Bead Threading for Toddler

Bead threading is an activity which improves their fine motor control, strengthening those little muscles in their hand. I found it also helps for hand and eye coordination and also concentration skill. This activity involves small item: beads, please never leave them unattended while doing this activity.

What you will need:
Beads
Thread (It works well with pipe cleaners too!)

Letter push pin activity

I had this cork board for a long time but didn't have a chance to use it, I was so happy when I saw a lot of toddler activities idea!
This time I'm gonna make an alphabet using the push pins and let her connect it to each other by using colorful elastic bands. 

This activity improves their fine motor control, hand and eye coordination and also concentration skill. This activity involves small item: push pin, please make sure to keep an eye on them and never leave them unattended while doing this activity.
If you don't feel at ease, please don't do this activity with your toddler.

What you need:
Cork board
Push pins
Elastic bands

Eye Dropper Activity for Toddler

I love to teach Jenn while she plays, it's more fun and easier for her to absorb the lesson. Today's activity involves messy play and colors, I put on a plastic bib on her.

What you need:
Eye dropper or pipettes
Food coloring
Thick napkins/paper

All you have to do is teach them how to use the eye dropper and let them explore as long as they want. Eye dropper is a good tool to improve their fine motor skills, have fun! 

Basic Prewritting

It's time for prewritting skill! It's a very basic activity for Jenn, it improves her fine motor skill and get her ready to write at school too. 

This activity also allow me to correct her way to hold a pen. She still needs a lot of practices in prewritting, but it's a good start for her! I'm gonna make more prewritting activity for her, stay tune! =)

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Counting Shape

Jenn enjoyed and did well in this activity, it includes shapes, colors and counting. Let's give it a try!

What you need:
Paper
Marker Pen
Stickers

How:
Print out different shapes for each task, color it with differently too.
They are required to count the shapes and stick down the stickers on the box.

Name Recognition

Jenn is very familiar with alphabets, so I decided to make a name recognition for her. It's a simple sticking sticker activity, which requires them to match the alphabets.

What you need:

Paper

Stickers

Marker Pen

How:

Make circles and write down the alphabets of their name on it

Get the stickers ready and write down alphabets on it too

Hope they will love it too! 

Counting Cards with Clothes Pin

I'm still doing a lot of activity in counting for Jenn, let's make it fun again this time!

What you need:
Cardboard
Origami Papers
Clothes Pin
Scotch Tape
Glue
Scissor

Firstly, write down the numbers on origami papers and cut them out. I made them in different colors, just to make it more colorful. Then cut cardboard into same sizes and glue the numbers on it. I cover the cardboard with scotch tape, just to make it difficult to be torn.

How to play? Just simply ask your toddler to put on the clothes pin on the cardboard, based on the number written on it. Happy counting! 

Dinosaur

Start introducing dinosaur to Jenn, it's another simple sticking stickers activity. 
She still can't do it perfectly, but I'm still proud of her. 
You'll be amazed how they improved from time to time.

What you need:
Cardboard
Markers/pencil colors/crayon
Stickers

I searched the dinosaur from the net, simply printed it out and colored it, don't forget to leave some blank spots for the stickers.

Enjoy the activity! 

Matching Animals

It's been busy days lately, so I just give Jenn a simple activity, it's inspired from creative moms out there.
The activity requires them to match between the animals in the flashcard and the plastic toys.

You need:
Animal Plastic Toys
Animal Flashcards

You may add some information about the animals, eg: how do they sound, where do they live.

SUN-shine

After everyone was down couple of days ago, now mommy was down too with fever! But I can't wait to make this sun activity for Jenn. 

What you need:
Cardboard (thick!)
DIY Edible Paint
Origami Paper
Scissor
Scotch Tape
Marker pen

Firstly, I let her paint on a thick cardboard with DIY edible paint. She may use her finger, cotton buds or anything that she wants. Then you have to wait until it gets dry. 

You may cut some origami papers while waiting for the painting. I used red, orange and yellow colors to stick on the sun.

Once the painting dries, cut a big circle and you may start sticking on origami papers on the circle's edges with scotch tape. I added smiley face to make it cute!

Jenn didn't finish her job, mommy have to do most of it. We may give it another try next time! 

DIY Edible Cloud Dough

Firstly, I would really say sorry for postponing the activity posts for a long time, Jenn was down with fever, followed with the rest of the family, and I had to take care of them. Thanks God they recovered now and I get the smiles on the faces back!

I've always wanted to bring Jenn to a beach, let her feel the sand on her tiny feet and play with water. But it's not easy to take her there since we're staying in a metropolitan city full of buildings. Here is an option to introduce her to sand, I made an edible cloud dough for her to play.

Recipe:

• Flour
• Cooking oil (I used olive oil this time)

You may change the cooking oil with baby oil too, but it's not gonna be edible for them!

All you have to do is take some flour, add up some oil, make sure you drop it slowly, or else it will be too sticky. Add up the oil until you get the texture, where you can use it to mold.

I added up some underwater creatures, eg: seahorse, fish, crab, turtle and shell. Let her sense the texture, mold it with the toys and have a lot of fun!

Colorful Toothpicks Activity

I love making DIY toys for Jenn, and this is one of them. It's a simple color recognition activity and also practice their little fingers' muscles.

What you need:

• Empty bottle (I upcycled a mineral water bottle)
• Thick plastic (as the cover)
• Colorful stickers
• Toothpick
• Rubber bands
• Marker

We had to color the toothpicks with markers, we made 6 different colors. You may have more colors, depends on the size of your bottle. Stick on colorful stickers and make a hole, not too big, but just enough to fit in the toothpicks. Cover the bottle with the plastic and secure with rubber bands.

