Bring a little bit of sunshine inside with these 10 easy sun craft ideas for toddlers and preschoolers.

10 Easy Sun Themed Crafts for Toddlers and Preschoolers

ByKori
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Though it’s officially spring, it certainly hasn’t felt like it every day. Sure, sometimes the sun shines brightly but more often than not there’s cloudy skies to be found. We’ve taken it upon ourselves (we being Squeaker and I) to bring a little bit of sunshine indoors. We made our “You Are My Sunshine” craft for Mother’s Day this year and on that same day, we did three more sun themed crafts. Maybe we’ll turn this into a Sun and Moon unit in the future and use some of these sun crafts for preschoolers. For our part, we did the following three: Tissue paper sun (using pink, orange, and yellow tissue paper) hand and footprint sun (with yellow construction paper) Do a Dot marker sun…

Easy Letter Matching Activity

Easy Letter Matching Activity

ByKori
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As we have our informal tot school, and by informal I mean we do a fair amount of free play, learning through play, pretend play, reading books, arts and crafts; sometimes I’ll try to sneak in a learning activity. But those learning activities are also play based, or at least have some element of play in them. I want to keep it simple enough for Squeaker and yet still with an element of challenge so she’s working on her skills. Things like fine motor, gross motor, letter identification, and that sort of thing. For Squeaker, this also means playing games and having learning activities that can be quick in nature or that she can come back to when her attention span allows for it. We’ll…

Easy Shaun the Sheep Craft

ByKori
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Squeaker is absolutely in love with Shaun the Sheep! She’s had a Shaun stuffed animal of her own for a little over a year now and it was just recently that she discovered the Shaun the Sheep cartoon series on the Kindle. We’ve also watched A Close Shave with her, and she seemed to be pretty fond of that when the sheep were around. With the movie coming out here in the United States soon, and Squeaker getting ever so excited when she sees the trailer, I thought we could make an easy Shaun the Sheep Craft. It was her first time doing a craft with me but I think she did pretty well!  This post contains affiliate links and while you are under no…

Having Fun with the Itsy Bitsy Spider

ByKori
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Squeaker absolutely nursery rhymes and finger plays right now. One of her favorites just so happens to be the Itsy Bitsy Spider. We do this one often and she’s getting to the point where she can do some of the motions independently. She’s also attempting to say itsy bitsy. To help facilitate this, I made a printable pack for her so we can do other activities. We’re having fun with the itsy bitsy spider and I hope that you will too! We will also be using this soon in our Afterschooling series, so be sure to look out for the post! For now this is just your download and coming soon, I’ll share what we did to supplement our mini unit/first theme for Tot School…

This easy DIY button game for babies also encourages fine motor skills.

Button Play for Fine Motor Skills

ByKori
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After putting together the St. Patrick’s Day sensory bin, which was then re-purposed  for an Easter sensory bin, I realized that the buttons that we bought had a lot of potential. How so? Well, I got the idea after Squeaker kept trying to go after the package. She was fascinated with the shape and size, so I thought why not capitalize on her curiosity and use button play for fine motor skills development. After gathering a few materials around the house, we had a simple DIY button game that only took me a few minutes to put together but kept her entertained for a good 15 to 20 minutes at a time. (and if you have a young child, you know that’s quite a bit…

Easy and Simple Every Day Play

ByKori
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Squeaker turned a year old on December 5th and while I’ve seen different criteria for classifying a child of her age; we alternate between calling her an older baby or a toddler (… toddling terror, to be specific). She is walking and walking quite well, and she uses walking as her primary form of movement. She’ll only crawl now if it’s to reach something that she can’t bend down and pick up. But, even with all of her walking, I still try to find easy play ideas that will keep her moving, keep her occupied and also facilitate some sort of independent play. I’m not trying to say that I want her to play independently all the time- she’s still just a baby (in my…