Hands On As We Grow®

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• A Week of Indoor Gross Motor Activities
• Easy Handprint Magnet Father’s Day Craft
• 10 Ways to Slow Down & Make Your Child’s Day
• Rubber Band Activity to Keep Kids Busy When You Need It

A Week of Indoor Gross Motor Activities Posted: 05 Jun 2022 06:00 AM PDT Click here to read A Week of Indoor Gross Motor Activities on Hands On As We Grow® This is a week of indoor gross motor activities that are just meant to burn off that extra energy when you’re stuck inside. There’s no ‘real’ (academic) learning involved, not themed in any way… just good ol’ fun movement activities to do inside. Now is a good time to have some indoor activities planned, for those days that you’ll need them. When we have a lot more indoor time, it’s so hard to burn off their energy. I always have a few go-to indoor ideas (like our fine motor rubber band activity and lines of tape), but it’s always good to have a way for them to go crazy for a few minutes, in a controlled way that I like. Hence, the need for some indoor gross motor activities. Free feel to plan your own week using our hundreds of indoor activities found here. Just to give you a little background on how I’ve planned a week of activities for my own kids… whether its indoor gross motor activities, crafts, fine motor activities or art projects… or more likely, a well-rounded week of activities that includes each of them all. I start with the gauging what my child is interested in (using the "My Child This Week" sheet of the free weekly planner). I fill one out for each of my kids and what they're into at the moment. I use this as my guide to plan our activities accordingly. With each of my kids' interests, I brainstorm 7 activities to do that week. I jot them down on the simple 'Activities To Do This Week' planner. As for this week of activities to learn a letter, it could be any of our letter learning activities. But for this one in particular, I wanted the ability to be able to focus in on one letter. And of course, like always, I include a day of family time. I think the kids will especially love this family activity! Here’s a week of super fun indoor gross motor activities to do with the kids. This week of activities is a sampling of what it would be like to be a member of The Activity Room and have all the activities planned for you, week after week. Get on the waitlist to join here. Monday: Walking on Pillows Lay pillows and cushions on the floor in a line. Attempt to walk across them! Supplies needed: pillows cushions Find details: Walking on Pillows Tuesday: Paper Hands & Feet Trace and cutout your child’s hands and feet on paper. Tape the paper hands and feet to the floor and have your child match their hands and feet to the paper. Re-position the paper hands and feet and repeat! Supplies needed: paper pencil scissors tape Find details: Paper Hands & Feet Wednesday: Indoor snowball fight Make snowballs with balled up socks, or wadded paper, and have a snowball fight! Supplies needed: socks or paper Find details: Indoor snowball fight Thursday: A Tape Road Tape two lines as the sides of the roads around the house! Create intersections and curves! Supplies needed: painter’s tape Find details: A Tape Road Friday: Simple Frisbee Toss Tape 3 lines of tape on the floor about a foot apart. Stand back and toss the lids like a frisbee to land on the tape line! Supplies needed: plastic lids painter’s tape Find details: Simple Frisbee Toss Saturday: Follow the Line Motor Planning Lay out a jump rope on the floor in a long long. Move a ball from one end to the other along the rope using your hands… how about your foot? Supplies needed: jump rope or string ball Find details: Follow the Line Motor Planning Sunday: Don’t Step in the Lava! Spread sheets of paper around the room, within jumping distance of each other. Jump from paper to paper to not step in the lava (the bare floor). Supplies needed: paper or pillows Find details: Don’t Step in the Lava!

Easy Handprint Magnet Father’s Day Craft Posted: 04 Jun 2022 06:00 AM PDT Click here to read Easy Handprint Magnet Father’s Day Craft on Hands On As We Grow® Make cute handprint magnet, from Julie, for a quick and easy Father's Day craft to make with your kids! My kids and I had so much fun making this super simple Father’s Day gift. Dad is so hard to buy for, but a handmade craft is always a win! This handprint magnet is super simple to make and so useful. It’s a great present for the Dad or Grandpa who has everything! Get creative with these summer art projects to do outside! Dad can keep these at work to remind him of his favorite little ones during the workday. They’re perfect for holding a cute photo on the fridge as well! Easy Handprint Magnet Father’s Day Craft I love how simple these DIY magnets where to make. Plus, we had everything we needed in our activity supply closet. To make your own handprint magnet, you’ll need: foam sheets magnetic sheets pen and markers scissors Get Crafty with this Easy Father’s Day Gift First, I let my kids pick out their favorite color foam sheets. Pink and blue for the win! I traced each child’s hand on the foam. Then we cut out the handprints. The magnetic sheets we purchased had a sticky side. I let my kids carefully peel off the backing, then press the foam handprint onto the sticky magnetic sheet. If you can’t find magnetic sheets with a sticky backing, you can use some craft glue to stick the handprints to the magnet. Make even more simple decorative magnets. While the kids took a quick lap around the kitchen to get their wiggles out, I cut out around the handprint shapes. This left us with foam on one side and magnet on the other. We slapped the handprints on the fridge to make sure they’d stick. Then, we headed back to the kitchen table to decorate! Your kids will also enjoy making these cute Father’s Day crafts! For Father’s Day, I wrote out a simple message with a permanent marker. Regular markers sometimes don’t work well on foam. I like to have a permanent marker on hand, just in case. You could also kick your handprint magnets up a notch with glitter, sequins, or other decorations. But we decided to keep it simple for Dad. I love how these handprint magnets for Father’s Day turned out! These would be so cute wrapped up with a few photo prints and a new coffee mug for work. What are your favorite gifts to make and give for Father’s Day? Share your ideas below!

