toys Archives – The Pinterested Parent

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toys

Fri
09 ^th

Creativity Is Cheap & Imaginations Don’t Cost A Thing

Posted by Pinparent — 9 Comments

I just adore my how my daughter’s mind works. I never know what she is going to say or do. To look at life through her eyes is a daily adventure, with a new story every day.

Since the birth of my daughter I have become a pack rat. I never throw anything away because everything has some sort of creative potential. Things like empty paper towel rolls, tissue boxes & milk jugs are great for craft time. My daughter loves to draw and color and I have found that many things other than paper make for a great canvas. My home is cluttered with empty boxes, recycled ribbons & bows and other assorted odds & ends.

Mai’s birthday party is this weekend. This year, it is a Play-doh theme to pay homage to her favorite addiction. I have saved all of her old Play-doh containers in the hopes that I would be able to use them for her party. As I was washing out all of the containers, Mai saw a chance to grab the lids. My daughter played with the lids, pretending that they were various things. She baked Play-doh lid cookies, formed Mickey Mouse ears with them & cracked them open for scrambled eggs. For an hour, we played with them. I listened as she described to me every step in the Play-doh cookie lid baking process. She told me the flavor of each different colored treat. Some were sprinkled with sugar, some with cinnamon. She made sure that both of us had our oven mitts on before handling our freshly baked desserts. She is just fascinating to watch.

With a glorious imagination like hers, remind me again, why we have a house full of toys.

For more free fun…Please check out my latest article in this month’s Seek.

Indoor Fun With Sheet Forts

Sun
16 ^th

Sorting Game For Toddlers

Posted by Pinparent — 10 Comments

I know that there are mixed feelings about children and electronics. I think that they can be a great learning tool, but in moderation. Our daughter has a Nabi Tablet. It has been a wonderful tool in promoting learning for our daughter. She can access her ABC Mouse Learning Center from there and there are also a lot of learning apps that we selected for her. As I said, I think that is a fabulous tool to educate my daughter, but I also don’t want her parked in front of it for hours on end. I thought I could bring one of her favorite lessons to life.

There is one application that has an assortment of objects and a row of baskets that represents a category that each of these objects falls into. She loves this one & is starting to get pretty good at it. I decided to use this idea to create a similar game that she could play sorting various pictures & matching them to their coordinating category.

What you will need:

Paper bowls or another bowl shaped container

Old magazines or computer print-outs of clip art

Scissors

Glue

Posterboard

Directions:

Figure out what categories you would like to use. I chose animals, clothing, toys, food & transportation.

Flip through old magazines and cut out various pictures.

Cut out pictures that fit your various categories.

Put your pictures in a container.

Make a sign for your category with picture examples of the category. Glue it to the inside of the bowl.

Line up your sorting bowls & spread out the picture cutouts in front of them.

Match up your pictures to the appropriate bowl. Here we have a dog, cat & horse matched up to the animal sorter.

Hmm…Where does this go?

Right there..right there

My daughter loves anything that has pictures that she can sort through. She named off all of the cut outs and we sorted through them together. She did the best on her own with the animals and the food. I love this activity. It is cheap & easy to make and it is something we can do together or she can play with on her own.

Who Needs Toys – Playtime Made Easy

Posted by Pinparent — 23 Comments

You always hear people joke that you don’t need to buy young children expensive toys because all they end up wanting to play with is the box. This is no joke. There is no truer statement. Toddlers are easy; they can find the fun in anything. Their little spongy minds are absorbing and exploring everything. Things as simple as the box, are still new and fascinating territory for them. At 2 years old, my daughter is past the excitement of the box, but still has a taste for the simpler things in life.
We have more toys in this house than we know what to do with. Between the play kitchen, Little People Villages & Twisty Tracks, she should have enough to keep her occupied until she is in her teens, but as kids tend to do, she gets bored of these things very quickly. There are many things that you can do to occupy your child’s day without the use of fancy toys.

Here are some simple and fun things for your child to do.

Water play

It doesn’t get much simpler than this. This is one of my favorite activities to give my daughter while I am cooking or doing dishes. Lay out a towel & fill a large container half way with water and add some measuring cups & spoons. Here my daughter told me she is making coffee.

Chick Peas, Beans & Rice

Similar to above, I have a container of chickpeas & colored rice set aside just for play. It is amazing how long my daughter will play with them. She will count them out & transfer them from cup to cup.

Couch Cushion Fun

My daughter has a lot of energy. She loves to jump & is always throwing herself on the ground for some odd reason. Take your couch cushions off the couch & place them on the floor & let your child roll around on the pile of pillows.

Stringing Pasta

Pasta necklaces are an old classic. This requires a little bit of hand – eye coordination. Mai strung up the 3 shown below & told me that it was the mama pasta, daddy pasta & baby pasta.

Read, read & read some more

We spend about a half hour before bed reading books every night, but books are not just for bedtime. We often read to our daughter while she is eating to keep her firmly planted in her chair during her meal. Many times even if my daughter insists that she does not want a story, if I just start reading she will eventually jump up on my lap.

Bubble Wrap

We order from Amazon a lot, I mean a lot. Bubble wrap comes with most of these packages. I think that bubble wrap is fun for small children and adults alike. Who doesn’t love popping that stuff?

