Make-It Monday: Matching Game & Other ECFE Activities

 I wish I could take credit for these ideas, but the only idea of mine was to "laminate" the memory cards. All of these crafty activities my son did at our Early Childhood Family Education (ECFE) class. I am not sure if any other states have ECFE as part of their public education systems, but Minnestoa does. Basically they are like a Mommy & Me class with a parent education component that are available to all families regardless of income (financial assistance is provided to those that need it in order to make these classes available to them.) It really is a great program, but this isn't a post to tell you all about ECFE.

 The top project was making a memory game to take home to play. They provided us with the rectangles & colored circles already cut out and kids just needed to glue the circles on and make matching pairs.

Once we were home I decided to "laminate" them using clear contact paper (a roll - which will last quite a long time - was just under $6 at Target). I did this so that the cards would become tear-proof and water-proof and we will be able to play them more than once. The other project we were laminating is something I will tell you about on Friday!

 The two painting projects were done using different objects as tools to paint with. The top picture might be hard to figure out what they are prints off, so I will tell you. They are prints of  re-purposed nylon stockings filled with different objects (un-popped corn, rice, lentils, & beans). The kids would dip the filled nylon stocking in some paint and then plop it on the paper and see what kind of print it would make.

The picture on the left was made my making prints from several different items including: a spool a wine cork, a toilet paper tube, a plastic cap and a small box (part of a toy).

And finally, we have a fun project where kids took eye droppers of water dyed with food coloring and dropped it on paper towels cut in to shapes (we have also done this on coffee filters - my daughter and I have also first cut out snowflakes from the coffee filters and then make colorful snowflakes.)

One of the fun things about this activity is you can teach kids about mixing colors with it. When my son did this one only yellow, blue & red water was available.