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Gather recycled materials: paper rolls, bottle caps, wine corks, bottles or anything they can print with. Place a sheet of paper , paint and let your child paint through printing with the recycled materials as their tool!

Collect a stash of recycled materials (egg cartons, bubble wrap, popsicle sticks bottle caps, paper tubes, cardboard, paper plates/bowls). Have your child glue all these materials on a large piece of cardboard or poster board. After it dries, hang it up on a fence, wall, door and let your child paint !

Collect a stash of recycled paper towel and toilet paper tubes. If your child is old enough let them cut them in various sizes, if they are not you can assist them. Provide glue and a piece of cardboard and let them build away. Let the sculpture dry. To further enhance this STEM experience provide them with paint and #lethtempaint.

Letter, Number, or Shape Hunt: In sensory bin, plastic bin, or baking tray place wooden or foam letters, numbers, or shape from puzzles you may already have as the base. You can do a different category each day. Cover the letters, numbers, or shapes with a sensory material (rice, pasta, flour, salt, beans, water beads, etc.) Next have your child find the hidden letters, numbers, or shapes. For older children after they remove each material you can have them sort and match them back on the puzzle board or print out of sheets with letters, numbers and shapes. Tip: To lessen the mess. Place a bed sheet, towel, blanket or mat as the base where the sensory play takes place for two reasons. 1) easier clean up 2) sets boundaries for the child to know that they can only play in that specified area. Letter, Shape and Number STEM with Play-dough: Simply set out letters, shapes, or numbers from puzzles with play-dough and let your child build and explore. Number Counting with Loose Parts: You can use either an egg carton, plastic cups, paper bowls/plates, or write numbers on a paper . Write numbers on the materials. Set aside loose parts (rocks, flat marbles, pom poms, cheerios, goldfish, recycled bottle caps, etc.) and have your child count the loose parts and place the amount in the containers. Tracing Letters, Shapes, and Numbers Art: On any paper draw letters, numbers, or shapes. Then have your child use a tool or a variety of tools such as q-tips, paint brushes, foam roller brushes , or their finger to trace over the drawn letters, numbers, or shapes with paint . Letter, Number, or Shape Stacking Cups: Take any plastic cups. You can write letters, numbers or shapes with a sharpie, place stickers or tape pieces of paper on the cups. Simply let your child build and explore with the cups. For numbers and letters they can attempt to put it in the sequential order. STEM Challenges are a great way to get children thinking and doing even with simple supplies like these plastic cups. Opportunities for hands-on play with different materials will allow children to learn and extend their knowledge and creative thinking skills.

Laundry Basket Rescue Mission: It is a simple set up and keeps little ones busy for a good chunk of time. You Need: Laundry Basket, Yarn or String, Toys. The Set Up:Take a laundry basket and fill it with toys. You can use toys of all different sizes/textures. Take the yarn or string and tie pieces of it across the basket. Do this over and over until you have a latticework of yarn over the top of the toys. (Almost like a spider web over the top.) The Rescue: Set the basket out and have your child rescue the toys! They need to use many skills to maneuver the yarn and the toys to get them to freedom. For older children you can have them use tongs or tweezers to enhance their fine motor skills.

Provide your child with wash cloths, soap, baby doll , and a sensory bin (bowl, bath tub, sink) filled with water and let them bathe their baby doll. Baby dolls are packed with potential for teaching children about themselves and the world around them. As they act out actions, which they have watched their parents or caregivers do with them, they are able to practice vocabulary and life skills. Pretending to care for a doll does more than just expand vocabulary. It also expands practicing good hygiene when they are cleaning the doll, nurturing skills as they take care of the doll, and giving them the power to show connection. Children learn to be responsible for the well-being of their own baby as they practice caring for it, and this lays the foundation for careful, empathetic connections when they are older. Children in an adult world can often feel small and insignificant. Doll play brings that large world down to their size, so they can have some measure of control over it. Doll Play lets children work through strong emotions, practice life skills, and gives them a venue to release their emotions in a safe way.

