Building Week Part 3: Chain Reaction

This is SO fun your kids will want to do it over and over. Mom Trusted has a great chain reaction you can build from popsicle sticks that will surely create some giggles.

Want to see one in action? It will surely make you run to the store for sticks!

Building Week Part 2: Strong Shapes

This is an easy, fun experiment to find out how strong different shapes are. Shape 1 sheet of paper into different shapes and see how much they can hold. We made a triangle, square, and cylinder.

We used books and loaded them on slowly (in the same order for each shape)

The triangle won with 12+ books! The cylinder held 9 and the square held 5 (but the seam was a little weaker on the square too) We used this information to make a card pyramid and discussed our thoughts on how the Egyptians built their pyramid without modern technology.

A house of cards is rewarding, but frustrating lol!

A coffee break was definitely needed. What are you building this week?!

Building Week

Welcome to Building Week - this week we'll cover different activities that involve "building". Today I wanted to focus on our favorite building material, LEGO bricks, but switch it up a bit and pair it with learning. There are so many ways to mix them together and they are all great for visual learners which both of my boys are.

Matching patterns with DUPLO from Rockabye Butterfly

Math with LEGO bricks from Homegrown Learners

 Create structures (easy or hard) photograph them and have your kid recreate them! from My Little Princess World

A lot of great math ideas from The Pleasantest Thing

Another great LEGO instruction book - perfect for beginning builders from Kids Activities Blog

How do you use LEGO bricks for learning?

Pirate Week: Part 3

Since I'm only one person and can only do so much in a week I thought I'd load you up with lots of pirate inspiration from others today!

Make a treasure map from a paper bag from B.Nute Productions

Egg Carton treasure box (and treasure) from Nurture Store

Jello boat snack from The Remodeled Life

Build a pirate ship from Kate's Creative Place

Walk the plank from Chick a Bug

Between a Dog and a Hard Place has a GREAT pirate week up on her blog (good for younger kids too!)

A Pirate play date from The Busy Budgeting Mama

A sand jewel hunt from The Fickle Pickle (you could do this in the park)

and pirate sensory play from Momma's Fun World

from Crayon Freckles

And Navigating the Preschool Years

PIRATE WEEK: PART 2 - WATER PLAY

This is another one of those make it your own activities. Depending on the age of your kids or their attention span there are so many different ways to play with boats and floating objects.

ALWAYS watch your kids around water.

We planned to do this project in our pool but we got some crazy winds and the pool is a disaster so we moved it indoors to the tub. You could do this in a plastic bin, kiddie pool, sink etc.

First we made a paper boat. You can use the instructions we posted on our hat/boat/life jacket post using a regular piece of paper instead of a newspaper

The paper boats DO float - make sure you pull open the bottom a bit to stabilize.

Then we turned it into a "let's see what floats" experiment

Of course minifigs got involved.

I try to leave activities like this open ended even now as they are older so it can go where they want it to.

For the building portion leave plenty of supplies at their disposal to create and experiment with. We went the quick and easy route with some styrofoam packaging. It makes a perfect boat.

I love that activities like this lead to natural questions and experimentation (the best way to learn). Build off of these activities and see how much each floatation device can hold before sinking.

Have fun!

Spy Week: Part 3 - Fingerprint Matching

Now this might be more detective than spy - but I don't mind if you don't! This is a fun game/activity that can be switched up for just your own kids or a whole party of kids. Start by taking everyone's finger prints. For your own family you can do all the fingers but if you have a whole party of kids you may just want to stick with the thumbs.

There are 2 easy ways to do finger prints. A less messy way is with a regular pencil and Scotch tape. Scribble a square of pencil on a paper and place your thumb into the square.

Then press your thumb onto a small piece of Scotch tape

Peel off the tape and place on a sheet of paper and you have a perfect little finger imprint.

If you want to go the more traditional route  you can use stamp ink

For this game you'll need 2 sets of each finger prints. One is the record to go off of and the other will be for the crime scenes.

For a party you could hide all the presents at some point and place one of the fingerprints in the area. If you're just doing this at home you could place them around the house. Once they find a fingerprint they can try and figure out whose it is using their magnifying glass and their record of prints.

I love how this game can be changed up to meet your needs. For little ones it might be fun just to examine their fingerprints and then hid them around the hosue for them to find (with their magnifying glass of course!)

See more from SPY WEEK

Spy Week: Part 2 - Printable Decoder

Every spy needs a way to send messages to his partner. The circle decoder is the perfect tool!

You can have your kids make their own or print out this one

Cut out the circles

Arrange from smallest to biggest and use a brad in the center to attach them together

Now you're ready to create a message and decode!

You'll need to decide which code you're going to use. You line up the "A" on the smaller circle with the letter on the larger circle that you've chosen. Some do the first letter of the day of the week so today would be W for Wednesday. We wanted to be cryptic so I chose "V" for this one. When writing your message use the outer circle for plain english and the inner circle for the decoded message.

Once the message is written out - mess up the decoder so not just anyone can figure it out. The person decoding will need to match up the "A" with the secret letter (in this case "V") 

You use the outer circle for the plain english message and the inner circle for the decoded message. So in this case he found the "O" on the inner circle and change it to "I" to decode.

Now you have a way to send special messages. To make it harder you can run all the decoded letters together!

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Spy Week: Part 1

Welcome to SPY WEEK!

Spies (and I'm using this term losely) are sneaky, smart, and crafty. It's fun to pretend to be a spy (especially if you have an older sibling). A spy kit is a fun way to start off spy week and I wanted to show how easily you could pull together a kit like this for a birthday or surprise gift!

The only thing I bought was the magnifying glass and I found it at Michaels in the bargain section. They also had quite a few other fun spy gadgets but I thought I'd show you how to pull stuff out from around the house! The silver thing is a small flashlight. Flashlights are another thing I recommend keeping on hand for playtime. The moustaches and nose glasses I picked up in the party supply section last year. I try to keep an eye out for things like that on clearance to hid in a stash since you never know when you might need them! A little box, suitcase, or bag and you have a complete set!

For our first spy activity we made a laser beam obstacle.

We first saw the idea at Chicken Babies and posted about it HERE. Finally decided to try it on our own with some string and washi tape. I actually liked using the tape because if they touched/pulled on the string too hard it fell down and they had to try again.

(I think at this point we can start making a game out of seeing how many pictures Kona the dog can get herself into)

Such a fun game and reminded us of the Backyardigans Super Spy episode they watched when they were little.

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