Mommy and Mee - Animals and their Young ones Free Play

This (activity) is an unplanned one from my LO👦. As always he was playing with animals, and I was busy doing my chores. He was chatting with animals and busy arranging them on the whizzy dizzy toy. LO imagines the whizzy dizzy to be the forest, as it is green in color😁. After sometime he asked me something and to my surprise I noticed, he had paired the animals as 'mommy and baby'!!😍. I was blissed out about his idea, and what else, immediately I grabbed my camera and started to click snap (just for you guys!😉)

I have come across the importance of free play for kids, but then I realized how creative, fresh and imaginative it could be!😊 I just wanted to share the pictures, so I am not gonna talk about the supplies needed nor how we did it! And of course its just a free play! 

He imagined the brown beans to be the water and let the duck and dolphin swim! You can also use this play to teach them the animals and their young ones. But I didn't do, since I didn't want to pester him! But let's have a look at the young ones' names. 

Dolphin and its Pup/Calf.

Duck and its Duckling, Spider and its Spiderling.

Bear and its Cub.

Lion and its Cub, Grasshopper and its Nymph, Praying Mantis and its Nymph, Fox and its Cub/ Pup.

Sheep and its Lamb, Goat and its Kid, Dog and its Pup, Cat and its Kitten.

Zebra and its Colt/Foal, Tiger and its Cub, Dino and its Juvenile, Cheetah and its Cub.

Horse and its Foal, Frog and its Froglet.

This free play kept LO busy for hours. He had so much fun arranging them in the forest!

Its important for the kids to have these kinda imaginative free play, which allows them to use their creativity and develop their imagination and other strengths. Share the interesting stories of your kids free play with us in the comment box.

Happy Parenting!😊

Animals and Habitats - Sorting activity for Pre-Schoolers

The previous activities on Animal sorting and Old Mac Donald farm were a big hit with LO, so I thought to do one more sorting activity using the animals🐄🐅🐙🐢🐧🐨We had a collection of sea animals, insects and jungle animals, and LO sorts the animals into two or three categories based on his own designed criteria! So I thought let's do an animal sorting based on their habitats. By this I can introduce him to the habitat's terms and based animal sorting. 

How do we assemble:

Get your construction papers, I used five different colors for five different habitats, markers, crayons, glue, scissors and the animal toys.

Decide which habitats to include in the activity game. I decided on Sea, Farm, Forest, Polar Region and Wet Lands. See to that at least you have two animals in the decided category.

Start to create the habitat mats using the construction paper. I loved doing this. We used markers and crayons. LO helped me to glue the labels and color the habitats. 

LO loved the habitat mats! He was happy that he contributed in creating them. If you love the mats you created sooo much, you can even laminate them and have it forever!!

And its all done! Its time for some learning cloaked as a game!😁

To make it simple I told him that most of the amphibian animals are found in the wet lands. The term "Wet Land" was new to him. 

And added "The Polar bear is found in the Polar region". All these days we categorized seal as an sea animal, and to convince him to put the seal in the Polar region was the hardest part. And some how he agreed to it finally!

He was comfortable in sorting the other categories namely, the Farm animals, Forest animals and Sea animals. You can have one more category as Jungle, but truly I was bit confused in sorting the animals between jungle and forest!

We also talked about the Habitats, like the Forest has lot of trees, the Polar region would be full of snow, the Wet lands would be marshy kinda, and the Farm is owned by Old Mac Donald😁😀😀

Try this simple easy peasy activity and use this game as an ice breaker to teach your kids about the science facts. I am sure they would love to learn all these new facts.

Happy Parenting! 😊

Old Mac Donald Farm - Sensory Pretend Play

The next idea I'm gonna add to the 'animals' series is the Old MacDonald Farm pretend play with sensory touch. As I mentioned earlier, this season LO is crazy about animals. Every day he plays with animals, and not at all bored! I wonder, how come he isn't feeling bored? So I thought let's do some pretend play, with the animals in hand. So ended up in doing Old MacDonald Farm setup. This is an easy and fun sensory play for children.

We didn't have any large sized sensory tub, so just used cardboard as a base. We gathered all  the materials, and started to setup. At the beginning LO didn't get the idea about what I'm doing. He was bit not happy with me doing the setup and using his toys😛 But finally when it was done, he was so excited, and gave me ideas to fine tune it and helped me in completing it

Lacing Shapes Beads - Activity for Toddlers

This is a fine motor activity you can do with your toddler and preschooler, to enhance their threading skill and of course, its so much fun! Threading activities are nice when you are looking for some quite time. Even the busiest child can calm down and focus as they do this fun filled threading activity. 

