Ice Masterpiece

I saw this "ice sculpture" on  this blog's http://www.jugglingwithkids.com  facebook page and thought it looked like a lot of fun.  I had 2 empty creamer cartons and filled them with water and put up in the freezer for a day I had time to get them back out.  Well, we finally got them out this week and tried this out.  Here is what we got.

What you need:  Ice block( take empty milk carton or other carton and fill with water and freeze), kosher salt( other salt may work), food coloring, tray or pan).

What to do:  Take the ice block out of the milk carton and place on a pan.  Then pour salt on top and add food coloring.  Last, wait to see the color seep through the ice.

What we ended up with in picture above.

What we used.

My son was so excited to touch the ice and salt. 

Now to add color.

And more color, add as many as you want.

His face, love it.  He was really into this.

I was hoping for more color to seep through but it didn't.  Hope to try our other block out soon and see if it comes out any different.

My toddler getting his hand in there:-)

We had fun trying this activity out and look forward to trying it one more time.  Hope you and your family can make your own ice masterpiece.


Here is another link of  a blog that tried this out http://artfulparent.typepad.com/artfulparent

Please do come and visit us again. We would love to have you back:-)

All kids are different and only you can decide how you let your kids play. Please keep this in mind with any post you read of mine!

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We also linked up here http://craftymomsshare.blogspot.com/2012/08/sharing-saturday-31.html

Kid's Co-op # 16

We have made it through another week.  Here is this weeks kid's co-op.  I will try and share a few of the grea ideas on my fb page this week.

Please do come and visit us again. We would love to have you back:-)

All kids are different and only you can decide how you let your kids play. Please keep this in mind with any post you read of mine!

Check out our pinterest board, Fb page, or twitter page

10 Books Kids Love

"The more you read, the more things you will know.  The more that you learn, the more places you'll go."

- Dr Seuss, "I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!"

I thought this quote was great to start our 2nd post in the new series 10 Things Kids Love.  ( Our 1st post was 10 movies kids love)  I think almost every child loves story time.  When they are young we read to them and as they grow they can read to us.  Mine are still at the age that I read to them.  My oldest does pretend read to me and I love it.  Reading is a great activity that you can use to bond with your kids.  It is also a great learning time for our children.  Here is a link to a site that has 10 reasons to read to your child that I liked.  We love books and have them all over our house.  Every room we are in has a book that is close by:-)  Knowing that other families feel the same way, I chose to do my next list on books.  So here is what I have put together for you with the help from other moms out there.  The kids seem to range in age from 1yr to 6 yr.

10 Books Kids Love

1. Monster at The End of This Book by Jon Stone is a favorite of Aikman from Montessori Tidbits, my niece and nephew growing up, and my son.  I must say this book is special to me because my mom read it to me and my sister growing up.  My husband's mom also read it to him.  We now read it to our boys.
2.   Go, Dog! Go! by P.D. Eastman is a favorite of the kids from the Golden Gleam, and Henry from Play Dr Mom.             .
3. Mr. Brown Can Moo!  Can You? by Dr. Seuss  is a favorite of the daughter @  Love, Play, Learn, and my boys here.
4. Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle  is a favorite of Zel at Z is for Zel and my kids here.
5. The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper is a favorite @ The Good Long Road's house and here as well.
6. Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak is a favorite of the kids from Red Ted Art.
7. The Foot Book by Dr. Seuss is a favorite of the son from Famigila and Seoul.   
8. Cars and Trucks and Things That Go by Richard Scarry is a favorite of the son from Dirt and Boogers and once a favorite at the house of Play Dr Mom.
9. Don't Let The Pigeon Drive the Bus and Don't Let The Pigeon Stay Up Late by Mo Williams are favorites of the girls from Puttis World and Leah at 52 Brand New.
10. Little Critter:  Where is My Frog? by Mercer Mayer(and all other Little Critter books) is an all time favorite of my 3 yr son.  We know other kids that love him too.

Note, this is just a fun list of books some kids love. Only you can chose what books you feel are right for your child.

All the books listed if you click on them will take you to walmart.com were you can read a little on the books and buy online if you want.

I hope you and your children can try a new book. I know I am looking forward to trying a new book with my boys soon.

