With the recent change in my job situation I have stopped sending my kids to daycare full-time. My son is now in the pre-k program at his school just in the morning. So my daughter and I have been staying busy while he’s at school but that leaves the entire afternoon to keep at 4 year old, busy boy - entertained!

In the afternoons, while my daughter naps, we’ve been doing a mix of relaxing and activities. Here are some fun activities we did this week that were perfect for my 4 year old’s busy brain!

Turkey Leaf Craft

Collect leaves from your yard and glue them to a poster board. We enjoyed picking the leaves out and figuring out where we’re going to put them on our turkey!

Letter B Bandaid Activity

Write the letter B on a piece of construction paper, have your child put bandaids in or around the be. Each time saying “B is for bandaid” “B is for basketball”, etc. My son had so much fun with this!

Salt Crystals

Mix 1/2 cup salt with 1 cup hot water, keep mixing with water until the salt dissolves (STEM experiment). Cut out fun shapes from construction paper and place onto paper plates. Cover shapes with salt solution. In a few hours the salt will start to form small crystals. It takes about 4 days for them to be completely dry and useable. You can give as ornaments for Christmas gifts or keep for yourself as decorations! This was such a fun activity and cool to see how different they looked each day! I found this article: https://gosciencegirls.com/how-to-grow-salt-crystals/ really helpful for explaining the STEM part of this exercise!

Make Your Own Slime

We never got around to doing this activity because Liam wasn’t interested in it the day I had planned to do it. Anyway, I found some fun recipes for make your own slime. Some super easy, others seemed really fun and different - even edible slime! Check them out!

Edible Slime: https://littlebinsforlittlehands.com/how-to-make-edible-marshmallow-slime-recipe-strawberry/

Fluffy Slime: https://www.thebestideasforkids.com/fluffy-slime-recipe/

Glitter Slime: https://www.thebestideasforkids.com/how-to-make-slime-with-contact-solution/

Gummy Bear Graph

Put some of that Halloween candy to good use! You can use skittles, m&m’s, or even just a variety of different candies for this exercise. Print out or draw a graph table. Have your child separate the candy by color, or type and mark it on the graph paper you designed. This teaches counting, colors, and graphs!