Pumpkin Painting & Decorating for Toddlers

Halloween Activities

Pumpkin Painting & Decorating

Always use tempera paint (not acrylic) with young children. To help the paint adhere to the pumpkin you can mix it with liquid glue in the paint tray before starting.

She is painting 2 pumpkins, one for herself and one for her baby sister.

Preferably wait for the paint to dry overnight before decorating, but obviously that didn't happen here. I pre-cut foam shapes for eyes, nose and mouth and you can have your child glue them on or use the self-adhesive foam sheets like I used and they can just stick it on.

Kids love googly eyes so I suggest you stock up if you're doing art regularly with them.

Allow your child the freedom to place things where they want to, even if it doesn't look right. You can give them general guidance but if they don't follow it just remember it's their artwork, not yours. The experience is more important than the finished product!

This is how it turned out. You can use many other materials like glitter (I recommend glitter glue because it's less messy), stickers, playdough, markers, pretty much anything you have on hand.

 

Teaching Tools for Babies

Please note: The free infant stimulation cards in this post are no longer available. To purchase a set of high contrast baby stimulation products, see the following affiliate links:

• High contrast cards for babies
• Tummy time boards
• Baby activity mat
• High contrast board book

The Way Babies Learn

Research shows that the first five years of a child's life is the most critical period for brain development. In this period, brain cells make connections that lay the foundation for all future learning. These pathways must be maintained, through repetition and consistency, in order for the connections to be preserved. The network of connections influences intellectual capacity, memory, problem solving, and language. Most of these connections are made in early childhood, especially in the first year of life.

Starting from birth, the most important thing a parent can do is to interact with their baby as much as possible. You are your child's best teacher. A baby's brain is designed to learn best from human interaction. Experts recommend talking to your baby a lot. The more that a baby hears the patterns of language, the easier language learning becomes. By age 3, kids spoken to more frequently have an IQ that's 1.5 times higher than that of children who weren't. By the time they're in elementary school, they have much stronger reading, spelling, and writing skills. You should narrate your day, meaning talk about everything you are doing and everything that is happening. Once your baby starts babbling, you should have "conversations" with the baby. Ask the baby a question then pause and wait for a reaction. This kind of interaction will help to develop social and emotional skills. It is also recommended that parents read to their child every day, starting from birth. 

Infant Stimulation Cards (newborns - 5 months):

Because vision is one of the least developed senses at birth, it is a good idea for the parent to offer stimulating images to aid in the baby's development. At birth, a baby’s retina is not fully developed. An adult retina can distinguish many different shades of light and color, but a newborn retina can only detect large contrasts between light and dark, or black and white. I used to notice my baby staring at high contrast objects such as the dark framed mirror or the dark curtains up against a white wall.

Infant stimulation cards are black and white patterned cards that you hold up in front of your baby as a visual stimulation tool. Research shows that infant stimulation cards will help calm and soothe your baby as well as increase concentration skills, enhance natural curiosity and stimulate the creation of brain cell connections.

The best distance to place the card is 8 to 12 inches from your baby's eyes. You can tape it to the side of the crib, the wall next to the changing table, in front of your car's baby seat, or just show it to your baby and let the baby look at it until he/she loses interest. These cards are good for newborns up to around 5 months. Make sure baby is alert and active while showing these cards.

Baby Flash Cards (5 months and up):




Once your baby starts to stay awake and alert for longer periods, around 5 months, a daily exercise you can do is to use flash cards to aid learning. You can download free alphabet flash cards A-Z and numbers 1-10, click here! These high contrast black and white images are better than other colorful cards. Flash each card for a second while saying the letter sound. This exercise should last no longer than a minute for the whole set of cards. Do this while your baby is alert and in a high chair or seat. Consistency is the key, so if you do this every day you will significantly impact your child's reading potential. The child will quickly learn the letter sounds which is the first step in learning to read phonetically. Give your baby a head start in reading!

