Body Awareness Art

 Here is a fun, cute project to work on body awareness.  The child should lay down on large paper.  Trace the body, identifying the body parts as you trace around each one.  Now let the child paint the body however they would like.  Once dry an adult can cut it out and hang it on the wall.  Review all the body parts on the art work and the child.  This was a entertaining project for a two year old and educational with a lovely end result.

This activity encourages:

• body awareness
• creativity

Autumn Displays for Kids

I have been behind on blogging since back to school - very busy here at our house.  Today we enjoyed an outdoor activity with our pool noodle parts and Autumn materials.  We collected mums, leaves and twigs to create Autumn floral displays.  You just need to pinch off the bottom of the flowers or leaves so that the child can poke the flower into the cut up pool noodle.  Encourage the child to use the thumb and index finger to grasp the stem of the flower to poke it into the Styrofoam of the pool noodle.  The youngest child simply placed her flowers in the larger hole.  This was a simple, low cost activity with a nice end result to display on your table.  If we had time, we would have extended this to pretend floral shop to "sell" the beautiful arrangements.

This activity encourages:

• creativity
• outdoor time
• fine motor skills especially the pincer grasp
• eye hand coordination

Body Painting

This was a fun outdoor activity we did today - body painting.  First we were painting the bottoms of our feet and making prints.  But then the toddler just wanted to paint other people's feet or her own.  We had a bucket of water close by so anyone could wash up when done.  The toddler loved painting her own feet and cleaning them off.  In toddler fashion, this dirty/clean cycle was repeated many times (anything with water is always a huge hit).  This activity could be done indoors but so much easier outside.

Homemade "Nail Polish" for Toddlers

My little toddler LOVES to get her fingernails polished.  One day we were making some homemade paint and we realized it would work great as pretend nail polish.  It was some corn starch and colored water.  She really enjoyed "painting" my nails.  The corn starch made it dry hard on my fingernails but it washed off with ease.  She even got to paint her own nails.  This was a super simple activity that entertained her for quite some time.