Autumn Activity Shelves

I've mentioned before that we have a bookshelf in our kitchen full of novel toys and seasonal activities to keep our kids engaged while we're cooking dinner or otherwise occupied on the main floor of our house.

For autumn, it's stocked with:

Art Supplies

glue, feathers, leaf stickers, autumn foam stickers, Halloween cookie cutters to trace, foam leaves, colored card stock and white art paper, and a jack-o-lantern sticker book

The supplies are tucked away in a felt Halloween basket purchased on clearance last year.

Fine Motor Activity

tiny jack-o-lantern erasers, pumpkin ice cube tray, and tongs

Story Props and Book

Seasonal Picture Books

and our autumn sensory bin and last year's autumn treasure basket.

The art supplies, books, and fine motor activity fit neatly inside a basket.

Autumn Sensory Bin

Our autumn sensory bin contains black beans, white beans, orange-dyed rice*, plastic leaf table scatter from Target's Dollar Spot (purchased last year after-Halloween clearance, but I believe they have it again this year), painted acorns, bowls, a scoop, and tongs.

We collected some acorns at the park recently, washed them, baked them in the oven at 350 for 20 minutes (to kill off any insects/larvae), painted the nuts with soy paint, hot glued the caps on, then polished them up with some beeswax to protect the paint. They make a fun sensory bin addition.

*To color the rice, I just dumped some vinegar and a few drops of red and yellow food coloring onto the rice, stirred thoroughly, then spread it flat to dry for a few hours.

February Fun Box Fine Motor Activity

For the month of February, I've had a simple fun box transferring activity available to Meg on our kitchen busy shelves.

Basket with heart-shaped silicone ice cube molds, tongs, and Valentines erasers

Provides opportunities for fine motor practice, sorting, and pattern-making

More fun box activities
First Embroidery
Color Matching with Gift Bows
Magnetic Colored Popsicle Sticks
Magnetic Pom Pom Balls
Erasers and Suction Cups Activity
Paint Chip Matching Game
Uppercase and Lowercase Matching Eggs
Animal Matching Game
Pool Noodle Art
Button Snake Toy
Memory Matching Toy
Ribbons in a Bottle Toy
Clothespin Clipping Toy
Pom Pom Push Toy
Pipe Cleaner Poking Toy

Toddler / Preschooler First Embroidery Project

My daughter sees me embroidering frequently, and she loves when I let her help, holding her hands to guide the needle where I want it, and letting her puuuuuuuull the thread taught on her own. I made this fun box activity with that in mind, after having seen it mentioned on many a preschool blog.

I used some rubbery shelf liner from Dollar Tree, an extra embroidery hoop, yarn, and a blunt yarn needle. I threaded the needle and knotted the two ends of the yarn together so it wouldn't come unthreaded. Soon I'll teach her to thread it herself, so she can switch colors on her own.

It was so sweet to watch my little one diligently working away at her embroidery, curled up in a corner of the family room. She even took the hoop to bed with her at nap time. It won't be long before she'll be ready for a sharp needle and some Aida cloth. Then the real fun begins!

(Do warn your child that if s/he pulls too hard, the backing can rip. Meg only had to do it once to figure that out the hard way.)





Other activities in the series:
Color Matching with Gift Bows
Magnetic Colored Popsicle Sticks
Magnetic Pom Pom Balls
Erasers and Suction Cups Activity
Paint Chip Matching Game
Uppercase and Lowercase Matching Eggs
Animal Matching Game
Pool Noodle Art
Button Snake Toy
Memory Matching Toy
Ribbons in a Bottle Toy
Clothespin Clipping Toy
Pom Pom Push Toy
Pipe Cleaner Poking Toy
Fun Boxes

Birthday Play - Making cakes with play dough

Margaret's birthday is next week, and the promises of festivities have been hanging in the air around here. The other day when Meg was playing play dough, she started making "happy birthdays" for her doll, which I came to understand were in fact birthday cakes. This prompted a bit of extension on my part. I found some birthday confetti, birthday candles, and gems at Dollar Tree, dug into my cupboards for some extra cupcake wrappers (Who am I kidding? They're all extras. I'm never going to use these things!), and made up a batch of fresh play dough in cakey colors.

Meggie dug right in with zeal!

We made cupcakes:

Big cakes:

Giant cake balls:

And had a party:

"Blowing out" the candles

The birthday girl

I used just a touch less oil than usual to make the dough, so it would have a slightly crumbly texture like real cake. I also didn't mix the color completely, again for realism.

Removing the goodies made for a great fine motor activity.

Everything stores compactly, making it a great fun box activity, too.

Magnetic Pom Pom Balls

My girl loves pom pom balls. She sorts them, pretends to cook with them, crafts with them, and stuffs all her purses full of them "just in case." I'm forever picking up packets of pom pom balls from Dollar Tree and Target's Dollar Spot to supplement her addiction.

For some busy box fun, I made a magnetic pom pom ball activity. I just hot glued a magnet to the back of each ball and provided a Dollar Tree cookie sheet to play on.

On the heavier Target balls, I used store-bought button magnets.

For the lighter dollar store balls, I cut up promotional ad magnets (you know, the kind people leave on your door or that come on your phone book) into squares and glued them on.

