.

New Toys: Keep your preschoolers entertained in those early baby days.

I’d like to say I thought of this one myself, but I didn’t.  The kind souls at B.You Toys were super generous and sent us a big box of Stackadoos bristle blocks.  To say that I can not thank them enough is an understatement.  Really, my preschoolers are bored with the toys they already have and receiving something new and wondrous to play with means that I can sit and breastfeed in peace!  I love these blocks (and the kids do too!)  Once life calms down a bit more I’m sure we’ll incorporate them into learning activities.

.

Moby Wrap (or any hands-free carrier).

I prefer the moby baby styled carrier as it feels so snug, almost like I am giving my baby a big hug!  And they are super easy to make!  I have about a dozen of them (post coming with instructions on how to make one yourself sometime next week).   If you have a preschooler you are trying to chase and take care of, having a hands-free carrier is a must so you can still get “baby-cuddles”.  I use mine while cooking dinner, playing with blocks on the floor, and/or watching the kids and mediating play outside.

.

Feed your Freezer!

We can only eat macaroni and cheese and frozen pizzas so many times in a row.  I am so thankful that I spent a few weekends before Baby K arrived making meals so all I have to do is pull it out of the freezer in the morning and stick it into the microwave in the evening.  We do have several friends who have brought us meals, and I am grateful for them, but I am also thankful that I planned ahead of time with kid-friendly foods.  The last thing I want to do is fight with my preschooler about eating his dinner while trying juggle my fork and infant.

.

Snack Bags: Feed the kids and entertain them in the process.

I love giving the kids a chance to be independent.  We use snack bags for road-trips, but they are also really great if you want to lengthen a snack time, to make it into more of an event.  I made the bags in advance, then put them in reach of the kids.  When baby K is getting a mommy snack, the older kiddos can go grab their snack bags.  They enjoy the variety and digging out their favorites first.  The snacks that go into the bags vary each time we make them.

.

Cayenne Pepper (TMI warning!)

Pepper?!?  I know you are probably wondering why this is a must have, but for a recuperating momma with preschoolers it is requirement!  Lifting older siblings is unavoidable.  It seems that I have to rescue someone who climbed onto the top of the dollhouse, or who can’t get out of the crib, or separate two tasseling kiddos, you get the idea.   All of these are big no-nos for recuperating postpartum moms!  And yet, we can not not intervene!  Cayenne Pepper has been used in WWI and WWII as a clotting agent on battlefields.  It really helps speed up the recovery process.  I have used it with two of my four pregnancies and have had a much quicker recovery the two times I took Cayenne pepper (in spite of lifting heavy objects/children after delivery).  Take it in pill form daily and you will heal in record time.

.

Have you brought an infant home to a household of preschoolers?  Feel free to share your recovery and survival tips in the comments and I’ll be sure to link up to you!

.

Capes

These are so easy to create and make terrific gifts!  Basically, take a rectangle of fabric, finish off its edges, then gather the top and sew a band around the top.  Viola!  You have a cape!  I’ve even made them with no-sew stripping.  The kids have used these capes as well, capes, but also as aprons, a puppet stage to hide behind and covers to the entrance of their “caves”.

.

Hats/wigs/crowns

Having something silly on their head is just addictive for them!  We have gone through phases with cowboy hats, whimsically decorated hats, ball caps, fussy wigs, princess crowns, even putting all the ribbons and bows we own in their hair at one time (we got several comments grocery shopping that day).  My youngest is the one most enthralled with hats right now, she’s even put pants on her head as a makeshift hat.  I think she loves how the pant legs bobble on her back.  One of the favorites is an easy to make “braid hat”.  This was made before I began blogging, but you can easily replicate it with yarn.  Make braids or stringy hair and glue it to a hat.  Lots of fun!

.

Vests

We have several different types of vests in our collection, a few handed down from ring-bearers of weddings past, a few itchy ones, but by far the kids favorite vests are a pair of old swimming lifejackets.  They have been consistently favorite items for nearly two years of pretend play!  They have worn them in the bathtub (filled and empty) pretending they are “at the lake”.  They have used them in reenacting “westerns” and horse-back riding.  Currently, the life-jackets are coveted as props for playing “Diego and Alyssa” animal rescuers.

.

Flouncy dresses

If you have girls these are a staple!  My girls will wear their flouncy dresses/skirts 24/7 if I let them!

.

