Moon Sand

Today's project is a messy, but fun one! Did you know you can make moon sand at home? It only takes two ingredients too (unless you want color)!

All you need is cornstarch and shaving cream. You can add food coloring or other natural dyes you might find around the house, such as beet powder or turmeric. We used turmeric and it turned our moon sand into a pretty, earthy yellow.

I just eyeballed it and added more shaving cream and cornstarch as needed. We started with about a cup of cornstarch on the table. Feel free to put it in a bowl if you want to keep the mess under better control. ;)

Stress Balls

One of my children is a skin picker. This child has been a skin picker their entire life. They pick at their skin when they get bored, or just to keep their hands busy, until it bleeds. And then they pick at it again. And again. I am often getting asked for band-aids. One of the worst episodes took an entire month before it finally healed completely.

I have racked my brain for ways to get my child to stop the habit. I feel that it is a self-soothing technique and don't want to trade one bad habit for another. I don't want to take away any comfort my kiddo might get from it as well. Then I realized they need something to keep their hands busy. When I suggested making stress balls they were all for it. Hoping that it will help.

To make the stress balls we used:
balloons
cornstarch
funnel

Alphabet Hunt

So our first days of summer were spent inside, away from the warmth and sun, sick as a dog. We finally start to feel like ourselves again and California does what it likes to do in the early days of summer~ June Gloom. Hello fog and chilly air. Goodbye summer beach days. Needless to say, I've been trying to cook up some indoor activities for the kids to do. This one was met with great success!

I wrote every letter of the alphabet onto squares of paper. If you have magnetic letters that would work great too. Lay them out where you have some room for your collections. Let your kids roam the house hunting for items that begin with each letter!

This is a great activity for kindergartners learning beginning sounds of words.

For older children, it's great to practice ending sounds of words or just to enjoy the thrill of a hunt!

TA-DA!

Wasn't so sure how the kids would get Q and X. I knew we didn't have a xylophone, but unbelievably, we actually had an x-ray!

Start Your Garden

Worm Poop! Good for plants.

Dress Ups!!

Simply put, dressing up is fun.

 

Recreate a Scene

I luuuurrrv this one. Oh! Sorry for the lengthy MIA. Life got very busy (and fun) and now I'm back to the usual days of delight and sunshine.

This project works really well for older children, but my five year old enjoyed it too. Choose a scene or photo from a magazine that can easily be manipulated. Zoe chose of photo of a dog with his feet in the air because she wanted it to look like he was holding something. I chose a photo of a couple looking out to sea. Cut out that picture. Glue it to paper. And draw whatever your beautiful brain can think up that fits into that scene. So. Much. Fun. I'm doing another tomorrow!