As a stay at home mom, I can run out of ideas to do with my busy 3 yr old and active 6 yr old.
So, I just wanted to share some of the things, we have been doing lately:
1. I recycled a coffee tin and with duck tape and stickers, we made a drum. It makes a neat sound with the plastic tin on top of the metal and all taped with duck tape. My daughter uses it often and it looks pretty on her shelf in her room.
2. My kids love baking. But, I always have arguments between the two of them: Chocolate vs Vanilla. We came to a compromise and decided on both. I let them spread their side of the chocolate and vanilla. It tasted very good. They decided on the happy face.
3. We have a local walking track. My son can unwind his energy. My daughter can sit in her stroller or run or walk with us. It is a large open space. Some people may not have walking tracks in their community, if not, then when the weather is nice, you could take a walk to a nearby park. Time them and race with them. There are so many things to do when you are active and active games to play that will hopefully tire them out our where you can use it as an opportunity to have a great one on one conversation with your kid about school or life philosophies....
4. We did some sand art, it came as a set, which you can purchase from Micheals or walmart, maybe even the dollar store. My daughter had so much fun doing this. It was simple, but different. At the end of it, we had all the mixed sand in a bucket and she got to play for a bit. It is messy or can be. But, easy to clean.
5. I took some spaghetti jars from the recycling. We cleaned them really well with dish soap and we scrubbed the labels and glue off. It took some time. I then used some enamel paint that I had lying around from when I painted the kids rooms. It was a BEHR paint. We took spoons and put the paint in the jar, twirled all the paint around to cover the inside surface of the jar. I turned the jar over to let it drip out. That took a full day. The next day we went back to it. I had my daughter do the flower arrangement, the way she liked it. I purchased a bunch of fake flowers from Micheals. She chose the flowers she wanted, she also decorated the jar the way she liked. The materials for the project that were used were: Clear jar
BEHR paint
Fake flowers
Sticker's
Ribbons and white glue
6. Colour by number. This is quite simple. This can be purchased at Walmart or even dollar store. However, you can also make your own. You just need a blank paper or canvas, draw a picture with a black sharpie pen and put the numbers down. In the corner, draw a legend of what colour goes with what number and have your child fill it out. My daughter had a great time doing this, it took some concentration and it was time consuming. While she did this, I was able to clean, do dishes and help my son with homework.
7. This is a favourite for young kids. I had my daughter lie down and I traced her in the pose she wanted. Once that was done, my daughter used markers to dress her how she wanted.
8. Again, we used recycled boxes. My son is a huge minecraft fan. So, we took paper and painted a minecraft zombie, we glued the paper to the box. We also used a bigger box to make the bottom part (which is not shown here), it was to make his blue shirt. We cut out the arms and made a minecraft zombie costume with very little to no cost to us. It was a simple project and kept my son busy.
9. My daughter loves painting. So, I thought I would do something different today than the regular painting. I had her cut up a potato and we made potato stamps, a heart and a star.
10. A puppet show. This was taken at the library. However, I have had my kids take boxes and make a puppet show. For the puppets, I had them make cats, dogs, cows, whatever out of construction paper. My son made the pigeon from the pigeon books by mo willems. We then glued them onto popsicle sticks. I could not find a picture of that. But, these are the most recent pictures. Sometimes, it is a break to just take them to the library and let them read or play with whatever is there.
11. Now, I said 10 activities, but I have added one more because this kept my kids busy and they also learned about money. I had them separate the pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, loonies and toonies from each other. We then, counted the money by 5's, 10's and 1's and 2's. I told them if they could make 4 dollars out of the dimes, nickels, then they could keep that for their piggy bank and save up to buy themselves something they would really like to have.
This activity keeps them busy and teaches them about money. My son at this point got more out of it because he understands the value of money and that money can get you stuff. Whereas my daughter just likes the sound of her musical frozen bank, so she is learning through repetition without even being aware of it.
