Fun with Jell-o!

We did a lot of learning and color fun this week with jell-o. We bought 6 packages of jell-o. Strawberry, Orange, Lemon, Lime, Blue raspberry, and Grape. We poured aside one serving of each flavor so that we could enjoy the jell-o as a snack or with lunch for the color that we were focusing on for the day. Obviously a package of jell-o is more than just one serving….we used the rest to make rainbow jell-o, which is just the different flavored jell-o layered in a glass pan.


This is a picture of our lunch during the day we focused on “BLUE”. My son also wore a blue shirt and since he was potty training this week, he even got to wear BLUE big boy pants! ; )

We also used the different colored boxes to help teach the colors. My son also liked stacking them on top of each other as he said the colors out loud.
Here is what the rainbow jell-o looks like…it does take a while to make because you have to let each layer set up before pouring the next, but my son loved it!


We mixed up a package of pudding and spread it in a pizza pan and drew some pictures/letters. ; ) All of the steps involved in this activity were very entertaining for my 2 year old.
He LOVED:
STIRRING/HELPING

PLAYING

LEARNING

and EATING too!

Great Idea from Grandma!

I don’t know why I have never thought to do this before, but it was a real winner while visiting Grandma.  We plan to save our containers from here on out! ; )

We liked stacking the containers to the ceiling and building pyramids!!  The best part was knocking them down! ; )

Making Music in the Kitchen!

 Who knew you could make music with so many different things? We had a ton of fun discovering ways to make our own music with common kitchen items.

We used hot coco and nut cans to make drums. My 2 year old loved this! It was fun for him to try out all of the different spoons, and utensils. Depending on the material of the utensil you hear different sounds.

Have you seen Miss Congeniality.? Remember when Gracie (Sandra Bullock) plays the water glasses for her talent in the pageant? That’s what inspired this activity. We filled up some of our glasses with water and made some music…well more like noise! ; )

and then……this little guy decided he was thirsty! ; )

Another thing we did was got some containers and filled them with different objects….rice, beans, cheerios and corn nuts! It was fun shaking these containers and listening to the different noises.

We also played with the music toys that we already have. This drum is from leap frog...as you hit the top, the alphabet lights up and it moves to a new letter with each hit!

A few other things that we did that I don't have pictures of:

-we turned on some tunes and danced our hearts out in the kitchen. I had no idea this little guy loved dancing so much and I have NO CLUE where he gets some of his moves. : ) (There is a reason I don't have pictures)

- we sang some of our favorite songs! The ABC's, twinkle twinkle little star, The aunts go marching on, The duck song, the itsy bitsy spider and I Love You (a song my mom wrote and sang to me growing up).

Homemade Musical Instruments

We made some fun musical instruments. We kept things pretty simple and have really enjoyed these homemade instruments!

We made a guitar with a shoe box and rubber bands.

We made a tambourine by tapping 2 paper plates together with popcorn kernels in the center. (It was a lot like a rattle and my little girl loved it!) You could also attach bells to the outside of the plate for a different sound.

We made a rainstick!

My little guy wanted a big one so we used the center from wrapping paper and stuck tons of toothpicks through it. (You could also use a paper towel center or toilet paper center)

This looked more like a weapon to me then a musical instrument :) We ended up cutting the toothpicks down and wrapping the tub with tape.

This is what the inside looked like.

We then filled it with popcorn kernels and tapped the edges closed.

We also had fun with drums! We just used a bunch of empty containers I had saved.

We also had lots of fun just singing songs and finding things around the house that made noise. My little boy loved making the sound of horse hoofs by clapping two bowels together...my little girl loved simply clapping! Our favorite was turning the radio on and dancing...both my little guy and girl loved spinning and I loved watching their fun moves!

Little Einsteins

Have you ever seen any of the little einstein's movies? My little boy got the movie pictured below for Christmas and LOVES it! It is a cute show with 3 different episodes. Little einstein's visit a famous place in each of there episodes, talk about music and encourage watchers to get involved by doing simple things like clapping their hands. Anyway, I came into the room to find my little boy re-enacting an episode.