Jenn needs extra patient and concentration to do this activity, but she loves it so much. She will ask for more when all the toothpicks are inside the bottle.

Big vs Small

I was trying to introduce big and small sizes to Jenn with this activity, but seems like she didn't get it. It's a simple sticking stickers activity, you may wanna give it a try.

What you need:
Cardboard
Origami paper
Sticker
Glue
Scissor


Firstly, prepare the circles by using origami paper and sticker, I used colorful sticker and paper to make it more fun. Then instruct your child to pick the circle and stick it on the cardboard. When they can differentiate between big and small, you may ask them with detail, eg: big yellow circle. It practice their knowledge about color too!

Silly Monster

Jenn watched Monster inc and she loves it! Here's an activity to make silly monsters with so much fun! It involves sticking eyes and mouth stickers.

What you need:
Cardboard
Origami paper
Googly eyes
Stickers

I prepare the monster's shapes, and let Jenn to stick as much eyes as she wants and mouth for each monster.

And this is the result, don't be surprise if the monsters have a very strange look.

Uppercase and Lowercase Alphabets

These are simple activities to introduce your children about uppercase and lowercase alphabets. Jenn learned about uppercase and lowercase from the first time she learned about alphabets. I have an abc chart which contains uppercase and lowercase, I found it was very helpful, you can get it at the nearest bookshop.

We need paper, marker and magnetic alphabets for this activity. Draw circles and write down uppercase alphabets on a piece of paper. Make sure it's not too small for the magnetic alphabets.

First activity is to match the uppercase alphabets on the paper with the lowercase magnetic alphabets (it can be found in almost every online toy shop).

The second activity requires alphabet stickers, paper, marker and ruler. Draw boxes on the paper and write down a lowercase alphabets on it.

This activity require the children to match the lowercase and uppercase alphabets by sticking on the stickers. 

Jenn's Splendid Ice Cream

Start introducing ice cream to Jenn couple of months ago, and she loves it! Well, who wouldn't love ice cream?

This is another simple counting activity and let's make it more fun!

What you need:

• Origami paper
• Cardboard
• Glue
• Scissor
• Colorful sticker

Firstly, cut out ice cream shape for them, or let them practice the cutting skill. I used colorful origami paper to present different flavors of ice cream.

Let's start the sticking time, starting with the cone and followed with  scoop ice creams, they can have a single scoop, double scoop or even more, it's up to them!

Then I used colorful stickers as the smarties, let them stick as much as they want too, and remember to practice counting!

It's suitable for a birthday card, birthday invitation and also to congratulate newborns =)

Sorting Shapes

Jenn learned about shapes and she knows them quite well, you may wanna check out the activity about Introductions to shapes over here. It's time for sorting shapes!

What you need:

• Origami paper
• Glue
• Marker
• Paper

Prepare the activity by cutting some shapes on the origami paper, we had circle, triangle, square and rectangle. Then draw the shapes as the header on a piece of paper. This activity simple require them to sort the shapes and stick on the origami paper under each group.

The result is quite messy, maybe we should use different paper for different shape. Have fun! =)

Learning Alphabet "D"

It's been a while since she mess around with pencil color, crayon and paint, so here is a simple activity for letter D.

Print out a big and small letter of D with a picture of duck and dog. Let them use whatever they want to color it with.

My little Picasso is doing her thing, busy picking colors.

Jenn used crayon, pencil color and paint for this activity. This is the final of her coloring activity. 

Counting Tree

Jenn is learning to count, she still can't count properly. Sometimes she start counting from two, and sometimes she just say one to ten without really counting the things i asked. So this time, let's make counting more fun!

What I used:

• Scissor
• Glue
• Origami paper
• Old calendar (I love to upcycle stuff at home!) - Cut it into tree shape and tree trunks, cover up with origami papers.
• Colorful stickers - Write numbers on each color as the task to stick as many stickers as written on it.

Happy sticking, happy counting and have a great day! 

Under the sea

Jenn knows almost all animals, now it's time to tell her about the habitats. I'm gonna start with the sea life since we have crabs, sharks, whales, dolphins, lobsters and seaweeds.

I added a couple drops of food coloring to the water, we are running out of blue, so I used green instead. Jenn take out the animals, tell me what they are before she put them into the water one by one. I put on plastic slabber on Jenn to avoid any splash on her clothes.

Look at how much fun she had! 

DIY Birthday Cake Theme Card

Cousin's birthday is coming, so it's time for Jenn to make another DIY craft. We've prepared a gift for him, wrapped it nicely, but we need a birthday card! 
Instead of buying an ordinary card, making a birthday cake theme card popped out of my mind.

Here are what you need:
Origami paper
Marker
Glue
Scissor
Cardboard
Colorful stickers

We created a lot trash in our daily life: milk box, cereal box, cardboard flyers or invitations. Instead of trashing it, we can upcycle those into useful stuff, and it prevents the earth from getting any worse.

This time we used an old cardboard invitation as the main material. Draw a cake on the cardboard, cover the surface with origami paper. Don't forget to make the candles on the top of the cake, and cut out the shape.

I let my girl to stick the colorful sticker, asked her about the colors and also asked her to count them. It's a simple activity but also lots to learn about. 

Introduction to Shape

Jenn have learned about alphabets, numbers, animals, colors and it's time for introducing her to shapes. Let's get started!

What you need:

• Origami papers
• Glue
• Cardboard

Cut shapes of circle, triangle, square and rectangle using origami papers.
Make sure to use colorful origami papers, kids find it more interesting.

Tell them the shape names and how it looks like. 
Let them stick the shape you asked on the cardboard, you may ask them specifically. For example: Blue triangle, orange square, purple circle, red rectangle.

Keep repeating the shapes until they memorize them.