Margaret loves using these to make rainbows and stripes and other patterns.




Other activities in the series:
Erasers and Suction Cups Activity
Paint Chip Matching Game
Uppercase and Lowercase Matching Eggs
Animal Matching Game
Pool Noodle Art
Button Snake Toy
Memory Matching Toy
Ribbons in a Bottle Toy
Clothespin Clipping Toy
Pom Pom Push Toy
Pipe Cleaner Poking Toy
Fun Boxes

Erasers and Tiny Suction Cups - Fine Motor Activity

Once again, Target's Dollar Spot and clearance offerings have provided a really great fun box activity for Meg.

I found large bags of cute shaped miniature erasers in the dollar spot, and some suction-cup bathtub grippies (I think they're designed to cut down on slipping, but maybe they're just to decorate the tub - the packaging didn't say) on clearance for $1.25 for a pack of 6. Add in some plastic tongs (we have a few sets of these, they actually came with a sandwich tray a family member brought for a get together a while ago), and you've got a simple fine motor activity. In the ECE world, we call this one-to-one correspondence. Meg just calls it fun.

I split them into two sets. The blue plates remind me of lily pads for the frogs, and the yellow ones match the stars.

As a kid, I was obsessed with erasers like these, and any tiny things for that matter. It must be the age, because Meg can't get enough of these little guys either.




Other activities in the series:
Paint Chip Matching Game
Uppercase and Lowercase Matching Eggs
Animal Matching Game
Pool Noodle Art
Button Snake Toy
Memory Matching Toy
Ribbons in a Bottle Toy
Clothespin Clipping Toy
Pom Pom Push Toy
Pipe Cleaner Poking Toy
Fun Boxes

Paint Chip Shade Matching - Fine Motor Activity

This activity was a bit fiddly to make, but I just plopped down in front of the Olympics one night last week and banged it out. It's a two-part "grow with me" sort of activity, which I love.

I got a rainbow of paint chips from Home Depot, 2 of each sheet. I first cut one of every color in half vertically. This provides a really simple introduction to shade matching. I started with just one chip of each color, so she only had to match blue to blue, green to green, and so forth.

Once she'd gotten the hang of matching the cards the right way - dark with dark and light with light - I added the clothespins I'd made. With some of the scraps from the cut paint chips, I Mod Podged each color shade onto its own clothespin. The activity is then to clip the clothespins onto the matching shade on the card.

I started by giving her just a few colors - red, blue, and yellow. Once she's mastered the concept, I gave her more and more cards and clips in her fun boxes.

This activity is great as it combines color recognition, shade grading, and fine motor skills.





Other activities in the series:
Uppercase and Lowercase Matching Eggs
Animal Matching Game
Pool Noodle Art
Button Snake Toy
Memory Matching Toy
Ribbons in a Bottle Toy
Clothespin Clipping Toy
Pom Pom Push Toy
Pipe Cleaner Poking Toy
Fun Boxes

Uppercase and Lowercase Matching Eggs Toy

I've mentioned before that I have no real desire to incorporate "academics" into Margaret's life right now. She'll be three at the end of the month, and I feel she has much more important things to be exploring than math and writing and reading. Desk time and workbooks and traditional flashcards just aren't our thing around here.

I've also mentioned before that Margaret loves signing. So much so that her ASL vocabulary and grammar is beginning to far exceed mine (I haven't taken a real class in almost 10 years). As a result of her signing, she's learned the manual (fingerspelling) alphabet. This triggered a passion for letters in her. She gets so excited when she sees "ABCs," and she loves naming and matching letters. Since this is something she has a personal interest in, we incorporate letters into our play frequently, just as we do shapes and colors and other symbols.

With that in mind, I decided to have a shot at uppercase/lowercase matching eggs I've seen numerous times on Pinterest. Meg loves Easter eggs, and she always has a few dozen floating around her playroom. I nicked a few and wrote an uppercase letter on one half and its lowercase partner on the other half. I did each letter on the same colored half as a control of error, and it would add an extra challenge to do them on different colors with older kids.

I started by just giving her a few, so she wouldn't be overwhelmed, but she immediately asked for more, and she quickly matched up all 26 pairs. She loves cracking them all apart and matching them back up, naming the letters and colors of the eggs

It would be fun to match other things for extension activities. Dots to numerals, two halves of stickers, pictures to sight words.





Other activities in the series:
Animal Matching Game
Pool Noodle Art
Button Snake Toy
Memory Matching Toy
Ribbons in a Bottle Toy
Clothespin Clipping Toy
Pom Pom Push Toy
Pipe Cleaner Poking Toy
Fun Boxes

Pool Noodle Segments and Toothpicks - 3D Art Activity

For this activity, I simply cut some pool noodles purchased at Dollar Tree into rings and provided toothpicks.

The toothpicks can easily be poked into the noodles at any angle and fun 3D art can be created. Margaret calls it "making rainbows."





Other activities in the series:
Button Snake Toy
Memory Matching Toy
Ribbons in a Bottle Toy
Clothespin Clipping Toy
Pom Pom Push Toy
Pipe Cleaner Poking Toy
Fun Boxes