“IN A WORLD WHERE YOU CAN BE ANYTHING, BE KIND” - Unknown

February 17^th is National Random Acts of Kindness Day and that’s a holiday we can all get behind! Take our Random Acts of Kindness Challenge and see how many of these activities you can do in a single day – bonus points if your kids see you doing them!

1. Hold the door open for the person behind you.
2. Print a funny GIF or surprise note in your kiddo’s lunchbox. Get FREE printables.
3. Pay it forward in the coffee line.
4. Greet each person you pass.
5. Email your boss with positive feedback about another employee.
6. Compliment a stranger.
7. Pick up a piece of litter and toss it in the trash.
8. Edit out any negative comments and let the positive flow.
9. Double your tip at lunchtime.
10. Introduce yourself to someone new.
11. Bake a batch of cookies – then share them all.
12. Call your mom.
13. Bring a coworker or friend a coffee.
14. Take your dog for an extra-long walk.
15. Ask each cashier you encounter how THEY’RE doing today.
16. Let someone – or everyone! – merge in front of you.
17. Surprise a former co-worker with a great review on LinkedIn.
18. Make a lunch date with a friend you haven’t seen in a while.
19. Give someone the benefit of the doubt. Even if you know they’re wrong ????
20. Ask your kids for advice about something and really listen.
21. Email, text, or call someone who has made a difference in your life and let them know.
22. Leave a kind comment on every social media post you read.
23. Put your phone away when you’re talking to someone.
24. Thank someone who makes your life better or easier.
25. Make a small donation to a cause you support.

Kindness doesn’t stop with you! Challenge your kids to complete these five acts of kindness today (and every day!):[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="716"] Photo credit: parenttoolkit.com[/caption]

1. Smile at everyone you see.
2. Look for someone standing alone and ask them to play or sit with you.
3. Tell everyone in your family that you love them – and why.
4. Share your snack.
5. Give your teacher a hug.

You can do it – we know you can! To continue the challenge, check out https://www.randomactsofkindness.org/ and download their free monthly kindness calendars for school and work![caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1400"] Photo credit: childrenshomeandaid.org[/caption]

February is Black History Month, a time to celebrate the myriad achievements and accomplishments of African Americans throughout American history. It is also a time to reflect on the sacrifices made in the name of many of the civil rights that all Americans enjoy today. In honor of Black History Month, we’re sharing some of our favorite ways to celebrate, like:

Reading!

Young children today can only imagine the fear that courageous first grader Ruby Bridges felt as she became the first African American student to walk, escorted by four federal marshals, through the doors of Louisiana’s all-white William Frantz Elementary School. Robert Coles’ The Story of Ruby Bridges brings the day – one where parents shouted at Ruby and refused to let their children attend class with her – to life. The future-entrepreneurs in your family might also enjoy reading about Madam C.J. Walker, the first self-made female millionaire in the U.S. Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope tells the motivational story of our 44^th President. Craving more? Our friends at FamilyEducation.com have created a list of the Top 15 Books for Black History Month.[caption id="attachment_5322" align="alignnone" width="1706"] The Story of Ruby Bridges[/caption]

Visiting!

A visit to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C. features interactive exhibits designed to help visitors explore and revel in African American culture. Cincinatti’s National Underground Railroad Freedom Center brings the freedom fighters of the Underground Railroad, like Harriet Tubman, to life. The Beale Street Historic District in Memphis celebrates the daring musicians of the early jazz, blues, and R&B scene. And the sports nuts in your house won’t want to miss the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri. Looking for a historic spot closer you? Check out USA Today’s list of 50 places to visit during Black History Month.[caption id="attachment_5323" align="alignnone" width="2320"] The Negro Baseball League Museum Logo[/caption]

Listening!

From music and poetry to politics and religion, African Americans have moved the world with their voices. Gather your family and listen to the uplifting words of Maya Angelou’s And Still I Rise, read by the poet herself. Groove to the sounds of Miles Davis, the most influential trumpeter of all time. Allow yourself to be carried away by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s I Have a Dream speech. And get inspired by 40 Thought-Provoking Quotes by Famous African Americans, including the words of Malcom X, James Baldwin, Muhammad Ali, and others, as compiled by TheAfroPolitanMom.com.[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1615"] Miles Davis, American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. Photo credit: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images[/caption]

Learning!

Elementary-school aged kids can test their knowledge of Black History with this wordsearch from ThePotters.com or this crossword puzzle from Scholastic.com. Work  the puzzles together and be sure to explain any words or concepts that are new.[caption id="attachment_5326" align="alignnone" width="407"] Photo credit: scholastic.com[/caption]There are so many ways to honor Black History Month with your family, including these ideas from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Now let’s celebrate!