Your baby will also learn to recognize numbers by using the number cards. You should also try to count things in every day conversation. Count the baby's fingers and toes, count the number of steps in your staircase, etc. Soon the baby will be counting everything too!



Note: Teaching your infant with flash cards should not be time consuming and should always be fun. To be used in addition to lots of meaningful interaction and play with your baby. If your baby is not interested, try again at a later time. Also, if you do not start at 5 months, don't worry it is never too late to start. Your child will benefit regardless. 



The file contains 6 cards per page, just laminate and cut out. You can also hole punch and put them through a ring to hold them together and quickly flip through them. 

Alphabet Sorting Game with Free Printable

I'd like to share a fun picture sorting activity that I do with my daughter to help her learn letter sounds. This also builds alphabet awareness and vocabulary!

For each letter of the alphabet there are 6 cards: four cards with pictures of objects, one card with the uppercase letter and one with the lowercase letter. That's a total of 156 cards.

All you need is a few baskets, cans or containers and you label each container with a letter of the alphabet.

I had my daughter sort the cards in the correct containers.

Depending on your child's age and skill level you can choose how many letters to do at a time. I recommend only doing 2 or 3 letters at one time for beginners. You can also add challenge by using letters that are not in alphabetical order, example x, m, and r.

Download your FREE Alphabet Sorting Cards HERE!

This Alphabet Sorting Game is part of our Alphabet Games Bundle, a set of 15 unique, hands-on printable ABC games.

Painting Activity for Babies

This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support.

Finger painting with babies might start out with fingers... but it can quickly turn into full body painting! Yes, this may seem very messy (and it is!) but the end result is a masterpiece that you can hang on your wall and your guests will think it's a modern art piece you bought at the gallery. Well, maybe not quite.. but you'll have some great wall art for your kid's room.

When my daughter was 8 months old I started painting with her. I placed an old sheet on the floor to contain the mess, then I laid down one of my large canvases. I squirted some finger paint on the canvas, one color at a time, and she eagerly went to work. She started spreading the paint around the canvas with her fingers, then proceeded to crawl all over the painting and use her whole body as a paintbrush. The result was impressive!

 

 

Tips:
1: Make sure your child is at least 6 months old and is able to sit up on their own. If your child does not crawl yet you can rotate the canvas for them or place the child on different parts of the canvas. If your baby is crawling, let them crawl all over the painting. It might seem like the canvas is bending or caving in, but it should snap back into place later.

2: My daughter started out in a t-shirt onesie but I quickly learned that it was much easier if she paints without any clothes, just a diaper. This makes it easier to quickly place her in a bath right after the activity. Also, the diaper actually creates some interesting designs when it is dragged across a painting!

3: Start by squirting one color on one part of the canvas. Let the child finish spreading that paint around. Then squirt another color somewhere nearby and let the child work on that. Keep doing this until the painting is complete.

4: Let the child complete the painting at their own pace - some babies might be done in 5 minutes and decide to crawl away in search for the next adventure, while other babies might sit and paint for quite a while.

5: You may know from experience that complementary colors (colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel. example: red & green, blue & orange, yellow & purple) will turn a lovely shade of brown when combined. In order to keep the painting bright and colorful and minimize brown areas try to avoid using complementary colors next to each other.

6: Yes, babies put everything in their mouth. These Crayola finger paints are non-toxic, but if you prefer you can make your own homemade finger paints with this simple recipe.

 

15 FREE St. Patrick's Day Printables for Toddlers and Pre-K

This is a fun activity pack for toddlers and preschoolers featuring number recognition, number quantity, shapes, patterns, sorting, alphabet letter cases, letter sounds, visual discrimination, coloring, tracing, and scissor skills practice.

 Download the Updated Pack here!

FREE Daylight Savings Time Board Game

Teach your child about Daylight Savings Time, clocks, seasons, numbers and counting in this fun game for the whole family!

