DIY Popsicle Sticks Pattern Matching

Kids love to do matching, and I have a lot of cereal boxes. So I want to reuse them to make pattern matching game for them. 

I cut out rectangles from the cereal box and fold into half to make the holder for Popsicle sticks (one side opening). Next, I search through old papers, magazines and broucher to look for colorful patterns to use for matching. Last, paste those cutout patterns on rectangles and Popsicle sticks for pattern matching. 

Materials used:

1. Cereal box or cardboard 

2. Pen knife and/or scissors

3. Popsicle sticks or craft sticks

4. Glue and/or double sided tape 

5. Pattern paper (I get them from magazines, brouchers, gift wrap, scrapbook paper, etc)

 

After done the matching, kids pretend these are ice creams and lollipops. 

Popsicle Sticks and Bottle

FF likes this activities a lot. She almost does this activities at least once per day. She pours the Popsicle sticks out from the bottle and put them back in one by one. The hole of the bottle is quite small, so she required to pay attention in order to put the sticks into it.

Indoor Water Play

Recently the weather is very hot. Too hot for me to bring kids to go outside to play. Thus, I decided to let kids play at home with water - indoor water play.

I set up the play area at the bath room with some plastic stools. These are some of the materials use in the water play:

• Plastic containers (Reuse the packed food container) - coloured water
• Syringe
• Pipette (bought from Arts Friend)
• Sponge
• Spoons (different sizes and types)
• Plastic bottles (Reuse fruit juice bottles)
• Ice cube trays

Kids love this activities very much and played for about an hour before bath. In this activities, they learn about colour mixing, scooping, measuring, and some fine motor skills. At the same time, they also learn about sharing the items between siblings.

Nursery Rhymes: Hey Diddle Diddle

We sing the nursery rhymes - Hey Diddle Diddle with the laminated rhyme, word and picture cards. The rhyme and patterns are from Kizclub. After I printed it out, I laminated it and then put magnetic tape on each pictures.  

Kids love to sing this song and put the pictures/words on the magnetic board when we sang the name of the objects. It is such a fun way to learn about words and picture matching. In the printable, it also given the rhyming words for kid to work on.

Play with Egg Carton, Paper Beads and Luck Stars

F found an egg carton and asked for permission to play. I agreed and let her play. 

She took out some paper beads and lucky stars then slipped them into the egg carton through the hole when it was closed. FF saw how sister played, she also joined in. They slipped the beads and stars into the egg carton and then opened to pour it out repeatedly. 

Kids are very creative, they can find multiple ways to play the same materials without guidance from adult. 

DIY Insert Box

FF likes to insert things through holes. So I came out this idea to use cleaned milk carton to make it into a box with lid. I cut a hole on the lid and close the lid with Velcro. 

I gave her some snowflake puzzle pieces to insert into the box. After that, she can open the lid to take out the pieces and play again. 

DIY Weighing Scale

Y likes to do measuring and comparison, so we made this weighing scale for him to measure. This is our homemade weighing scale, made from spoilt cloth hanger, strings and recycled bowls. 

We are hanging it on the door, and they are measuring with anything, including lego bricks, pom poms, blocks and etc.

Homeschool Theme: Reptiles

For the past two weeks, we were working on the theme Reptiles.

These were some of the books that we read for this theme:

Chameleon's Colors

A Color of His Own
I found some activities and coloring pages for the book "A Color of His Own" from Creating Learning.

Kids also learn about reptiles from YouTube.
All About Sea Turtles


Reptiles - Learn About Animals For Kids