What will we serve you next on  10 Things Kids Love?

Please do come and visit us again. We would love to have you back:-)

Check out our pinterest board, Fb page, or twitter page

Over at Crayon Freckles they have a great list of 100 books kids must have!  Its a great list if you are looking for additional books for your kids.  Please check it out:-)

Liebster Award

I hate to say this is the second time I have gotten this reward.  That's not the bad part, the bad part is I didn't do what was required of me the first time to accept it.  Having felt bad over not putting together a post with the first nomination, I knew I had to do it this time.  When I got a comment from Nicole at Mama Of Many Blessings , I was so flattered and touched to have been chosen by her for the Liebster Award. The Liebster Award is given to up and coming bloggers with less than 200 followers. Liebster is German and means sweetest, kindest, nicest, dearest, beloved, lovely, kind, pleasant, values, cute, endearing and welcome.

With the Leibster Award you are asked to share 5 random facts about yourself, so here are my 5 random facts:-)

1. My grandfather was Cuban.
2. I can't speak spanish.
3. I love Crocs.
4. I love watching movies.
5. I am a little OCD.

Now it's my turn to nominate 5 blogs for the Liebster Award. Here are the rules for the blogs I've chosen: Post about your win.

1. Link back to the blogger who presented you with the award and follow their blog.
2. Copy and paste the award button to your blog (right click on the image and save).
3. Present the Liebster Award to 5 blogs that have fewer than 200 followers that you think deserves to be recognized.
4. Let them know by leaving them a comment on their blog.
5. Share 5 random facts about yourself.

Here are my 5 blogs I see deserve to be presented with this award for the great blogs they have put together:

1. The Fairy and The Frog
2. Z is for Zel
3. Watch Me Play and Learn
4. Smile Play Learn
5. Adventures at Home With Mum

I enjoy all of these blogs and what they share on them.  I hope you will check them all out if you have not come across them already.

Please do come and visit us again. We would love to have you back.

All kids are different and only you can decide how you let your kids play. And with what materials you let them play with. My children are supervised when playing. Please keep this in mind with any post you read of mine!



Check us out on Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Sulia, Google+,
and our G+ community, All Things Kids.

Cloud Dough: A little kid's dream

We first made cloud dough fall 2011.  And my son LOVED it!!  He plays in it all the time.  We keep it in a Rubbermaid.  Not sure I should say this but we haven't noticed anything wrong with it, so we continue to use it.  He has dumped plenty of it out on the ground etc.. over the months.  I though it may be time to make a fresh batch. 

It is so EASY TO MAKE.  RECIPE HERE ( Update:Some people say not to use baby oil so I would suggest trying another type oil.  We have since made it with cooking oil and it is still great.) 

Here are our supplies.  I bought flour on sale during Christmas and put it up for activities like this.  I am a cheap mommy:-)  The baby oil we have had since big brother was born and never used.

Mixing it up.

With little boys we must have the cars and trucks in almost everything we do:-)

You can mold this substance.  Can you see his rocks we made by his hands?

Another great sensory play substance.  The texture is fun and the smell is great:-)

Think he was building a mountain, by pushing the cloud dough up on the side of the bucket.

This is our other container of cloud dough with more toys. He had them both out!

You could use your imagination and play with cloud dough all different ways.

 We always have fun and make a mess when we play with our cloud dough!

We have played with this cloud dough in a separate activity and will share that with you soon:-)

Please do come and visit us again. We would love to have you back:-)

All kids are different and only you can decide how you let your kids play. Please keep this in mind with any post you read of mine!

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Lemon scented ice cubes in the tub

We love colored ice cubes in the tub and we have made a few scented baths.  So I chose to put the 2 ideas together to make scented colored ice cubes.  This was our first try at this type bath.  We had already used some of the cubes in our outside water play.  My little tot loved the cubes in the bath.  He had been walking around with this bottle brush from their kitchen so we just added it to the tub.

I put the cubes in a little bowl and set it down for him to get them out. 

He loved holding them and then letting them go. What a great sensory activity for him and I wasn't even trying to add learning to the bath it just happened.  He gets to learn that ice is cold and will melt in the water:-)  Also these cubes smell good and have bright colors.

