St. Patrick's Day Shamrock Cork Stamp

Why shamrocks? Why has this small, weedy plant become the face and main symbol of St. Patrick's Day? According to an article written by Michelle Gervais, the number three was always a mystical number to the Celtic religion. Since white clover (shamrocks) had three leaves, they became a sacred plant used by the Irish Druids. Enter St. Patrick. As he traveled Ireland spreading Christianity in the 5th century, St. Patrick used this sacred Celtic symbol to help introduce the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. 

Now once a year, we use his sacred day to turn our homes and selves (and beer) green. Woo-hoo! This fun child craft uses wine corks taped together as a stamp to make shamrocks. It's really that easy. First you need to drink three bottles of wine ;). Tape those corks together and dip them in green paint. Then let your child loose on a piece of paper. 

This was my daughter's first try at stamping. Check out her intense concentration while she figures it out. Eventually, stamping got a little mundane for my her taste. So I got out a brush and she quickly brushed over all her beautiful shamrocks. Oops! Oh well. Maybe this painting will end up in the trash rather than the fridge :).

St. Patrick's Day Shamrock Marble Painting

We've been on one heck of St. Patrick's Day binge! My last posts were a St. Patty's Day Sensory Bin and a St. Patty's Day Science Project, but now I need some little crafty something from my daughter to hang up for some green decorations for when the day finally is upon us. And here is what I settled on.

I have some leftover paper heart doilies from Valentine's Day that I had bought from the Dollar Store in February. I'm sure you could find some year round at a big craft store near the wedding or cake-baking area. Anyways, my idea is to take 3 hearts to make a clover and let my daughter finger paint them. Well...they are very deliate and tear easily, so I needed a way she couldn't get her little finger on the doilies. Enter, marble painting. I have always loved this idea on Pinterest, but have never put it into use. For our first try, it went fantastic.

It was the very first thing we did in the morning after breakfast (my little one wasn't even out of her pjs). Set up was a snap, literally only taking less than 3 minutes. I taped 3 doilies down on the bottom of a cake pan, speckled some green paint in there, and threw in 10 marbles.

Then I handed it to my daughter and showed her how the marbles moved when she shook it or tipped it. She did the rest.

Afterwards, I pulled up the doilies and set them to the side to dry. Once dry, I glued them down to a piece of paper and used a green popsicle stick as a stem. Now, I have an adorable marble-painted clover for my daughter's craft wall in the kitchen and I love it.

St. Patrick's Day Sensory Box (Part 2) -- Baking Soda and Vinegar Play

This is Part 2 of my previous post, St. Patrick's Day Sensory Box (Part 1) -- Sifting for Leprechaun's Gold, where I placed gold coins, buttons, and rocks into a bin full of baking soda and let my 18-month-old explore and search for gold.

Now what the heck am I suppose to do with that box full of baking soda? Reuse it for another fun activity, of course! Pour some into a shallow dish; coins, buttons, and rocks all. Then give your little one a small container of vinegar colored green with some food coloring.

We used a small liquid dropper to add the vinegar. I like these because they only add a little bit of vinegar at a time instead of dumping it all at once (it stretches out play time). You could also think if using a spray bottle or have your older child practice spooning small amounts of vinegar. 

Anyways, before I even let Rose have the vinegar I let her play with the baking soda again. She immediately stuck her hands in and began searching for all of her gold coins, as you can see in the picture above. This is a great time to practice counting. We put the coins into piles of 3 (since we are just now learning to count, 3 is the highest we get to).

After all the coins were found and counted multiple times, I gave Rose the green-light for the green vinegar. As always, she had a blast watching the bubbles form and then playing in the mushy mess. Click here for a fun baking soda play dough (at the time, we used it as fake snow) that can then be used to later "melt" whatever you create. 

Once all the vinegar is used, why stop playing? We used our found gold to make a pretty face. As you can tell, Rose was not amused. 

St. Patrick's Day Sensory Box (Part 1) -- Sifting for Leprechaun's Gold

Good morning! I'm really excited to share this one with everyone. I tried this fun sifting activity with my 1.5 year old a couple days ago. It was the first time I had introduced the process of sifting to her and she had a blast with it. Don't get me wrong... it took several (several, several) tries before she understood what the heck I was showing her. But, finally, she had fun trying the colander out for herself.

I prepared her sensory box during nap time, hence my blog's name Nap Time Blogger Mom.  I emptied a small tote out and filled it with baking soda. Why baking soda? No reason. You can use flour, corn meal, corn starch, etc. I used baking soda only because I know my daughter and I will reuse it in the future for some baking soda + vinegar play. Look out for Part 2 of my St. Patrick's Day Sensory Box where we add some green vinegar to our baking soda and watch the fun chemical reaction.

After the baking soda dust died down (there was much more than I was prepared for), I threw in a half a 30-pack of gold coins that I bought at the Dollar Tree. Then I wandered aimlessly around my house searching for other fun things to throw in. I ended up only finding a handful of buttons. For older kids, you can pretend-play that these are coal or other non-exciting finds. Then I ran outside and grabbed several rocks for her to have to play around. Lastly, I picked out the tools she would be using: a spoon, a small colander (from her play kitchen set), and some colorful popsicle sticks.

Now I just needed the kid. Once she was awake and ready, we sat down and she ran her hands through the baking soda. Much to her surprise she found the coins and buttons in there. I showed her the colander and explained how it worked while sifting and finding several coins/buttons myself. She enjoyed the shaking part , so be prepared for a mess (as always).

