Little Chick Activity

My son loves chicks, as in baby chickens. I mean loves them! So, we had a fun night with chicks!I ordered this super cute book and brought it out after dinner one night. We read the book together as a family (and by "as a family" I mean I read it to my son while my 1 year old made a huge mess of the house and my husband played Angry Birds on the iPhone). After we read all three stories in the book I pulled out...

...our dessert of dirt and worms! We had to pretend that we were chicks digging for worms in the dirt. Fun, easy, and delicious!

Marshmallow Snowball Fight

Too cold to play outside? Just do what we did last night! We had an indoor marshmallow snowball fight that lasted so long it wore our 5 year old out! So much fun and SO easy! All you need is a bag of marshmallows and a smile on your face!

Thanksgiving Turkey

On Thanksgiving, after we had stuffed ourselves with a delicious meal, we gave this turkey a feather display to be proud of! Everyone cut out a feather and wrote a list of things they were grateful for this year. It was fun for adults and kids alike!

Fall Nature Walk Playgroup

This week for playgroup, we went on a Fall Nature Walk.I brought bags to collect all the fall "treasures."When we finished the walk we glued all of the treasures to the bag.

The kids had a great time and when my son got home from school and heard about what we did, we had to go on another walk so he could collect his own fall treasures!

Nature Walk Playgroup

For a fun summer playgroup activity, a couple weeks ago we went on a nature walk. During the summer we usually just meet at a park for playgroup, so this mixed things up a little without having to stray too far from the norm.We made construction paper binoculars by cutting a piece of construction paper in half, rolling it up and taping it, then taping the two rolled up halves together. Then, using a hole punch, we made one hole on each side and tied a piece of yarn through each hole. I had printed off a nature walk check-list and we went on a walk and the kids had to use their binoculars to find all of the items on their check-list. The kids really enjoyed it and it was nice for everyone to stretch their legs on the walk!

Leprechaun Dust

We never did much for St. Patrick's Day when I was growing up (aside from wearing green clothes to school) so I didn't do too much this year. The one thing we did do was "find" some leprechaun dust (pistachio pudding mix)! I split it up so we each had some in a soon-to-be sealed container. Then, I put milk in each of the containers, put the caps on, and everyone got to shake theirs up to see what would happen to the leprechaun dust! After it was all mixed together we enjoyed eating the pudding with graham crackers. Yum!

(The ration is about 2 tbs. pudding mix to 1 cup of milk.)

St. Patrick's Day

Here's what I did for playgroup this week (but it could also be used as a fun family activity) to celebrate St. Patrick's Day and the kids (hopefully) learned a little something, too! We started off by talking about what rainbows are and how they're made. I did a demonstration by putting a glass full of water on a window sill and a...

White poster board on the floor right in front of it. Make sure the sun is shining brightly through the window or I doubt this would work as well! The sun shines through the water and creates a rainbow that the kids can see. You could also pull out the crayons and let the kids trace and color the rainbow onto the poster board or paper that you're using.

Then I asked the kids what they could find at the end of the rainbow on St. Patrick's Day which led us right into a scavenger hunt! (My latest obsession...they're so much fun!)

The hunt led everyone outside where there was a pot of gold hiding behind a tree! It was so nice out that we all stayed outside and enjoyed the chocolate coins and sunshine. Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Indoor Camping

My son has been talking about camping for weeks on end and I figured the only way to satisfy him would be to go camping! However, since we live in a state that is ridiculously cold and snowy for half of the year, having an actual camp out was out of the question. Hence, indoor camping!

First, it's not really considered camping if you don't have a campfire. Our carpet-safe campfire was made out of cutouts of each of our hands.After cutting the hand prints out I taped them all together and formed a small circle with the adult hands, and a larger circle with the kid hands. We never even knew it wasn't a real fire!
Once we had our fire built, it was time for the camping snacks. I had gotten a wide variety of trail mix ingredients so that we could each make our own individual trail mix. Delicious! Then, while we were sitting in our tent (aka - the blanket thrown over three dining room chairs) enjoying our snack, we took turns telling stories.Once we finished with the trail mix and story-telling it was time to roast some marshmallows. Using a tea light worked fine since our son doesn't like to eat them when they're really roasted, he just likes the idea of it. We've also roasted marshmallows in the toaster oven by just leaving the door open and that worked great (and didn't leave a black residue on the marshmallows!).