We love the book Bug Hotel by Libby Walden and Clover Robin. My kids like the idea of bugs living together in a cozy hotel so much that we thought we’d try building our own.
For the “hotel”, I used a cardboard box with 2 bamboo utsenil box inserts from Dollarama. Then I placed a number of materials in the tray that the kids could put in the hotel for different insect habitats. The Bug Hotel book provides the perfect guidance for this activity. Our habitat materials were mostly gathered from around the house and outside. We used mini stumps, pine needles, sticks, pinecones, scrunched paper filler, seed heads, moss, egg carton, bamboo pieces, toilet paper rolls. I also cut some slits in pieces of cardboard to use for butterfly habitats. Everything was easy to collect, with the exception of the bamboo pieces. I bought the bamboo pole from Dollarama and had to use some muscle to cut it into 2-3 inch pieces with a saw.
Other Materials Used in the Activity:
Bug Hotel by Libby Walden and Clover Robin – Amazon
Bugs in the Garden Dirt Scented Sensory Bin in a Bag – Readymade Play Canada (code PLAY10) (note: I used 2 bags of dirt scented filler here)
Felt ladybug, bees, butterfly & Safari Ltd. life cycle figures – Sewing Seeds Play (code HOUSEOFPLAY10)
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My kids really enjoyed this activity and used the book as a reference for creating various habitats for the different insects. There were a number of textures to explore as well as an exploration of containment as they tried to fill the open spaces with different materials. The small assembled Bug Hotel went outside immediately so that real bugs could move in as soon as possible.
We don’t have a fancy mud kitchen (although I would love one), but I still wanted to give my kids the mud kitchen experience. Mud kitchens have to be up there with sandboxes for one of the original sensory experiences.
I put together this mud kitchen very inexpensively. I found some old milk crates and a piece of plywood in the garage for the counter. Then I went through our pots, pans, utensils and bath toys in our house and pulled out anything that wasn’t being used anymore or looked like fun. The soil is left over from a Christmas planter arrangement and the only things I really needed to buy were the drink dispenser water jug and food stones.
We’ve been using this setup for a few years now and while it isn’t fancy, it works great and the kids love it. I’d also easy to put away and store in the garage when we’re not using it.
You only really need dirt and water to have some mud kitchen fun, but there are a few accessories that we find add some extra excitement to our play.
Favourite Mud Kitchen Accessories
1. Drink Dispenser filled with water. Ours is a glass one from Canadian Tire. I thought glass would be easier to keep clean, but there are acrylic options if you’re concerned about it breaking.
2. Green Toys Tea Set and Stacking Cups. Green Toys makes such great toys for the outdoors. These things are indestructible.
3. Squeeze Bottles from Dollarama. I have ended up with a bunch of these because when friends come over, everyone wants one of these squeeze bottles. The plastic has the perfect flexibility for little hands to squeeze.
4. Empty Spice Containers – save your empty spice containers! They are so fun for filling with dirt, water, old spices, anything. They give the kids a sense of real cooking.
5. Spice Box. This is new to us this year and the kids have been loving it. You can fill it with spices, potion powder, Oobleck, dried leaves, flowers, anything you can think of. It’s very durable and cleans easily, although I do store it inside because I want to use it for indoor play as well.
6. Yellow Door Stones – the one splurge in our Mud Kitchen and they are totally worth it. We have the Fruits, Pizza Toppings, Breads of the world and Sensory Sound Eggs and they are all wonderful. We leave them outside all year and they still look new. Mine are from Sewing Seeds Play (save with code HOUSEOFPLAY10) and Scholars Choice.
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I’d love to know, what are your favourite mud kitchen accessories??
We’ll be doing some play on the topic of ponds this week. I think it will tie in nicely with Earth Day coming up on April 22nd.
To start off, we did a pond fizzy (potion) play activity. My kids love activities involving fizzy reactions, so we do them often.
I usually make my own fizzy powder because the kids go through a lot in one activity. My 3 year old tends to dump entire containers of fizzy powder into the water. To manage this impulse, I put the powder in small containers and refill them throughout the activity.
