Use photographs or books as inspiration for block play
What You Need:
- Photographs or books of bridges and towers
- Large cardboard tubes (e.g., cores from butcher paper rolls, paper towel rolls)
- Wood pieces (e.g., tree cookies)
- Unit blocks
- Plastic animals, people, or transportation vehicles
What To Do:
- Look through photographs or books of local landmarks, bridges, and towers with your child. Talk about the location and the shapes that make up the building.
- Have her choose a picture that she likes and place the picture within eye level and encourage her to use the blocks, tubes, and wood pieces to recreate it.
- Talk about the shapes, textures, and height of what she creates, encouraging her efforts. For example, “Look at how tall your building is! I see that you used four blocks on top of each other. I see that you used rectangles for the base and small triangles for the roof.”
- Have her expand her creation by incorporating animals, people, or vehicles and encourage her to tell you about her creation.
Watch as your keiki pulls, shakes, and moves the plunger, encouraging her efforts and problem solving skills.
What You Need:
- Large container
- Cornstarch
- Water
What To Do:
- In a large container, create a thick mixture of cornstarch and water (approximately 2 parts of cornstarch to 1 part of water), making sure the bottom of the container is covered.
- Put the plunger in the container and encourage your child to explore. You can say, “Here’s a plunger in the mixture. You want to see if you can pull it out?”
- Watch as she pulls, shakes, and moves the plunger, encouraging her efforts and problem solving skills. Talk about how the mixture created a suction that may be hard to break and encourage her to share her ideas on how to pull it out.
- If needed, encourage her to keep trying to move the plunger and see if she can push the handle all the way into the mixture to break the suction.
- Talk about the sound the plunger makes in the mixture and encourage her to repeat her actions over and over.
Note: This activity is best done outdoors as it could become messy.
Have your keiki explore various textures.
What You Need:
- Empty picture frames with the glass removed
- Cardboard or cardstock pieces, cut to the size of the picture frame
- Variety of clean objects with different textures, such as: yarn pieces, placemat squares, sticks, sandpaper, carpet pieces
- Glue or tape
What To Do:
- Arrange the various objects according to texture and glue each of the objects onto the cardboard pieces.
- Put the cardboard pieces into the picture frames.
- Encourage your child to rub her hand over or pat each of the texture frames. Talk about how each one feels. For example, let’s touch the green yarn pieces. How does it feel? Does it feel soft? How about the sandpaper. Oh, that feels rough!”
Here's a simple sweet snack to make with your keiki
What You Need:
- 1 can refrigerated biscuit dough
- ¼ cup sugar
- 1-1/2 t ground cinnamon
- Sweetened condensed milk
- Optional toppings, e.g., raisins, walnuts
- Cooking spray
- Muffin tin
What To Do:
- Heat oven to 375 degrees and spray 6 regular size muffin tins with cooking spray.
- In a small bowl, stir together the sugar and cinnamon.
- Separate the dough into 8 biscuits and cut each into 6 pieces.
- Together, roll the biscuits in the sugar-cinnamon mixture. If needed, place the mixture into a resealable bag and have your child shake the biscuit pieces until the pieces are covered.
- Fill each muffin cup with 6 biscuit dough pieces. Add any optional toppings, if desired.
- Together, spoon 1 tablespoon of condensed milk into each baking cup.
- Bake 8-11 minutes or until browned.
Adapted from: http://simpleplayideas.com/3-ingredient-monkey-bread
