Sometimes the most simple ideas are the most fun ideas. Coffee filter painting is a great project your preschooler can virtually without any help at all and you can turn the colorful art pieces into other projects when the painting is all finished. If you’re preschooler can hold a marker and a paintbrush, they’re ready for coffee filter painting!

Coffee Filter Painting

Materials you need to make coffee filter paintings:

• White coffee filters (brown work, but the colors aren’t as vibrant)
• Washable markers – any size and color
• Paint brushes
• Bowl of water

Color the coffee filter with washable markers

How to make your own coffee filter painting

1. Make sure to cover your work surface.
2. Color the coffee filter however you like using the markers – make sure they are washable markers, as they work much better.
3. Paint water over the colored areas using a paint brush. (You can also use a spray bottle of water for a different look).
4. Let dry.

More fun art when painting coffee filters

If you “paint” the coffee filter with a white piece of paper underneath, you’ll find a second piece of art when you’re finished. The color will seep through the coffee filter on to the paper and create a neat design. Once your art pieces are dry you can display them as is or create new projects with the pretty colored papers.

We are going on a trip in a few weeks. We won’t stay within the US, but we’re going to Europe. That means 5 hours driving to Chicago and then about 8 hours in the plane. I have a 4 and a 5 year old. Can you guess what I’m thinking?

Kids travel craft kit

I’ve seen a ton of articles lately about drawing in sand, practicing drawing letters in colored sand and sensory activities using sand. So, last week when I was at Michael’s I saw jars of colored sand for about $3 so I had to pick up a jar. I grabbed the purple and home we went. This particular sand is designed for use in making sand art (filling decorative bottles with layers of colored sand), however it makes for a great preschool activity.

Drawing in colored sand

Get a serving tray, pour the sand in and play… that’s it! You could use paper plates, however, make sure not to over-fill the plate, you really don’t want this sand all over the floor just because there’s too much to play with.

If you don’t want to buy it, you can make your own colored sand pretty easily. The Artful Parent talks about making your own Zen tray using colored sand, a great activity that promotes thoughtful creativity. I also found an interesting tutorial for making colored salt using sidewalk chalk. We haven’t tried this one yet, but it sounds like a fun 2-fer project… make colored salt for one project and then play in the salt (instead of sand) for another project, double the fun!

When you do get out the sand to draw and play with, try using other objects to play with too. We experimented with cookie cutters, chopsticks, paint brushes, etc. Encourage your preschooler to explore not only the texture but the results of using different surfaces together. Happy sand playing!

Food fun, learn AND eat eat vegetables at the same time! I keep seeing all these fantastic, fun food creations especially on Pinterest. I don’t always have time to make something elaborate and if you have a room full of preschoolers, fancy snacks are even harder to make time for. So I set out to come up with some ideas of fun food crafts and play time using food so we can talk about eating veggies and make them more fun.

Carrot craft - make a smiley face

Create a game  or edible craft with carrots!

Get yourself a relatively large carrot and cut into a variety of shapes. The bigger the carrot, the easier it is to make triangles and decent sized rectangles. Make at least 2 of each shape, although 3 is just that much more fun.

Cut a carrot into different shapes

Once you have the piece cut, your preschooler can play a matching game, pairing up the matching shapes or create pictures and other shapes by combining the geometric shapes. You could even use this as some snack time match if you’d like… “if I have 3 circles and I eat 1, how many circles are left?”.

carrot shapes to make a car or train

carrot shapes to make buildings

making a smiley face with cut carrots

I know playing with our food is generall discouraged, but if playing with food can make veggie eating fun, then I say, do it! You can create this project with just about any kind of hard fruit or vegetable, apples would also work really well. (cheese and salami or bologna would work too). Consider combining two food items to play a matching shape and food item game too.

What other fun food activities do you like to do?

Sensory Bottles

This is a very easy and simple craft to do with younger children and when done you have a new toy for them to play with.  It is also pretty cheap, and you know I love cheap.