Each player moves clockwise across the board, traveling through the 4 seasons, and moving the hand on the clock. If you land on the "spring ahead" or the "fall back" spaces, you also move the clock an hour ahead or an hour back.

Ages 2+. Simple enough that a 2 year old can play but fun enough for older kids and adults to join in.

Includes Board Game, Playing Instructions and 2 Paper Cubes.

Download Here

FREE Printable Art Collages

4 Free Art Collages for your child to practice their art skills! Includes Build a City, Build a Farm, Create an Ocean, and Create a Face. Includes both color and black and white cut-outs.

There are 3 levels of difficulty depending on your child's age and skill level:

1. Parents cut out the colored pieces for the child to glue.

2. Parents cut out the black and white pieces, the child glues them and also colors the picture at the end. 

3. The child cuts out the pieces, glues them and then colors them in. They practice cutting, gluing and coloring at the same time!

Download your Free Art Collages Here

For more art skills practice, take a look at The Ultimate Art Skills Pack for ages 3-6 years. This is a unique set of 20 printable activities that help kids practice ALL of their art skills at the same time: Scissor Skills, Gluing, Tracing, Coloring and Drawing!

Free Alphabet & Picture Tracing Printables

Say goodbye to boring letter tracing sheets! In this fun pack, your child can trace a picture, color it in, and trace uppercase and lowercase letters on each page. Practice writing and drawing skills at the same time. Also great for reinforcing letter sounds!

 

This post contains affiliate links for your convenience. 

This FREE set of alphabet worksheets is perfect for preschool and kindergarten kids learning and reviewing the alphabet.

Materials Needed:

• Printer
• Paper
• Laminator (optional)
• Sheet protectors (optional)
• Dry-erase markers (optional)

You can either print these no-prep sheets and give to kids as-is, or you can make them reusable by laminating them or putting them in sheet protectors. Then give the kids dry-erase markers to use. Afterwards, just wipe clean and reuse!

Click Here to Download your FREE Alphabet & Picture Tracing Printables

For more Alphabet worksheets, see the following posts:

Free Board Game for Toddlers and PreK: Feed the Monkey

This board game will get your tots to practice counting, number recognition, and number quantity skills while having fun feeding the monkey!

Includes: printable board game, bananas, paper cube with colors

Directions:

1. Choose a token for each player. This can be a bottle cap, a miniature animal, etc.

2. Divide the bananas equally between all players. (If you need more bananas, print multiple copies of the banana page)

3. The player rolls the paper cube and moves to the next circle that matches the color on the cube.

4. The player says the number that they land on.

5. The player then "feeds" the amount of bananas that matches the number they landed on. (To feed the monkey just place the correct amount of bananas on the monkey's mouth)

Example: Player rolls the cube and gets green. They move to the green circle. The green circle has the number 2 so they feed 2 bananas to the monkey. The players take turns moving around the board and feeding the monkey. The player who arrives at the finish first is the winner.

Download your Feed the Monkey Board Game Here!

If you liked this activity you will LOVE our Toddler Matching Pack!

Free Easter Printables for Toddlers and PreK

Spring is in the air! And that means Easter is right around the corner. Get ready for the season with this fun, free printable Easter Learning Pack for your toddlers and preschoolers! Featuring number recognition, number quantity, counting, shapes, patterns, alphabet letter cases, letter sounds, sight words, letter tracing, sorting, visual discrimination, coloring, puzzles, pre-writing tracing, scissor skills practice and more!

This FREE Easter Learning Pack features 31 hands-on activities, and it is available for Free to all email subscribers. Here is what's included:

Literacy Activities:

-Cut & paste Missing Letter

-Letter Sounds Matching

-Find Letter E

-Sight Word Matching

-Word Tracing & coloring

-Letter Case Matching

-Do a Dot: E is for Egg

Math Activities:

-Numbers 1-5 Puzzle

-Numbers 1-10 Puzzle

-Numbers 11-20 Puzzle

-Counting 1-5

-Counting 1-10

-Cut & Paste Correct Number of Eggs

-Shape Matching

-Patterns

-Color Sorting

-Size Sorting

-Color by Number

Pre-Writing/Fine Motor:

-Trace Horizontal Lines

-Trace Vertical Lines

-Trace Shapes

-Trace & color Easter eggs

-Trace & color Easter rabbit

-Do a Dot: E is for Egg

Visual Discrimination:

-Which one is different?