Sensory Play Ideas for You and the Kiddos to Explore

If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of that intense baby stare, or grab, or taste test, you’ve witnessed sensory exploration first-hand (someone give us a towel!). While it may seem strange to explore a textured block with your tongue, little ones use the senses they have control of at any given age in order to explore the world around them.  And it’s SO good for them!Looking, touching, feeling, hearing, and yes, even tasting, helps kids build a framework in which to understand the people, places, and things in their lives. Sensory exploration also helps build your child’s brain, develops critical motor skills, supports language development, introduces cause and effect, and practices problem solving. All good, right?Although sensory exploration comes naturally to kids, parents can encourage this natural curiosity and exploration. And it’s easy! Below are some of our favorite sensory activities for each age group:Infants:

• Bubbles! Gently blow non-toxic bubbles around your baby. Let them watch the bubbles as they float down and feel the silky softness as they land on their skin.[caption id="attachment_5275" align="aligncenter" width="470"] Photo credit: Playgroupwa.com.au[/caption]

• Paper! Show your baby a sheet of colorful paper, then loudly scrunch it into a ball. Let your little one hold and squeeze the ball, exploring the creases and ridges.

• Words, words, words! Talk to your child as much as possible. Explain what you’re doing when you’re together. Use lots of different sounds, words, voices, and volumes.[caption id="attachment_5276" align="alignnone" width="503"] Photo credit: thestir.cafemom.com[/caption]

Toddlers:

• Paint! Finger painting does double sensory duty, allowing toddlers to explore colors, color blending, and the slippery smooth texture of paint on their fingers.[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="866"] Photo credit: https://nourishingourchildren.org[/caption]

• Oobleck! A solid and a liquid, is science magic and perfect for sensory play. And it’s easy to make! Follow these simple instructions (and add a little food coloring or scent for a bit of extra fun!).[caption id="attachment_5279" align="aligncenter" width="350"] Photo credit: https://www.education.com[/caption]

• Sensory bins! Fill a large container with rice, beans, or Playfoam Pluffle™, add spoons, scoops, and small toys, and let your little one dig in. Click for some fun sensory bin ideas.[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1039"] Photo Credit: @my_three_little_strawberries[/caption]

Preschoolers:

• Playfoam®! Squish, squash, shape, and smash – non-toxic Playfoam comes in all kinds of colors kids can squeeze and sculpt into all kinds of shapes. Best of all, it’s non-toxic, never dries out, and doesn’t stick to carpet or clothing (so it won’t stain or make a mess)![caption id="attachment_5281" align="alignnone" width="595"] Photo credit: @carlson.toys[/caption]

• Music! Simple instruments like shakers, harmonicas, tambourines, and recorders are great for sensory play. Hand them over and watch as your kiddo explores their look, feel, and sound.

• Nature! A walk in nature gives your little one endless opportunities to see, smell, and feel all kinds of things, from grass and leaves to pine cones and feathers.[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1180"] Photo Credit: http://www.parentmap.com[/caption]

With a little effort, you can add a sensory twist to most activities. For more fun ideas for infants, visit our friends at Red Tricycle. Busy Toddler’s got tons of ideas for your big kids and these creative activities from Little Bins for Little Hands will keep your preschooler engaged for hours. 