Celebrating nature, Disneynature’s newest film Chimpanzee is a cute, documentary style movie featuring a family, specifically a baby chimp named Oscar (he’s SO DARN CUTE!). The movie premiered right before Earth Day and I had the chance to see it. Bonus: a donation made toward conservation for every ticket sold the week of Earth Day!

Tim Allen narrated which of course added plenty of laughs – yes, he even did his classic grunt. Although there were a couple dramatic scenes, there was nothing too graphic for even young children. No graphic animal violence. In perfect Disney style, the movie was educational and shared important messages with vibrant scenes full of beauty and cuteness.

To go along with the film, there are a handful of activity pages, a teacher guide and, perfect for our preschoolers, a make your own chimpanzee mask!

Chimpanzee teacher guide from Disneynature

Download full Chimpanzee teacher guide. This is designed for children grades 2-6, however, you can adapt many of the conversations and activities for younger kids. Talk about nature, animals, how we can work together to protect nature, what chimpanzees look like, where they live, etc.

Some activities include: find the jungle animals picture, picture cards of different animals and species, compare your foot to a chimp foot, picture list of ways to protect nature and many more!

Download the full chimpanzee activity packet. This includes many of the activities from the teacher guide with the addition a few other projects such as dot-to-dots and the chimp mask.

Download the Chimpanzee make-a-mask activity 

Make your own chimpanzee mask

Did you see Disneynature’s Chimpanzee movie? What did you think?

What do you do with all those plastic Easter Eggs after Easter?  In the past I have saved them for the following year, which is great so I don’t have to keep buying them.  But we go to the towns Easter Egg Hunt each year and our Plastic egg supply is getting pretty big.

So this year I decided I did not want to save them all, we just had too many.  But I hate throwing things away so I figured we better make something out of them.  And since Easter is over I did not want to make anything Easter like so we decided to do a snake.  After all the top of an Easter egg actually looks like a snake head doesn’t it?

Recycle your plastic Easter eggs to make a toy snake

Supplies you need to make an Easter egg snake

• Plastic Easter Eggs (any number will work, the more you have the bigger the snake)
• Fishing Line
• Glue
• Googly Eyes
• Red Foam Sheet

Steps to make your own recycled Easter egg Snake

1. Separate the egg bottoms from the egg tops.
2. Now thread your fishing line into one of the bottom eggs and tie it on the inside of the egg (see picture)
3. Thread all the bottom parts of the eggs first, with your fishing line going in the left hole then the right hole (this will keep your snake even).
4. Once all the bottom pieces are threaded start with the top pieces, the first one should match up with the last bottom piece so that you can close the egg.
5. Just like the bottom pieces thread all the top parts with the line going in the left then the right hole.
6. For you last one you will tie it just like the bottom one.
7. Now glue the last egg to the 2^nd egg.  Then glue on your eyes and tong (cut it out from the foam paper).
8. Once glue dries just play and have fun with your new Snake toy!

Turn breakfast or snack time into a learning fun. I know, doughnuts aren’t the healthiest of snacks, but when you turn your doughnuts into letters, they can’t be all bad, can they? We made our own doughnuts into letters and numbers using standard cookie cutters. You could use any recipe you like, however we used a simple “bisquick doughnut” recipe using a bisquick-like mix I make myself.

Alphabet doughnuts

Ingredients to make your own doughnuts:

• 2 cups Bisquick mix
• 2 Tbl sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/4 c milk
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• Vegetable Oil

How to make your own alphabet doughnuts:

1. Pour 3-4 inches of oil into a pan or deep fryer, heat to 375.
2. Roll out your dough about 1/4″-1/2″ thick.
3. Instead of using a doughnut cutter, use your favorite alphabet and number cookie cutters.
4. Adult only: place doughnuts in oil and cook for 30 seconds.
5. Let cool.
6. Eat as is (they are yummy, plain), or roll/dip in powdered sugar.

make doughnut dough and roll flat

use alphabet cookie cutters to cut out doughnut shapes

alphabet doughnuts cut out and ready to cook

cook doughnuts in oil (adults only)

You can use this same method to make any kind of doughnut shape you’d like. Make a batch of alphabet doughnuts and make learning letters and spelling words a little more fun today. This is a delicious snack you can make in about 30 minutes!

