Some Fun Kids Activities
Harry from https://purehomeimprovement.com/ says “It has been a looong week with my son. He’s 3 years old and boy o boy, does he push every one of my buttons. I’m trying to give him some constructed play a bit so here are some things we’ve done over the past couple of weeks.”
This was a huge hit. I got the idea here. Basically, I put some little dinosaurs and sea animals I picked up at the Dollar Tree a while ago in the bottom of a Tupperware. I filled it up half way with water, then added some blue dye and froze it overnight.
We grabbed a meat mallet and headed outside. I just gave it a little squeeze to get it out of the Tupperware. We dropped it on the ground and he went to town rescuing his dinosaur friends.
I made him wear his sunglasses so no glass flew up into his eyes.
Sarah was relaxed enjoying watching her big bro.
He kept saying, “This is cool!” Mom brownie points! I grabbed some colored ice cubes I made for something else (see below) and he crushed those too.
I had also pinned this idea a long time ago. I really just tucked the idea in my brain and never re-looked at it. I thought the idea was to make colored ice cubes and “color” the concrete by letting them melt. That didn’t really work.
So, when I go back and look at the idea, she let the kids use the ice cubes to color a piece of fabric. It turned out really pretty. So, I may have to revisit this at some point. For now, it’s another great thing for my little guy to smash with his meat mallet. We ended up just using the ice cubes as cars and letting them “race” until they melted. Below are “McQueen”, “Dinoco”, “Chick Hicks”, and my personal fav, “Yellow Belly”.
Something else that has been a huge hit is water beads! I admit, I’m obsessed with these. Just running by fingers through them makes a crappy moment that much better.
I’ve seen them all over blog land. Basically you buy a little pack of beads. I got mine at Joann’s for $5 and used a 40 or 50% off coupon making them cheap fun. Let them sit in water for 4-6 hours and watch them grow. This was fun to do throughout the day. We’d go back and forth seeing how much they’d grown. Then we used measuring cups to move them from one bowl to the next, we played with them a big bowl of shaving cream. He really loves playing with these. I just keep them in a sealed container but even if you left them out, they’d dry up but you would just need to stick them back in water.
I filled a Tupperware container with vinegar and filled a salt shaker with baking soda and let him shake away. When the soda hits the vinegar, it bubbles up. He’s really liked this a ton too. I got the idea from this blog. We’ve done this several different times, with different colored water (his request). You could also do it the opposite way with a container filled with baking soda and spray on some vinegar.
These are some really easy, really cheap ideas for you and your kiddos too. I’d love to hear if you try any of them and how your kiddos liked them!
Thanks for reading!