Educational Resources for Kids

Peppermint Sensory Writing Tray

March 4, 2025November 11, 2015 by Stephanie Oswald

When it comes to the holidays, peppermint is one of my favorite scents. Just one whiff and it is an instant magical trip back to the land of Santa and Rudolph and snow. Never fails, like a great glass of hot coco, peppermint will always remind me of this time of year. Because of that when it came time to work on our writing tonight I couldn’t think of any excuse to not make a Peppermint Sensory Writing Tray…tis the season 🙂

This peppermint sensory writing tray is an awesome way to work on sight words while getting some sensory exploration!

Sensory writing trays are an excellent way to make challenging tasks for your child fun! These can be used from basic working on fine motor skills to sight words to even math problems! We love using sensory trays in our home!

DIY Counting boxes

April 8, 2016October 29, 2015 by Stephanie Oswald

With a baby in the house we go through a ton of baby food. This means lots of those little containers that are awesome for re-purposing for crafts, on the go snack containers, or even into educational toys. Gerber’s new Lil’ Bits convenient plastic tubs are perfect for your crawler and for crafting. We have had a blast playing with these counting boxes made from our Gerber Lil’ Bits containers.

These super easy DIY Counting boxes are an amazing fun quiet time learning toy!

Exploding Pumpkin!

February 26, 2025October 23, 2015 by Stephanie Oswald

Lately Livia has been regressing. It is a pattern that I have gotten all too familiar with — 2 weeks forward, 1 week back. So this afternoon when a quick activity was needed I could not think of anything more fun and engaging to do than a simple sensory science activity. As an added bonus it is blue which got Meatball super excited! We had a blast with this volcano pumpkin experiment!

This Exploding Pumpkin Experiment is super neat! Can't wait to do it with the kids!

We found these white pumpkins at our local grocer for insanely cheap. I picked up a couple of them to do our Teal Pumpkins for FARE, but by the time we were done decorating those we still had a couple left. I had seen different versions of this science experiment on a couple different sites such as Little Bins for Little Hands and Growing a Jeweled Rose and figured this would be a fantastic way to have some fun before decorating another pumpkin!

Geoboard Gourd

March 6, 2025October 22, 2015 by Stephanie Oswald

Yesterday was a rough shopping day. It took three stores to find the one thing I was looking for…who would have thought that black-lights could be that hard to find this time of year? While out and about Meatball was on his best behavior. Poor little guy was just about falling over exhausted. Since he was so good I let him pick out one item. His choice? A gourd…

Now what was I suppose to do with that?!

Then I remembered seeing this adorable Geo Math Pumpkin over at Fun.A.Day and I knew what we were doing. This Geoboard Gourd activity was a BLAST!

This geoboard gourd is a fantastic fine motor activity!

Earlier this month we had made some teal pumpkins to support FARE’s allergy awareness campaign and the kids ended up using golf tees to poke holes into their pumpkins, which they loved. So I knew this was right up their alley!

Red Sensory Bin

April 8, 2016October 16, 2015 by Stephanie Oswald

While color seems like a super simple to us, for a young child color is a pretty complicated concept. For a minute put yourself in their shoes. They are just starting to learn terms of the items in their ever day lives such as shoes. Now the game is being upped because shoes are not just shoes. There are red shoes, and blue shoes, and green shoes. And well colors come in multiple different shades. So those dark blue shoes and those light blue shoes are both exactly the same general color even though they don’t look the same. Confusing stuff people.

Activities such as this red sensory bin are a great way to start introducing colors in a playful stress-free manner.

So, as you start learning colors with your child have patience and make it fun. Activities such as this red sensory bin are a great way to start introducing colors in a playful stress-free manner.