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.
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.
Join us on this whimsical journey of discovery and play!
ENCHANTED FOREST!
Playlist on Spotify
.Activities
Activity #1: Bear Hunt Sensory Bin Adventure
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Sensory Bin:
Allow your child to STEP into the world of the beloved book, We're Going on a Bear Hunt, by Michael Rosen! This one is a little more forest, than enchanted forest, but through this series of sensory bins, your child will travel through a land of adventure and enchantment as they search for the bear through a series of landscapes unique to the story.
Materials:
- A copy of the book We're Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen (a YouTube video of a read-aloud works too!)
- 5 containers to be used for sensory bins
- Materials of your choosing to design the 5 settings in the book:
- Long wavy grass: I took this as an opportunity to pull some overdue weeds, and then I mixed them in with some grass.
- Deep cold river: I filled a bin up with water and put some ice cubes in it.
- Thick oozy mud: I put dirt inside and added water for a little extra fun... and mess.
- Big dark forest: I gathered sticks, leaves, acorns, pinecones, and other woodsy items from the yard.
- Swirling whirling snowstorm: I used cotton balls and took advantage of reusing materials from last week! I also threw in some strips of toilet paper to use like wind.
- Optional- You can create a bin for the last setting- narrow gloomy cave OR we decided to have the different settings leading up to a space that we made to be like a dark cave. We used a play cushion and a blanket. You could put a towel over two chairs- it doesn't have to be anything crazy, just something fun for them to crawl into!
1. Gather 5-6 containers that you can use for sensory bins and fill with the materials you plan to use. Engaging your child in collecting the materials is a fun way to involve them too.
2. After the sensory bins are set up, a fun way to use them is to read the story and travel through the sensory bins as you read together. Have fun making the sound effects together and moving and whirling through each of the settings in the story, finally ending with a dramatic bear appearance in the cave!
3. Just make sure as you read through the book and run back through the stations that you and your child don't run under the covers with the thick oozy mud all over your feet.
4. After reading, allow your child to play independently, watching their imagination and creativity take their own spin on the fun.
Benefits of This Sensory Bin:
- Enhanced Brain Development: Sensory experiences stimulate the neural pathways of the brain which promotes problem-solving, emotional development, language development, and more.
- Imaginative Play: This activity encourages kids to use their imagination! Your child can pretend to be a character in the story, navigating through each of the settings along the way through the bear hunt!
- Fine Motor Skills: Sensory bins help to develop fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination which is important for many tasks.
- Language Development: When children participate in imaginative and pretend play, especially around a new theme, they naturally begin to use new and different vocabulary and boost their communication and vocabulary skills. Combining this sensory play along with the book also boosts their literacy skills as well as well as their use of sensory details and descriptive language.
- Math Skills & Concepts: Math concepts are taught through play such as quantity, size, shape, sorting, categorizing, and counting objects.
- Emotional Regulation: Sensory play can have a calming effect and help children regulate their emotions.
- Social Skills: Sensory bins can help build empathy, sharing, cooperation, and turn-taking if played with others.
- Learning about the World: A "bear hunt" or various setting-themed sensory bins can introduce kids to the concepts of weather, environments, landscapes, safety, and expanding their understanding of the world around them.
Activity #2: Fairy Dough
When I first asked my son if he wanted to make fairy dough, he responded with, "No, I want a doughnut"... Luckily, he ended up forgetting all about the doughnut and had a lot of fun mixing colors, adding sparkles, and playing with the fairy dough! This dough kept all week and we all enjoyed it a lot.
Materials:
- 2 1/2 cups of cornstarch
- 1 cup of any hair conditioner
- Food coloring of your choice
- Glitter, beads, or other sparkles!
1. Mix together the cornstarch and hair conditioner!
2. Use your hands to knead the mixture together until a dough-like mixture forms.
3. After kneading for a while and the mixture feels firm like play dough, mix in colors and your favorite fairy sparkles!
4. Play and enjoy! Encourage your child to make shapes, objects, and scenes. Chat and engage with them while they are building and try to step inside their imagination! You might find it to be quite magical.
Activity #3: Nature's Paintbrushes
Materials:
- Sticks
- Rubber bands, twine, or string
- Branches, leaves, or other natural items
- Paper
- Paint
1. Gather natural materials to assemble your paintbrushes.
2. Connect branches and leaves to sticks by attaching them with rubber bands, twine, or string.
3. Involve your child in the collection process by having them gather things that look interesting to them and that they would like to paint with. They also do not necessarily need to only paint with things that can be attached to a stick. We painted with acorns and a rock too.
