Adventure walk

When you're two, and adventure walk can be anywhere! We just walked around the block with the dog, and brought along a zip-lock bag to collect treasures. Walks can be an oppertunity to talk about all sorts of things - the neighborhood, the weather, different things you can hear (wind, birds, leaves, people), etc. We also say 'hi' to the neighbors and somtimes get to stop and play with friends!

The five senses: Touch

First.... a shot of my messy boy!

Various slimes/goops/dough is great for experencing the sense of touch.

Gluten Free Playdough:

1/2 cup rice flour (you can use regular flour instead)

1/2 cup cornstarch

1/2 cup salt

2tsp cream of tarter

1 TBS oil

1 cup of water

Cook in a saucepan on medium until it forms a ball, let cool and kneed

Another dough:

1 cup cornstarch

2 cups baking soda

1.5 cups water

cook until it looks like mashed potatoes, let cool, kneed. This can also be rolled thin and baked in a cool oven for an hour or so to make things like ornaments. Has a different texture than most playdough.

Gak (pictured)

8oz of elmers glue

1/2 cup water

1tsp of borax

Mix water and borax, add glue and stir/kneed well. pour off extra liquid.

Oobleck

cornstarch

water

start with a bunch of cornstarch, slowly add water stirring as you go (it will end up about 1/2 water, 1/2 cornstarch), when you stirr slow it will feel like liquid, but if you move fast, its like a solid!

Here is Landis and Levi fingerpainting! Great for both touch and sight (and a mess)

Finger paint:

3 cups water

1 cup cornstarch

Put in a saucepan on medium heat, bring to a simmer and cook until thickened (it will thicken more as it cools, add water as nessisary and stir often while it cools), color as disired (food coloring, kool-aid packet, add a little bit of kid friendly paint...)

Sensory box ideas:

- shredded paper (Levi likes this one!)

- sand

- moon sand

- lentils

- beans

- coffee grounds

- dirt/mud

- ice

- water

- packing peanuts (use the cornstarch ones only, not the styrafoam)

- buttons

- leaves

- rice (you can color it if you want)

- pasta

- shaving cream

- straws cut into small lengths

- bird seed

- polymer crystals and water (from the garden store)

More for the letter B

B is for boat!
Levi decorated the letter b, the waves and the sail, and then helped to cut them out. Then we glued them onto the background paper. Another idea would be to make an little boat and float it in the bath/pool (talk about sink vs. float too!).
If you are lucky enough to live by the water like we are, go look at some real boats!


Buttons:
We put buttons in the sensory box, fun to look at, touch, count, sort, name colors, thread onto string....

The Letter B

A simple bear project, just cut the shapes out of paper and have the child glue them together! Older kids can cut the shapes out themselves. We used sticky dots for the eyes too, and read a book about a bear.

Here is Levi rolling out some dough to make bugs. This is model magic (crayola), which is very light weight, and easy to clean up! He stuck pipe-cleaners in for the legs.

Our new bread machine! We got this at the thrift store for $10, it looked new! Found the manual for it online and tried it out! Make sure to use actual bread flour, otherwise you end up with brick-like bread. This was our first attempt, we have sense made other types of bread and some yummy cinnomon rolls.

Levi loves to help bake, and this one is easy because you just dump everything in and push the button. Great for math skills as well (count the scoops!)

Here is the pipe-cleaner part. I wish I could figure out the pics better on blogger.... I am not that skilled.

The bird project - Draw a simple bird shape on paper and glue feathers on!

Please use cruelty free feathers: http://www.crueltyfreevegan.com/ OR just cut some feather shapes out of paper instead!

We also went outside to listen for bird sounds, there are a lot of different birds you can hear when you are paying attention!

B is for:

-bear
-balloon

-ball

-bus

-button

-beads

-bread

-bug

- bird

- boat

The Letter 'V'

V is for:

-volcano

-vacuum

- van

-vest

-vase

- valentine!

We made valentine cards (and sent them to all of the grandparents of course)

I made Levi a Valentines Vest as well!

Thats about it for the letter V.

Another idea would be to make a 'volcano' with baking soda/vinegar for the lava... this is a really fun experiment! We didnt do it b/c Levi is allergic to vinegar and food coloring...and knowing him he would have his hands right in the middle of everything, and then in his mouth.