Salt Dough Recipe

This Salt Dough is great for making fossils, ornaments, handprints, or any other project where you need to have a hardened finished product. 

Salt Dough
1 cup salt
2 cups flour
1 cup lukewarm water
Optional food coloring

 

Combine flour and salt.  Add water and stir until dough forms.  Knead for about 5 minutes, until it is smooth. 

Make your creations!  Bake for 2-3 hours at 200 degrees F. 

Dinosaur Activities

Outing:
-Visit a museum nearby that has even a few dinosaur exhibits. 

 

Activity/Project:
-Use play dough or clay and push various items into the dough to create fossils. 
-Make a simple Salt Dough (recipe below),  roll out small circles about 1/4-1/2 inch thick, make imprints  of dinosuar bodies, feet and anything else you'd like to make fossils of.  Bake to harden.  Either play with the fossils alone, or go on a dinosaur dig!  You can bury them outdoors in a sandbox, or make a small indoor box by using a sturdy plastic bin, filling it with sand and burying them.  (Be sure to put a shower curtain or other piece of plastic or even newspapers underneath your sand bin!)  Let your child dig for the fossils with small shovels and even use a paintbrush to sweep them off!  You can find lots of great dinosaurs to use for the imprints and to play with at a dollar store, Wal-Mart or even craft stores.  There are also some great options online, such as Sarafi Ltd.'s Dinosaur Toobs, or their Dinosaur Skulls Toob.
-use a large piece of cardboard or cork-board (something that won't get broken too easily).  Decorate it with your kids to depict a "dinosaur" scene…mountains, trees, plants, a volcano, etc.  Then, use toy dinosaurs and play on the mat that you've created.

 

Salt Dough
1 cup salt
2 cups flour
1 cup lukewarm water
Optional food coloring

 

Combine flour and salt.  Add water and stir until dough forms.  Knead for about 5 minutes, until it is smooth. 

Make your creations (great for fossils, ornaments, handprints, etc!).  Bake for 2-3 hours at 200 degrees F. 

Dinosaur Book List

Next up…Dinosaurs!  This one is so much fun!  What has amazed me the most is how incredibly absorbent children's minds are.  We did a section on dinosaurs awhile back and are gearing up to cover them again in the coming week and my little guy STILL remembers the names of most of the toy dinosaurs we have!   So, here's a list of some of our favorite dinosaur books to help you get ready:

 

"The Berenstain Bears' Dinosaur Dig" Jan & Mike Berenstain
"Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs" Byron Barton
"Dinosaur, Roar" Paul Stickland
"Dinosaur, More: A First Book of Dinosaur Facts" Henrietta Stickland
"How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food?" Jane Yolen
"How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night?" Jane Yolen
"Curious George and the Dinosaur" Margaret Rey
"The Great Big Book of Dinosaurs" Rupert Matthews

Construction & Tools Activities

Outing:
-Take a walk or drive past a home or building under construction near you.  Go by repeatedly to observe the progress being made!  Point out building, home and even road construction while you are out and about. 
-Work on naming all of the different types of construction vehicles that you see while you are out and about.

 

Activity/Project:
-Use some construction vehicles or even a shovel to dig in the dirt, sand or snow and build some creative structures.
-Cut out different color and size shapes (i.e. several sizes of squares, several of each size) and let your little one practice "building" by gluing them together on a piece of paper in creative ways. 
-Get out the blocks or legos and build different types of structures.  Let them pretend to hammer and saw the blocks.

Construction & Tools Book List

Alright, this one's for the boys!  Here's a great list of books about construction and tools.  As always, I'll post the list and then post some activity ideas a few days later so you have time to get the books you'd like to use. 

 

"Building a House" Byron Barton
"Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel" Virginia Lee Burton
"The Little House" Virginia Lee Burton
"Get To Work Trucks" Don Carter
"1 2 3  I Can Build" Irene Luxbacher
"Construction Tools" JoAnn Early Macken
"Construction Crews" JoAnn Early Macken
"Building With Dad" Carol Nevins
"The House That Max Built" Maxwell Newhouse
"Construction Countdown" K.C. Olson
"Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site" Sherri Duskey Rinker
"Good Morning, Digger" Anne Rockwell
"Old MacDonald Had a Woodshop" Lisa Shulman
"Let's Try it Out With Towers and Bridges" Seymour Simon
"B is for Bulldozer" June Sobel
"Dig" Andrea Zimmerman

New Playdough Recipe!

Our homemade playdough reached the end of its road, so I thought I'd try a new recipe for our next batch.  I LOVE this new recipe!  Our old recipe tended to be a little sticky.  This one is really similar to the consistency of store-bought playdough.  And, it's supposed to last about 6 months. 

Colored Playdough
1 cup water
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1/2 cup salt
1 tablespoon cream of tartar
food coloring
saucepan
1 cup flour

Combine water, oil, salt, cream of tartar, and food coloring in a saucepan and heat until warm.  Remove from heat and pour into bowl with flour.  Stir to mix, then knead until smooth.  (the cream of tartar makes this dough long-lasting--up to six months or longer).  Store in an airtight container or ziplock bag.  Do not refrigerate. 

This recipe is from "The Preschooler's Busy Book" by Trish Kuffner.  I love this book for all of its simple ideas and activities, most of which only require things you already have around the house!

Winter Fun activities

Hopefully you've had a chance to collect some great books about Winter.  I think that the best activity for exploring winter is simply getting outside! 

-If you live in an area that gets snow, as we do, playing in the snow, making snowballs, building snowmen and yes, eating the snow are all wonderful fun.

-While outside, look for animal footprints and try to figure out what you're seeing, where animals might be living/hibernating nearby, and what they might be eating.

-Make a pinecone birdfeeder so that you can observe birds right outside your window!  Simply find a pinecone (or substitue with some other item that you can cover and hang), help your child cover it with peanut butter and then help them roll it in birdseed.  Hang anywhere that will allow you to observe the birds enjoying it!

Don't forget to enjoy some hot cocoa when you come inside!

Winter Fun Book List

First of all, I know that I am covering winter when it is almost spring!  I just got way behind.  I'm going to go ahead with winter, though, because I think this is a prime time to see the signs of winter outside. 

I love learning about and talking about the seasons because they are so vivid and so appealing to nearly all of your child's senses.  It's so fun to watch them experience what they're learning so fully!

This one is also fun, because Winter is my favorite season!  The cold, cold weather and the blankets of snow also create such great contrasts with the other seasons to really help them see the differences among the seasons. 
Here's a list of some of our favorite books about Winter:

"Animals in Winter" Henrietta Bancroft  (has some fun winter activity ideas at the end)
"The Snowman" Raymond Briggs
"Snowmen at Night" Caralyn Buehner
"Katy and the Big Snow" Virginia Lee Burton
"One Winter's Day" M. Christina Butler
"Oh!" Kevin Henkes
"Winter" Ron Hirschi
"The Snowy Day" Ezra Jack Keats
"Under My Hood I Have a Hat" Karla Kuskin
"Over and Under the Snow" Kate Messner
"How Do You Know It's Winter?" Ruth Owen (has some fun winter activity ideas at the end)
"Snowy, Blowy Winter" Bob Raczka
"White Snow Bright Snow" Alvin Tresselt
"Paperwhite" Nancy Elizabeth Wallace