Day Two of Help the Leprechaun Find His Gold

You can read about the Leprechaun's letter here
Day One here

When I saw these, I knew they'd be perfect to add into the gold recovery tasks - and they did not disappoint!  

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They are also super easy to make!  I made four balls (though you can make different shapes using cookie cutters or just molding by hand) using a box of baking soda.  I added some green Colorations Liquid Watercolors  green glitter, and green sequins for effect.  Mix all that up and sllllowly add water.  Add just enough that the "dough" barely sticks together.  It should look crumbly and a bit dry.  I then took the coins and molded the dough around them.  It does crack a little so just keep compacting it and eventually it will hold together.  I let them dry overnight before using them - that seemed to be enough time to get them ready.

S thought they felt really cool.

We started with a spray bottle full of vinegar, but S was having trouble aiming and spraying a good amount onto the treasure rocks.

So we switched to a squeeze bottle (though a spoon and vinegar, an eyedropper and vinegar, or even just pouring vinegar from a cup would also work) and then we were really cooking!

The treasure rock soon split and revealed the first gold coin!

Got it!

Having SO MUCH fun!

Squishing the two balls that didn't have coins for fun.

And now...the dinosaurs are playing in the leftover green sparkly mush.  :)

Day Three

Day Four

Day Five

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All activities here are activities I feel are safe for my own children.  As your child's parents/guardians, you will need to decide what you feel is safe for your family.  I always encourage contacting your child's pediatrician for guidance if you are not sure about the safety/age appropriateness of an activity. All activities on this blog are intended to be performed with adult supervision.  Appropriate and reasonable caution should be used when activities call for the use of materials that could potentially be harmful, such as scissors, or items that could present a choking risk (small items), or a drowning risk (water activities), and with introducing a new food/ingredient to a child (allergies).  Observe caution and safety at all times.  The author and blog disclaim liability for any damage, mishap, or injury that may occur from engaging in any of these activities on this blog.

Day One of Help the Leprechaun Find His Gold

You can read the story behind S's Leprechaun Gold search here, if you haven't already.

As per the leprechaun's instructions, after a good breakfast, S asked me if I knew where she would look.  I mentioned that I thought I'd heard a commotion out on our front porch - she might want to start by looking there.  Lo and behold, she found a big bin full of shaving cream on our front bench!  

She searched and searched for the two gold coins.  She found one early on, but had to really look for that second coin.  Mixed into the shaving cream were green pom poms, green paint streaks, green glitter, green sequins, and green bingo chips.  Lots of interesting textures!

Eureka!  I had a small Gladware of water and a hand towel for cleaning off anything she found in there (she called the bingo chips "green coins" and had fun finding all those as well).

Once the coins were located and cleaned, she hid them again a few times...and some time later, things ended here as they usually do - with dinosaurs.  :)

I have the envelope clipped to our fridge, down low, with the gold coins in it.  S has periodically checked on them throughout the day and shown several of her stuffed animal friends and X the gold coins many times.  :)

Day Two

Day Three

Day Four

Day Five

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All activities here are activities I feel are safe for my own children.  As your child's parents/guardians, you will need to decide what you feel is safe for your family.  I always encourage contacting your child's pediatrician for guidance if you are not sure about the safety/age appropriateness of an activity. All activities on this blog are intended to be performed with adult supervision.  Appropriate and reasonable caution should be used when activities call for the use of materials that could potentially be harmful, such as scissors, or items that could present a choking risk (small items), or a drowning risk (water activities), and with introducing a new food/ingredient to a child (allergies).  Observe caution and safety at all times.  The author and blog disclaim liability for any damage, mishap, or injury that may occur from engaging in any of these activities on this blog.

So if I'm being honest, St. Patrick's Day has nearly always been a bit of a boring holiday for me.  As a kid, I never really got that into it.  Wearing green was sort of fun, I suppose, but the lack of other excitement (and probably treats, hahaha) always made it a bit of a bummer for me.

Once, though, when I was in 7th grade, my super amazing science teacher had set up a crazy scene for us.  He'd tipped over some tables and chairs, left green glitter, tiny green footprints, and gold chocolate coins for us.  Of course, we were old enough to know it was him...but it was still so much fun.  I still fondly remember it every St. Patrick's Day!  So I set out to create something fun that we could repeat each year for S (and eventually X) to make St. Patrick's Day a bit more of a holiday to look forward to.