I prefer fizzy powder recipes that use citric acid powder – so you can just add water to create a reaction. However, baking soda and vinegar will give you the same reaction. The recipe is simple and very forgiving. The measurements do not need to be exact. I will usually just eyeball the amounts of each ingredient.
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If you don’t have Bubbling Epsom Salt, but want to still create a long-lasting, bubbling mix – you can use cornstarch. I have more information on making fizzy/ potion powder with cornstarch in this post.
To add something extra to this activity, I made it look like a pond, so we could talk about creatures that live near ponds. I also included some blue and yellow water, so the kids could try some colour mixing. For fine motor work practice, I put out a variety of tools including pipettes, tweezers and scoops.
The kids had a great time with this activity. They loved the added texture of the grass under the water and of course, scooping, mixing and pouring the ingredients. It sparked a lot of conversation about the animals and creatures who live around ponds.
Other Materials
Yello Door Education Rustic Pourers (Sewing Seeds Play – save with code HOUSEOFPLAY10)
Lovevery colour tablets for blue and yellow water, tweezers & pipettes
My 5 year old daughter is unicorn-obsessed, so of course she wants a unicorn birthday party this year. I thought I would get a head-start on the party favours/goody bags by making some Unicorn Magic Potion kits. Since I’m a sensory mom (is that a thing? i don’t know – lol), I made them myself. Here’s how I did it.
Making potion fizzy powder is very easy. I used a slightly different recipe this time in order to increase the yield and I’m very happy with it. I have another recipe here.
DIY Potion/ Fizzy Powder
2 cups baking soda
1 cup citric acid powder
1 cup cornstarch
I mixed the baking soda and cornstarch together first. Then I added some purple gel food colouring to colour the powder purple. The food colouring step is obviously optional. I did find it difficult to spread the dye out in the powder as the dye drops got trapped in the powder. I ended up mixing it with my hands and smearing the powder between my hands to mix the dye in.
Once the dye was mixed in, I stirred in the citric acid powder. I added the citric acid last to be extra cautious the dye didn’t activate a fizzing reaction. I also added some glitter and unicorn polymer clay slice mix to the potion powder. Again, this is optional.
I don’t think the measurements in this recipe need to be exact. Baking soda and citric acid powder mixed together will make a fizzing reaction when water is added. The cornstarch just prolongs the fizzing. I only had 2 cups of baking soda left, so the cornstarch also allowed me to make more potion powder. For reference, this amount of powder made 20 party favours (with 4 spoonfuls in each small bag).
Part of the fun of making potions is mixing magical objects into the fizzing substance. For potion add-ins I included some purple crushed decorative filler, sequins, resin unicorn and rainbow trinkets and acrylic gems.
I put everything into a bag and added a pipette (for adding water to the powder) and a thank you note with the potion instructions. I will link the thank you note here if you’d like to download it.
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A quick note on AliExpress: You can get the items I bought on AliExpress on Amazon, I just chose to buy them on AliExpress because it’s less expensive and part of the reason for doing a DIY was to save a bit of money.
Everything is packaged and ready to go. Now I just have to organize the rest of the party. lol. If you have any questions, please leave me a comment!
The Solar Eclipse 2024 was a big event for us. I set up a special space invitation to play in the morning for the kids (3 and 5). The kids were so excited about the upcoming eclipse and the space themed toys allowed them to explore their curiosity about space and eclipses.
I put our new Wonderie Space The Solar System Play Cloth on our Tuff Tray and laid out some of our space-themed toys. The regular size Wonder play cloths fit perfectly in the Tuff Tray. I added in the Grapat Dear Universe Set, Sewing Seeds Play’s Space felt Friends, our resin and felt stars and an Astronaut Gem Block made by Tommy Tran.
For a little added sensory fun, I made a cardboard tray/ sensory puzzle rocket ship and added our Pinecone Tray from AW and Co., turned upside down, for the rocket fire. The rocket ship sensory puzzle was very easy to make. I am becoming a little addicted to making these, because you can make anything your imagination can come up with to the exact proportions you need – and it’s free.