-Matching Easter egg halves

-Easter egg hunt

Scissor Skills:

-Cutting straight lines

-Cutting zig zag lines

-Several Cutting & pasting activities

Puzzles:

-Numbers 1-5 Puzzle

-Numbers 1-10 Puzzle

-Numbers 11-20 Puzzle

This Easter Printable Pack is FREE for all Totschooling subscribers!

What can I expect as a Subscriber?:

-You will receive access to free printables that are not available for download on the website. This includes holiday and seasonal packs, as well as other themed activity packs.

-You will get access to a collection of Board Book Printable Activities and Nursery Rhymes sequencing.

-You will receive 1-2 emails per week with new posts, freebies, sales and additions to the site.

-You will receive a special subscriber discount for the Online Store.

-Your information will never be shared with anybody else.

How do I get my Easter Pack after subscribing?:

-After confirming your email address, you will receive a Welcome Email which provides the link to the subscriber's page. This subscriber's page is where you can download the Easter Pack as well as ALL other subscriber freebies.

-Please check your email thoroughly for this email including spam folder, promotions folders, etc. If you still do not see it, please email me at totschooling@gmail.com and I will be happy to send you the link.

Free Do a Dot Spring Printables

Happy Spring! Enjoy these free Spring themed Do-a-Dot sheets, featuring a bird, butterfly, tulips and kids playing in the park. Includes both color or black & white.

If you haven't tried Do-a-Dot markers (affiliate) with your kids yet, they are really awesome and easy to use. I highly recommend them for toddlers and preschoolers! 

Download Free Do-a-Dot Spring Printables Here! 

See ALL of our Do-a-Dot printables Here

Prewriting Game with Doodle Board

 

This post may contain affiliate links. Thank you for your support.

I was playing with my daughter and her doodle board today, and I got inspired to make a little game that would be fun and also help kids with their prewriting, drawing and tracing skills!

The game is very simple. Print and cut out these game cards which tell you to draw a shape or trace an object. Each player picks up a card and draws or traces what the card says. I also included some blank cards so you can make your own and customize it to your child's skill level.

DRAW this:

TRACE this:

 

Click here to Download Game Cards!

Recommended Products:

Egg Carton Recycled Easter Crafts

After you boil all your Easter eggs what do you do with the egg carton? The possibilities are endless! I am going to show you a few ideas for recycled and eco-friendly Easter crafts, including a flower, a bunny rabbit, a cat, and a caterpillar.

Flower

Cut out one of the cups from the egg carton. Every egg carton has a slightly different shape but you should get a flower-like shape after cutting. You may have to cut it a bit more to form the petals.

Use a sharp instrument to poke two holes at the bottom of the flower. Then you will thread a chenille stem through one hole and back out the other hole.

Twist the two ends together to form the stem.

My daughter painted the flower and glued a pom pom in the middle. This is the finished product:

Caterpillar

Cut the egg carton down the middle lengthwise to make this caterpillar. You can add more cups to make it longer. Let your kids have fun painting and decorating it!

Cat

For the cat you will need two cups - one for the head and one for the body/legs. Make sure to cut the legs to be the same length otherwise it won't stand.

For the head you use another cup and you may have to cut and shape the ears.

Glue or staple the head and legs together.

Let your child paint the cat, add eyes, whiskers, tail, and any other accessories.

Rabbit

The rabbit is the same as the cat except the ears are longer.

Paint it, add eyes, whiskers, a pom pom tail and anything else your child wants!