Blanket forts

Being that mommy is always cold, even in the summer, we have blankets all over the house. Mai loves it when we make forts over the couch. “Mommy, play in the fort toooooooo?” Definitely! Here she is reading with a flashlight under her fort.

Song & Dance

My daughter loves music. She has been dancing as long as she has been walking. She also loves to sing songs with mommy & daddy. Don’t underestimate the power of music.

Red Light, Green Light & other games

My daughter loves running around our house in circles. I had to teach her Red light, Green light just to catch my breath in between chases. Pheeew! Also try Simon Says or Hide and Seek.

Get outside

If your toddler is like mine, then he or she loves to run free. Take them outside, weather permitting & let them run & jump and play. Here is Mai walking the track at the Relay for Life in memory of her grandmother & namesake.

Color & Draw

I have an unlimited supply of poster board in our home. My daughter loves to doodle & color. She also loves when we draw for her too. She & I will lie on the floor and she will ask me to draw pictures of caterpillars & horses. She has a vivid imagination. She creates different scenarios for these pictures. Here Mai asked Mama to draw a mama & dada spider. She said that they were both sick & needed medicine.

Stacking boxes

I love stacking boxes & have quite a few sets strewn all over the house. My daughter shares my love for them. She likes piling them up & placing them inside of one another.

Styrofoam & Yarn

Seriously! Yarn sticks to styrofoam. If you are like me & have styrofoam cones laying around this is a great busy activity.

What easy & simple activities do you have for you & your toddler. I would love to hear.

Mon
02 ^nd

Christmas Sensory Box

Posted by Pinparent — 9 Comments

Up until about two months ago I never heard of a sensory box. I started seeing them popping up all over Pinterest. I remember thinking, “I don’t see how this would interest my daughter” , but still I was intrigued by the idea. It turns out I could not have been more wrong. It makes me a little angry that I didn’t know about these earlier, because they truly are a mommy sanity saver.

Since it tis the season & all, I thought a Christmas sensory box would be just the thing to get our daughter excited for the holidays.

The last box we made was filled with multi-colored rice, scoops & tiny little animals & creepy crawly critters. Mai loved it! It would keep her occupied for hours on end, but I was picking rice out of the strangest places weeks later.

I wanted one a little less messy this time around. The idea I had involved using cotton blankets of snow & mixing assorted Christmas themed items inside the folds of cotton.

I love the Dollar Store. The dollar store is perfect for finding affordable fillers for sensory play. Lucky for me, I work right next door to one & can shop on my lunch breaks for wonderful treasures. Here are a few of the items that I was lucky enough to find.

I had my ingredients, lets construct our box.

I use a Rubber Maid storage bin for ours. I pulled and stretched at the blankets of snow to make it loose & fluffy & placed it in the bin. I cut the garland into several pieces & lined the outside. I had hundreds of plastic mini ornaments. I placed them evenly throughout the snow, hiding them with the folds. I did the same with the pine cones, rubber leaves & berries. The cloth presents were just laid across the top.

Mai was so excited as mommy was putting this together. She kept yelling “box, box!”

“Ok, baby girl.” It is ready. Dig in!

The verdict: The Christmas sensory box was a hit. She played with it so quietly for about an hour before bed. Awwww.. Life is good.

Up next: Holiday Traditions

Treasure Hunt Bottles

Posted by Pinparent — 5 Comments

A few weeks ago, we had to bring our daughter to the emergency room. She had what was called nursemaids elbow, a common toddler injury, which is basically a dislocated elbow. With a quick movement the doctor snapped Mai’s elbow back in place & within seconds, she was back to her happy, smiley, mischievous self. I was relieved. It is a nerve wracking couple of hours.

While we were there, a very nice nurse brought us a cylinder like toy, filled with sand and different assorted shapes and objects. She gave this to Mai to play with as we waited for her x-rays. The toy worked in distracting our little miss from her injuries. I thought this was a wonderful idea, but in all the stress and anxiety of the situation, it was quickly forgotten, until yesterday when I saw a pin for a treasure hunt game.

This reminded me of the cylinder and all of its’ random objects. I thought this should be easy enough to recreate and would have to be more fun to play with, without a big ouchie.

What you will need…

An old soda bottle 20 oz or 32 will do

rice or sand

food coloring

assorted plastic toys small enough to fit into a bottle top

I originally made this with a 2 liter bottle, but found that it was too heavy for Mai to play with, so we transferred it to a 20 oz bottle. This worked much better for her little hands.

Directions:

Peel the soda label of the bottle. Clean the bottle & let it dry thoroughly

Pour rice & food coloring into a ziplock bag & shake

Pour rice onto paper plate to dry

Insert mini toys into bottle. I went with assorted insects, bugs, butterflies and reptiles. I bought these at the Dollar Store.
Use a funnel & fill the bottle 3/4 of the way with rice.

Seal top using super glue.

Shake the bottle to mix up the toys

Let your toddler shake & play & point out all of the objects

With all the left over rice we had, we also made a sensory box.

The verdict: She loved the bottles. She was shaking it up and pointing to birds and butterflies and laughing. The sensory boxes are always a hit in our house. It was a fun day for Mai. It was a messy day for mommy.

Drop cloths, mommy..drop cloths. Some one hand me a broom.