then totaled up her order on a calculator and told her how much she owed.

When it was time for E to be the hostess/server/chef, the restaurant was a lot less formal (as to be expected with a 3-year-old!)  She showed me to a table (it was cute listening to her tell me that there was a lovely table by the window, something I had said) and took my order.  She brought me some of the things I asked for, and didn't bring me other things I asked for.  She informed me that she was out of burritos.  Then, awhile later, she brought me a burrito and told me that it had been hiding.  E then just had a great time bringing me a bunch of food on the tray, and the menu part of the restaurant was forgotten. 

We have played restaurant a few times since, and I think it's a great role-playing activity.  It could easily be played with more kids, so there would be more customers, servers, chefs, etc.  It can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be, depending on the children's ages and/or interest level.  If you already have play food and a camera, then this activity is very cheap.  If you don't have play food, you could use real food.  If you don't have a camera and/or computer and/or printer or don't want to hassle with it, you could just draw/write a menu on a piece of paper. 

Some additional things you could do with the activity that I did not do with E:

• Have the child dress up as a chef, either with a chef's dress-up outfit (Melissa and Doug make one that's cute: http://www.amazon.com/Melissa-Doug-Chef-Role-Costume/dp/B002F9NH68/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1311616486&sr=8-1) or just use an apron or other things you might have around the house
• After the customer is finished with the food, wash the dishes (either in the real kitchen sink or give the child a bucket or big bowl of water to do it in); E's grandmother got her a washing dishes sink for her birthday that we could use for this purpose:  http://www.amazon.com/iPlay-Doin-Dishes-Kitchen-Sink/dp/B001R94LWQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=toys-and-games&ie=UTF8&qid=1311616529&sr=1-1

Introduction

I am the mother of two children, E (3 years old) and W (9 months old).  I work full-time, and my husband stays at home with our children.  I decided to start this blog in order to write about the activities that I do with E and W.  I plan to use it as a resource when W gets older, so I can remember some of the things E particularly enjoyed doing at various ages.  Hopefully, it will also give my readers some ideas for things they can do with their children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, students, etc. (assuming someone else besides my husband and mother read this...okay, perhaps my husband reading it is a stretch).

When I was a child, I didn't have a DVD player in the car.  My family didn't get a computer until I was in 5th grade, and we didn't have the Internet (AOL dial-up) until my senior year in high school.  Although E and W won't be able to believe it when I tell them (just like I didn't believe that my dad trekked through 6-foot high piles of snow for 10 miles to get to school), I somehow managed to survive.  Kids spend a lot more time in front of screens now, and the toys are more high-tech--it seems like they all make noise, move, light up, or all of the above.  I am definitely not against technology.  E and W definitely have toys that make noise, move, and light up.  E has lately started watching an episode of Curious George in the afternoons, and she has some Berenstain Bear DVDs.  She also plays some games on her grandmother's I-pad.  However, I vowed to myself even before E and W were born that I would encourage them to use their imaginations.  To create, pretend, explore.  To get messy, even if that sometimes means ruining an outfit. 

As part of a single-income family, it is important for me to find activities for E and W that won't be too expensive.  Although I can't promise that all of the activities I will write about on this blog are low- or no-cost (sometimes the expense is worth it), hopefully most of them will be.

If anyone tries out any of these activities (or variations of these activities), I'd love to hear about your experience...feel free to leave comments!  Thanks for reading.