Melissa & Doug Wooden Geometric Stacker

What a great little toy!  This one is a favorite for so many ages.  You can work with so many things. Colors is the first obvious one.  Then there is shapes, sizes, amount and sorting.  This works for young kids up to about 4 (although my 5 year old will easily fly through this, he still enjoys it from time to time).

The square one, is the one that makes my 4 year old think about how things fit together.  I like that this is self-correcting & my kids can find out the way it goes (size & shape wise).

Sorting Buttons by Color!

This is a fun project the my youngest keeps coming back to.  It is great for sorting things & color recognition.  You can also throw counting in there.

I started with a deviled egg dish from the thrift store ($2.32).  This one is a nice white ceramic, which is great because I always like to reinforced handling things with care.  I wish I had taken a picture of it before I add the color (but alas I was not thinking that far ahead).  Once I got the dish, I got out "my" set of sharpie markers and started coloring.  So now each "egg holder" is a different color, which is a total of 12.

Then I got out my old collection of odd buttons (started by my mother).  My oldest son helped with the choosing of the buttons for the activity.  This was great for him because he had to find two or three buttons in each color.  We didn't happen to have any brown so we colored a button with marker (problem solved).

Counting Caterpillar

This is such a cute little activity!  I have actually made this a few times.  I have done the activity with my own boys, as well as made it and given it as a cute little gift for a little boy who was going to be a big brother.  He thought it was so cute (and better yet it entertained him & he was learning).  We started with 10 and have since added on.  Our Counting Caterpillar currently counts up to 30.

You can make this caterpillar out of little wooden discs that you can easily pick up at Micheal's Craft Store or you can make it out of card stock (we have done both).  Today I used cardstock & was working with one of my son's friends.  She can easily count to 10, but then starts to get mixed up, so we made a caterpillar that goes up to 20 (and then she can keep adding at a later date).  C also can not identify her numbers above 10, but she can count pretty well, so the dots on the back were very helpful. We used water colors for the front, then I drew the numbers on & put dots on the back for her to count and self correct.
                                 

BUGS! BUGS! BUGS! (Patterns & Colors)

So if you have boys or know any boys you then know that they have an innate fascination with BUGS!  So this game is great.  It is from Discovery Toys (but I was lucky enough to pick it up at a thrift store).  Not only do the bugs not squirm around when you touch them (much to my delight), they are colorful & very detailed.

There are 10, 2 sided cards that get gradually more difficult.  They start off very easy working with colors & then get progressively more difficult when it asks you to complete patterns or make your own.  My guys love this game.  They have even branched out & colored the original patterns that they created on another piece of paper.

Edible Peanut Butter Playdough

What fun this was!  Edible playdough, you gotta love playing with your food and eating what you play with. Although my guys are old enough to know what to put in their mouths and what not to.  Some of our little friends are not.  So this is the perfect activity for little visitors who want to join in on our "cooking" fun.  The boys have their own drawer in the kitchen that holds their cooking supplies (aprons, hats, rolling pins, cookie cutters, flippers, measuring cups, etc...).

Edible Peanut Butter Playdough

18 oz. peanut butter

6 tbsp. of honey

1 1/2 cups of powdered milk

Mix all ingredients well.  All powered milk until the playdough is workable with your hands.  This is a fun recipe for kids to play with and certainly has a great taste.  Optional: Use raisins, nuts or pretzels to decorate.

Alphabetical Order Matching Chart

This alphabetical order matching game came from: www.montessoriforeveryone.com   

They have lots of really cool "stuff" including some free downloads (which this is one of).  I copied the file onto cardstock and then laminated the cards and words (and cut them out).  I then stored it in a file folder (and all the little words in a plastic bag).

With my younger son I split the cards and words in half (less words to search for, for now).  For my older son (by 15 months) I put both cards out and all the words.  They both did a great job on it & I can tell my younger son is going to be doing both cards in no time.   I may add (or change) the words at some point, but for now this is perfect. 

My older son also knows a lot of the words (as sight words), so it is like 2 in 1 practice for him.  J did it this morning while I was making breakfast and then was quick to do it again this afternoon while I was prepping dinner (AWESOME)!

Water and The Maryland Science Center

I love playing in the water (except when it is raining like today & it messes up our original plans), so why shouldn't the kids. Whenever we go to the Science Center the kids favorite place to go is the water table in the Kids Room.  They would be content to play here all day and why shouldn't they? They get to pour, dump, spray, damn up the water, send boats down the "river", hook up & build with pipes to redirect the water & oh yeah (inevitably) end up wet!