Cheerio Names

This was a fun and tasty activity for the kids. It is not only fun and yummy but also helps with dexterity and letter recognition. 

All You Need

• card-stock or cardboard
• pen/marker
• cheerios
• glue

Directions

I wrote out their names on a piece of card-stock and went over the letters with glue (one at a time so they wouldn't smear it all over the place). The kids then took the cheerios and placed them on the letters. 

They had fun taking "snack breaks" between each letter. We also took time to talk about what letters we were working on, the sounds they make and who had the same letters in their names. 

Ivory Soap Cloud

I have seen the pin on Pinterest with the Ivory Soap Cloud and when my husband came home from Costco with a huge pack of Ivory Soap bars I just had to give it a shot (I am not sure if it works with any other kinds of soap). I thought how much fun it would be to let the kids watch it grow then split up the cloud and let them mold it into shapes and a new bar of soap that they could use - as said promised here - Our Best Bites

So I didn't read all of the instructions...a shock I know. I tried to get the kids to mold the soap by squishing it into cookie cutters, but it would all just fall apart again. You do need to mix it in a food processor with some warm water THEN put it into the cookie cutter to mold it. 

The kids all lined up to watch the soap grow in to a cloud.

Here is our soap cloud after 1:30minutes in the microwave. I have to warn you the smell is overpowering. I also found 1/4 of the bar in the back of the microwave so I put that part back in for another 45 seconds. 

 Here they are trying to mash the dry soap cloud into cookie cutters...not working....

While the activity was fun, it made a HUGE mess everywhere, this stuff gets on the floor, on clothes and tracked through the rest of the house. The kids had fun but I think I spent more time cleaning up afterwards than they did playing with it. 

I was left with a pile of dry soap flakes which I saved in a jar and use it to wash my hands at the kitchen sink. The kids think it's fun to use the soap crumbs so I guess it wasn't a total fail. 

GOOP!

Indoor Winter Fun

Living in Calgary during the winter time with small children at home allows you to think of some very creative and fun activities to do indoors, or if you're like me that is what Pinterest is for! Here is the most popular activity of all of the fun things that we have been up to.

Goop!!!!

Goop is a fun activity to not only make but also play with. I made this one at home with my children, this not only kept them entertained for a couple hours but my husband and I had a hard time resisting playing with the goop as well. I got the recipe from Sugar Bee Crafts. We ended up making a few colors and it ended up last up to 3 weeks before it started to leek some gross liquid out of it. 

The kids loved using all sorts of baking and play-dough tools on the goop. We also made one with clear glue as well, it was fun but broke apart in crumbs and made more of a mess. I prefer the white glue goop. This was honestly their favorite activity to do for a couple weeks. 

Here are the directions:

Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup of white glue
• 1/4 cup of water
• 1/4 warm water
• 1/2 tsp of borax
• food coloring

Mix the white glue and water together in a bowl, add a few drops of food coloring (not too much we made that mistake and had blue hands for a couple days). In a separate bowl add the borax to the warm water and let sit for 15 seconds then mix together. Add borax solution to the glue solution. As you mix it you will see it is going to clump together. The more you play with it the more it turns into a solid clump of goop! 

Have fun!