Toddler Ideas Tuesday: March 11th, 2014

Welcome back to Toddler Idea Tuesdays! Have you been busy with your young children?

This week I would like to share our St. Patrick's Day Sensory Bin.

In this tub you will find:

Green rice

Colored pasta (in all 6 colors of the rainbow)

Pompoms (small, medium and large of all 6 colors)

Pipe cleaners (again, in all 6 colors)

Gold coins

The children loved placing the pasta on the pipe cleaners. 

I had hoped they would match the colors, but that hasn't really happened yet. Hannah may have been trying, but she did get some blue in with the green.

Now that they have had a chance to use the color sensory tub I have buried some of the items in the hopes they will go digging for it.

I just wanted to share that the children also help dye the pasta and the rice. It is a great opportunity for counting one-to-one and also for observing color mixing.  We used the same instructions for dyeing the rice/pasta as we did the last time we did this. 

You need 1 cup of rice or about 15-20 noodles

1 tsp of rubbing alcohol (much better results than vinegar)

6 drops of food coloring

plastic zippy bags. 

All you need to do is pour the alcohol in the bag, add the food coloring and mix it together. Then you add the rice/noodles, zip the bag shut and shake. You have to be a bit more careful with the pasta so it doesn't break.

Pour it onto a cookie sheet lined with foil or wax paper and let it dry.

Now onto:

Toddler Idea Tuesday Features

Lisa from Our Country Road shared her Preschool Totschool Wrap Up post filled with fun Fruit Themed Tray ideas.

There are color matching and fruit matching activities, along with sorting and counting. She also shared some great Montessori activities, including fruit prep. 

Jennifer from Hint Mama shared 7 Easy & Frugal DIY Ball Pit Ideas Beyond Plastic Swimming Pools.

There are so many great ideas, sure to keep kids busy for a while.

What sort of activities do you do with your toddler? Do you have some favorite activities you would like to share? How about some fun St. Patrick's Day activities or crafts?  I invite you to link up below. I will be pinning posts on my Toddler Ideas board and I would love to feature some of the activities each week from what is linked up. Please know I may share a picture from your post and link back to it, along with sharing how we used your idea in our toddler time. By linking up you are giving me permission to use a picture from your post. I will ALWAYS give credit and link back. Additionally, if you choose to try out any of the ideas with your toddler, please make sure you give credit where credit is due.

R is for Rice and Rainbow Sensory Fun

In the past we have had some fun with rice in our sensory tub. One day I decided to make Rainbow Rice.  I followed the instructions for dyeing noodles. I took 6 bowls and poured 1 cup of rice into each one. 

Next I found it was easier to mix 1 tsp of rubbing alcohol with 5-6 drops of the desired food coloring, then mix it into the rice. Then we stirred. 

We set it outside on cookie sheets covered with wax paper until it dried.  

One of the first things we made was a rainbow rice "r." All I did was trace the r with white glue and the girls sprinkled some rice, one color at a time in the order of the rainbow, onto the glue.

Then we poured our rainbow of rice into the white rice in our sensory tub.

The girls swirled it around and mixed it in.

Then they played in it. 

(Yes, this was a while ago.)

They love playing with their construction vehicles in the rice.

Another fun sensory experience was making Rainbow Stew (no, it is not edible).

I found this idea on about.com under Family Crafts.

Materials Needed:

• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 cup corn starch
• 4 cups water
• Food Coloring

Instructions:
Mix together all of the ingredients in a sauce pan. Stir constantly and heat until the mixture begins to thicken. Remove from heat and let cool.

Divide the mixture into three bowls. Add a different color of food coloring to each bowl. Put approximately three tablespoon of each color into a zip-lock bag. Seal the bag and tape the top closed.

Knead the baggie to mix colors just enough to look like a rainbow. Lay bag down on a hard surface and gently press to flatten it. You can hang it in your window when finished. You can also just play with it and see wht happens to all of the colors!

