Happily Ever After

Fairy tales are great simple stories to start your toddler on, so this week we’ll be reading several from the book “A Treasury of Five Minute Stories” and doing projects that go along with them- from castle building with blocks to a “Princess and the Pea” sensory bin, I hope you have fun playing happily ever after with your little this week!

–Castle sunset art: These came out SO pretty- I can’t wait to hang them up! I poured lines of “sun set” colors on cardstock and had my littles mix and swirl them so the pages were covered with color. Then I cut out some castle silhouettes out of black paper and stuck them to the paint while it was still wet- the result was as beautiful as a real castle sunset! I got this idea from The Pinterested Parent. This activity is perfect to pair with “Sleeping Beauty”.

• 

• 

• 

• 

–Princess and the Pea sensory bin: This one was fun and super easy to set up- we haven’t done sensory play for awhile, so the boys were totally into it! Of course we started by reading the story “The Princess and the Pea”. Then I poured a bag of split peas into our sensory play cake pan, added some felt rectangles for “mattresses” and a few figurines for the characters (we used Minnie and Donald Duck, but if you have small prince or princess figurines, that would be even better!) and let the boys play! I got this idea from Mrs. Plemons’ Kindergarten– she has tons of other cute fairy tale ideas for toddlers and preschoolers too!

–Make a crown: I cut a zig zag shape across a sheet of yellow construction paper, glued the two halves together, then had my little decorate it with polk-a-dot markers. When he was finished, I glued it in a circle to fit his head and voila! This activity is perfect to pair with “Cinderella”.

• 

• 

–Gingerbread men: Baking with littles is so much fun- and with older kids it’s a great learning activity that incorporates reading, science, and math! We read “The Gingerbread Man” and then baked our own using the recipe at Gimme Some Oven! We didn’t have any ground cloves, so I had my preschooler crush some with our kitchen hammer (which he loved!). I would’ve added maybe 1/4 cup more of brown sugar since we decided not to frost them, but they came out yummy and only a tad sweet!

• 

• 

• 

• 

–Castle in the clouds: I sprayed some shaving cream on my little’s high chair tray and gave him some big legos so he could build a “castle in the clouds”… basically he just smeared the shaving cream around then wanted me to wipe off his hands because he doesn’t like them messy- but other kids would probably love this activity! LoL I got the idea at Fun Learning for Kids. This activity is perfect to pair with “Jack and the Beanstalk”.

–Supply/shopping list:

• dot marker
• Legos (large)
• shaving cream
• dried split peas
• felt or fabric pieces in different colors
• prince and princess toys (if you have them)
• gingerbread ingredients