He had his blocks stacked (for the leaning tower of Pisa), his cowboy hat on and his little red train (for the wild wild west episode), and his plane (for rocket) and hit helicopter (for Big Jet). I thought it was so cute to see him doing this all on his own...I made him stop for a picture!

The other day we went on a walk around the block and he started walking really slow and looks up/ahead at me and says "Mom, we need to go adagio." I started laughing so hard I almost started to cry. As I was laughing he says "Okay, mom...now allegro!" If you haven't seen these episodes you would think I have a pretty weird kid but if you have it makes perfect sense. In every episode they fly in a rocket and refer to fast as Allegro, and slow as Adagio...they are music terms...they also play music from famous composers.

We have had a lot of fun with this movie, it's become a normal thing for my little guy to tell me to go Allegro when we are driving and to pretend like he has found different things to fulfill his pretend missions.

Mixing Colors

We all know the primary colors are: Red, Yellow and Blue but did you know you can get the other color of the rainbow by mixing 2 primary colors together. Okay, so you probably knew that but do your kiddos?? They will think mixing colors is AWESOME and its simple, inexpensive, not to messy and fun!!

Mixing for the Kids

You will need: 9 plastic cups, Red, Yellow and Blue food coloring and water

1- Fill up 6 of the 9 cups with water

2- Add each color of food coloring (2 drops) to 2 cups (Leaving you with 2 of each color and 3 empty cups)

3- Mix away! Example: pour the yellow and red together to get orange

(Refer to the picture below for mixing fun!)

You can also just fill 6 cups with water and add dye straight to cups but I thought that would be to messy for my toddler. After we made all the colors of the rainbow we lined them up to look like a rainbow...

then I pulled out some skittles and had my kiddo match colors by putting the skittle in the matching cup.

when we ran out of skittles i let my little guy stir it up and then

drink it...it tasted good a little like kool-aid

Rainbow Pinwheel Game with Tutorial

I made this super simple pinwheel game for my little guy to help him learn his colors! He loves games and so I thought he would respond to it well...he did! Here is a little tutorial so you can make one too...if you want :)

You will need:

1 piece of each color paper (Orange, Red, Yellow, Blue, Green and Purple)

Glue or double sided tape

18 clothes pins

Directions:

1-I cut out a half circle from each piece of paper using a dinner plate for my pattern

2-Then I stacked the paper like the photo below tucking half of the paper below another colored paper

example: the green paper would be placed over the purple with half of it under the blue

3- I then secured the paper by putting double sided sticky tape under each piece of paper

4- I laminated the finished pinwheel so it would last longer...this is optional

5- I then cut out little strips of paper and tapped them to clothespins (I did 3 of each color)

This is what the final product should look like:

This stored perfectly in a Freezer bag!

My little guy loved this game...we have played it multiple times a day for over a week. At first he struggled with being able to open the clothes pines by himself but when I showed him how to open them (like an alligator) he got it!

We started out playing the game by matching the clothes pins to the pinwheel and then we started to look for other things in the room that matched the clothes pin. We ended up finding something in the room to match each color and stuck the clothes pins to the items we found.

Rainbow Game

We made this simple and fun game from 1 sheet of cardstock/paper, markers and 2 dice. Here is how:

1-We cut the cardstock/paper into 6 different sheets

2-Then used markers to draw little circles on the paper like the one pictured below. (HINT:If you are horrible at drawing circles you can do what I did and draw on your marker lid and stamp a circle on the paper rather then free hand it)

3- Cover 2 dice with paper and color each side a different color then tape paper over dice.

We used a package of M&M's and Skittle's for our markers (HINT: M&M's don't have purple, Skittle's don't have blue)

The goal of the game is to be the first to cover your card...we played if you already had the color filled that you rolled you got to eat the M&M/Skittle :)

My goal/purpose in this game was to help my little guy learn his colors! :)

Hope you enjoy this as much as we did!

Fruit Loop Sorting Game

I made this simple game with styrofoem, kabob sticks and markers.

I colored each stick a different color and then stuck them in the styrofoem.

We then put the matching colored fruit loops on the sticks!