4. Create a paint palette out of colors you'd like to use! If you want to get really natural, consider making paint out of other natural items that can be found outside like berries, fruits or vegetables, dirt, or other natural items that can be mixed with water and turned into a paste consistency. We decided to stick with commercial paint.
5. Allow your child to use the natural paint brushes to design their own creations on the paper! Consider using an easel to keep the paint off of the ground or grass if you'd like, but you certainly don't have to.
6. It might be fun to celebrate your child's artwork by creating an outdoor display! Tack or tie a string onto a fence or gently onto a tree to create a display and attach your child's paintings to be shown to all of the birds, squirrels, and neighbors to admire for the day!
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: Berry Fairy Wands
- Watermelon
- Fruit of your choice
- (We used blueberries, raspberries and grapes)
- Skewers
- Star cut-out
2. Allow your child to practice fine motor skills by designing their own fairy wand by pushing the fruit onto the skewer. Consider discussing colors, patterns, and numbers to bring awareness to these concepts as you design.
3. This is one time when your child can play with their food! Once your wands are finished, consider allowing your child to be fun and silly playing with the fairy wand, allowing their imagination and creativity to shine. One safety consideration is that sometimes the tips of those skewers can be sharp and if you used grapes, consider cutting them before allowing your child to eat them whole).
5. Serve and enjoy!
Recipe #2: Bear Hunt Trail Mix
This is a recipe that pairs well with the Bear Hunt Sensory Bin activity from above and the book too! Allow your child to practice measuring, pouring, and sharing their preferences as you develop a fun recipe all your own, perfect to munch on before, after, or during that bear hunt or an enchanted forest hike!
- Teddy Grahams or Kodiak Bears - Bears
- Pretzel Rods - logs in the forest
- Goldfish - fish in the river
- White chocolate chips- snow
- Mini-chocolate chips- oozy mud
- Veggie Straws- long wavy grass
- Reread the story We are Going on a Bear Hunt! As much as rereading sometimes may seem redundant to us, it is actually a critical part of literacy for young readers.
- Allow your child to pick ingredients that might represent settings or concepts in the story, or you could talk through the ingredients you have chosen and ask them what you think each one might represent!
- Feel free to sub out whatever ingredients work for you and your child and the elements in the story.
- Pack up the trail mix to enjoy on a bear hunt of your own as you go on your own hike through an enchanted forest nearby!
| Recipe #3: Enchanted Savory Shrooms Ingredients:
1. Prep the string cheese and tomatoes by slicing 2. Assemble the mushrooms by putting half of a tomato onto the stem (chunk of string cheese). 3. Visit our Pinterest to see some ideas on how to turn these into Caprese skewers or mushroom caps with strawberries instead! |  |
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!
FIELD TRIP!
Take a trip around town to bring learning to life!
Trail of Small Wonders- Westwood Hills Nature Center
The Trail of Small Wonders was beyond enchanting and brought such joy to our day. Explore hundreds of fairy houses, gnome homes, dinosaurs, and other woodland creatures as you take a hike through the winding trails of this beautiful nature center. The hike is perfect for little ones, as it isn't too long and the trails are flat. One downside was that there seemed to be significant damage after the latest round of storms, however, we were still able to see most everything and damaged areas were clearly and safely marked off.
There is an opportunity to write letters to the fairies inside of the nature center building, and there is also an absolutely beautiful playground with an enchanting forest theme, complete with a large butterfly, beautiful trees, a large hill for kiddos to climb, and slide down, and even a water station where kids can splash and play.
The Nature Center is located at 8300 W Franklin Ave., St. Louis Park, MN 55426. The trails are open every day from sunrise to sunset. The Interpretive Center building is open Monday through Friday, 8am-4:30pm and Saturday and Sunday, 12-5pm. For more information on the Nature Center, see their website.
This field trip is worth the hike to St. Louis Park, it is truly magical!
Have a magical trip!
Check out our Local Treasures & Hidden Gems feature this week to read about Mr. Little Guy- another field trip opportunity to Lake Harriet!
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. We're Going on a Bear Hunt |
| 2. The Fox and the Star by Coralie Bickford-Smith |  |
 | 3. A House in the Woods by Inga Moore |
| 4. Backyard Fairies by Phoebe Wahl |  |
 | 5. Through the Fairy Door by Gabby Dawnay |
 | 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! |