10 Ways to Slow Down & Make Your Child’s Day Posted: 03 Jun 2022 06:00 AM PDT Click here to read 10 Ways to Slow Down & Make Your Child’s Day on Hands On As We Grow® How to make a child happy doesn’t have to be complicated. Here are simple tips to help us slow down and make our kids happy on any given day! Today’s post is a wonderful parenting reminder shared by Joyce of Childhood Beckons. 10 wonderful ways to slow down and savor the moments with your kids! We all need to take the time to do these! Life can be hectic and busy. Parenting can sometimes seem to compound that problem. And then there are the holidays. It’s very easy to get caught up in your to-do list. Or at least, it is for me. We are always having to run here or there, finish this, clean that. Sometimes I find myself saying “no” when I should be saying “yes!” Today, I wanted to share a few ideas on making time to slow down and have fun to make our children happy. I try to allow time to have fun, but sometimes we really don’t have the time to jump over every crack. When we’ve had an especially hurried few days I like to plan one day to be a preschooler’s paradise. We still do what needs to be done, but I take extra care in the planning and make it my mission to say yes. I try to view the entire day through the eyes of my preschooler. Five things we do while running errands to make my child feel happy: We jump over the cracks! Both of us, it’s more fun that way. He pushes all the buttons! Elevators, debit card machines, coke machines. What child doesn’t feel happy getting to push buttons? We stop at the grocery store with the carousel even if we don’t have shopping to do. It’s sacrificing five minutes time for some smiles and giggles. Well worth it. We take the time to stop and watch that trail of ants, find the perfect rock, or read every sign we see. This is something we try to do everyday, but it can often get pushed to the side when we are in a hurry. We have coin races in the Children’s Miracle Network donation bins. I bring a bag of change for this purpose. We watch the coins spin round and round. We declare victors. This makes my child especially happy and helps other kids too. Bonus. Five ideas for the time spent at home to make your child’s day happier: Let them help make dinner. Let them pick dinner! Yes, it might be more work for you, but they’ll be thrilled to help. And you might get the added bonus of them eating better than usual. Many kids are happier to try foods when they helped prepare them. Play that board game before you make the phone call. Most games don’t take that long to play and making your child a priority will make them feel extra special and happy for sure. Read them one more book. Or three! Is it going to make a mess? Help them make a mess! Let them help you clean it up. That can be almost as much fun as making the mess. No, really. Plan an extra special bath. Instead of getting them out, add more warm water once the original water turns cold. My son looks forward to bath time, but by that time, I’m often looking forward to bed time. This is always a favorite! All of these things combined makes for a very happy child. I usually get a lot of sweet comments at the end of one of these days. The truth is, I’m happier too. But you don’t have to do all of these things in one day like we do. Have you been feeling rushed? Set out to try a few things from this list, or come up with a few of your own. You’ll all be glad you did. Need a few more fun ways to slow down? Try these 10 tips for being hands on with your kids. Learn to let go… let the child lead the way. Try these 4 simple ways to squeeze more quality time into your day. Try some 10 minute challenges to refocus the day and your kids. What can you do to slow down and make your child extra happy?

Rubber Band Activity to Keep Kids Busy When You Need It Posted: 02 Jun 2022 06:00 AM PDT Click here to read Rubber Band Activity to Keep Kids Busy When You Need It on Hands On As We Grow® Do you need a minute? Discover my go-to fine motor activity that to keep preschoolers busy with rubber bands! I absolutely love activities that easily keep kids busy! I can just set them up and they can keep at them for as long as they’d like. It allows me the freedom to work around them in peace. Rubber Band Activity to Keep Preschoolers Busy When You Need It It was time to make dinner and the kids were running around like mad. Which is a regular occurrence in this house, don’t get me wrong. It was just getting wild and I knew that I had to intervene with something else for them to do. Which is where quick busy activities come in handy. FREE Build Your Own Busy Boxes Download This rubber band busy activity happens to be great for fine motor skills, too. To Make Your Own DIY Fine Motor Rubber Band Activity for Preschoolers, You’ll Need: tons of rubber bands a can of food, sturdy water bottle, shampoo bottle, etc. See? Super simple! My one suggestion is to find a place or method to organize your rubber bands. I finally bought a rubber band ball not too long ago because my kids have been stealing my rubber bands constantly and I never get them back. Here’s what you do: have the kids put the rubber bands on the can. That’s it! What else can you do with rubber bands for kids? Check out our rubber bands passing activity, too! At first, I thought it would be fun to make it a contest. Who can get the most rubber bands around the can before supper time? And Henry took right to that, but I realized soon that George was going to get really upset if he didn’t win. He’s been very sensitive lately. So I quickly switched the goal of the rubber band activity. Let’s see how many rubber bands YOU can get on YOUR can before supper time. And then I left them to it. Henry was still sure he was going to have the most. But George kept at it. I made it a point to tell them that we were going to stop the activity before dinner in time to take off the rubber bands and count them. Henry, my kindergartener, was very particular in how he placed them on his can so he could count them well. His were all neat and very straight and lined up. He even took time mid-activity to push the rubber bands all closer together to get more to fit on it. George, my preschooler, wasn’t as particular with his rubber bands, just persistent and kept at the rubber bands. When it was time to stop, Henry took off each one of his to count. He had 33 rubber bands. I had George just remove his rubber bands and I’d help him count them out. He ended up with, not only more than Henry but almost double, with 64 rubber bands on his. I made sure to point out the “pros” of both their wrapping because Henry still saw it as a contest and I could see George starting to get excited about him “winning.” Although George put on more rubber bands, Henry took his time with the activity and did a really neat job at his. Both winners. We have lots more ideas for fine motor activities! Bounceback Parenting has a wonderful list of activities when you need one quick. What are your favorite busy-play activities for kids? Share your ideas with us!

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