My Rhino Pet

All my art pieces start out as a sketch. Then I transfer them to the computer and digitally color them. Take a look at the evolution of my rhino boy art. I'm in love!

Magic Sand Dough Sensory Play

I'm sure everyone has seen some variation to this recipe before, but I would like to share our version with you. My kids LOVE playing with magic sand dough. It's super soft, but formable. It only takes two ingredients to create, which you probably already have on hand.

Magic Sand Recipe
Mix together:

• 8 cups flour
• 1 1/4 cup vegetable oil

I mix it up with my hands until all the oil is mixed in and it is able to form easily. We also added glitter to ours to make it sparkly.

The magic sand should store nicely in a ziplock or plastic container for future use as well.

This recipe makes the perfect amount to fill up our sensory tub. We also added scoopers, tractors, and wild animals to the magic sand.

Magic sand is PERFECT for feeding the frogs and hippos with. Very important. (As you can see, magic sand can be a little messy. We like to play with ours outside in the summer time and put the sensory tub on top of a table cloth during the cold winter months.)

If you like messy play, view our fun, Foamy Ocean Animal Sensory Bin as well.

Literacy Connections: The Very Busy Spider Web Making

When my kids love a certain book, I like to create a project they can do that goes along with it. Connecting a book with a fun activity is a great way for kids to make the connection between literacy and real life. It brings meaning to an abstract concept.

We love Eric Carle's classic book The Very Busy Spider and decided that we would like to be very busy spiders ourselves and make some fun spider webs.

Preschooler Sewing Station. Beginning sewing for kids

I like to sew and am using needles and pins all the time. Needless to say, my kids would also like to sew. They are very good at sneaking my pins away when I least expect it to make their own projects! I decided it was about time I let them experience sewing in a more child friendly way.

Montessori Sensorial Printable. Truck Shade Matching

 Download the truck shades matching game.

I've been trying to make some fun Montessori activities for my kiddos and decided to design a couple sensorial, color grade matching puzzles.  After making the girly butterfly matching game (found here), I had to make a "boyish" printout for the boys in my house. So here you go! Hope you enjoy it as much as we have! It's easy to make, fun to play, and self contained. Perfect!

Preschool Butterfly Matching Printable. Sensorial activity for kids.

Butterfly Color Matching Printable

This preschool color matching printable helps children recognize the subtle differences between different shades of colors. Once your child can match individual colors, go ahead and let her have a go at matching shades of colors. It's more challenging, but so much fun. We do a lot of Montessori activities at our house and this is a great sensorial activity. 

Christmas Craft for Kids. Snowman Advent Calendar

This easy snowman advent calendar is a great Christmas craft for kids. It is also a simple math activity to help kids with numeric awareness and learning to count backwards. My daughter is very interested in counting backwards and this will be a great way to work on that skill this Christmas season. Plus, your child will love having her own calendar to count down to Christmas with. My mom showed my this snowman Christmas Countdown and I got the idea that it would be so much fun to transform the idea into a kid craft!

Preschool Math Activity: Dinosaur Color Graphing

A great way to work on math skills with preschoolers is graphing. Kids will utilize thinking and language skills discussing which has more, which has less, and how many there are. If they are playing and having fun, your preschoolers will learn to think math is cool. I wish I would have learned that in preschool!

Download your own Dinosaur Graphing Printable 

(PS, this printable has my OLD website written on it in case you are curious.)

Rustic Christmas Advent Calendar. Focusing on Jesus

I wanted to create an advent calendar that would help my family focus on the true meaning of Christmas this year: The Savior Jesus Christ. I decided it would be fun to gather some photos of The Savior as well as some scriptures from the bible that we could focus on each day. There are also fun activities for us to do written on the cards. 

Imaginative Play Activity For Kids: Straw Sensory Bin

Cut up straws are a fun sensory play material. Who knew, right? My kids are totally OBSESSED with drinking out of straws. There is no possible way that chocolate milk can taste as good without a straw. Seriously. Have you tried it? I thought that since straws make drinks taste better, they would also make sensory play a bit better as well. Guess what? I was right! They are fun to feel and have an interesting sound when dumped and played with. I decided to add our nesting dolls and cups to the straw sensory bin for a fun imaginative play activity for my kids. They loved it. My daughter played with the nesting dolls and straws for an hour or so.