We've had our Kindergarten kid home from school for the past couple of days, dealing with fever and cold-like symptoms, so I've been trying to come up with fun activities for him to do while our little one is napping. This activity with marshmallows and toothpicks is simple, educational, fun, and EDIBLE (well, at least the marshmallow part). Supplies: About 20 marshmallows and a handful of toothpicks
Procedure: Have your child build a square base with 4 toothpicks and 4 marshmallows, and then let them build upwards and/or outwards from there
Objective: To learn about 3-D structures, be creative, and use trial and error to see which structures hold firm and which bend and break easily.
Enjoy!
7 comments:
My kids had fun with a similar project a while back. You can see their works of art here: Marshmallow Sculptures
It is fun and just plan yummy to eat too!
cool idea!
Nice idea, Kat. We all knew you were a homeschooler at heart.
Still pregnant.
This is great! We can do this with all four older kids, and talk about perimeter and area as well.
Awol, I can't believe you have the guts to say that after the last conversation that Kat had about homeschooling.
However, I think that with all of the flu going around, all mothers benefit from having some tricks like this up their sleeves, stuff that is fun, semi-educational, quiet and creative. It was very rare for us to be out of school for more than a day, but this generation has it more like our grandparents did -- have a fever, loose a week of school.
Family Fun magazine has lots of ideas like this, stuff you can do with things you already have around the house.
:) :) Actually, it has been really nice to have C around for the past few days! He's looking forward to returning, but the time at home has been good for us all. If I were to really be homeschooling, I would need to do it during Maria's naptime - we've had some minor disasters here over the past couple of days due to mommy trying to do too many things while M has been awake. Let's just say that I had to google "How to get Krazy Glue off of skin" this morning...
Kat, we're homebound too, and I finally got to go the store last night and got these materials. High priority. Sick little Bella really bounced back and enjoyed this, the first time she's enjoyed anything in 4 days. Thank you!!
Kat, I'm glad to hear you say that you would have to homeschool during Maria's naptime because she requires almost complete attention when she's awake. She just turned two. I wanted to ask how you homeschoolers manage your toddlers. My Angelina, who got her blog alias "Angelina" because she was the tamest baby ever born, has morphed into a complete wild animal of an 18-month-old. She's so tantruming, destructive, demanding, violent and focused on her missions of disaster. She's fiercely independent and runs away as fast as she can anytime we leave the house, and she tries stunts that are terrible decisions. I think some of it has to do with having older siblings, she really thinks she's 5 years old and entitled to do everything, and she gets extremely frustrated by the fact that she's not. Anyway, I'm trying to continue being affectionate and patient and I know that she'll outgrow this... but HOW IN THE WORLD do you manage to do anything meaningful with older children in the meantime? Maybe when we move into a house one fine day, I'll set up a steel cage for my 1.5 year olds with dry-erase walls and gym mats on the floor and throw a bunch of toys and markers in and lock the door. But for now... really?
I send my toddler outside, or gate him into the playroom while I work with Gianna. He destroys our school supplies if I let him anywhere near when we are doing school. I have taken anything dangerous out of our playroom, and he is gated in the backyard when he goes outside (I can see him from our kitchen when I am doing school). Gianna's school only takes about an hour (if we are efficient) and our toddler has learned to occupy himself during this time.
Age 16 months-2.5 is a cute but very destructive time!
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