Shoes

We have a big box of old shoes (waiting to be handed down to the next Quirky Kid) it also includes a few bigger sizes that are hand-me-downs from their cousins and some old high heels, Daddy’s old boots, etc.  The kids absolutely love playing with this big box.  They wear the shoes, but have also used them to create a “shoe road” and used them as a stand and homes for their animals/dolls.  We’ve even used them to create letters and of course to practice matching!  Interesting shoes are so much fun!

.

Sheet or boxes

A sheet is great for pretend play.  It can become a tent, a turban, a dress, a swimming pool, the dog kennel, my youngest especially enjoys using it to play hide-n-seek and hiding wherever, just under the sheet.

.

.

For my youngest, while she does color with crayons, today she was more interested in banging them so I helped her color in her page. She’d hand me a new color every few seconds and I’d tell her the name of the color, have her repeat it back to me and then scribble like mad till she picked out the next crayon. She loved it and thought I was “so silly.”  It is the highest compliment my toddler gives someone. After we colored them we got on our art shirts and mixed up our shaving cream paint. As I am trying to encourage my youngest to not finger paint, there is a time for finger painting but also a time for more orderly – aka clean – fun, we got some old makeup sponges out and used those to help spread our paint.

.

I love how the paint makes the crayon jump out at you! The finished product of our painted crayon works of art are beautiful! 

.

What you need to make Jello Popsicles:

• Box of Jello – we have used cherry, lime and strawberry.  I bet all the flavors would taste great!  Note: the red colors do stain clothes!  We learned that the hard way.
• Orange Juice – 1 Cup. Love that the new Minute Maid bottle is so easy to pour!  This also adds to the health benefit – these could be great during the flu season, hydrating the kids and giving them vitamin C and other vitamins!
• Fruit – we’ve mashed bananas, added pureed peaches, strawberries, blueberries, etc.  Be creative! ETA: I was asked quantities, and it varied each time we made them. Probably a cup or two.
• Hot water – 1 Cup

.

While I boiled a cup of water, Z mashed the fruit.  Then I gave him the hot water and he dumped the jello in it stirring for a little while.  Add the Minute Maid and fruit.  Then fill the popsicle cups (we filled mini-dixie cups with the leftovers) and freeze for a few hours until frozen.  So simple!

.

Thanks to Minuet Maid for participating in this post and to Jen at Whole Foods, check out her giveaway of a popsicle maker!

.

Grab 4 bottles of bubbles and food coloring. I was fortunate enough to satisfy my obsessive nature by matching my dye to the bottles. You don’t have to be so picky!

.

Open the bubbles and squirt half a bottle of coloring into each bubble container. I didn’t take this task outside. It’s messy, so you should go outside before you squirt food coloring all over your dining room table!

.
Speaking of messy: do you have an art easel taking up too much room inside? If you want to make your deck the coolest place on the block, move it outside for the Summer! It’s so much easier to clean up paints and chalk dust, and we end up doing tons more artwork if I know we aren’t going to make the house a disaster. We have these: No-Spill Paint Cups With Lids and I use half of them for paint, and the other half hold our chalk. The lid keeps out any moisture, and I don’t have to bring our supplies back and forth.

Back to the bubble paint: take out the wands and change the kiddies into old clothes. The goal is to blow bubbles aimed at the paper, and when the bubble pops it leaves a great design. My kids thought it would be better to take the Jackson Pollock route.

.

Looks like they had a blast!  Thanks again, Lawrence Girls and Daddy Too for a fun craft idea!

.

Sorry guys, we cheated in these photos.  The originals I took on the actual trip and they were incredibly out of focus… hope you don’t mind our “recreation” of the bucket system, from the comfort of our driveway.  We are glad to be home!

.

.

.

.
What were our edible paints? Random dips from our fridge (including French’s Honey Mustard, Ranch dressing and ketchup). I hoped that the dips would mix together, that ranch salad dressing and ketchup would make “pink”, or that ketchup and French’s Honey Mustard would make “orange”, but that was not the case. Although they did not blend well,  the kids still had a great time!  We cut up a mixture of veggies for our “paint brushes” and had fun stamping different textures and playing with our food.

.

As the pictures show, my youngest was ecstatic to be included in her siblings “craft” time and I was thrilled she devoured her “trees”.  Not only was this a great toddler/early preschooler craft, it was also a great way to encourage her to eat her veggies. Want more edible painting fun with your toddler?  Check out our painting your pancakes post.

.

.