Sweet little foot.  You can see how the water changes color as the cubes melted.

Of course he had to taste the cube.  After all it smelled like food.  I let him play with the cubes before we did washing.  So to me the water was clean enough and so were the cubes.

I made these scented by adding a little lemon juice to the water before freezing.

Hope you can have some tub time fun with your kids too.

More tub time fun you may like: Red themed bath and Car wash bath

Please do come and visit us again. We would love to have you back:-)

All kids are different and only you can decide how you let your kids play. Please keep this in mind with any post you read of mine!

Check out our pinterest board, Fb page,or twitter page

Kid's Co-op #15

TGIF!!!!  So here is the fantastic Kid's Co-op for this week.  I need your help please comment what ideas you like.   I will then try to share the ideas you pick on FB, Twitter, and/or Pin. 

Have a great weekend.

Fun Snack Cone

I saw this great treat idea on spoonfuls fb page and knew we would try it out.  We added our own mix of snacks.  I chose popcorn, gold fish grahams and yogurt raisins for our cones.  All you do is put your snack down in the cone and serve!  My son loves eating fruit snacks out of his toy ice cream cone already.  He was happy to see this snack and enjoyed eating it!  We will be doing this again and love how simple it is.  Hope you and your family can enjoy this too.

Please do come and visit us again. We would love to have you back:-)

Check out our pinterest board, Fb page, or twitter page

 

We linked up at living life intentionally

Dino Land with mocha glitter playdough

We had a lot of fun playing with our coffee grounds last week.  I love to re-use and recycle anything we use to play with when we can.  Because of this with some help from some fab blogger: Nurture Store  and The Iowa Farmer's Wife  I chose to make Mocha playdough to re-use some of our coffee grounds :-)
Here is the link for 2 recipes for chocolate playdough- Link 1 & Link 2  they are about the same. What I did was add 1 cup dried out coffee grounds that we had played in and some GLITTER for fun.  I also thought the glitter would help us remember "we don't eat it."  After making the playdough I now needed to set up a play theme for my son(3yr).  That is where Dino Land came from!!  I found little dinosaurs, wooden sticks, and a few sunflower seeds.  I took the playdough and flattened it out in a tray and then added the items.  After seeing how it would look for him I took the items off and covered the tray with press and seal. ( I made the playdough the night before so my son would be ready to go in the morning)  The next morning I managed to get the toy items back in the playdough before he noticed it.  Then I called him to see if he wanted to play.  He was super excited about it and sat down quickly to get started.  

Here is our day and how you can make your own Dino Land too.

What I used in the photo above plus glitter and coffee grounds for our playdough.

  It smelled so good, I wanted to eat it,lol.

Final creation- Glitter Mocha Playdough- one of my favs now!

Dino land is not just fun but a great sensory experience too.  Photo above I love the foot prints.  Do you see them?

Now that it is set up we need Liam to come play.

I love how the glitter turned out:-)

He was stunned and then...

Super excited!!!!!!

Off to playing.  He liked the smell too.

Of course he had to add a few trucks.

Little brother was a little sleepy but I gave him some fun stuff too.  However, it did not compare to what he saw big bro had out.

Big brother playing and little brother at least got a stick off the tray:-)

He played with this off and on all day and I had to drag him away to go out:-)  It is so worth taking the time to make and create something when they really like what you put out for them.

What he ended up with at the end of play time.  I just covered it that day with press and seal but that night we put it in a Tupperware bowl to keep it.  I chose the chocolate play and not just the coffee playdough to make because I know the recipe for the chocolate one keeps well.  We have peppermint glitter playdough from Christmas in a ziploc bag that can still be played with.  Here is a link to the Nurture Store of a  list of playdough recipes from A-Z if you would like to look for a new playdough recipe to try.  Hope you and your family may have some Dino Land fun too.

Please do come and visit us again. We would love to have you back.

All kids are different and only you can decide how you let your kids play. And with what materials you let them play with. My children are supervised when playing. Please keep this in mind with any post you read of mine!

Check us out on Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Sulia, Google+,

and our G+ community, All Things Kids.

Other post you may like: Sand playdough  &  Hotwheels and paint

We linked up at living life intentionally