Have you ever made your own doughnuts?

This post is sponsored by Country Crock. I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls Collective, and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.

A lot of kids seem to have a natural dislike for vegetables. I don’t know if it’s the color, taste or sometimes our own dislike mimicked by our kids. I happen to have kids that love salads and most cooked veggies, but that’s not always the case with all families. Now here’s some fun food projects you can make and eat featuring our yummy veggie friends. Clare Crespo has put together a FREE cookbook full of delicious, step-by-step vegetable recipe projects kids are sure to love to make. When they make it themselves they might just be more willing to taste it AND agree it’s good.

free Clare Crespo Cookboo

My family has been using Country Crock for years. We love how it tastes and it cooks well with everything I make. So for me, this combination of veggies is a no-brainer. I downloaded the free Clare Crespo Cookbook and from all the fun recipe options, I decided to make the Zucchini Boats. However, I changed up the recipe just a little bit. I forgot to buy carrots and wanted to try using Quinoa instead of CousCous. Here’s how it went…

Country Crock goes great with Vegetables

I love the taste of sauteed mushrooms and onions, so I added about 1/2 cup of chopped mushrooms to this recipe as well.

Vegetables to make zucchini boats

Because I had forgotten to by whole carrots, I used a handful of frozen fancy cut carrots and a whole yellow squash. I thought I’d use the yellow squash just like the recipe said for carrots… it didn’t work out as well as I had planned, keep reading.

Cook the carrots, zucchini and yellow squash in water following the recipe

Cook Quinoa, and mix all chopped ingredients plus cheese and spices

With so many flavors and colors, your preschooler can help put this mixture together. Have a taste test as you go, trying out all the different veggies and food textures. My favorite is the feta cheese!

Use a spoon to remove center of zucchini

Fill the zucchini with Quinoa veggie mixture

The filling turned out delicious. The added veggies were fantastic. The quinoa was yummy. Now here’s where my squash decision backfired. Squash are, well, squishy once they are cooked. Even cooking for a short time, the centers of a yellow squash aren’t sturdy enough to stand up on a skewer like the carrots would have done. So really, I made zucchini canoes – which is also cute. Since I already changed up the recipe slightly, I guess going sail-less is ok, but it wasn’t the intent. So, for the sake of photos, I did manage to get a couple with a sail before it fell off the stick – ha!

Zucchini veggie boats

Are you looking for quick and simple tips and recipes to make serving veggies more fun? Download the free Clare Crespo Cookbook here for fun and whimsical recipes your family is sure to love!

More great recipe ideas at The Country Crock Chronicles - a place where moms are excited to serve veggies because they fly off plates! The Crock Country Chronicle is an excellent resource for quick and simple tips and recipes to help make serving veggies fun.

More Country Crock:

• 70% less saturated fat and 30% fewer calories than butter
• 0g trans fat
• RD approved
• Country Crock’s Facebook page
• Country Crock’s Twitter page

I would love to hear if you try out this recipe. The book is filled with all kinds of fun ideas, volcanos, campfires, flower gardens and more fun food crafts that preschoolers can definitely help with.

What fun vegetable creations have you made lately?

Looking for a quick and fun activity? Grab some round objects from around the house and a marker or crayon and start tracing circles. Your preschooler can make circle art, practice their shape tracing and explore a load of fun size comparisons with this activity.

Drawing and tracing circles

We used a pile of different lids for this project. Round lids from different food containers work great for tracing and come in a wide variety of sizes. We really like the objects that have an outside circle and an inside circle. It’s fun to see if we can trace both circles without moving the object from the paper too much.

Do you have a favorite circle activity?