I prefaced this whole thing by talking a little about leprechauns off-handedly last night with S.  I told her that their job was to keep pots of gold at the ends of rainbows safe.  But sometimes, I said, they are a bit forgetful.  They can lose gold as they travel around leading up to St. Patrick's Day.  

When she woke up this morning, a green envelope with her name on it was waiting outside her bedroom door.  

"S--, did you drop something?" I asked.

 "Oh!" she exclaimed - "This has my name on it...it must be for me?"

Then Dada offered to help read the message to her.

The set-up is five days of activities to locate gold coins - ten coins in all.  On the fifth night she's supposed to leave the envelope full of rescued coins outside her bedroom.  I have a feeling that when she wakes up the following morning there will be a thank you note from the leprechaun...and probably a little St. Patrick's Day treat!  ;)

Follow along with our activities to rescue the coins each day here:

Day One

Day Two

Day Three

Day Four

Day Five

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All activities here are activities I feel are safe for my own children.  As your child's parents/guardians, you will need to decide what you feel is safe for your family.  I always encourage contacting your child's pediatrician for guidance if you are not sure about the safety/age appropriateness of an activity. All activities on this blog are intended to be performed with adult supervision.  Appropriate and reasonable caution should be used when activities call for the use of materials that could potentially be harmful, such as scissors, or items that could present a choking risk (small items), or a drowning risk (water activities), and with introducing a new food/ingredient to a child (allergies).  Observe caution and safety at all times.  The author and blog disclaim liability for any damage, mishap, or injury that may occur from engaging in any of these activities on this blog.

S and I are both HUGE fans of baking soda and vinegar.  I was trying to think up a new way to play with it, and decided to see what it would do if I threw gelatin into the mix.  Turns out, it's really fun (at least we think so!).

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To make fizzing gelatin, you'll need:

Gelatin (I bet you could use Jello, too)

Baking Soda

Vinegar

Food Coloring/Colorations Liquid Watercolors (optional)

When you are making the gelatin, just make sure to dissolve a hearty amount of baking soda in the hot water step (for the Solo cup sized portion of gelatin pictured, I dissolved somewhere between 1/2 to 3/4 cup).  Not all of it will dissolve - that's OK.

Refrigerate as normal, remove from whatever mold you've used (we used plastic Solo cups) and you're ready to add vinegar!

We added about a cup of vinegar all at once.

If you press your hands down, it feels like Pop Rocks!  It's so fizzy.  The gelatin slowly releases the baking soda, so it kept on fizzing for a long time (for more than 5 minutes!)

If you squeeze a handful of the gelatin, little pieces hop out of your hands.

It's such a bubbly, fizzy sensory experience, we really enjoyed it as a variant on our traditional baking soda and vinegar play.

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All activities here are activities I feel are safe for my own children.  As your child's parents/guardians, you will need to decide what you feel is safe for your family.  I always encourage contacting your child's pediatrician for guidance if you are not sure about the safety/age appropriateness of an activity. All activities on this blog are intended to be performed with adult supervision.  Appropriate and reasonable caution should be used when activities call for the use of materials that could potentially be harmful, such as scissors, or items that could present a choking risk (small items), or a drowning risk (water activities), and with introducing a new food/ingredient to a child (allergies).  Observe caution and safety at all times.  The author and blog disclaim liability for any damage, mishap, or injury that may occur from engaging in any of these activities on this blog.

S loves Dino World so much that I started contemplating an Easter-themed playmat.  If you sew, I am sure that you can create a much prettier version of this mat.  As for me, I am terrible at sewing, so for ease and speed, I used the hot glue gun.  The total cost to create this mat was under $10 (hooray for felt being really cheap!).

To make this playmat, you'll need:

Around a yard of green felt

Several small sheets of felt in various colors

Pipecleaners

Hot glue gun

3 white pom poms for bunny tails

Polyester stuffing for bunnies (though you could stuff the bunnies with felt scraps)

Shredded paper (though you could stuff the basket with shredded felt)

The main feature of the Easter Bunny Playmat (or Bunny Land, as S has dubbed it) is an Easter Egg hunt.  I used two identically sized pieces of green felt and cut slits in the upper sheet.  I then glued the two pieces together around the perimeter only.  This leaves sneaky little pockets for hiding Easter Eggs.  I cut more slits than eggs, just to make it a bit more of a guessing game.  Here I caught a picture of S just as she'd hid an egg. 

After hiding it, you pat down the slit and it almost disappears.