I simply cut a rocket ship shape out of cardboard and 3 strips. I hot glued the strips along the 3 sides and made a circle that I glued in the middle for the window. You could remove the top layer of one side of cardboard if you like. It will make the cardboard more pliable. However, I didn’t do that step for this puzzle – I didn’t find it was necessary. And that’s it. The whole thing took me 5 minutes.
In the afternoon, we traveled south about an hour so we could observe the total eclipse. The traffic was very heavy as everyone had the same idea, so we didn’t make it to our intended destination. Once we were inside the path of totality and about 10 minutes before the total eclipse, people started pulling over on the highway. We did the same and ended up having a great view of the eclipse.
The kids had a phenomenal experience. I was a little surprised at how much they enjoyed it. For me, I think the best part was seeing how people reacted to it. Just about everyone on the highway pulled over, got out of their cars and looked up at the sky. There was a feeling of excitement in the air and a connection from sharing the experience.
I also paid more attention to my surroundings than I have during previous eclipses. As the moon covered the sun, the mosquitoes came out and it got very cold. I had to go get a sweatshirt for my daughter. As the sun emerged from behind the moon, the birds started singing their morning songs and it warmed up again. It was a wonderful experience and I’m glad we made the short trip to experience it fully.
We live very close to the solar eclipse path of totality, so Monday will be a big event. The kids (3 and 5) have been talking about the eclipse at their schools, but I wanted to do something a little special at home as well.
I used items we had around the house to make an eclipse trofast insert for our IKEA Flisat table and then added a tray of sensory material.
The eclipse trofast bin insert was made with cardboard. I traced an existing insert we had, cut it out, used a bowl to trace a circle in the middle and then cut that out too. Then I painted it all black. I taped one of our magnetic tile base plates on the back of the insert and placed a puck light in the bin before fitting the insert on top. It’s simple, but I liked that we could move the moon piece over top of the “sun” circle to block out the light.
I took a couple books out of the library, so we could learn about how the eclipse will work while the kids played with the insert. I ended up reading the books to them while they played.
For some added sensory fun, I also put out a tray of material intended to represent the moon. I had some epsom salts that I had tried to dye purple for another activity and it hadn’t resulted in the colour I wanted. However, I thought the grey colour it ended up being looked perfect for some moon dust. I put the epsom salt in the tray and added a few dabs of grey decorative gravel to give it a moon effect. For some added space fun, I added in some glow-in-the-dark meteor rocks and resin stars, bowls and scoops.
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This activity worked out great. it was the perfect catalyst for talking about the solar eclipse with my young kids. We are excited for Monday. Will you observe the solar eclipse?
We’ve been having fun with all kinds of Easter play activities this past week. Here’s what we’ve been up to.
Easter Bunny Express – Easter Train Track
For this activity, the kids help the Easter bunny dig up the eggs and deliver them to the correct houses on the Easter Bunny Express train.
My 3 year old son loves his wooden train tracks and my daughter wanted an Easter themed activity so we did an Easter, construction, counting mash-up. I added in some learning elements that I thought would appeal to my 5 year old daughter. Honestly, my son would have been content driving the train around the track for hours, he didn’t need any extras
I made 21 cardboard eggs and 6 cardboard cup baskets. The kids could work on 1-1 correspondence (there are enough eggs for 1 to go to house number 1, 2 for house 2, etc.) and for a little extra challenge for my 5 year old, I added dots to the backs of the eggs for matching with the correct number.
I also intentionally left the egg design uncoloured so my daughter could colour them. She likes to add colour to anything neutral.
Materials
Train Tracks & trains – Brio
Tuff Tray – Scholar’s Choice
Felt Easter bunny – Sewing Seeds Play (save with code: HOUSEOFPLAY10)
Grimm’s Rainbow & Semi Circles
Grapat Spring Nins & Fancy Nins – Nest.ca
Grapat tools & felt pond – Sewing Seeds Plau
Wood bunnies and flowers – Tiny Fox Hole
2. Easter Play Dough
Play dough is always a winner for us. I ordered some new, super squishy and enticingly scented play dough from Readymade Play Canada . I have become a fast fan of this dough. I do sometimes make my own, but it doesn’t compare to the very soft and silky texture of this dough. And we loved the unique scents – dirt, fresh cut grass, lavender & rain!
