Tots and Me... Growing Up Together: playdough

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Littles Learnng Link Up: Homemade Playdough

Welcome to Littles Learning Link Up.

Each month you will find:

A seasonal round-up (at the beginning of the month)
A guest post featuring crafts, activities, tips, snack ideas or other early childhood topics. (toward the end of the month)
Posts where I share what I have been up to with my preschoolers and/or early elementary children.

Each week, I will host a link up, where you can share either what you have been up to recently, or old posts that may go with the theme. Feel free to link up more than one post.

Each week I will continue to feature a couple of posts from those that have been linked up.

I hope you will continue to share your wonderful posts, and I hope you will find something new to try with your child.

It would be great for everyone to stop by and visit the other linked up posts as well. Check them out, leave some comments, pin those that interest you. Let's make this a real party and socialize with each other.

Homemade Playdough

Since the older girls were preschool age, we have been making our own playdough. Not only do I not have to worry about harmful ingredients that might be in store-bought playdough, but making the playdough is a great learning experience for the children. I tend to start the year with a new batch of playdough and then we make some at least a couple more times during the year.

We use the recipe found in the book, "Slow and Steady Get Me Ready" by June R. Oberlander. Here is the recipe:

Ingredients:

1 cup of flour

1 Tbs vegetable oil

1 cup water

1/2 cup salt

2 tsp cream of tartar

Food coloring

I like to have Tabitha or Amelia read the recipe.

Then we add the ingredients. This recipe is quite simple. Just pour all the ingredients in a pan.

Then stir while cooking over medium heat until it forms a ball.

We were going for a brown color as we making Viking Ships to go with our My Father's World Adventures lessons on Vikings.

Here is a look at what the playdough looks like once the ball has formed. You have to make sure not to cook it too long, or it will dry out faster.

(This picture is actually from the past, but I didn't take any pictures of it at this stage this time.)

Once a ball forms, mommy takes over for a while, because we have to knead the dough, and it is very hot at first. As soon as it cools down sufficiently, I have the children help knead and play with the dough.

I think we succeeded in getting a decent color. Though it didn't look quite right at first, the more we played with it, the more the brown color came out.

Now onto:

Littles Learning Link Up Features

On my last Littles Learning Link Up post, there were 11 wonderful posts linked up. I will be picking one randomly selected post to share, plus the top clicked-on posts.

This week's randomly selected post is:

There's Just One Mommy shared Apple-Themed Skip Counting Activity.

The following posts tied for the most clicks:

Carla from Preschool Powol Packets shared Edible Bubble Science With Apples.

Sarah from How Wee Learn shared A Year Full of Name Puzzles.

I would love to have you join in this week! What sort of activities do you do with your young children? Do you have some favorite activities you would like to share? I invite you to link up below. I will be pinning posts on my Toddler Ideas, Preschool, or other relevant 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 school 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 child, please make sure you give credit where credit is due.

Linky will be open through Sunday night, to give me time to check out all the posts and get the Features organized. Please take the time to visit some of the other wonderful posts linked up.

An InLinkz Link-up

Sunday, August 7, 2011

School Time: Finally Finished Jj

This week I finally had time and motivation to work on the letter J. Yes, we did our Jonah muffin tin on the 18th.

But we didn't really do much else lesson-wise. We had some fun times. We had a picnic

and we had a "campfire" sing a long, with microwaved S'mores.

Steven insisted on roasting a marshmallow, or should I say putting it on fire.

And we also made some green playdough. For instructions on how to make this playdough, you can check out my post from a year and a half ago. It was the last time we made playdough. Thought it was about time to make more.

Hannah was having a great time.

Except she wouldn't stop trying to eat it. Luckily I know it is non-toxic.

And we made cookies during this time of "not doing much." As I look back, it doesn't seem like we did nothing. Just not anything "letter" related.

The book was called Mr. Cookie Baker by Monica Wellington

It was a simple book with colorful pictures depicting the work of a baker, from setting out the ingredients, that we named one by one, to baking and decorating and selling the cookies in his store to the hungry children. And the bonus was that there were 4 cookie recipes in the back of the book. So, of course we made cookies. We made the oatmeal raisin cookies, and they were very good. I need to write down the recipes before I return the book.

We had also been reading a few books about jam. Jamberry by Bruce Degen

was not a favorite of mine at first, but I started to really enjoy it after reading it several times. I wasn't prepared for the silly words, like shoeberry and canoeberry to name a couple. But I love the rhythm and the rhyme. They are traveling through Berryland gathering lots of different berries for jam. It is fanciful and exciting. The girls really seemed to enjoy it.

We also read Bread and Jam for Frances by Russell Hoban.