Stuck Inside?  Cooler weather means more time inside, but it doesn’t have to mean endless hours of screen time and sibling squabbles. Check out eight of our favorite activities for indoor family fun and turn your next winter day indoors into memories your family won’t soon forget!1. Classic Card Games – From Go Fish and Old Maid to Concentration or even Spoons, card games are a great way to spend time together, as a family. And all you need is a deck of cards (and some spoons)![caption id="attachment_5097" align="alignnone" width="600"] Photo Credit: signupgenius.com[/caption] 2. Sardines – You may have forgotten but you’ll soon remember what fun it is to hide and seek! One person hides while the rest cover their eyes and count to 30, then let the hunt begin! Find the hidden one and join them until everyone’s hiding – together! Then choose a new hider and start all over again.3. Sculptapalooza – Add a bit of creativity to your together time with Sculptalooza™  the fast-paced, laugh-out-loud family game! Work together to guess what your teammate has sculpted out of squishy, squashy, Playfoam® before time runs out. No one likes reading directions, so watch this super fun tutorial on how to play![embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhS_Ah5NqFo&t=37s[/embed]4. Storytelling Circle – Sit in a circle. Someone starts a story with a single word, the next person adds another, and so on, until a silly story begins to take shape. Guaranteed to get you giggling, this game encourages creativity and teaches flexibility and thinking on your toes!5. Make a Fort and Read – Gather your pillows, blankets, and chairs (tip – chip clips are a great way to keep things in place) and design your own family fort! Then climb on in with your favorite book and a flashlight.[caption id="attachment_5094" align="alignnone" width="620"] Photo Credit: familyeducation.com[/caption]6. Board Games – Board games bring families together and, with Educational Insights’ squeezer games, even preschoolers can get in on the game! Adorable fun for everyone, little ones can practice colors with Sneaky Snacky Squirrel Game®, learn their letters with Frida's Fruit Fiesta™, and master numbers and counting with Shelby's Snack Shack Game®.[caption id="attachment_5096" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Shelby's Snack Shack Game[/caption]7. Treasure Hunt – Take turns hiding something in your house and racing each other to find it. Give one word hints to guide your family closer and closer until you have a winner, who gets to hide the object next![caption id="attachment_5095" align="alignnone" width="300"] Photo Credit: realsimple.com[/caption]8. Charades – Get ready to giggle with a simple game of charades! Everyone writes an act-it-out challenge down on a slip of paper, folds it, and drops it in a bowl. Then, take turns drawing a clue from the bowl, set a timer, and act it out!So let it rain, or snow, or gusty winds blow – you’ll be too busy having fun inside to notice! You can find even more indoor family fun ideas on our Pinterest page.

6 Mesmerizing Sensory Bin Activities for Kids of All Ages

There are so many ways to play with Playfoam Pluffle, but one of the most rewarding ways to get the most out of the mesmerizing, feel-good fluffy stuff is to dig your hands right into a sensory bin! Sensory bins are great, multi-sensory experiences that develop fine motor skills, bilateral coordination (using two hands together), and hand-eye coordination in younger kids and can also be used as a fun way to practice everything from letters and numbers to math and more with older kids. And, of course, they’re a wonderful activity for calming and soothing kids of all ages, particularly for kids experiencing anxiety. Below are a few of our favorite ways to use Playfoam Pluffle as part of a tactically-satisfying sensory bin:

1. Playfoam Pluffle Patterns – Fill two mixing bowls with two different colors of Playfoam Pluffle. Using a spoon and a muffin tin, show your little one how to spoon the first color of Playfoam Pluffle out of one bowl and into the first muffin hole, then swap to the other bowl and hole, repeating to form an A/B color pattern.

2. Playfoam Pluffle Fishing – Hide small objects, such as the acorns from The Sneaky, Snacky Squirrel Game!®, the bones from Shelby's Snack Shack Game® or colorful buttons in a bin full of Playfoam Pluffle, then use the squeezers, a pair of child-safe tweezers or a scoop to pull them out. The Helping Hands Fine Motor Tool Set™, is a fantastic set for little hands. Practice sorting the objects by color or size to squeeze in some early math skills.[caption id="attachment_5072" align="alignnone" width="680"] Photo Credit: @my_three_little_strawberries[/caption]

3. Playfoam Pluffle-bet – Hide plastic or magnetic letters or numbers in a large plastic bin full of Playfoam Pluffle. Little ones can use their hands or a magnet to dig out a letter and show it to you – you can say its name and the sound it makes. Help older kiddos find the letters in their names, think of words that start with that letter, or set the letters out on the floor in alphabetical order as they find them.

4. Playfoam Pluffle Tubes – Remove about ¼ of the Playfoam Pluffle from its tube, then add plastic toys like insects or fish, buttons, bells, etc. We added carrots from Hoppy Floppy’s Happy Hunt™ Game. Shake the tube to mix them in, then have your little one roll and twist the tube to find as many hidden objects as they can. Talk about what they’ve found using descriptive vocabulary and try counting them as the objects are discovered. Great for on-the-go fun!

5. Playfoam Pluffle Funds – Bury some cash (use plastic coins and paper money if you’d prefer, like the those from our Play Money Coins and Bills set) in a bin of Playfoam Pluffle. Then, let your kids use their fingers, child-safe tweezers or our preschool game squeezers to make it a little trickier, to extract the money. Younger kids can count the number of coins they have; older kids can add up their value. Play against a sibling or friend to see who has more and who has less.

6. Playfoam Pluffle Excavation – Hide different types of rocks, minerals, and fossils, like those found in our Complete Rock and Mineral Set, in a bin of Playfoam Pluffle. Use plastic tongs or tweezers to excavate each item from the Pluffle and a paintbrush or basting brush to clean them off. Can your kids identify the specimen?  As a bonus, they may want to inspect their findings under a microscope.

