Experimenting with coloured water for fine and gross motor development and a lesson in colour mixing:
This coloured water activity is one of our warm weather favourites. We do this activity every year, and the hooligans always love it.
I like it because it’s so simple and virtually cost-free, and yet it’s educational, entertaining and provides lots of opportunity for learning and fine and gross motor development.
Gather your supplies:
empty squeeze bottles
water
food colouring
large clear or white bowls or baking dishes
Use what you have to make an outside work surface:
When we’re crafting or “working” in the backyard, we use an inexpensive coffee table that I picked up for about 6 bucks at a thrift shop. When it’s not in use, it lives on our deck, where it’s exposed to the elements, but because it has a laminate top, it weathers well, and cleans up easily with a wet or soapy cloth.
To start, set your bowl(s) or pan(s) on your work surface. Clear or white bowls are best so the kids can see the true colours of the water, and what happens when they combine colours.
Now fill your bottles almost to the top with water. We used the garden hose for this, which was an activity in itself, and then we added several drops of liquid food colouring to each container. We popped the lids on and…
…sang the shaky song: ”Shaky, shaky, shaky, shake it all you can. La la la la la la. La la la la la la la, HEY!” Lots of la la’s there because we’ve never bothered to come up with a second line to the song.
Now they can pop open the bottle tops and and squeeze, squirt, dribble and mix their little socks off.
We have lots of great stuff going on here! Water play for one; I’ve never met a kid who doesn’t love some good, old-fashioned water play.
Fine motor skills are put to the test, opening lids and twisting the tops on and off the bottles.
Lifting those heavy bottles, holding them high and squeezing the water in to the bowls give those little arms and hands a work out.
And of course, there’s the colour-mixing. Kids are always fascinated by this process, and I have to say, as much as I’ve seen it a thousand times, it always looks a little magical to me too.
What a fun way to get some learning in while having fun and keeping cool on a warm Spring morning!
If this is your first visit to Happy Hooligans, I’d love for you to pop over and LIKE us on facebook. I update my page daily with easy and affordable arts, crafts and play ideas.
You can follow me on Pinterest too! I have over 90 boards dedicated to all kinds of kids’ crafts and activities, as well as some personal interest boards too.
5 ways to use your Magna Doodle as a learning tool!
Our original Magna-Doodle has been kicking around for about 13 years. It’s dented and dinged, and the screen is permanently marked in some places, but it’s still one of my favourites among our toy collection, not only because of the fun my boys had with it, but because I always enjoyed coming up with educational Magna Doodle activities that we could do together.
Over the years, we have spent countless hours of quality time, playing educational drawing games together. Often, part of our bed-time routine would be to snuggle up with the Magna Doodle, and I would use it as a tool to help teach my sons their letters, numbers and basic drawing skills, and over the years, I’ve come up with a number of games to make the learning fun.
My boys are now tween/teenagers, but I still play these games today with my daycare hooligans.
I’ll start with the most basic of the games, which you can play with young toddlers, and work my way through to the most challenging, which are great for older children.
Basic Magna Doodle Activity:
This one is so basic I don’t even have a name for it, but it’s a the perfect game to get started with when your child is really young. It’s great for hand-eye co-ordination and fine motor skills.
Fill your Magna-Doodle screen with circles, and give your child simple objects to place in the circles: pom poms, stones, blocks etc. When your child is ready to move on to something a little more challenging, you can try this next game.
Shape Match:
Similar to our DIY Matching Game which is played on paper, this activity helps with shape recognition.
When your child is capable of creating simple drawings, they’ll enjoy this next game:
Making Faces:
Draw a large, oval on your Magna Doodle, and add some hair and ears. Hand the “pen” over to your child, and have them fill in the features. If your child is just learning to draw, take some time to draw a few faces yourself, describing where to place the eyes, nose and mouth. Your child may simply make scribbles at first, but that’s ok! The more you play, the more his or her drawing skills will develop.
When your child is ready to make more complex drawings, this next activity is a lot of fun.
I Draw, You Draw:
I don’t know about your kids, but when mine were little, they were always asking how to draw such-and-such or would I draw a certain object for them to trace or copy, so I came up with this game, which I think I love as much as the kids do.
Draw a line dividing your Magna Doodle screen in half; one half for you, and one for your child. Draw a simple object: a flower, cat, carrot, rocket-ship… whatever you want, just keep it simple so your child can try to duplicate it on the other half of the board. I just love this one!
And now for my hands-down, very best, all-time favourite Magna Doodle Activity:
What Doesn’t Belong:
We’ve probably played this one thousands of times over the years because as my children got older, I just kept making the game more and more challenging, so we ended up playing it until my boys were about 7 and 9. It’s a favourite among the daycare kids too, and they ask for it often.
