Boat Loads

First, you'll need a small boat. You can use a toy boat, modeling clay, styrofoam or foil to create one. Float your boat and load it with small items, such as paper clips. Add a few at a time, watching the boat sink lower into the water. How much cargo will your boat carry before it sinks? Can you design a boat that will hold more cargo?

*Variation: Design the tiniest boat you can that still floats.

*Variation: Create a boat with a sail and blow it across the water. Ask a friend to race his or her boat across the water with you.

Bouncy Painting

In the middle is 3 primary colors of tempera- red, yellow and blue, in an old film reel lid. Our paintbrushes are nylons filled with rice and tied off. Just bounce into the paint and splat on the paper. Wonderful fun! The kids started bouncing right along with the nylons. I wish I would have taken an after picture, because the ground was splotchy too! It's addicting really. My quite obvious recommendation for this one is outdoors.

Flower Petal Perfume

Sometimes the boys pick me flowers that well, are a bit beyond my TLC. I let them make me perfume instead!

Tear up the flower petals and let them soak in a cup or two of water. After a good soak, pour the liquid into a new container through a coffee filter to catch all the pieces. Let the kids give it a fancy name and dab on a little of your new "fragrance."

*Variation: Add other smell-goods before you filter it, like cinnamon, vanilla, orange rind, etc.

*Variation: Different varieties of flowers.

Grocery List

Grocery shopping with 3 boys has always been a chore. But I keep C, my preschooler, occupied with his very own grocery list. When he was about 3, I drew pictures next to the words. Now I just write the words and we sound them out together. When he figures a word out and finds the item, he gets to cross it off the list.

Little does he realize that my lesson in all of this is seeing a purpose for print, another way we use language to organize and communicate. He feels a sense of pride for "reading" it too!

Crossing the Midline - Exercise Those Brains!

Physical activity is what gets blood flowin' and brains a goin'. Imagine a line going from the top of your head, down the center of your face, down through your belly button, the entire length of your body. That's the midline. Since the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body and vice-versa, when arms and legs cross over, we are forcing both sides of the brain to communicate.

When children need their brains energized or refocused, do an activity in which they cross the midline.

Crawling- The kind babies do where the hand and opposite leg move together.

Windmills- Spread feet apart. Extend arms. Bend over at waist and tap right hand to left foot. Raise back up and tap left hand to right foot.

Elbow Tap- With arms at sides, raise one leg up and touch it to the opposite elbow. Switch!

Dance- With streamers or ribbons.

Dance Moves- Mark the children's midlines with painter's tape and challenge them to come up with a dance move that crosses the body.

Simon Says or Follow the Leader

More: http://make-the-grade-ot.com/Midline%20Crossing%20Activities.html

Salad Spinner Art

For this art activity, you will need:
A salad spinner
Watered down tempera paints
Small paper plates or circles of paper

Directions: Have your child place the paper plate inside the salad spinner, drop some paint on, replace the lid and give it a whirl!

This is usually a very popular project with the preschoolers, leading to multiple tries and oodles of finished paper plates to take home. Enjoy!

Shadow Shifters

All this activity takes is some chalk and a sunny day. Ask your child to locate their shadow.

Guiding questions:

What does your shadow look like?

Can you make your shadow bigger? Smaller?

Can you find a place where your shadow disappears?

What happens when our shadows come together?

Whose shadow is larger?

Can one person hide in another person's shadow?

Can you make your shadow wiggle? Run? Hold very still?

Trace around child's feet with chalk as they stand in the sun. Trace their shadow standing still. Point out where the sun is. Several time during the day, return and stand in the footprints to see what happens. Trace the new shadow with a new color of chalk. Look at the sun's position.

*Extension: Play "catch a shadow" with friends.

*Extension: Read Robert Louis Stevenson's My Shadow