'tis the season for...SNOW!

We've only had a frost or two here in Chicago, but that hasn't stopped me from gearing up for my winter theme art projects and therapy activities. 

 

I just made these really cute snowmen with my daughter (thanks, pinterest) and think that I have a few kiddos that are closer to three I may try this with.  It was beyond simple- small powdered doughnuts, leftover candy corn and a little black decorative icing.  Clean up was really easy, too!  The original recipe called for mini chocolate chips for the eyes and mouths but I had a tube of black decorative icing in my pantry we used instead. 

 

Another favorite winter project for me is cotton ball snowmen.  I've been making these with my therapy kiddos for years.  I typically use just have the kids make circles with the glue and squeeze lots of glue in the middle to fill the circles in, stick on the cotton balls, add a little pipe cleaner nose and draw the arms.  I've also had the kids draw circles to form a snowman on contact paper, cut the circles out and then stuck the cotton balls onto the sticky side of the contact paper.  It's less messy than glue and you don't have to wait for it to dry to hang it up.  The contact paper method usually requires more hand over hand assistance (for the cutting, mostly) and can take a little longer.  This activity is excellent for fine motor practice, of course, by I also love it for sensory play, color identification and even building frustration tolerance (hey, cutting is hard work for most of my early intervention friends). 

 

One of my favorite winter  books to use in therapy sessions is Karen Katz's Toes, Ears & Nose.  It has children that are dressed for the cold weather.  Each cold weather article of clothing is a flap that lifts up to show the body part the clothing protects.  The text will say "Inside my mittens, I've got..." and then you lift the mitten flap to expose the fingers and it finishes the sentence with "fingers."  I love that it does this because it allows for what my friend and colleague Claire calls the "hesitate and hold," which is is verbally setting the child up to answer a familiar question.  It encourages expressive language that is built into a familiar routine. *  I also love that this book teaches the functions of clothing like mittens, hats, coats.  Object function/associative skills can be a difficult  to master and I like to reinforce them any way I can.  In a child who isn't ready for these kinds of skills, you can target vocabulary building.  In my neck of the woods, winter clothing is very functional vocabulary! 




*Hesitate and Hold is a  great trick that you can use in seemingly limitless ways.  I also like to use it  while knocking down towers, too.  You say "KA-BOOM" and knock over a tower a few times.  Then you knock over the tower, say "KA!" and freeze, allowing the child to say "BOOM!"

Cooking with Kids: Jack o Latern Whoopie Pies

I've always loved to cook with kids.  While working as a nanny in college, the kids and I used to decorate cakes to look like underwater scenes and Dr. Seuss hats.  Now that I have my own child, I enjoy it even more and it's something that we've done together since she was old enough to stand at the counter with me (about 18 months).  This week, our family carved a pumpkin so I was inspired by these little cute little Jack o Lantern treats.  When I clicked onto the actual recipe page, I discovered that the recipe had too many ingredients for me to want to even attempt to tackle it (Did I say cooking with kids?  What I really meant was combining a few ingredients and tossing something into the oven. If it needs more than one type of pan or requires more than one cooking method, I'm out).  Luckily, I had made this super easy whoopie pie recipe before (it has 3 ingredients! my kind of recipe) and substituted the homemade filling with store bought frosting.  I surveyed my kitchen cabinets and came up one box of yellow cake mix and some store bought chocolate frosting so I altered the recipe to:

1 package of yellow cake mix
A liberal squirt of orange food coloring
2 eggs
3/4 c of crisco. 
 1/2 can of store bought frosting (I used Chocolate because it's what I had and it's delicious)
tube of black sparkle decorative icing

I had my almost 3 year old put the ingredients into the mixer and turn it on to mix.
Then, I helped her line a cookie sheet with parchment paper, dropped the dough onto the sheet in tablespoon-ish sized balls and baked at 375 for 9 minutes.  

After you take them out of the oven, let them cool completely (I try to time this part for nap time.  The wait for them to cool seems endless for small children) before before spreading a liberal amount of frosting onto one cookie and topping it with another.  After all the pies had been assembled, I let me daughter make eyes, noses and mouths on the cookies.  She really was only interested in doing a few so I was glad that I halved the original recipe! 

 

A few suggestions about this cooking with kids project:
Keep a wet cloth or diaper wipes handy to wipe off sticky, frosting covered fingers and spills on the counter (which are inevitable). Also, I like to have my daughter break the eggs into a mug and then pour them into the batter.  This way if they obliterate the eggs you can pick out the shell before it gets into the batter. 

