At Home Art and Music – Kansas Children's Discovery Center

Toddler Finger Paint: Discovery at Home Toddler Time

What you need:

Cornstarch
Measuring cup
Boiling water
Cold water
Food coloring

Directions:

Mix and stir together 2 C cornstarch and 1 C cold water.
Add 4 ½ C boiling water.
The mixture should look like hot oobleck. Stir until it melts into a custard like consistency.
Separate into individual containers before adding the food coloring. Be sure mixture is cool before giving to your toddler!
To thicken: add an additional cup of cornstarch or stir over low to mid heat rather than in a bowl.
This non-toxic toddler paint can be used as finger paint or with a brush. The thick and gel-like consistency will take longer to dry than store bought paint, but the satisfying texture is pleasing for all ages, inspires creativity, and provides sensory input through free exploration. Paint inside seated at a table or on a highchair tray.

Ways to expand the activity:

For a pleasant scent, add a few drops of vanilla!
Make it an outside play day! Get a large plastic tub or cardboard box and place your toddler and the paints inside. It cleans easily with a hose, or toss the box at the end of play.

What do they learn?

Fine and gross motor development: from the trunk and shoulders to the wrists and fingertips.
Life skills: mixing, stirring, combining wet and dry ingredients, cause and effect, before and after, and helping with an easy clean up!
Play: Flexible, free, open-ended discovery encourages creativity.

Toddler Kazoo: Discovery at Home Toddler Time

What you need:

Cardboard tubes (long or short)
Wax paper
Rubber bands

Directions:

Cover one end of the tube with wax paper.
Secure the wax paper with a rubber band wrapped tightly.
Show your toddler how to cup the tube with their fingers around the open end so there is space between the tube and their mouth. This will preserve the life of their toy and help with vibration!
Put the tube against their cupped fingers and humm, say do-do-doo or da-ta-daa! Try laughing loudly: HA HA HAA! Try different combinations to make the perfect kazoo sounds! This may take time to get the hang of it, but the process is a great calm breathing technique for exhaling the air out and away before deeply inhaling for another go!
If they are still having a problem with the vibration, check to see that the rubber band is spaced away from the edge of the tube and there is room between the wax paper and the edge of the tube to vibrate.

Ways to expand the activity:

Create kazoos of different lengths!
Poke holes along one side of the tube with a sharp object and adjust the sound when covered with a finger. What do you notice?
When sounds have reached the point of chaos, have your child march to the backyard and have a parade for the neighbors!
Make several kazoos and have a family parade through the living room and into the bedroom to announce bed, bath and book time

What do they learn?

Inspire creativity and problem solving. Have your child decorate their new instrument and then ask them to make one for a friend. Will it look the same? Different?
Explore sound and vibration. To make sound, air needs 3 sources: vibration (us), a source to travel through (tube), and a receiver (ear). The wax paper vibrates from the sound of their voice amplifying it! Can you hear it now?

Rock Painting: Discovery at Home

What you need:

Rocks
Paint (acrylic works best)
Paint brushes
Optional: paint pens, chalk markers, permanent markers, stickers and other rock decoration items.
Optional: spray-on, clear sealer

Directions:

Go on a nature hunt to collect different types of rocks that you are able to carry.
Optional: Wash off your rock to remove as much dirt and mud as possible and let it try. Leaving dirt on the rock might change how your paint works, but it could be a fun experiment!
Think about what you want to rock to become. Should it become a character, a piece in a puzzle or carry a message? Or do you want to paint first and then decide? Think about your rock’s shape, texture and size. What does it remind you of?
Paint your rock!
Optional: after your paint is dry, spray it with clear sealer to help your design last.
Optional: Hide your rocks in a public place and participate in the city-wide hide and seek with our friends at Topeka Stay at Home Stones!

Ways to Expand the Activity:

Paint multiple rocks and turn them into a puzzle, game, story or multi-rock creature.
Write words, letters, or numbers on the rocks to help practice counting, reading, and recognizing letters.

What Kids Learn:

Creativity: Creative play encourages thinking outside the box, problem-solving and self expression. It can also promote focus and reduce stress.
Cooperative play: Hiding painted rocks for other children to find is a unique type of cooperative play that encourages empathy. It gets kids thinking about the excitement of other children discovering and enjoying their rocks.
Sensory play: Sensory play that lets children touch, squeeze, smell and feel helps build connections in the brain.
Experimentation: When kids experiment, they're learning how to learn. Failure is an important part of experimenting, so let kids try things that won’t work. It’s how they figure things out!
Hand eye coordination: Young children can use activities like this to help improve communication between their minds and bodies.
Fine motor skills: Kids practice using the small muscles in their hands later used for writing.

Pool Noodles and Pipe Cleaners: Discovery at Home

Ways to Expand the Activity:

Add a constraint. You could add a time limit, only use a certain number of pieces, etc.
Add an objective. Create a structure that can hold two books using only pipe cleaners and pool noodles.