Bread and Jam for Frances (I Can Read Book 2)

(our copy isn't an "I Can Read" edition)

In this story all picky Frances wants to eat is bread and jam, because she knows what she is getting and there are no surprises and she likes it very much. She has a reason for not liking any type of egg. I have read two Frances stories and she puts things in a song in each one (I assume she does in all the books). She insists on only eating bread and jam, but when her mother only gives her bread and jam for every meal, she decides a well balances meal (like her friend Albert eats) is what she wants.

This past Monday I made the girls a muffin tin using the foods Frances ends up having for lunch at the end of the book, with a piece of bread and jam added, of course.

I even set the table with paper towels for doilies and with a vase with flowers.

Our other jam book was The Giant Jam Sandwich by John Vernon Lord and Janet Burroway

This was not my favorite book, but the children seemed to enjoy it. One summer day, in the town of Itching Down, four million wasps fly into town. They cause quite the problem until the baker comes up with a solution. The town is going to make a giant jam sandwich to trap the wasps in. Definitely another fanciful story, though it was hard to read in places. As one reviewer "Dee" mentioned at Amazon, the writer seemed to struggle with the rhymes and the rhythm was off. I also agreed with the reviewer that the pictures are way too cluttered. I, however, did like the idea behind the story.

That brings us to our jungle "unit." The idea of doing jungle came to me after Tabitha talked about going on a safari because she had daddy's binoculars. I was going to have the girls make some huge trees and put some animals out, but we ran out of time and I am low on green paper. But I had put some jungle books on hold.

The Great Kapok Tree: A Tale of the Amazon Rain Forest by Lynne Cherry

I loved the detailed illustrations in this book about the importance of the rain forest. Two men come into the forest to chop down a tree. After showing the one man which tree to cut down the other man starts chopping the tree, but he falls asleep. Suddenly, one by one, animals that depend on the tree, come to the man and tell him the consequences of cutting down the tree.

After reading the above book, we read "Slowly, Slowly, Slowly," Said the Sloth by Eric Carle.

We had already been introduced to the sloth in the first book and I thought this would be a cute little book. I was really impressed. The book had the trademark Eric Carle collage illustrations depicting the animals of the rain forest each asking the sloth why he was so slow. He only answers after one of the animals calls him lazy. He goes through a whole list of words describing his sluggish lifestyle, but insists he is not lazy.

I also found a couple of different books over at another blog. I can't find the blog right now as it was one I found following the link at the Ultimate Alphabet Craft Collection over at The Attached Mama, and for some reason her linkys aren't coming up for me on Google Chrome, Internet Explorer or my cell phone browser. I was looking for a jaguar craft and I found a really cute one. And she had also listed some more great jungle books.

I really enjoyed The Rainforest Grew All Around by Susan K. Mitchell.

The illustrations where absolutely gorgeous, with so much detail. This is similar to the song "The Green Grass Grew All Around," but starts with the seed of a Kapok tree, shows the different animals that live in the tree,and ends with the seed coming out of the pod of the tree. One side of the double page spread has the words of the story/song while in the sidebar on the other side more details are given (which I didn't go into with the children yet, it was late when we read it). We also didn't go into all the additional information at the end of the book, but I did note there is a recipe for Rainforest Cookies.

The other book I think I read about on the other lady's blog was Rumble in the Jungle by Giles Andreae

The children seemed to enjoy the bright cartoony illustrations depicting different animals in the jungle. It is not really a story, but a list of animals. The animals are described by funny rhymes showing what the each animal does and eats.

As I stated, I was looking for a letter J jaguar craft. It's driving me nuts that I can't remember where I found it with out the link. I know the blog, have been there before, but can't think of the name. I promise when I figure it out I will share the information. She has a great blog and great crafts.

I drew a letter j for each of the girls. Miss Hannah has been sitting herself along side us during lesson time. She climbs up in the extra chair so she can color. I let her color her j jaguar, though the other two only glued on the brown spots. And I had the girls draw the jaguar's nose, mouth and eyes. We made a jungle for our jaguars to live in (this was my own creation). I know the girls love to paint, so they painted green on green paper, then when that was dry they painted on some colorful flowers. We had looked on Google Images for different pictures of the jungle and jungle flowers, just so they could see how pretty it was.

I didn't know how much Hannah loved to paint. I had her up in her chair painting her jungle, and suddenly mommy had to run to the bathroom. I took her down away from the paint, completely forgetting the other paint was still on the little, Hannah-reachable school table. I came out to see her sitting at her sister's spot, painting her sister's jungle and she had paint all over her, even in her hair. Oops.

Here she is waiting. It's her first time wearing a smock.