Now that I'm not in the classroom, I get to spend a lot of time doing fun activities with my kiddos. I have a 20 month old and a 6 year old who still love doing fun activities with me so I try to take advantage of it every chance we get. I thought it would be fun to share some of these activities with you all in the form of Toddler Tales Tuesdays and Firstie Fridays.
The first activity I want to share with you is outdoor clay play. All I grabbed for this was our tub of Crayola model magic air dry clay that I purchased at Walmart last year, a handful of beads, our outdoor table, and a few bowls. When we got outside, Lincoln helped me gather some sticks as well.
I was barely able to get the table set up before he started digging in!
The sticks were a huge hit!
He really got into adding the beads as well. A word of caution: with any small parts and toddlers keep an eye out for them placing them in their mouth. I gave him several reminders before he finally figured out momma wasn't playing around. 😉
Here is where the magic happens when taking this kind of play outdoors. He found a leaf on the ground and brought it back to the clay table and pushed it into his creation! I loved watching his creation evolve over the course of his play and exploration!
A spontaneous dance break. There was no music, but don't tell him that. LOL
He sat down, clearly exhausted from all that dancing, and found this curious chunk of grass…
Which he added to the clay of course. I played around with putting beads on the grass ends while he messed with the sticks. Then he strung his own bead on! It's amazing how observant they are even when we think they are not paying attention.
He added the final touch, one of the bowls. Why not? It has a pretty flower on it!
There was lots of clapping, because, well, he's awesome!
A super fun way to practice fine motor skills, hand/eye coordination, creativity, and of course, dancing.
How do you play with your little ones?