Divide your Magna Doodle screen into quarters by drawing one horizontal and one vertical line.
Now, think up and draw 3 items that have something in common. For toddlers you’ll want to keep it simple, like 3 fruits and one animal, or 3 letters and 1 number etc. For preschoolers, you can make it a little more difficult, for example: a tee shirt, a tie, a hat, and a foot.
Point to, and have your child name all of the objects, and then ask them which one doesn’t belong. We played this way beyond my boys’ preschool years, making it more and more difficult. A car, a bus, a skateboard and an airplane. The airplane might not belong because it’s the only vehicle that is airborne. Or it could be the skateboard because it’s the only vehicle that isn’t powered by an engine. You could draw a lemon, a banana, a sun and a leaf. The leaf might not belong because it’s not yellow, or the sun might be the mis-fit because it doesn’t grow on a tree. You get the picture.
When they answer correctly, strike a big X through the mis-fit, calling out “Sun, YOU DON’T BELONG!”
Swipe your slate clean and start again!
For your convenience, I’m including the following affiliate link:
If this is your first visit to Happy Hooligans, I’d love for you to pop over and LIKE us on facebook. I update my page daily with easy and affordable arts, crafts and play ideas.
You can follow me on Pinterest too! I have over 90 boards dedicated to all kinds of kids’ crafts and activities, as well as some personal interest boards too.
Crafting with little ones can be somewhat daunting if you don’t have a designated place to keep all of your supplies. We’ve got you covered! Pop over to CBC Parents, and check out our handy portable craft kit! It makes the perfect gift for any little crafter, and it would be great for teenage baby-sitters to take along to their jobs!
If this is your first visit to Happy Hooligans, I’d love for you to pop over and LIKE us on facebook. I update my page daily with easy and affordable arts, crafts and play ideas.
You can follow me on Pinterest too! I have over 90 boards dedicated to all kinds of kids’ crafts and activities, as well as some personal interest boards too.
Paint up some fun outside with our easy cornstarch sidewalk paint!
This recipe for homemade sidewalk paint is so easy, you can whip up a batch of creative fun for the driveway, sidewalk or patio in just a matter of minutes. This paint is always a hit with the hooligans, and it never fails to impress me too, so I always get in on the fun.
Supplies needed to make your homemade sidewalk paint:
A sectioned container or several bowls
cornstarch (in the U.K. this is known as cornflour)
water
food colouring or liquid water colours (I personally like Wilton Icing gels for their intense colours)
small whisk
For your convenience, I’m including affiliate links in this post:
The sectioned container that I always use for mixing my paint in came previously packaged with fruit, from the produce department in the grocery store. I held onto it for projects like this because I like how deep the wells are. The well in the center is perfect for filling with water to rinse our paintbrushes.
Making your sidewalk paint:
Add just over a quarter cup of cornstarch to each section of the container. (I used about 1/4 c. plus 2 tbsp.
Add a little less than 1/4 of cold water (a little at a time so you don’t over-do it) to each section, whisking until the cornstarch has completely dissolved. If you’ve played with cornstarch and water before, you’ll know that it has an interesting quality, and can turn from liquid to solid and back again depending on how much you handle it. You want your paint to be thick enough that it drizzles from the whisk.
Add your food colouring, and stir well. I started by adding a few drops of our new liquid watercolours, but I wasn’t happy with the strength of the colours, so I went back to my old standby: Wilton Icing gels, and added a dab to each well. You can’t beat the Wilton gels when it comes to intense colour
Once your colours are mixed in, you’re ready to hit the pavement!
The hooligans love this stuff.
You can paint with it just like you do with regular paint, but I love to drizzle and dab the paint to create thick puddles of colour.
When they were finished in the driveway, we moved up to the smoother surface of our front walk, and they had another go of it there.
Someone got the bright idea to grab some sticks of sidewalk chalk and dip them into the paint. This made for a neat effect when drawing, but even more interesting was how the paint immediately hardened in layers when they dipped their chalk into each of the colours in the tray, so they ended up with these beautiful, multi-coloured sticks of chalk. They would then crumble the layers off and mash them into the pavement.
They were happily entertained for about an hour with this small batch of paint. And when the day was over, it washed away with a spray from the garden hose, and didn’t leave a mark.
Not so sure about these legs though. A soapy bath was in order for this little one. I rinsed her off, but she went home with tell-tale trails of blue on her shins.
Happy Painting!
If this is your first visit to Happy Hooligans, I’d love for you to pop over and LIKE us on facebook. I update my page daily with easy and affordable arts, crafts and play ideas.
You can follow me on Pinterest too! I have over 90 boards dedicated to all kinds of kids’ crafts and activities, as well as some personal interest boards too.