 

Maybe it’s your favorite teacher’s apple earrings (or mug or sweater) or the apples you’re slicing for your kid’s lunchbox, but come fall, it seems like apples are seriously everywhere. Make the most of this sweet-smelling season – and celebrate National Apple Day (October 21) – with two of our favorite at-home apple-tivities.Apple Taste Test – An at-home apple taste test is fun for the whole family AND an easy way to practice some key early-learning skills, too. Start with whole apples of several different varieties (or at least one of each color).[caption id="attachment_5044" align="aligncenter" width="551"] Photo Credit: jdaniel4smom.com[/caption]

• Sort the apples by size and color. Talk about their shapes and textures using descriptive words like smaller, bigger, round, smooth, and bumpy.
• Cut one apple in half and show your kids that two parts make a whole. Then cut those halves in half and reassemble your apple to demonstrate how quarters make halves and halves make a whole.
• Help your tiny taster spell each variety of apple out on separate paper plates.
• Slice the remaining apples and place them on the corresponding plates.
• Let each child try a slice of each type of apple and select their favorite type, making a mark on that plate. Talk about the taste of the apples using descriptive vocabulary like sweet, tart, and juicy.
• Tally up the totals on the plates to see which type of apple got the most votes. Consider creating a simple chart with the name of each apple across the bottom, the number of testers along the vertical side, and the number of votes tallied above each apple name each to visually demonstrate the results. Or use the free tastes-test cards created by our friends at jdaniel4smom.com to track your family’s favorites!

Apple Stamper Art – Save any bruised or older apples and make some awesome apple art!

• Cut several apples in half horizontally and let them dry for a few hours.
• Pour some tempera paint onto a paper plate – red, green, and yellow are great colors for apple art, but, of course, feel free to get creative.
• Show your kids how to place the apple half into the paint, then lift and press firmly onto a sheet of construction paper or paper bag.
• Make single apple prints or print them in a circle or star shape or stamp them into a painted tree, like the creative mama at living well.com did. Use a paint brush to add the apple’s stem.
• Turn these hand-made treasures into note cards and send them to the grandparents or other loved ones or write a special thank you to your kiddo’s teacher.

[caption id="attachment_5047" align="alignnone" width="574"] Photo credit livingwellmom.com[/caption]Speaking of teachers, why DO we give apples to teachers? I mean, they’re delicious little self-contained snacks, but why not oranges or bananas? Word is, several centuries ago, Scandinavian parents paid their children’s teachers with baskets of apples. Those teachers must have made a lot of pie!Be sure to visit our Fun Fall Activities Pinterest Board for more edu-taining activity ideas!

Fun Fall Leaf Activities & A Simple Explanation for Color Changing Leaves

Your curious kiddo has probably noticed the changing colors of the leaves that mark the beginning of fall. Color changing leaves are pretty magical, but the science behind the magic is so simple that even the littlest leaf lovers can understand!Start by explaining that trees grow and thrive by eating, just like kids do. Trees happen to eat glucose, which they make all by themselves, using water from the ground, carbon dioxide from the air, and sunshine from the sky. Plants put this recipe together in their leaves, which contain something called chlorophyll, which happens to be green. You can tell a plant is “full” of good, healthy food when its leaves are green. But as winter approaches, the sun shines less than it does in summer and it’s harder for the trees to make their “food”. The less food a plant makes, the less green chlorophyll it has, and the more you can see the yellow, orange, and red colors that were there all along, covered by the green.You can bring this mini-science lesson to life with fun arts and crafts using beautiful fall leaves! We’ve compiled four awesome projects from some of our favorite bloggers below:

• Doodled Autumn Leaf Mandala – Check out this gorgeous piece of fall wall art, made of kid-doodled leaves arranged in a mandala shape, from our friends at The Artful Parent!
• Sticky Picture Frame – Make your fall leaves last forever by capturing them in sticky paper and framing them with sturdy twigs collected on a nature walk! Find step by step instructions at NurtureStore.
• Lovely Leaf Prints – Make colorful leaf prints using a press and print method perfect for preschoolers, as outlined by the experts at the Kleas preschool!
• Classic Leaf Rubbings – Pour some warm cups of cider and settle in for an old school leaf rubbing session using just leaves, paper, and crayons, with our friends at Hands On As We Grow!And don’t forget to check out the leaves up-close you’ve collected underneath your GeoSafari® Jr. My First Microscope! With a bright LED light, easy-focus knob, and two extra-large eyepieces, your child will view the leaf’s veins magnified 8x larger!