Disney Surprise Fun Bags for Extra Park Magic

I don't have any great pictures for this post, unfortunately. I have snoopy eyes over my shoulder, and I want the bags' contents to be a bit of a surprise for the little ones.

I loved this idea I found on Pinterest, making fun surprise bags for the kids to open at specific times during the trip. For mine, I used brown paper lunch sacks, a Sharpie, free Disney stickers from the Disney Movie Club welcome package, and washi tape to close them. Our bags contain:

• Open when there's a rumbly in your tumbly: fancy lollipops - purchased on clearance in hopes of staving off requests for the pricy park ones.
• Open in a looooong line: 1)squishy sensory ball and plastic Slinky, 2)Rubix cube and plastic Slinky. - all from Dollar Tree.
• Open before Fantasmic and the parade: glow swords, glow sticks, light-up bracelets - Dollar Tree and Target Dollar Spot.
• Open when people-watching: mini bottles of bubbles - Dollar Tree.
• Open when you see a penny machine or a wishing well: homemade penny tubes.

They're nothing beautiful to behold, but I think the kids will get a kick out of opening them. They'll be stashed in our park snack bag until they're needed.

December Activity Shelves

This year's December activity shelves revolve, surprisingly enough, around winter and Christmas.

As usual, the top two shelves are filled with themed activities while the lower two hold a variety of non-themed toys.

Our sensory bin is a white dish tub from Dollar Tree. It's filled with white rice scented with almond extract (I'd originally planned to use mint, but we were out), a bit of glitter, miniature mylar gift bows from Dollar Tree, and a scoop that I believe we purchased from Target's Dollar Spot earlier this year.

Our treasure basket holds a few of the same things our Shiny Stuff Treasure Tin held last year (holographic foil tissue paper, a large jingle bell, and a shiny gift bow), but we've also added some other jingly instruments.

There's an art tin with a variety of papers - old dollar store greeting cards, pages from a Christmas picture book that got ruined, a snowman notepad, and festive foam shapes from Target's Dollar Spot after-Christmas clearance last year - as well as feathers, spangles, scissors, glue, and markers.

We have a basket of books about various December holidays and wintry fun, some plush reindeer the kids were given last year at "Story Time with Mrs. Claus" at the mall, and a tree stacker from Plan Toys (purchased for a steal at the consignment store, since it was massing the top piece).

Previous Seasonal Activity Shelves
February and Valentine's 2013
Springtime and Easter 2013
Autumn 2013

Previous Seasonal Sensory Bins
Springtime and Easter 2013
Autumn 2013

Previous Seasonal Treasure Baskets
Autumn 2012
Winter 2012
Valentine's 2013

Previous Seasonal Shelf Activities
Christmas 2012
Valentine's 2013
Halloween 2013

Halloween Colored Glue Suncatchers

We got the idea for these colored glue suncatchers from the fabulous early childhood blog, Teach Preschool.

To make the colored glue, we filled empty condiment bottles ($1 apiece from Wal-Mart) with white school glue and a squirt of tempera paint. You can use food coloring or liquid watercolor to tint, if you prefer. I stuck autumn and Halloween cookie cutters (a Wilton set - $4 at Michael's) to contact paper to hold them in place.

Meg simply filled the cutters up with the glue. I encouraged her to use different colors in the same cutter to highlight features, but she wanted to stick with one color per cutter. Just as well, because the glue did run quite a bit and the colors may have mixed too much. I've read that you can run a bead of hot glue around the inside and outside of the cutters to prevent the colored glue from escaping underneath, but, despite a lot of leakage, our cutters were still nice and thick, so I don't think it's necessary.

The shapes took a few days to dry, but they finally remained firm instead of sticking when we lifted a corner to peek underneath. The oranges and reds dried the slowest, probably because they had more pigment. After we popped them from the cutters (much easier when they're still a bit stretchy, by the way, than if you let them harden completely), we poked holes in the top and bottom of each shape and strung them together with thread to hang in the windows. For fun, I added some faces and other simple (very simple) features with a Sharpie before we hung them, like so:

This was one that we left in the cutter until it hardened completely, and you can see that his hand and tail didn't pop out cleanly.

"Let's Go Camping!" Pretend Play

I'd been feeling like a bit of a loser mom for a while. We had a lot going on in August, and I was getting snappy and short with my kids, and they were spending a lot of their days cranky as a result. One night I was laying in bed, thinking about how cute it is that my Meg is currently obsessed with the concept of camping when she has no practical experience with it, and on a whim I decided to set up a camping trip for her to wake up to.

I sneaked downstairs and set up a "campsite" in the middle of the playroom with the kids' play tent, an overturned rug, and a "campfire" of Lincoln Logs and train tracks.

The "fishing hole" was made from a blue yoga mat, plastic ducks, a frog beanbag toss game, and some hastily-cut cardstock fish with paperclips clipped to their heads. I made a quick fishing rod with a wooden dowel (pinata stick from Meg's birthday party), twine, and a magnet.

I set up some gathering activities: pom pom "blueberries" (which is a game Meg made up herself ages ago) with tin pails, Dollar Tree faux leaves scattered on the floor, and plastic bugs hidden amongst the playroom toys.

I set the scene further by tucking faux flowers into couch cushions and nestling woodland stuffed animals in appropriate "homes."

Meg was greeted when she came down the stairs with a backpack filled with bug nets, a magnifying glass, cooking supplies, a flashlight, the fishing pole, a cardboard tube "spy glass" she'd made earlier, a sleeping bag, and an explorer's hat.

All told, it took me maybe 15 minutes to set up.

She was so excited when she woke up and heard we were going camping!

She caught and cooked dinner,

collected leaves and bugs and blueberries,

and spent a good long time hiding from bears in the tent. When we finished, we set it all back up and did it again. And again. And again.

She's been asking to go camping again every day since, so I'm going to have to set up another surprise trip soon. Things were just tossed together and not very attractively, but the novelty of the activity and one-on-one time with Mom thrilled her. And it didn't cost us a cent!

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.

Creating a Blank Book to Illustrate

Recently Jean from The Artful Parent mentioned buying her daughters some blank books to create with. It inspired me to make a blank book for Meg to illustrate that was a bit more special than our typical sheets of paper folded together.

I had a nice clean sheet of white cardboard stashed away in my craft room. It came in a package I'd received, thicker than poster board, but thinner than corrugated cardboard. I showed Meg how to score it down the center on front and back so it would fold nicely, then she cut some white paper down to the same size with her scrapbooking paper cutter. We stapled it all together down the spine.

After it was done being assembled, Meg wasn't happy with the staples being visible on the spine and asked if she could cover them with washi tape. It was a pretty brilliant idea and made the book very pretty. She and her brother worked together to make lovely abstract pictures on the cover and each page. He actually worked on this part more than she did. I think the assembly turned out to be Meg's favorite part.

Glue, Salt, Liquid Watercolor

Drizzle white glue all over paper (card or poster board works best - we didn't have any handy, so we used watercolor paper), sprinkle salt liberally on wet glue, touch tip of paintbrush loaded with liquid watercolor to the salty glue and watch the color creep along the line of glue.

Liquid Watercolor on Cotton Rounds

I'm short on time at the moment, so the posts for the next few days will consist mostly of pictures. Fortunately, they speak for themselves pretty well.

Cosmetic cotton rounds (from Dollar Tree), diluted liquid watercolors (diluted food coloring would work too), paint cups, droppers, pie tins, cookie sheet

We strung them together with embroidery floss after they dried and used them as a table garland on Easter.