Egg Roller Painting: This is just like marble painting but with eggs. Take a plastic eggs and put two marbles or rocks inside. You can cut the paper in the shape of an egg or leave it as is. Place the paper in the box then drop spots of paint and the eggs in the box. Have your child shake and tilt the box lid to make the eggs roll around. The eggs paint the paper as they roll. Sink or Float Eggs: Have your child fill eggs with different materials from around the house or loose parts. Then have them test which egg will sink or float in a body of water. Pom Pom Color Sorting & Number Counting// Children have a natural desire to make sense of their world, to create order. For that reason, sorting activities often attract children. In fact, many children will start sorting things without even being taught. Simply set out this invitation with different colored eggs placed in a egg carton, colorful pom poms , and if you have tweezers or tongs you can enhance your child’s fine motor skills with those tools. Sorting is a beginning math skill. It may seem that a big chunk early math is about learning numbers and quantity, but there's much more to it. By sorting, children understand that things are alike and different as well as that they can belong and be organized into certain groups. Getting practice with sorting at an early age is important for numerical concepts and grouping numbers and sets when they're older. This type of thinking starts them on the path of applying logical thinking to objects, mathematical concepts and every day life in general. When the children use their finger muscles to squeeze the tweezers in order to pick up each pom pom and place it in the empty eggs it helps strengthen the children’s fine motor skills which in turns gets their hands ready for pencil grasp. This teaches the child to sequence a multi-step activity as well as challenge their memory by progressively increasing the demands of the activity. This course provided sensory input of tactile (touch) sensory input, through capturing the colorful pom poms and placing them in the eggs. Eggs & Waterbeads: Fill up a sensory bin or bowl with waterbeads and plastic eggs. Simply let your child explore. Tip: If you don’t have water beads you can use shaving cream, water, rice, or dried beans as the base. Egg Printing: Open a few plastic eggs. Place paint in plates. Have your child stamp the egg in the paint and print however they please. If you want to enhance the experience a step further you can do color theory mixing with primary colors ( red + blue, blue + yellow, yellow+ red).

Do you ever wonder why children just love getting mucky and making a mess – whether that’s squishing Jell-O Play Unicorn Slime through their hands, smearing mud across their faces or simply playing with water! Many times we are put off by messy play, as although the idea of finger painting or sensory bins sounds fun at first, the reality of paint and materials getting everywhere and the inevitable operation clean up that follows it soon sets in. So does messy play really benefit a child? Yes! Messy play is extremely important for a child’s development. Many studies have shown that messy play is one of the best ways for our children to learn and develop, so now is the time to embrace it and get messy! There is no right way to carry out messy play, it is all about letting children explore and experiment with different objects and materials without any end goals to restrict them. With materials such as sand, water, chalk, paint, rice, play dough or slime, children’s imaginations can run wild and they can spend a long time exploring these, making their own discoveries, stimulating their curiosity and developing their knowledge. With messy play, the sensory experience also helps children to understand their senses. By exploring how things feel, smell and taste, this type of play nurtures an awareness and understanding of the world that surrounds them. It provides children with an exciting tactile and sensory experience that inspires their curiosity, allows them to explore the world around them and enhances their learning, language and creativity. Children learn through experimentation and discovery and messy play encourages children to explore new textures and manipulate different materials through touch. Not only does messy play enhance a child’s cognitive development and learning, but it also improves a child’s physical development (fine/gross motor skills, muscle strengthening, hand eye coordination, body control & balance, spatial awareness ) as well!

This invitation can be modified by height for any age. Simply take a strip of packaging tape place it from one point to the another, stick balloons or balls to the tape and have your child remove it from the tape. Working on gross motor skills helps a child gain strength and confidence in his/her body. It also helps them get exercise and physical activity, which is important for a healthy lifestyle. Developing these skills through play such as this helps a childs ability to do more complex skills in future activities.

Go on a nature hunt, gather flowers, sticks, leaves and twigs. Place a sensory bin or a variety bowls, or Tupperware with water. Provide ladles, utensils, & cups as their mixing bowls. You can add food coloring or liquid water colors as well. Let your child explore, create, and have endless amounts of fun.

Save your egg cartons! 1. Dismantle the egg carton; cut the lid off, cut the egg holder side into individual sections. 2. With each individual section, cut down the sides in four spots. 3. Load up a plate or paper with paint as your artists palette. 4. Let your child paint the flower as they like, set aside to dry.

Rainy Day Window Art: Have your child paint on a baking tray or plastic bin (l iquid water color s, diluted tempera paint , food coloring), then take a blank sheet of paper and smooth it down on the tray, lift it up and it looks like it rained on the paper! Rainy Water Play: Whether you do it in the bath tub, sink, or a sensory bin . Fill your base with clear or blue water and provide cups, Tupperware, bowls, ladles, and let them explore rain water through water play. Rain Cloud in a Jar Experiment: In clear cup or vase place water as the base, on top of the water squirt shaving cream or place a sponge above the water. In another cup place blue colored water or food coloring /liquid water colors . Have the child transfer the water with a baster, pipette, squirt bottle, droppers , or the food coloring bottle itself, then they will see the rain precipitate. Rain Resist Painting: Have your child draw rain with a white crayon on white paper , next have them paint over the crayon with cool liquid water colors (blues & purples), and let it dry. Rain Storm Sensory Bottle: Take an empty clear plastic bottle, fill it with dyed rice, and cotton balls, and there you have it! You can also do oil, water, glitter and food coloring/ liquid watercolors . Water Absorption: In a baking tray place a cup of water, add food coloring/ liquid water color s place droplets of water all over the baking tray, then have your child take the cotton balls or pads to absorb the rain.