Blog Revamped! It's Manic Monday!

Okay, I got minimal feedback on what to do for the blog revamp, so I'm just gonna wing it.  I'm great at that.

I officially decided, that as long as it suits me, Monday will be "Manic Monday" and I will share a fun activity to do with your kids.  The first few will be easy enough because we've done a lot of projects in the last few weeks.  I'm gonna go ahead and add a link for you as well, I'll be getting some ideas from this post that someone shared on Facebook, it's from http://teachingmama.org/.  We've done 75% of these already, one way or another, but there's a few things on here that are new and a few that gave me ideas for modifications on some old favorites.

Tonight (5-25-14), I decided to try the tubes and pom poms (from that post I linked above), but it was a bit chaotic and I've decided to wait to share about that one, until the kids have had a chance to play it a few more times this week...stay tuned.

MANIC MONDAY 

Week 1: Homemade Play dough

Recipe is here.

There's a few different play dough recipes out there, I'm partial to this one because you just add warm water and don't have to cook anything.  I would also like to say, that if it's not the right texture, play arount with it. If it's too dry, add a little more water and/or oil; too wet, then add more flour.  We made pink this time.  You can always make a variety of colors if you're cool with that.  I am not.  I hate poop dough, which is basically what you get when you mix play dough.  Judge away, I know kids get good color mixing from combining play dough, but they can do that with paint too.  So, at our house, we stick with one color because this Momma just can't handle certain things.  We also used some whole wheat flour, so it made our dough look "special".

We like to use a variety of tools. Each of my kids has their own pair of scissors especially for using with play dough. It's a great way to practice cutting without wasting paper!  We also use plastic ware.  If we had them, we'd also use cookie cutters, rollers, and those fancy tools that come with some of the sets you can buy.  We're all about using what we have whenever possible...old cans (that have no sharp edges) would work as rollers, or cans that are still unopened.  And you could play around with pipe cleaners to make your own "cookie cutters", they'd just be very flexible.

Not sure why, but I only have these two photos, I guess I typically use this activity for the kids when I'm doing something else.  These were taken when we made the play dough. The kids helped me make it, and by the time the play dough was actually ready to play with, they weren't interested in it for long. However, they've played with it a lot since then, and for longer periods of time.

You can see their play dough scissors in the first picture, I bought them at Dollar Tree, they have the "helper" function, that bends backs and makes the scissors open and close easier.  (Here is a link to their website if you're interested in these exact ones, you can order them, but you have to purchase a minimum of 36 pairs. You could also just see if your local store has them in stock. But I think these would be great for child care or churches to use in their toddler and preschool programs!)