I Spy:

We had I Spy toys (like the shakey bottles and books), but we also played a version of I Spy while driving.  Even my 17m old loved participating!  Each age level played in a different way.  With my four year old I could describe items and have her guess what she was looking for… with my almost 3 year old I’d ask him to hunt for all the “gray” items in our car, or all the places where he could see trash on the side of the road (or in the car, that was helpful come clean-up time).  He also loved pointing out each and every water tower we drove by.  With my youngest, I Spy, was a bit more obvious.  I see a red truck (as the red truck passes us) we’d all point and she’d shriek joining in the pointing fun!  This was a great way to keep conversation flowing when your mind is drowsy.

.

Box of Books:

We had a morning and an afternoon “quiet time”.  In the morning I gave the kids books to read during the quiet time.  The older kids got to share a box of books between their seats, my youngest got her single book to play with and read (hopefully, dozing).   They also got a snuggle item.  The first day this was difficult.  The kids did not want to have a quiet time and kept asking for  items/whining.  I am amazed at how quickly kids can learn a new routine!  By Day 2 they knew what quiet time meant and by the last day of driving they anticipated it and had book requests and settled right in!

.

Complicated snacks:

Giving a simple snack (like pretzel or a cookie) works, but we found that snack time could double as play time.  We got snack sized bags and would put a mixture of snacks in them.  The kids got to play I spy with their food – they loved that!  Also, apples given whole take a long time for them to eat.  Other complicated snacks we enjoyed included fruit leather with another item (ex: pretzel stick) and the kids could play pretend with their food, making a scroll, a Tee-pee, pretending the fruit leather was a blanket for their toy, etc.  Come back later for a post on how to make your own fruit leather!  It’s in the works!

.

In-Car Potty:

Two of our three kids are potty-trained (and our third thinks she is – but is no where near full control).   This potentially could mean tons of stops for their tiny bladders!  We would limit drinks till half an hour before our next stop (we stopped every 2 hours, one a quick pull-off and in-car potty time, the other a get-gass and coffee stop).  Having a potty in the car meant that we didn’t have to unpack the kids, we could just pull off into a rest area or onto the side of the road, let the kids go in the training potty chair, dump it (if it was liquid, solids we disposed of) and get back on the road in under 10 min.  It was great to not have to worry about bringing multiple young children into a public bathroom as often.  The Bambino potty is pretty low, perfect size as it fits nicely under the back seat.   I also like how it is one-piece, no nooks and crannies, just wipe out and store!

What are some of your sanity-saving road trip tips?  Please share them in the comments!

Thanks to Evelyn for the use of a photo!

What you’ll need to create your own buckle clipping toy:

• Plastic Buckles (I found mine for a few bucks off ebay)
• Various ribbon scraps
• Two pieces of fabric – we used canvas as it was sturdy
• Other fun items (we added a pacifier, a bell, a key-chain, a zipper. I can also see this being a hit with various sizes and textures of Velcro).
• Sewing machine and thread.

.

How to make this toddler learning toy:

First, I threaded the buckles through the ribbon and affixed them to the right side of the fabric, or the side I wanted to be visible.   Then, I pinned the other piece of canvas (pretty side in) and sewed along the edge, leaving one side open, like a pillowcase.  We clipped the corners and turned the “pillowcase” inside out.  Now the buckles, which had been pinned on the inside of the two pieces of canvas, are on the outside.  I reinforced the seams with another straight stitch along the outside, added a zipper and viola!  I love homemade toys.  Our toddler has had hours of fun clipping and unclipping these buckles!

.
Want to see another version?  Miss M from Splendidly Imperfect created her own clipping toy.  She added a snap, and some blocks to hers!  It looks great!  Here’s the photo she sent our way.  Check out her blog for other crafty ideas.

.

Selena and I took a little break this week from our postcards. We had a very fun Geography lesson playing with some new toys that Selena received from some friends of ours.

.

Selena received all these small doll houses complete with furniture, little people and all the accessories to make her own little town. There is a hotel, beauty salon, candy store, pet shop, cafe, cottages, and a dance studio. There are 8 little houses all together. This comes with a mat that lays on the floor with streets so we had fun making our own little town. We discussed maps, and how this could be any town or city she wanted it to be. She decided it was just “Selena’s City.” With the ice cream truck that came with it and other little cars that she has, she had fun driving from business to business. She can change the look and feel of her city in any fashion she wants to. A great hands on introduction to Geography.

.

.

After our play time with this, she spent quite a long time playing with it by herself. Then she discovered the box it came in. Her box has been everything from a hiding place, batting box for baseball, car, and just a dream place to lay and watch the imaginary clouds on our ceiling.

.

Where is Selena?

There she is!  Thanks again Children Grow, Children Explore for sharing your learning game with us and thanks Amanda for sharing a photo with us.