Car Ride Activities Set 4

And here are the next five activities I've prepared for the car ride. See the Car Ride Activities Set 3.

Car Ride Activities Set 4

Busy Bag 6: I'm the Ice Cream Man

Cut matching felt ice cream bars in several colors and sew around three sides leaving the bottoms open. Write the colors on the bottom of jumbo popsicle sticks. I also cut green rectangles for money. I imagine the children playing the game together. One child plays the customer and holds the money while the other plays the Ice Cream Man and holds the ice cream. The customer requests a specific flavor (color) of ice cream. The Ice Cream Man assembles the ice cream by matching the ice cream bar with the corresponding stick and handing it to the customer in exchange for some money. Then they can switch roles.

Busy Bag 7: Simple Fleece Marble Mazes

Cut two rectangles of fleece and sew them together leaving a small hole to flip inside out and then insert the marble. Then sew in lines through both layers to make maze. I found the tutorial for making a simple marble maze here. For more complex marble mazes look here. To make a marble maze with a slightly streamlined production look here.

Busy Bag 8: Color Wheel Clothespin Match

I printed a simple color wheel I found online and cut it out and glued it onto a cardboard circle of the same size to make it more sturdy. Then I took sharpies to wooden clothespins and made matching labeled colored clothespins. The task is to match and attach the clothespins to the appropriate sections of the color wheel. This activity addresses color identification, matching, and fine motor skills.

Busy Bag 9: Square Tile Patterns and Play

I actually made this square tile pattern activity a while back. I just pulled it off the shelf and stuck a few patterns and a third of the tiles into one of the travel busy bags. You can get the square tiles on Amazon or at most teacher supply stores. My kids also use these in free play to build towers and roads and to create block like pictures.

Busy Bag 10: Toothpick Pattern Punch

Print a few shapes with dotted lines (or just freehand draw some, or trace some simple stencils) onto regular weight paper. Put those and a few toothpicks into a bag. Our travel trays are felt lined, so that's all we need, but if your child will be working on a hard surface, include a piece of felt or small washcloth. They put the paper shape over the cloth and punch holes along the outline. Then they can hold the completed punched pattern up to the car window or towards a light fixture to see their pattern light up. This is a great fine motor activity.

(Inspiration found: here, here, and here.)

If you like these activities, you may be interested in more.

• Car Ride Activities Set 1
• Car Ride Activities Set 2
• Car Ride Activities Set 3
• Car Ride Activities Set 5
• Car Ride Activities Set 6
• Car Ride Activities Set 7
• Busy Bags Revisited

Car Ride Activities Set 3

I'm getting ready for another 12 hour car ride to New Orleans to visit family. 7 months ago, I posted Car Ride Activities Set 1 and Car Ride Activities Set 2. This year, when searching for inspiration I used the search term "busy bags" online. It is a gold mine. There are so many ideas out there for making simple activities for young children from arts and crafts materials you probably already have sitting around the house. The goal is for the activities to be portable, decently interesting, car appropriate, and numerous. Each child will have a felt lined lap tray with sides (made from a box) to keep the current activity's contents from spilling and sliding around.

Here's my plan. Both of my children are potty trained, but they are only three and four years old. We pretty much have to stop at every single rest area. The car entertainment cycle will run like this:

1. Stop at rest stop. Keep the stop as quick as possible because every extra 10 minutes you spend at a rest stop cumulatively adds at least an hour or two that you can't afford on to the end of the trip. Go potty and stretch their legs by playing a quick dancing, hopping, or running game.
2. When you get back into the car give each child a busy bag or other car ride activity. Let them play with their own for 10-15 minutes and then have them stuff it back in the bag and switch. After they finish the activities they have to put them back in the bags and return them to an adult who will put that activity in the finished (and save for the return trip) pile. Then turn on some tv until the next stop.
3. Watch 30-45 minutes of tv until the next stop.
4. Repeat the cycle approximately 12 times occasionally substituting running into a fast food restaurant for a bathroom break/stretching legs/getting meal to go instead of stopping at a rest area.

So, here are the first five activities I've prepared this time.

Car Ride Activities Set 3

Busy Bag 1: Popsicle Puzzles (x2)

Print a picture your children will like that is approximately 5.25 inches tall and 4.5 wide (or 4 wide and use one less jumbo popsicle stick). Cut the pictures into strips slightly less than the width of a jumbo sized popsicle stick. Glue the strips onto the popsicles. Voila. You have very portable puzzles. I made two and put them in the same bag. That adds the additional difficulty of figuring out which puzzle pieces (craft sticks) go with which puzzle.

Busy Bag 2: Felt Chain

Cut strips of felt. Mine are 1.5 inches wide by 9 inches long. Sew small pieces of velcro to the ends of each strip on opposite sides. The children can use them to make roads, bracelets, necklaces, "paper chain" style links, etc.

Busy Bag 3: Lego Duplo "Puzzles"

Dig into your duplo stash (or any other kind of building blocks you may have) and build several small structures. I deliberately chose the smaller/slimmer duplo blocks to try to save space. I made a vehicle set, a flower garden set, and two random block tower type sets. Take a picture of each set and print the pictures. Put the picture along with the blocks necessary to build the pictured structure in a bag. Now you have homemade portable building puzzles. They can try to build what they see in the picture or simply play with the blocks in their travel trays.

Busy Bag 4: Felt Picture - House

Just sit down with some craft felt and a pair of scissors and create a simple picture. I made a very simple house. Stick all the pieces in a bag and then the children can recreate the picture and just play with the pieces.

Busy Bag 5: Bead and Pipe Cleaner Counting

Take 10 pipe cleaners (or perhaps only five if your children or younger). Wrap a piece of tape around the top of each pipe cleaner and number them 1-10. Put the appropriate number of pony beads in the bag with the pipe cleaners. The children can thread the appropriate number of beads onto each pipe cleaner. They may even notice that they can have each pipe cleaner be threaded with a different color bead. If your children are even younger, skip the number part of the activity and simply stick some pipe cleaners and pony beads in a bag. Consider cutting the pipe cleaners in half as they will be easier to handle that way.

(Inspiration found: here, here, here, here, here.)

If you like these activities, you may be interested in more.

• Car Ride Activities Set 1
• Car Ride Activities Set 2
• Car Ride Activities Set 4
• Car Ride Activities Set 5
• Car Ride Activities Set 6
• Car Ride Activities Set 7
• Busy Bags Revisited

The Weekly Review: Week 71

SLP Idea of the Week

Take a 12 cup muffin pan and cut speech cards into circles that fit into the bottom of each cup. Also gather 12 small tokens of some kind (pom-poms, cotton balls, squinkies, etc. Have the child (gently) toss a token at the muffin pan and practice the word at the bottom of the cup that their token landed in. Then they toss another token into another cup practicing that word. The goal is to get a token into each cup practicing all 12 words along the way.

Ava this Week

Ava will be starting preschool soon. We're less than three weeks away from saying goodbye forever to our part-time daycare. The daycare was fine. I was perfectly happy with them and they did a great job of taking care of my children. I am not in the slightest bit sad to say goodbye to them (or to the monthly check I wrote to them). It does feel strange to think that soon I will pull out of their driveway for the last time. After all, I've been taking at least one child (and often two) there twice a week for almost three years. It feels nice to be moving on to the next stage though.

Weekly Michael

Originally I had intended to enroll the children in preschool five mornings a week in the fall. In order for Michael to attend the second level preschool room, they require five day enrollment. As fall rapidly approaches I have been realizing that I'm not ready for them to be away five mornings a week. After all, I'm still seriously considering keeping them home and beginning homeschooling a year from now.

So, I decided to keep Michael in the less structured preschool room and enroll the children only four days a week. I may reduce that to three days a week later. A side effect of this decision is that the children will be in the same room for preschool this year. Michael will be repeating in the same classroom (along with all the other students who won't be attending full-time including his best friend). Ava will enter the room for the first time. I think they'll enjoy being together.

Weekly Weight Loss

This week the scale reports a loss of 1.3 pounds. That makes up for the token drop from last week with an average of 0.75/week over the last two weeks. I'm doing fine with the calorie reduction portion of my agenda. I'm having trouble trying to change my lifestyle to regularly include more activity though. I always seem to have higher priorities than exercising (and those priorities are invariably sedentary). I need to remind myself that even 15 minutes a day is so much better than nothing and that I can exercise with the children around.