I brought out the rest of our Easter play dough trinkets and accessories for some perfect Easter and spring play. Only the little Play-doh bunny stamp roller is new.
Materials
Easter trinkets and add ins – The Creative Mix Shop (from previous Tinker Tubs)
Acrylic flowers – Eye Spy Club
“Basket” tray (Cauldron/ Pot of Gold Tray)- AW and Co. (save with code: HOUSEOFPLAY10)
Easter resin paintables – Playspiration
Wood letters – Birch and Bark Natural Wood
Wood stamps – DIY
The kids love to make cakes, small world scenes and whatever else they can think of. I will leave this playdough activity out in our Art Center area until Easter so they kids can continue to create.
3. Fill an Easter Basket
In this activity, the kids could pretend they’re the Easter Bunny and fill a basket!
I love this activity – we do it every year. It’s so easy, it gives a purpose to the Easter trinkets you’ve collected over the years and it’s a fun sensory and pretend play invitation. This year I used my new Grapat Tinker Tray to organize all the trinkets, but in previous years I used a basket and filled it with whatever Easter stuff we had. The kids love to make up their own little Easter baskets and deliver them around the house. My 3 year old also thought it was fun to hide things in the crinkle paper and pick them out with tongs.
Materials
Felt carrots, chick, bunny feet, Boho Easter Bunny, felt balls – Sewing Seeds Play (save with code: HOUSEOFPLAY10)
Folkmanis puppets – Nurtured.ca
Resin bunnies – The Creative Mix Shop
Acrylic flowers – Eye Spy Club
Grapat mandala – The Bohemian Collective
Bunny bag – handmade gift
Everything else is from the dollar store or Michaels.
4. Easter Bath Surprise
We’ve also been having a little Easter fun in the bath. I added some giant pom poms, plastic eggs, silicone moulds, tongs, egg cups, straws and a strainer into a bubble bath. The kids hopped right in the bath and enjoyed all kinds of festive fun scooping and playing. Anything that helps gets the kids in the bath quicker is good for all of us, so I try to do special baths sometimes.
Materials
Everything is from Dollarama. I will add our Glo Pals light up cubes in the eggs once the kids get them on Sunday.
5. Easter Chick and Sensory Egg Puzzle
I won a beautiful sensory rice mix from Kidfolk & Co. in a giveway and wanted to think of a fun way we could use it. Since it’s bright yellow, it made me think of Easter chicks.
I used our peg board from Eye Spy Club and wove a yellow pipe cleaner through it to make the outline of a chick. The chick needed an egg and since I don’t have a cracked egg tray (although I would like one-lol) I made one out of cardboard.
I added the beautiful mix to another trofast bin along with some yellow flowers, included scoops and a nesting wood egg set. The kids can post the feathers through the peg board to make a fluffy chick, fill the cardboard egg tray with sensory mix and experiment with the materials and wooden egg containers. It will be a bright and cheery activity to leave out for the weekend.
Materials
Easter Sensory Rice Bin Filler – Kidfolk & Co.
Wood Peg Board – Eye Spy Club
Feathers, pipe cleaners – Michaels
Felt chick – Sewing Seeds Play (save with code: HOUSEOFPLAY10)
I made some simple and inexpensive DIY trofast bin covers for my IKEA flisat table. I wanted to make a fun Easter sensory activity for my kids, without a big price tag. I ended up making a garden where they could harvest flowers and arrange them in an Eater basket, harvest carrots, and even plant new seeds in the carrot holes or in the pots.
Here’s how I made the cardboard covers:
I cut the covers from cardboard and for the first one, simple cut x’s in the cardboard so a carrot could either be “planted” or “harvested”.
I also wanted to make an Easter basket cover that the kids could post fake flowers in, but since my drawing skills are not the best – I used a felt Easter basket from the dollar store. I simply cut the basket in half, removed the bottom and handle and then reapplied the handle to the two corners at the top of the basket. Then I glued the felt basket piece to the cardboard and poked a few holes around the top of the basket (some larger to accommodate the larger stems) .
On the other side of the table I filled a bin with dry black beans for “soil”. Black beans have to be one of the most versatile sensory materials you can use. I cut some fake flowers with wire cutters, separated them into individual stems and “planted” them in the black beans.