What Kids Learn:

Basic engineering skills. Engineers solve problems with constraints. They learn to solve problems by using the engineering design process: asking questions, coming up with solutions, building, testing and improving.
Spatial or visual thinking. Being able to imagine the positions of objects and how they interact is an important skill for learning math.
Fine motor skills. Kids practice using the small muscles in their hands later used for writing.
Experimentation! When kids experiment, they're learning how to learn. Failure is an important part of experimenting, so let kids try things that won’t work. It’s how they figure things out!
Creativity! There are so many different ways to create when it’s up to your imagination. These exercises build skills to help broaden creativity.

Playdough Monsters: Discovery at Home

Ways to Expand the Activity:

Create a story using multiple playdough monsters.
Instead of monsters, you could create models of your relatives and show a playdough family portrait.
You could also combine this activity with stop motion animation to create your own movie!

What Kids Learn:

Children gain social and emotional skills through dramatic play. When they pretend, they are experimenting in social roles, practicing language, and solving problems.
Spatial or visual thinking. Being able to imagine the positions of objects and how they interact is an important skill for learning math.
Fine motor skills. Kids practice using the small muscles in their hands later used for writing.
Sensory play! Sensory play that lets children touch, squeeze, smell and feel helps build connections in the brain.
Creativity! There are so many ways to create using playdough. Creating something using their imagination enhances those creativity abilities.
Calming effect. When you sit down to squish and mold playdough, there is a moment of calm where you can express your feelings through the way you interact with the playdough.

Abstract Art Box: Discovery at Home

Ways to Expand the Activity:

Create a character! Add eyes, arms, tails, wings, etc to create a new friend.
Use different sized boxes to make a unique shaped display! Wrap the boxes individually or together and decorate in a whole new way!

What Kids Learn:

Basic engineering skills. Engineers solve problems with constraints. They learn to solve problems by using the engineering design process: asking questions, coming up with solutions, building, testing and improving.
Spatial or visual thinking. Being able to imagine the positions of objects and how they interact is an important skill for learning math.
Fine motor skills. Kids practice using the small muscles in their hands later used for writing.
Symbolic thinking, or the ability to think about one thing representing something else. When small children begin to connect a house on paper to the house they live in, they start building the connections in the brain that allow for reading and learning later.

Yarn Monster: Discovery at Home

Ways to Expand the Activity:

Create a story with your characters. Make multiple characters and put on a show for your family.
Add a moving part. Is there a way you can create the yarn monster so that mouth can move? Experiment to discover different ways you can add movement.

What Kids Learn:

Children gain social and emotional skills through dramatic play. When they pretend, they are experimenting in social roles, practicing language, and solving problems.
Basic engineering skills. Engineers solve problems with constraints. They learn to solve problems by using the engineering design process: asking questions, coming up with solutions, building, testing and improving.
Fine motor skills. Kids practice using the small muscles in their hands later used for writing.

Stamp Making: Discovery at Home

Ways to Expand the Activity:

On a large sheet of cardboard, attach all the objects you want on one side. Then paint it and press the paper on top of the stamps. This would be a form of printmaking.

What Kids Learn:

Stamps impress a pattern or mark on a surface using an engraved, inked blocked, or died instrument.
Texture is the feel, appearance, or consistency of a surface or a substance.
Print is an indentation or mark left on a surface or soft substance by pressure.
Printmaking is the transferring of images from one surface to another.

Making a Flipbook : Discovery at Home

What you need:

4 note cards or a stack of sticky notes.
Scissors.
Staples.
Pen, pencil or marker.

Directions:

Cut note cards in half or use 8 sticky notes.
Stack note card cutouts and staple them together or make sure your sticky notes are stuck to one another along the sticky edge.
Start the beginning of your drawing on the last page. (This will make it easier to flip through).
Add slight changes to your drawing on each page to show motion.
Once complete, add a title to your flipbook and your name.

Ways to Expand the Activity:

Make your own stop motion animation video with toys. Take pictures of your toys and move them slightly in each picture. Take about 10 pictures and put them together to watch them come to life!

What Kids Learn:

Stop motion is an animated filmmaking technique where objects are physically manipulated in small increments - moved slightly in each frame so that once the images are put together, the object will appear to be in full motion. An example of this is the Lego Movie.

Silverware Sound Science: Discovery at Home

Ways to Expand the Activity:

Use other materials. What happens if you use a different type of yarn or string? Does it travel the same way? What if you have a friend tap the metal silverware with different metal silverware? Is it different?
When swimming or playing in the bath, clink together two pieces of metal silverware underwater and listen with one or both ears under water. What does it sound like? Is it different than when the materials were not under water?

What Kids Learn:

Sound waves. Sounds waves are made up of vibrations that travel through the air, water and objects. The sound waves that reach our ears make our eardrums vibrate. Exploring the vibrations that are sound waves through hands-on activities help create a better understanding of how sound waves travel.

More Discovery at Home Projects

More Discovery at Home Projects