Fun With Playdough

This week Hunter played with playdough for the first time.  He is learning the color red, so I let him check out some red playdough.

He definitely thought it was interesting.  He loved touching it and squeezing it.

I used a cookie cutter and cut out a heart shape… Hunter tried to put the heart back.

He loved seeing the results of pressing the cookie cutter into the playdough.

Of course he had to taste it.

And play peek-a-boo with it.

He loved playing with playdough and it kept him occupied for quite a while!

(A note of caution- when I worked in a daycare center there was a little girl who stuffed playdough into her mouth and it got stuck on the roof of her mouth.  It had to scraped off and was pretty hard to get out.  So, keep a close eye on your toddlers when they are playing with playdough.)

Mess Free Painting

I have seen this idea posted on several blogs, and thought it looked like fun.  I don’t know why I never thought of this!

Put a piece of paper and some paint inside a ziploc bag.  Seal the bag and tape it to the table.

Add a toddler.

Have fun with no mess to clean up.

Hershey Kiss and Science Experiments

Hailey made a Hershey Kiss for a cute Valentine’s Day activity.  I cut out a Hershey Kiss shape from an old file folder.  Hailey wrapped it in foil and then taped it to the back.

Hailey added some eyes to the kiss.

The finished Hershey Kiss.

We did a little color mixing experiment.  We froze different colored hearts using food coloring.

Then we put the hearts into clear cups, waited for the ice to melt and checked to see what happened.

Once all the ice melted Hailey filled in our color chart to see what would happen when certain colors were mixed together.

Then we did an experiment with snow.  Hailey filled a cool whip container with snow and we brought it inside to see what would happen.

Hailey checked it every hour and made predictions about what she thought would happen next.

Once it was all melted we poured it over a coffee filter to see what would happen.  We talked about why the bowl was full of snow and why the water was much lower and we talked about why there was dirt on the coffee filter.

I took pictures of Hailey checking the snow and wrote down her predictions/comments each hour.  This will be made into a little booklet.

Letter of the Week- Letter P

Our letter of the week last week was the letter P.  Here are some of the activities we did:

We looked through fliers and found things that started with the letter P and Hailey cut them out.

Hailey colored letter P  word cards, cut the pictures out and then glued them onto index cards.

We do these for every letter.  When it’s all dry I staple it together and make a little book.

I saw a cute P is for Peacock over at No Time for Flashcards.  Hailey used her Do-a-Dot markers to decorate the feathers.

The completed P is for Peacock.

Hailey practiced writing the letter P and circled words that started with P.

We made a piano- Hailey drew some lines on a white piece of paper.

She cut some black strips of paper and glued those on.

The completed P is for piano.

We added the letter P to our Chicka Chicka Boom Boom tree.

Hailey practiced her shapes on this pizza coloring paper.

Then we made a pretend pizza- Hailey painted a paper plate red then added all sorts of toppings.

The finished pizza.

For more fun ideas to do with your preschooler, check these out: