Host a Bee-u-tiful Playdate

My inspiration for hosting a BEE Themed playdate came from my son's recent obsession with the book A Hunny, Funny, Sunny Day! by Bruce Talkington. So, of course that was one of the books that we read. We also read Bugs! Bugs! Bugs! by Bob Barner.

We had toast with butter and honey on it as a snack. It provided a good opportunity to talk about bee hives, making honey and pollination.

The boys made rolled beeswax candles and we were able to talk to them about the purpose of beeswax and the shape associated with a honeycomb. These come as sheets and you simply roll or fold and press, very easy for a toddler/preschool to do with some help.

One of our activities was to paint a beehive and then made fingerprint bees.

Had the rain not washed it away , this would have greeted our friends in our driveway.  But it was a good jumping off point the evening before to start talking to my son about bees, so that bees were on his brain.

Playdate Theme: Dr. Suess' Birthday

Dr. Suess Birthday (Read Across America) Playdate Theme:
Craft - Truffula Trees Craft , Plant "Truffula Tree" and Thing 1 and Thing 2 Handprint Craft
Books - The Lorax ; Mr. Brown Can Moo
Snack - Truffula Trees & Pink Ink Drink
Activity - Truffula Trees Dominos/Matching Game

Did you sign up for Read Across America to read The Lorax to your children or a group of children. It's not too late! You can still sign up! TODAY IS READ ACROSS AMERICA DAY! I have signed up to read to my son's little playdate and I also signed up to read to my daughter's kindergarten class. With both groups I will be reading The Lorax and planting Truffula Trees (aka tomato seeds - which this is the perfect time to grow those seedlings indoors.)

At our play date we are also planting these Truffula trees as well. The kids will have a chance to pick out the colors of their treetops (pompoms) and with a mom's assistance we will hot glue them to the top of a yellow pipe cleaners that I drew black lines on with permanent marker to look like the tree trunks in the book. Then we planted the trees in some homemade play-doh. You can find a couple of homemade play-doh recipes here.

 This is a picture of our Truffula Trees snack. I made cupcakes (used food coloring to make them green and put in green liners) and put green icing and sprinkles on top. To make the Truffula Tree Tops I quickly rolled a large marshmallow in water and then rolled it in colored sugar sprinkles, then I stuck large pretzel rods (broken to varying sizes) in the marshmallow in order to create a trunk. I will serve these with some Pink Ink Drink (aka Pink Lemonade.)

 We printed of 4 sets of the Truffula Dominoes so that each family would get a pack of 2 sets. I just didn't think that a set of 10 dominoes was enough, but a set of 20 sounded much better.

My daughter helped me with cutting them out and them placing them on the clear contact paper to laminate them. I like to laminate these kinds of things to make them easier to play with more than once & prevent tearing and water damage. Below is a set of 20 Truffula Tree Dominoes.

And presuming we have time for one more project, we will be making Thing 1 (2 or 3, depending upon where they are in birth order) hand print art projects.

To do the circle in the center, I used a large punch and wrote on them.

To do the body, just paint 4 fingers/thumb and do not paint the center finger.

Happy Birthday Dr. Suess!

Playdate Theme: Valentine's Day

When I plan out a themed playdate, I try to fill in these four main areas: Craft, Activity, Books and Snack.

Valentine's Theme Playdate

Craft - Valentine Candle Holders, Homemade Valentines
Books - The Day It Rained Heart, Big Pig Saves Valentine's Day, and Dora's Valentine Adventure
Snack - Red Velvet cookies, hot cocoa w heart cool whip
Activity -  Cardboard Box/Tube Mailbox (put valentine’s in and take out)

Our first craft was to make red, pink and white decoupaged baby food jars to use as candle holders. I can think of nothing more fun on Valentine's Day than eating our heart-shaped pizza from Papa Murphy's by candlelight that the kids made.

Our other craft was to make simple valentine's using supplies from the dollar store: 2 different sizes/colors of doily heart and foam stickers and some markers as well.

As you can tell from the picture above, my son was very proud of the valentines he made.

Here are the three books I had available to read. We had been reading them the week before to my son, so I knew he would be interested in them when I read then that day.

We had fun reading them over the past week. When we read Big Pig Saves Valentine's Day,he laughs whenever the little brother makes a mess. Oh boy!

Our snack consisted of these pretty AND tasty Red Velvet Cookies. Aren't they just perfect for valentine's day. My son was very into helping me pour the ingredients in to the mixer for these and then licking the beater. We also had mugs of hot cocoa with heart shaped whipped topping floating on top.

And finally, one of the activities I planned to go along with our Valentine theme was to allow the kids to play with a mailbox and they could put their valentines in & out of the mailbox. The tutorial on how to make this will come in a few days.

I am planning our next themed playdate to occur on March 2nd with dual reasons: the birthday of Dr. Suess and Read Across America day. Have you pledged to participate in Read Across America Day? The book we will be reading is the Lorax (such a great book to help teach kids about protecting and valuing our natural resources) and you can pledge to read to just your own kids or a group.