Combine play sand with cornstarch and you get lots of sand fun!  What is great about this mixture is that unlike regular sand, it cakes together when slightly damp.  Almost becoming hard, but smashes back into sand.  All of my kids enjoyed playing with there new “outdoor only” tub!  I will warn you though, they were covered in sand when they were done!  The “clumping qualities” exist on clothing too – haha.  This was messier than regular sand, it didn’t just brush off until it was bone dry (aka when …

It is rare that all three of my kids enjoy learning at the same time, usually a learning activity is a hit with one kiddo and a bust with the other, while the other is zoned out in the corner.  This measuring activity was loved by all! What you will need:
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Ruler
Assorted Gummy Worms
Bananas

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Activity to Teach Preschool Math Concepts :
Have the kids sort the gummy worms.  Which do they think is the shortest?  Which is the longest?
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Once they have found the shortest one measure it.  Can they find any …

Super easy and Super fun! This is a really easy edible art project! Instead of boring plain old syrup on your pancakes, why not paint them! What you’ll need: Food Coloring, Syrup, Unused Paintbrushes, & Pancakes! We used an egg carton to “hold the paint” as it doesn’t tip easily, holds small portions of syrup and, most importantly, is disposable! I love art projects with easy clean-up! Add 3 drops or so to roughly a tablespoon of syrup and have fun painting and …

Do your preschoolers use a ton of chapstick?  Mine do!  And I needed an alternative to help their cracking lips (gotta love winter weather) and something that I felt safe with them ingesting.  I was inspired after reading about a friend who mixed shortening and a juice mix to create a yummy edible lip balm.  We adapted it slightly.  We like a “harder” solution – here’s what we made, and my kids love it!
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What you will need make your own edible lip balm:

1/2 a cup of vegetable shortening
1 teaspoon of …

We have found a terrific way to work on our Bible memory verses and have recently begun using magnets to learn site words.  These are super easy to create.  You know all those random magnet advertisements, well they finally have a purpose!  Get some mailing labels, print out the words you want your kiddos to learn to recognize, attache the label to the magnet, trim them and viola!  You have large magnetic words perfect for little hands.  Below is a list of 100 common site words:
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Puppets are great for fostering pretend play! My three year old especially enjoyed having her puppet dolls walk and hold hands, have elaborate conversations… my son, as much as he enjoyed decorating his “man” all he wanted to do when he was finished was sword fight with his “puppet”.  Boys.   Want to know how to make your own stick puppets? Here is what we did!
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This will be a new “favorite food” for my preschoolers! My son was so proud that “he made lunch”. These would be perfect with frozen pancakes, but as we had already consumed our stash Z mixed up some batter for us (see our make pancake letters post). We used bags to “squeeze” out our mini-pancakes. They were the perfect size for little hands to grab!
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How to make them?  Grab two pancakes, lather on the peanut butter, add slices of bananas and you have a hit …

My son loves being a helper and was thrilled when he got to make lunch for us today! We are eating pancakes – yummy! How fun is it to mix breakfast with learning our letters! We have a set of cookie cutters that are in the shapes of capital letters (thanks Laney). Here is a tip that we use to decrease the likelihood of massive pancake batter spills while using cookie cutters to make pancakes in particular shapes, maybe it will help you!
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We used a dry …

Do you remember Cootie Catchers from when you were a kid?  I loved them!  Here is a cootie catcher perfect for the learning to read kiddo in your life!  For our paper we used one of the sheets of Shaving Cream Painted works from yesterday.  I was inspired by Jimmie and her daughter Sprite (love their blog).  They created cootie catchers for learning history and math facts at Heart of the Matter Homeschoolers.   If they can make one for the Civil War, I bet I can make one about “Short …

We had a girls dress-up tea party at our house this week and they had so much fun dressing up!  We needed the perfect accessory, edible bracelets!  I was inspired to make these adorable jellybean bracelets after reading the tutorial by Mrs D Lightful, love her blog!  She used stretchy string to thread her bracelets but we just used plain string, the kids absolutely loved them!
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Supplies needed to make the Jellybean Bracelets:

Thicker needle (I used a basting needle from quilting.  Loved it’s “T” head, it made threading so much easier!).
Thin …