This time me and LO tried lacing a caterpillar 🐛with some shapes beads made out of plastic, and with the pipe cleaner. I know LO is still not comfortable lacing with string. Using a pipe cleaner to thread onto is a good idea for beginners, as it is easier to hold and retains its shape during lacing. They can be twisted into any shape and its easy to secure them at the ends. 

We had these plastic shapes beads which my sister 👸😍bought for LO. The beads are of all colors and shapes.

Make a loose knot at the other end of pipe cleaner, so that will keep the beads from sliding off and prevents lot of frustration!

I told LO, let's make a caterpillar 🐛with these shapes and he got so excited. LO got fully involved into it and it was so much fun.

Lace the beads on to the pipe cleaner.

And we are lacing a "caterpillar" 🐛actually! And LO was smart enough to take care that no two beads of same color are put together! 

And the caterpillar is ready to eat and eventually build a cocoon!!😊🍃🐛

This activity enhances their fine motor control, hand eye co-ordination, pincer grasp, concentration and making new creations from combined materials. Try this lacing activity with any kinda beads available with you and share your comments.

Happy Parenting😊

Sort Animals based on their Diet - Activity for PreSchoolers

We are back with one more animals activity. This time we classified animals based on the specific food animals specialize in eating : Herbivore, Carnivore and Omnivore. I think this is the right time to introduce science facts for Preschoolers. The hands on aspect of this activity is great for budding young learners and can encourage later imaginative play as well.

Very simple activity, to start with gather your materials. You will need construction papers (colors of your choice), black marker and mix of animal figurines. LO already knows some of the animals in each category, but this time I thought lets do a detailed sorting making use of most of the animals with him. 

Write the categories in the white strips. I asked LO to glue each one of them on three different construction sheets, and all set to play!! 

Initially LO sorted few animals that he is aware of, and for the rest he sought my help.

As LO was sorting, I made a list of the animals, category wise with his help.

Later we did a detailed sorting with rest of the animals.

Stick this white paper on kid's wall, so that they can look at it and get familiarized with the animals' type of diet.

Happy Parenting!

Magazine Cut Animals Collage

This collage is effortless to make, and kids would sure love it. I had few magazines and zoo's pamphlets. I was thinking to make a random magazine cut collage with LO for long time. But this time I thought, lets do an animal collage with these. So we both surfed through the magazines and pamphlets and collected these animal cut-outs. And that's it, so simple to make, but yet wonderful activity.

I helped LO in making the cutouts.

He was so excited to glue all the animals on the white paper.

 We talked about the animals' name, color, and what the animal is doing..etc amidst the activity.

Try this simple activity with your toddlers. Bigger kids can make the cut outs by themselves. You can even glue these cut outs in your kids scrap book or create an album of your own. It would seem silly to look at these albums later in life.😊

Happy Parenting!

Bug Fossils with Play Dough

This season Me and LO went crazy about animals and we did series of activities using them! I will keep you posted with activities related to animals in coming weeks. And this post is all about Play Dough and bugs, and we were trying to make fossils out of them.

All you need is bugs (not the real ones, plastics, of course!) of any size and Play Dough. This bug set is a gift from LO's Grandpa from India, and few bugs looked scary to me, but LO's is so excited to have them! Here is a link to Amazon for the bugs, if you want to check them out.

These plastic bugs are really fantastic that they leave very detailed impression on the play dough.

For the first time LO tried to roll, press and knead the Play Dough.. I felt bit relieved..!

First we started to make the fossil of Praying Mantis...! LO loved pressing them and to see the imprints they made.

 I don't know.. It could be a cricket!

 The mouse with its tail...

That is a snake...we couldn't accommodate its full length.. But enjoyed feeling its texture on Play Dough.

( Awful) Lizard.. Thank God, LO doesn't know that I'm scared of these creatures..!😁

 Tiny mighty Ant!

 It must be a fruit fly...

 Ah... Green Grasshopper! Hop hop hop....

 I think its a cockroach..

And this is Tarantula! Bit scary, it was so big!

This would be different experience for the kids from the usual Play Dough activities. We loved making the bug imprints, and you can teach your kid about the fossils and related stuffs. An easy way to make kids love the environmental friendly Bugs! 

Happy Parenting!