After one or two times, the sifting became too much of a chore and she used the popcicle sticks, spoon, and her hands to shovel her way through to her gold. If only finding real gold was this easy. :)

Rainbow Bath Paint

We can all agree that the longer days are a good thing, right? Especially, when it means that warmer temperatures are around the corner. But until then, a day at home with an 18-month-old can feel like forever. 

Yesterday, we desperately needed an activity that would help break up our day and last more than 10 minutes. In our house, bath time is always an thumbs-up choice for a 30 minute or more activity. To shake things up, I broke out the shaving cream and food coloring and made a not-so-cute rainbow. Why make it perfect when it's going to be messed up in seconds? 

Simply, mix some shaving cream and coloring in a separate bowls and carefully (or not so carefully) spread onto a smooth surface. I used a giant plastic lid that goes with one of my mixing bowls. 

It proved to be an excellent pre-bath activity. Since both the mess and messy child were already in the bath, clean-up was also fairly quick and easy. My little lady played with the shaving cream for a good 15 minutes before a long 20 minute bath. 

All in all, I can say this time-wasting activity was pretty successful. 

DIY Upgraded $1 Store Easter Magnets

I don't often go to the Dollar Store and now I remember why. They have a ton of awesome deals that I can never pass up because, come on, it's only $1! Well, right now they have these awesome Easter refrigerator magnets in stock. I bought one of each set: the Easter rabbit, and the 5 chicks.

As soon as we got home I opened up the package, popped them out of their forms, and stuck them on the fridge for my little one to begin playing with (why wait until Easter?). She was thrilled and immediately begin pulling them off and presenting them to me as if I had never seen them before in my life. She's pretty adorable.

While wondering if I could recycle the leftover magnet forms, it hit me (duh!) why don't I upcycle them myself?! I could cut them up and make extra (and educational) magnets for Rose. So that's exactly what I did.

I always have to remind myself not to get too fancy. Why put a lot of energy and time into something that my child will probably crumple up and ruin in seconds? So I didn't. I took some index cards and wrote out "purple", "blue", "pink", "green", and "pink" then cut them out. I cut out some funky shaped-magnets and hot-glued them to the back. In less then 5 minutes, I had made color magnets that corresponded to the 5 little chicks that I just bought. I also spelled Rose's name out and made each letter it's own magnet. Another plus, I still have 1 1/2 sheets of extra magnets left for future magnet-making.

"My Little Easter Egg" Craft

Rose got this adorable finger-puppet book from her Grandma and absolutely loves it. Since she is forcing me to get into the Easter mood so early, I decided to do a quick Easter egg craft with her this morning. I won't toot my own horn, but I didn't even get this idea from Pinterest and it turned out pretty good. Also, I love how quick it was to set up.

Simply stick some painters tape in fun designs on a piece of construction paper. Then let your child finger paint like normal on the paper. After he/she is done painting, carefully take the tape off and let the painting dry. Once dry, cut out an egg shape. There you have it. A refrigerator-quality Easter toddler craft.

Make a Non-Skid Drop Cloth for Toddler Activities

Conditioning (the Pavlov’s dog kind, not the silky-smooth hair kind) is a powerful thing. Every time I pull out our blue vinyl tablecloth, Rose’s eyes grow three times their original size, her little feet start running in place, and the most wonderfully adorable “ooooh” comes from her itty bitty perfect mouth. She now associates this white and blue floral drop cloth as the beginning of her fun activity time.

But there is one problem. Vinyl tablecloths are not made to be used as drop cloths on the floor; therefore, many a time when Rose tried to walk on  the cloth it would shift and my poor baby would fall. Fortunately, the activity we would be doing would be enough of a distraction to prevent any crying/whining. But when i

t comes to my baby, I like to prevent possible boo-boos before they can happen.

So I thought on it and I had previously seen posts online of people putting dots or lines of hot glue on the bottom of their toddler’s socks to make them no-skid. So why couldn’t I do this for my drop cloth? Well, I can and I did. And the best part is it only took 15 minutes from beginning to end (that included taking silly pictures for this blog)! Here’s how I did it.

Step 1

Turn the vinyl tablecloth over so that the fuzzy cloth side is facing upward. You can do this either on a tabletop or a hard floor. If you do it on a table that is smaller than your tablecloth, make sure you find a weight (like the bowl I used) so the cloth doesn’t slide while you are working on it.

Safety Warning: Hot glue is… hot! Keep it away from kids. I recommend doing this during naptime when no kids are around. Another tip I learned is keep the pets locked away while doing this. Puppies and kitties do not always understand what we are doing.

Step 2

Plug in and warm up your hot glue gun. I needed an extension cord so that it would easily reach all four corners of the cloth. It took about 5-6 sticks of glue, so be prepared.

I started at one of the corners and tested to make sure the hot glue did not leak or seep through and ruin my tabletop. In some places it seemed to melt the vinyl side a bit, but not too terribly that I felt I needed to stop or that my tabletop was in danger. Continue checking the bottom side of the cloth throughout the activity. I would really hate if anyone’s table or floor got messed up on my account.

Squeeze the trigger while making a fairly thick line of glue and lightly pressing the tip of the gun into the cloth. I made a line all the way around the edge of the cloth and then made long diagonal lines from corner to corner. Honestly, you can make any pattern your heart wishes. You don’t have to overdo it, my lines were around 3-4 inches apart.

That’s it! You’re done and now you have a skid-proof dropcloth for your child’s craft and activity time.

I would greatly appreciate any feedback you may have after trying this out for yourself.