Making jack o lanterns our of whoopie pies is a pretty abstract idea to little kids who likely don't remember last Halloween.  It would be helpful to first carve your own family pumpkin and to read a few jack o lantern books with a great illustrations before making these.  That way your child will have a better frame of reference and the project will be more fun.  If your child is younger than 30 months, you can help them complete the tasks with some hand over hand assistance. 

You could also alter this idea and use it for early intervention by premaking some round, orange sugar cookies and just having the little one's decorate the face.  You can use the activity to work on single or multiple step direction following, to reinforce labeling parts of the face, to teach the color orange and/or to work on fine motor skills. 

 Squeezing the dough is fun sensory play and rolling it into a ball is great way to encourage bilateral coordination and fine motor practice. 

Creative Ways to Play With a Shape Sorter

Just about every child that I've ever seen for developmental therapy has some kind of shape sorter.  I use them all the time but not always in the way in which they were intended.  Here are some things I've done with a shape sorter in recent weeks:

• container play- believe it or not, learning to take objects out and put objects in is an important cognitive and fine motor milestone.  I use the bottom part of the shape sorter as the bucket and place large, enticing toys in it to help encourage babies to reach in and take the object out.  You can use the shapes that came with the sorter, too, but I find that putting a baby's favorite toy or snack cracker is better motivation (taking out 9-11 months, putting in 12-13 months)
• shopping basket- Once toddlers are closer to 3 years they start to act out familair scenarios during pretend play.  I love to use the square shape sorter container that has a handle as a grocery basket.
• hat- One of my favorite games to play with children that need to work on being interested in playing with an adult (something we call joint attention) is to put a hat or other object on my head and then very dramatically "sneeze" it off.  I know it sounds ridiculous, but toddlers think it's hilarious and many of my kids will make more eye contact playing this game than just about anything else. It's also a great way to get kids to begin imitating actions and gestures.
• matching and sorting shapes- toddlers should be able to match and sort identical shapes sometime between 30-36 months.  You can add some fine motor practice if you stack the shapes into towers.
• baby bath/pool- the shape container is the perfect size to bathe a small doll  or have action figures jump into a pool.  Bonus points if you use blocks to build a diving board!

Tips and Tricks for Travel with a Toddler

I'm not fond of car travel and my two year old is even less fond of car travel.  Unfortunately, we spend a fair amount of time in the car because many of the people we love live an hour away or more.  A few weekends ago I was looking down the barrel of a four hour car trip solo with my kiddo.  I'm not going to lie, the thought of being in the car with an active child for 4 straight hours made me a little anxious.  So I tried to think about what I would tell one of my early intervention families if they were planning such a trip.  BINGO- as soon as I framed it this way, I had a zillion ideas for what to put in a busy box to keep her occupied.  I made her this Busy Box:

 



Here is what I brought:

• books- mostly paperback because they fit in the box better and are lighter.  I brought books that were brand new (from the library) or that I pulled out of my stash in toy closet (yes, I have an entire toy closet.  More on that another day).
• small doll and box of band aids. As long as your child has the fine motor skills to play with stickers and s/he knows what a band aid is, this activity will keep a kid busy for at least 20 minutes.  I recommend hitting the dollar store for these.  This works with stuffed toys and large action figures, too, if your child isn't so into dolls. You could also bring a toothbrush for the doll.  Most of the kiddos I see for early intervention LOVE brushing other people/toy's teeth.
• train beads.  Another find from my toy closet, but you can also use penne pasta or cheerios and a string.  Just make sure that whatever you bring for beading isn't a choking hazard. 
• Max and Ruby paper dolls.  I printed these from the nick jr. website, covered them with clear contact paper and added a few strips of velcro so the clothes would stay on if she held them up.  I wouldn't print print too many of the outfits.  Too many choices leads to all the choices in a pile on the floor.
• Action figures/toy cars.  Again, I raided my toy closet but you can get little disney characters or rescue vehicle cars from the dollar store.
• Reusable coloring pages.  These are just printed coloring sheets of a few characters my daughter likes put inside of clear binder sheet protectors.  If you color them using dry erase markers, the ink wipes right off with a wash cloth.  I also included a blank page and page with my daughter's name written on it. 

I had a an unused photo box that was collecting dust so I used that to hold everything.  You could just as easily use a large plastic food container or cloth shopping bag or tote bag.  If you are planning to take this on airplane, a bag would likely fit under the seat better than a box. I kept the box on the front seat and handed her one thing at time to play with.  Of course, I also packed lots of her favorite snacks and water bottles.  I also made sure that she had lots of time to run around before we got into the car.  Overall, the trip went pretty well.  The busy box entertained her for about 2 hours and then she napped the rest of the way.  I did have lots of band aid wrappers to pick off of the floor when got home, though!