Finally I put out some small garden hand tools, some pots and a small bowl of felt balls for “seeds” in case the kids wanted to do some planting.
The kids can harvest flowers and carrots, make Easter basket arrangements and even plant new seeds. Lots to do! It’s a fun, easy and budget-friendly sensory bin.
Everything except the felt balls (Sewing Seeds Play) and the carrots (AliExpress) are from the Dollar Store (Dollarama).
My daughter wanted to make an Easter craft, so we came up with these very cute Bunny Wands. This craft required my assistance, especially for the hot glue steps, but my 5.5 year old daughter was able to manage the rest. She especially loved choosing ribbons, bells and gems to personalize her bunny.
Materials
cardboard
egg carton
yarn (i used furry yarn and thick white yarn)
dowel
beads (1 pink for nose, 2 black for eyes)
tulle ribbon
ribbons
bells
optional: flower or gems for decoration
Steps
Cut out 2 bunny heads from cardboard. Hot glue a wood dowel to 1 bunny head. Scrunch and glue the tulle ribbon to the dowel at the bottom of the bunny’s head. Glue the other cardboard bunny head on top of the dowel, so the tulle is sandwiched in between.
Cut 2 pieces of yarn. Glue an end of each piece at the tip of each bunny ear, in between the pieces of cardboard. Wrap the yarn around the bunny head until the cardboard is covered.
Cut one egg compartment from the egg carton and trim until it is approx. 1.5″ tall. Make a hole through the end of the egg carton piece. Cut another piece of yarn and thread through a large needle. Make a knot at one end or glue the yarn to the inside of the egg carton piece. Sew through the hold and around the egg carton until the carton is covered with yarn. Thread a pink bead and pull until it rests over the egg carton hole. Sew around the carton 1 or 2 more times and tie off.
Hot glue the ‘nose’ (egg carton covered in yarn) onto the bunny face. Hot glue 2 black beads above the nose for eyes.
Tie 3-4 pieces of ribbon around the base of the bunny’s face. Thread bells onto one of the ribbons.
My daughter and I thought our dollhouse walls were looking a little bare, so we decided to create some art and flower arrangements to freshen them up for spring.
Here’s how we made them.
Paintings
Materials
Mini Canvases (Walmart)
Washable acrylic paint
Maileg cardboard cutout and tag pictures
Fairy picture canvas (Dollarama)
Command Picture Hanging Strips
We tried a few different methods to make the paintings.
I sketched a few bunny portraits using a Maileg bunny tag for guidance and we free-hand painted a few of the canvases.
I am not much of an artist, unlike my daughter, so I cut out a small image from a leftover Maileg sticker. I taped the sticker to a canvas and dabbed a sponge brush around it to create a mouse silhouette and then repeated 2 more times. The sticker was too small for my daughter to manage this technique, so I went hunting for a larger image to use.
When I saw the cardboard mouse figure in my box of Maileg things, I thought it would be perfect for this project. I traced the cardboard mouse figure (it was packaging that came with a mouse outfit) onto some cardstock, taped the cardstock on the canvas and then my daughter painted around it. Once the background was finished, she removed the cardstock stencil and painted the mouse. This was the most successful and least frustrating method, for both myself and my daughter.
We also had a canvas (from Dollarama) with a fairy scene pre-drawn on it that we decided to add to the collection
Once the paintings were all finished and dry, we put Command Picture Hanging Strips on the back and adhered them to the dollhouse walls.
Picture Hanging Strips work like velcro – one side sticks to the canvas and the other side sticks to the wall. This way the picture can be moved around easily. I thought that it would be a fun feature for my daughter if she could rearrange the paintings. It also means we can easily create new paintings and switch them out in the future.
When I saw the little wood flower pots, I immediately thought of our dollhouse. They were very simple to decorate and put together. My daughter painted the pots with acrylic paint. Once dry, she put a little brown air dry clay in each pot and then stuck the mini flowers in each pot. We left the pots overnight to cure before putting them in the dollhouse the next morning.
My daughter and I had a lot of fun doing this project together. I think it’s very likely we will do it again.
