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One thing I'm striving for this summer is to try and not sweat the small stuff and to keep things simple when possible. So when I realized that somehow the 4th of July Weekend has already snuck up on us I decided to keep our festive play simple and go with some playdough play. We have a great basic cooked playdough recipe which can be tweaked in lots of different ways to create slightly

As we were getting ready for Little Brother's Dinosaur birthday party this month we were excited to set up a new playdough play invitation. This invitation uses one of our all time favorite playdough recipes - we call it "Chocolate Cake Playdough" because it has the amazing scent of real chocolate. For this playdough play invitation we added in a few key pieces: miniature dinosaurs, floral

The boys are already looking forward to St. Patrick's Day, which means we've been doing some fun, little things already to get ready to celebrate. Which is how we came up with this Simple St. Patrick's Day Playdough Play invitation. As with most of our playdough recipes we started with our Basic Cooked Playdough recipe and then tweaked it a little to make it match the St. Patrick's Day

It was definitely time to make up a new batch of playdough, and with the new season arriving I was inspired to create a play experience that reminded us of fall. One of my favorite parts of autumn is all the great scents that come along with the season. In the past we've used some of those same great scents to create Pumpkin Spice Playdough and Fall Spice Playdough. But this time I wanted to

A few weeks ago as we explored our Simple Summer Theme - Desert Week- we knew it would be a great week for some sensory play! This was especially true when a new sensory material arrived from Sands Alive! for us to explore.  Although we've seen Sands Alive! advertised before, we'd never had the chance to explore the material ourselves. We were pretty excited when they offered to send us a

As we went through out Simple Summer Theme Science Week, we enjoyed a variety of hands on science activities. This one was very easy to put together and proved to be lots of fun for the boys! I wanted to put together a sensory bin that explored a scientific concept, but wasn't quite sure what would work. Then the idea of using our growing magnet set seemed like an easy fit! Materials: 

I love the sweet smell of lilacs in the spring time, but it always seems like the flowers last for such a short time.  We wait through early spring and by the time they open it's usually hot enough that they don't last for long. So to savor the smell a little longer, I made up a batch of Lilac Scented Playdough! We still love a cooked playdough and used our basic cooked playdough recipe as

Some of our activities I plan out and some of our activities just happen. On the days they turn into something that's tons of fun, and I know we might want to do again, I try to grab the camera. That's exactly how this Dinosaur Egg Sensory Play evolved. Recently we were given a tub of "Delta" sand by my Dad. As far as I can tell, it's pretty similar to Kinetic Sand (although maybe not quite

A few weeks ago we used dried peas in our Leprechaun's Letters Sensory Tub, and they proved to be a great sensory tub filler. So while we still had them out, I decided to tweak the bin a little to reflect the next upcoming holiday: Easter. Last year I picked up these cute little carrot containers at The Dollar Tree (I saw others for sale this year as well) and I've been looking for a great

This week has been a little funny as Little Brother came down with a stomach bug early on. And although it only lasted 24 hours, it still threw off our routines a little for the whole week. It also meant a stay home day with just mommy for Little Brother, which he always enjoys. In order to create something fun for us to do one on one, I put together a new sensory tub: Leprechaun's Letters, an

The other day we had a friend over and I decided to set up an easy and colorful playdough invitation. Although the boys all created their own versions of a rainbow, because of the high energy they had that day, it wasn't quite as peaceful as imagined when I set it out. (There was a lot of monster and smashing talk while they built the rainbows . . .) But, there creations were colorful! And we

I'm not going to lie, these didn't come out quite as pretty I was hoping, but they were fun. I've been wanting to try baked cotton balls as a project for a while now, and our recent snow day was the perfect time to try it out. Trying to make it a little more fun, I decided to color them gold and add gold glitter  . . . but it's true they turned out a little funny looking. I first read about

Valentine's Day is coming, which means it's a great time to create and play with hearts. A few years ago I bought these fun plastic hearts at The Dollar Tree. We've used them in other sensory play ideas before, like this Valentine's Day Sensory Bin. But the other day I was inspired to try them on the light table.  Little Brother and I were home on a pretty dreary and rainy afternoon,

Over the holiday break I took a bag of confetti out of the party box as we got ready to celebrate New Year's Eve. Yet, I couldn't quite bring myself to let confetti out free rein with the boys . . . who knows what corners of the house it would wind up in. Mid-month I got the idea of mixing the confetti into some fun sensory play and we came up with this confetti snow dough. In the past

Many people know the books Snowmen at Night and Snowmen at Christmas by Caralyn and Mark Buehner, we were pleased to buy the books in a set a few years ago. Along with the set came Snowmen at Work, which is part of the same series but not as well known. This winter the boys have discovered the book and they love reading it. In the book a little boy ponders if the snowmen (and snowwomen) have jobs

We do a lot of playdough play here, in fact we usually try to vary up our playdough play every month or so. Although there are a lot of different non-cook playdough recipes out there, we're still a big fan of a basic cooked playdough. All of our playdough recipes stem from this basic recipe, which we've finally decided to share! Ingredients: 1 cup flour 1/2 cup salt 2 teaspoons cream

One of the thrills of being the parent of a kindergartner is watching him begin to take off in reading. I love hearing him work at sounding out words and being excited when he recognizes a word. His classroom teachers take both a phonics and whole word approach to teaching reading, which means each week they sound home both the letters/sounds they are working on and a few sight words for the week

As the holidays come up, it's nice to have something on hand for the other kiddos in our life. Even though we don't always give gifts to the adults around us, I do like having something little for the kiddos we play and visit with. It's even better if the gift can be something homemade and doesn't cost a lot. Last year I had thought about putting together some kind of playdough kit, but

There's something about November that is so drab and brown, but yet also can be really pretty. Recently Little Brother and I had the chance to get out for a walk just the two of us. Because the weather was beautiful and sunny the dried plants, leaves, and trees really captured our eyes. We love finding ways to explore nature connections, especially when we take a walk.  This time we

There's something about these cooler days that instantly make me want the tastes and smells of fall food: cinnamon, nutmeg, all sorts of delicious spices . . . sometimes I don't even have to eat them to fulfill the craving, just smelling them is enough.  Little Brother and I put together this delicious smelling playdough the other day and both of us couldn't stop smelling it!  Although I