I also made her three little bunnies, each with distinct features.  Making the bunnies was by far the most time consuming part, so if you are crunched for time, you could always omit them.  Here's another view of a partially hidden Easter Egg so you can see how the slits work a little better. 

I also made a felt Easter Basket with a braided pipe cleaner handle and I stuffed it with some of the shredded paper from our Life-Sized Easter Basket.

And I made a little garden with removable carrots (S discovered the slits were big enough to hide eggs in there as well!  Clever girl.).

And, lastly, a hillside burrow for the three bunnies.  I did need to use pipe cleaners to reinforce the structure of the burrow.

The burrow also doubles as a good spot to hide eggs.  :)

The basket is moveable and S loves to use it to collect the eggs.

She found one!

Now that she thinks she's got them all, she starts to lay them out on the ground.  S is great with counting to 10, but from 11-15 is a little, er, fuzzy for her, so I decided to make 15 eggs as a fun way for her to practice those numbers that are a bit trickier for her.

Counting out loud (with a few corrections at the end from Mama), she put all the eggs in order.  I love the wavy line she made, and I love that 13 is totally upside down.  :)

We were having so much fun, X needed to come check things out.  He beelined for the basket first, touching the fuzzy pipecleaners, and then crinkling some of the paper.

He even raided the carrot garden.  Poor bunnies!

Bunny Land has been a big hit over here.  I love that it folds up to store when you aren't using it (or need to vacuum ).  I am planning on putting it away with our Easter decorations and bringing it out again next year.  Crazy to think that X will actually be an active participant in next year's Bunny Land play!

Oh, and for those of you who are wondering, yes the dinos have now visited Bunny Land.  Apparently dinosaurs really enjoy eating carrots.  You learn something new every day!  ;)

You can find all of our Easter activities here!

Follow along with Fun at Home with Kids on Facebook, Google+, Pinterest or Subscribe by Email or Bloglovin'!

All activities here are activities I feel are safe for my own children.  As your child's parents/guardians, you will need to decide what you feel is safe for your family.  I always encourage contacting your child's pediatrician for guidance if you are not sure about the safety/age appropriateness of an activity. All activities on this blog are intended to be performed with adult supervision.  Appropriate and reasonable caution should be used when activities call for the use of materials that could potentially be harmful, such as scissors, or items that could present a choking risk (small items), or a drowning risk (water activities), and with introducing a new food/ingredient to a child (allergies).  Observe caution and safety at all times.  The author and blog disclaim liability for any damage, mishap, or injury that may occur from engaging in any of these activities on this blog.

We sometimes need a bit more space for our sensory play, so we have a small inflatable pool that we can get out (we store it when we're not using it).  It works really well at containing activities that would otherwise make an entire room a bit, ahem, messy.

For this activity, I bought a bunch of bags (somewhere around 8-10) of shredded paper/Easter grass from the Dollar Store and let the kids have at it.  

S was beyond thrilled and was bouncy-crazy-exuberant while X, just a few months old, was mesmerized by all the paper (and his sister's crazy antics!).  

X observing all the beautiful colors (I think he liked the shiny kind the best.  He's kind of a magpie.)

X liked crinkling some of the paper in his hands.

S was 3 at the time, and though I didn't get pictures of it, we played a game where I would hide 10-15 ping pong balls (also from the Dollar Store) AKA Easter eggs in the Easter grass/paper mixture and S would have to root around to find them.  I found that the ping pong balls worked better than the traditional plastic Easter eggs because they are lighter and smaller and required more searching.  We'd practice counting up to whatever number I'd hidden together and talk about how many she'd found vs. how many were left (beginning subtraction with a lot of help).

Despite its fluffy nature, the Easter grass/paper does compact down fairly well and we store it in our shoebox containers when we aren't using it.

You can find all of our Easter activities here!

Follow along with Fun at Home with Kids on Facebook, Google+, Pinterest or Subscribe by Email or Bloglovin'!

All activities here are activities I feel are safe for my own children.  As your child's parents/guardians, you will need to decide what you feel is safe for your family.  I always encourage contacting your child's pediatrician for guidance if you are not sure about the safety/age appropriateness of an activity. All activities on this blog are intended to be performed with adult supervision.  Appropriate and reasonable caution should be used when activities call for the use of materials that could potentially be harmful, such as scissors, or items that could present a choking risk (small items), or a drowning risk (water activities), and with introducing a new food/ingredient to a child (allergies).  Observe caution and safety at all times.  The author and blog disclaim liability for any damage, mishap, or injury that may occur from engaging in any of these activities on this blog.