Magnifier Discovery Board

Both of our girls are in love with their magnifying glasses at the moment, we bought them about a month ago and they've been getting a daily workout ever since. At Bubble's kindy they have a great 'discovery board' toy which consists of a wooden tray with holes cut into it and tiny specimens for the kids to look at with their magnifiers. There is a sheet of perspex bolted over the top to keep all the little things inside.
I thought it was genius and wondered if we could make something similar ourselves where the things inside could be changed around regularly. It took awhile to find some cheap petri dishes but our discovery board turned out pretty well and I'm really looking forward to changing the items inside it every few weeks to fit with whatever theme it is we are learning about.

WE USED:

* an old wooden puzzle board
(you could also use wooden board cut to size, a chopping board, a wooden tray etc...)
* a pack of plastic petri dishes
(we sourced ours from Ebay)
* adhesive
(we used clear Liquid Nails, but any strong glue would do the trick)
* small items of interest
* magnifying glass

For the base of our discovery board I used the reverse side of a large wooden puzzle that had lost some pieces.
(see HERE for what we did with the remaining pieces)

Using clear Liquid Nails (any strong glue would work, that was just what I had on hand) I attached as many of the petri dish bases to the board as I could fit.
Once the glue was dry (overnight) I filled each one with something interesting for the girls to examine and replaced the dish lids over the top.

Newsprint and old keys.

Pencil shavings and seed beads.

A piece of clay with an imprint and a swatch of interesting fabric.

Some coloured buttons and the insides from a broken kaleidoscope toy (I knew I held onto this stuff for a reason :-D).

A circle cut from one of the girls magazines.

Bubble examining the items in the discovery board.

Other ideas for discovery boards:

Natural items : leaves (skeleton leaves especially would look great), seeds, seed pods, flowers, dead insects like bugs or butterflies, soil samples, gravel/stones, bark samples, grass blades.

Colours or shapes: small beads, felt or fabric discs, sequins, play dough or clay shapes, miniature items of certain shapes (bottle lids, buttons, stamps etc...), glitter, coloured sand, confetti.

Textures: Fabric samples like hessian, satin, velvet etc..., netting (fruit bags or stockings), course sandpaper, recycled paper, carpet swatches, ash, smooth gemstones, clay, rough and smooth tree bark.

Glass Stone Stacking & Patterning

We use our glass stones for all sorts of things; in our imaginary play scenes, counting games and as 'money' when playing shops, laid side by side to make roads and write letters.
Yesterday we used them for a fine motor stacking activity and also patterning games so that Bubble could practice sequencing and Squeak her colours.

WE USED:

* glass stones
(you can find bags of these at most dollar or home decor shops)

Bubble found stacking the stones challenging, it gave her fine motor control a good workout!

Both girls enjoyed the patterning activity; we made sequences of varying lengths, making them longer as we went.

A two colour sequence.

Three colour sequence.

'G' is for Grapes

We are just recently home from another trip interstate so craft time has been a bit limited while we get the house back in order and get our flow going again. Today we did a simple 'finger painting' activity to fit with our letter G theme, Bubble enjoyed it so much I'm going to try and think up other pictures we can make with fingerprints.

WE USED:

* paint (we used purple)
* paint pad (we used a foam tray and wet cotton pads)
* paper
* coloured pencils/felt
* glue

Paint pads made with a foam tray, cotton pads, water and paint.

I cut a stem and some leaves from felt and Bubble glued them to the page. I then drew a grape stalk with brown pencil and we chatted about the different parts before Bubble added the 'grapes' to her picture.

Bubble used the paint pad and her thumb to make prints along the stalks.

Bubbles finished painting of a bunch of purple grapes. She was very particular about where each one went and didnt want to add any more because aparently then they 'would just all fall off!" :-D

'G' is for Garden - Celery Prints

It's been awhile since we did a letter on our phonics wall so today we picked up where we left off - with the letter 'G'. Bubble enjoyed doing some vegetable printing and there was a lot of fine motor practice involved putting our little rose garden together.

WE USED:

* paint and brush
* whole celery cut close to the base
* paper
* scissors
* mini skewers
* green ribbon
* tray (we used a foam tray from some fresh produce)
* playdough
* blutack

Cut a bunch of celery close to the base so that you are left with a flower shape for printing with (and eat celery stalks, of course :-D).

We started out doing sponge printing but it didnt work very well, so we used a brush to paint the ends instead.

The celery leaves a great print which looks a lot like a rose.
Once the prints were dry we cut them out so we could create a garden with them.

Bubble preparing our 'garden bed', she really enjoyed pushing the playdough into the corners, making it flat and then 'digging holes for the flowers' with her fingers.
We made a similar type of playdough garden a little while ago ; Sensory Garden.

To create leaves on our flowers we tied short lengths of green ribbon around some mini skewers. Bubble can't quite tie knots by herself yet but she had fun trying! I did the crossover and then tuck under bit with her, then she would pull each one tight. Won't be long and she'll be tying up her own shoes :-)

Bubble put some blutack on the back of each of her flowers.

Then carefully secured them to the top of her mini skewer flower stems.

Bubble planting her little rose garden.

Rainbow Party Playdate

Bubble had one of her friends over for a play date today and she was very excited about it. I asked her yesterday what she would like to do for the day and she answered with "a rainbow party" (rainbows are a bit of a big deal around here at the moment). At first I was going to say no, parties are for birthdays not for playdates, but then I thought ... well, why not? Not a presents and cake all out type party, but why not put up some decorations, pick a theme and do some special activities?
So a rainbow party day is what we had and all three of the girls had an absolute ball. I put up some tissue paper poms that were left over from a BBQ at the park, blew up some coloured balloons and put some rainbow themed activities in the middle of the table. We made coloured salt dough necklaces and colourful bead bracelets, dressed up as butterflies, drank fruit milkshakes and made some rainbow cookies. We then headed to the park and blew bubbles and made some brightly coloured dancing wands. It didn't hurt that the weather today was so beautiful too, just perfect for a happy little rainbow celebration.

These poms are so easy to make and the bright colours were perfect for our rainbow party today.
For instructions on making your own check out this link.

I made up some simple salt dough from this recipe and created some bright colours for the girls to use. We used playdough utensils and skewers for making the necklace holes in the top.

Bubble made a handprint with some of her dough.

One of the baked salt dough necklaces - I overcooked them a tad but they still looked pretty good luckily!

Milkshake time - the girls made their own using colourful fruit, yoghurt and milk.

Yum!

We played a game with some colourful pompoms - using masking tape we made a start and finsh line on the floor. The girls loved using straws to have races blowing them across the tiles.
Game inspired by this post on House Of Baby Piranha.

The girls enjoyed dressing up in wings and jewellery, as well as anything else they could dig out of the dress up boxes!

The balloons were a hit (when are they not :-D).

The girls made colourful bead bracelets while we waited for our cookies to bake.

I followed this recipe to make rainbow cookie dough and the girls created their own colourful masterpieces to bake. They were really yummy!

Chasing bubbles at the park.

I asked the girls to collect a stick each so that we could make some dancing wands. They took their time finding just the 'right one' :-)

We used some reels of ribbon and a pack of colourful clips from the dollar shop to make our wands with.

We simply attached the clips to the end of our sticks and tied the lengths of coloured ribbon to them. Easy and fun!

Bubble taking her rainbow dancing stick for a spin.

“Come over to play at the Childhood 101 We Play link up”