For more color mixing rainbow fun we played with colored ice cubes. 

We used only the primary colors to dye the water in each compartment of the ice cube tray.

After it was frozen, I put about an inch of hot water in our tub.

We used two colors at a time to see them mix and make the secondary colors as we swirled them around. This would be a great activity for a hot day, come to think of it. 

After the ice cubes were melted and the color was mixed I dumped the water and we started again. 

School Time Week 36: The Conclusion of R: Rice and Rockets

This week we continued our letter R activities, when we had a chance that is.  The outdoors has been calling and we have had a hard time ignoring it.

Of course we started with our R muffin tin

We were able to make our rainbow rice, which I have wanted to do for a while and I figured this week would be perfect.
I actually followed the instructions I have for making colored noodles.  We dyed the noodles back in January of 2010. Here are the girls all ready to get to work.

We used the rice from our sensory tub.

It was very simple.  We placed 1 cup of rice in each bowl.

And added 1 tsp of rubbing alcohol and 5-7 drops of food coloring.  I have seen elsewhere that people of questioned the use of rubbing alcohol.  So, of course I had to experiment.  I tried coloring one bowlful with out the alcohol and it didn't mix in properly.  I have also seen a variation where people have used vinegar in the place of the rubbing alcohol. I actually experimented with that last January and found that the alcohol helped the color penetrate the noodles more fully for a brighter color and left them less brittle.  I shared about this in the above linked post, but here is the picture of the noodles so you can compare

                                 

Anyway, then the girls stirred the color in.  I actually found it coated better if I combined the alcohol with the food coloring and then poured it in the rice.  And you have to stir quite vigorously to get a decent coating too.

We then left it outside in the nice hot sun to dry thoroughly.  

Definitely looks better after drying.

It wasn't until a couple of days later that we got to use the rice.

We made our "tactile" r's.

Then we dumped the colored rice into the sensory bin.

I even let Hannah play in it.  She has been playing it the sensory rice tub with out permission for a while.  She loves to hear the rice as she spills it onto the floor.

On this day she enjoyed transferring it to the container and then...the floor (sigh).

Should have gotten a shot of the floor. Oh well.

Then I found the instructions for making a rocket in the book Big Book of Phonics For Whole Language.

While Amelia traced the letters USA and decorated her rocket body...

Tabitha cut out her "exhaust flames" and then got creative.

Then Tabitha decorated her rocket

While Amelia cut out her strips.

I really am happy with Amelia's progress with cutting on the line.

 I stapled the rocket into a cylindrical shape and also stapled on the paper exhaust strips.

Boy was it tricky getting the cones to stick to the top.

We are going to work on some rhyming activities (that I found in the Phonics activities book I mentioned above) next week.  I have not planned anything for our next letter because we have VBS over at the church where we meet for Play Group all this next week.  

This week's Bible verses were:

Our R verse:

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Exodus 20:8

Our verse from the Interlock curriculum

And God said, "Let there be light" and there was light. Genesis 1:3

This week we focused on light compared to darkness.  We talked about how when God made light it chased away the darkness, because with light there is no darkness.  Even at night there is light from the moon and the stars.  We went in our downstairs bathroom (the one with no outside window) and after seeing how dark it was I lit a candle, then blew the candle out and turned on a flashlight.  We talked about people years ago not having electricity and needing to use candles or oil lamps and such to see.  Then we turned on our electric lights.

We also spoke a bit about opposites.

Tiny Tot Time:

She loves finding paper and writing utensils to scribble with.

She decided it would be fun to hang on the table

She loves playing with the legos, though she really can't build with them yet.

I just thought it was so cute the way they all gathered together.

Amelia's constructions

Tabitha's staircase

A bit of a better shot of the stairs.

Hannah was having a blast putting the baby doll in the stroller and pulling it along with her.  She took it to the kitchen and started taking food out of the cupboard.  I said she was shopping.

I am linking to:

Also linking to:

No Ordinary Blog Hop