Welcome to our Weekly Whimsy feature, where imagination takes flight! Each week, we will bring you a fun mix of hands-on activities designed to spark creativity and imagination, while fostering learning through activities focusing on literacy, movement, STEAM, and motor skills. We will also provide fun-filled recipes that encourage your child to lend a hand in creating and enjoying fun and *usually* healthy treats. To top it off, you and your child can groove to our specially curated playlists that connect with the weekly theme, perfect for moving, connecting, and enjoying the magic of music together.
Join us on this whimsical journey of discovery and play!
BUGS, WORMS & BUTTERFLIES WEEK!
This week we have many fun ideas for activities, recipes, events, and music that will make the whole hive jive! The beginning of this summer marked a pause in my K-12 teaching journey to be at home more with my two boys. With that pause came the realization that I knew I wanted to put my creative and teacher energy into something fun and educational for them. Hopefully, your kids find as much fun as mine have been having with these fun and simple activities! Feel free to alter or adjust the activities and recipes to meet the needs of your children and family.
Bugs, Worms, & Butterflies Playlist on Spotify!
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Activities
Activity #1: Fingerprint Bugs
Both boys enjoyed creating fingerprint bugs with stamp ink and with paint! One we created with a planter pot, and one my sons created earlier this year with their amazing daycare teacher!
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Materials for Planter Pot:
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Allow your little one to select the colors and designs of the bugs that you want to create! Design a string of fingerprints to create bugs like caterpillars or even worms. Combine thumbs to create a butterfly or single fingerprints to make a spider or ladybug. After the prints have dried, touch up the fingerprint with a marker or paintbrush to add legs, eyes, or whatever other fun designs your child wants to add! If you decide to create the planter pot, cover the pot with Modge Podge to seal the paint from getting ruined. If you created the paper jar, mount it to a piece of construction paper for a fun backdrop that your child can also add to and design. Display your fingerprint bugs and it will have everyone who sees them buzzing!
 | Activity #2: Movement Dice I don't know about all of you toddler and preschool mamas, dadas, and caregivers, but my guy is quite a wiggle worm and needs tons of movement! We crafted a movement dice from a free printable linked below through Pinterest that had my son in hysterics! It had him wriggling like a caterpillar, sliding like a snail, jumping like a cricket, and more. It was a fun way to mix things up inside, especially with all of the rain we have had lately. Dice Link |
Activity #3: Bead Worms & Wiggle Worms
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Bead Worms: My toddler renamed the pipe activity, cozy worms, and took his worms to snuggle with him in his room. All you need for this is some pipe cleaners and some beads! Manipulate the pipe cleaner to create a worm head so that the beads don't slip off and let your child work their magic. This activity was fun, simple, and was more challenging for him than I anticipated. This works to build your child's fine motor skills by stringing the beads onto the pipe cleaner in a controlled way. It is also a great opportunity to talk to your child about colors, count beads, and help them to create patterns too.
Wiggle Worms: First of all, our wiggle worms are not anatomically correct, as worms do not have real eyes! Whoops... use this as a learning moment with your child. You could adapt these into caterpillars or different types of bugs, or remove the eyes. All you need are paper, scissors, tape, and some type of small stick, we used cake pop sticks. You can also use anything else that you'd like to decorate your wiggly worm. Cut your paper into strips and allow your child to decorate the worm however they would like. Fold the worm so that it is able to bend once the sticks are attached. Attach two sticks, one at each end, to the worm. Then, allow your child to move the worm and wriggle and slither it around through the air!
Recipes
Cooking with your child is a great way to teach many amazing life skills! By following a recipe, children build their listening, comprehension, and eventually literacy skills too. By practicing measurement, they are building early math skills. They express creativity through decorating and using imaginative thinking when making their creations. If they are cooking with others, sharing and collaboration are important social skills that are built, along with having responsibilities. Finally, patience and delayed gratification are awesome concepts that are taught by waiting for something delicious!
Recipe #1: Ants (& Ladybugs!) On a Log:
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Ingredients:
- Celery
- Nut Butter
- Yogurt
- Raisins
For snacks, we put a twist on the classic "ants on a log" by also using watermelon rounds spooned out with an ice cream scoop. I attached the raisins to the watermelon with yogurt to create adorable ladybugs, which my son happily munched on while reading some of our bug books from the library. We also practiced counting the ants on each log and the dots on each caterpillar! Try asking questions like, "How many ants?" "How many ladybugs?" "Are there more ants or ladybugs on the plate?"
Recipe #2: Butterfly Sandwich:
 | For lunch, we transformed an ordinary hotdog, broccoli, and a sandwich into a majestic butterfly, discussing shapes and the different body parts as we enjoyed this fun treat. This was honestly a spur-of-the-moment momma magic move, but it turned out to be a fun surprise and helped lunch go down quick and easy. Check out the photo for inspiration, but feel free to use your own ingredients to make whatever type of butterfly sandwich your child would enjoy! |
Recipe #3: Dirt Cups
Ingredients:
- Clear plastic cups
- Spoon
- Yogurt or pudding
- Crumbled Oreo Cookies
- Gummy worms
 | Fill a cup up with pudding or yogurt and cover with crumbled-up Oreo cookies to resemble soil layers and dirt! Top and design with gummy worms to create a fun and tasty treat that looks awesome too! Your child can have fun and build creativity by designing the dirt layers and how they want the worms to be in the soil! They can also build nature awareness by learning about worms and their role in soil ecology. |  |
Turn it into a teachable moment by saying something like, "Did you know worms help make soil healthy? They wiggle through the dirt and make it nice and crumbly for plants to grow big and strong!" This phrase introduces the concept in a playful and understandable way, emphasizing the important role worms play in the ecosystem and how they benefit plants and gardens.
Events:
It may be fun to incorporate a special event into your weekly fun! Here are some local events that align with this week's theme!
 | Nature in Your Neighborhood: Bug Safari- 7/11 Anansi, Br'er Rabbit, and Other Wiley Creatures- 7/27 Wood Lake Nature Hike & Play Area: Anytime! We enjoyed looking for bugs on a nature hike at Wood Lake Nature Center! For those who might not know, there is also an amazing nature-based park for kids inside the park too! |
Library Books:
With our weekly themed fun, it has been a fun tradition to head to the library to pick out some books together that correspond with that week's main theme. Here are a few of our favorites this week!
1. Worm Weather by Jean Taft
2.Hank's Big Day: The Story of a Bug by Evan Kuhlman
3. The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
4. Minnesota Bug Hunt by Bruce Giebink
5. The Amazing Life Cycle of Butterflies by Kay Barnham
 | More Ideas: Visit our curated Pinterest board to view more activities that we did, and some we didn't, but thought were awesome! They include free print-ables, more fun craft ideas, delicious recipes, and more! |
