This post may contain affiliate links. Thank you for your support.
We got an awesome package in the mail recently from Devany at Still Playing School as part of the Love Books Summer Exchange, organized by The Educators' Spin on It. This is a great program every year where bloggers team up and do a book & activity exchange! It was super fun and I am so glad to have been a part of it!
The book we received from Still Playing School was It Looked Like Spilt Milk by Charles G. Shaw (Amazon affiliate link). As it turns out, my daughter and I had never read this book before, so we were very excited to read it! When I saw the title I thought this is perfect because my girls spill milk almost every day at our house!
But the book is not actually about spilt milk. It is about clouds and how they come in many shapes and sizes and, with a little imagination, they take the form of many different objects, animals and familiar things!
My daughter cracked up laughing the first time we read this book! It is really funny because it leaves you guessing until the end. This is a perfect book for toddlers, as it is mostly pictures that toddlers can identify, and it teaches how to use your imagination to see objects within abstract images.
After reading the book a few times, we couldn't wait to do the fun activities we received from Still Playing School. Here they are:
1. Paint Blots
We did this one several times and each time I asked my daughter "What does that look like to you?" And I was impressed by her answers! Flower, spider, and a dog's face!
2. Paint Blowing
Squeeze some white paint on the blue construction paper. Then, using a straw, blow the paint around. What does the "cloud" look like?
This one was fun because she has never used a straw to manipulate paint before! It took a couple of tries, but she got the hang of it!
3. Parchment Paper Shapes on Blue Construction Paper (our favorite!)
Still Playing School sent us these really cute parchment paper cut-outs (hand-made) in the shapes of a dinosaur, a train, a teddy bear, an airplane, an elephant, and several other animals and objects.
My daughter played with the cut-outs on top of the blue tissue paper. She loved the train shape and made up a story about how all the other animals and objects are riding the choo choo train! We turned the ceiling fan on and it started slowly blowing the shapes across the tissue paper, mimicking clouds being blown across the sky by the wind. She spent quite a while with this activity and really used her imagination!
4. "Cloud" & "Sky" Sensory Bin
This activity was especially fun for my daughter because we don't do too many sensory bins at our house. So she jumped at the opportunity for messy sensory play! This sensory bin was made with blue water beads, which is the "sky", and soap foam for the "clouds". To make the soap foam, I just poured some liquid dish soap into a mixing bowl, added a bit of water, and mixed it with a hand mixer for a few minutes until the soap foamed up. It was really simple and my daughter had a blast!
5. Melted Pony Bead "Clouds"
This was a really cool activity - and a first for us! Pony beads melt at about 400 degrees F and fuse together to create a really nice smooth piece of plastic. This should be done outdoors because of the fumes, and can be melted on a grill or a toaster oven outside. It took about 20 minutes for the beads to melt and you will know it's done when you no longer see individual beads, just one smooth piece of plastic. Let it cool for a few minutes and you can remove it from the pan easily.
Once we had our melted bead "cloud" we looked at it from different angles and finally decided that it looked like a rabbit!
Thank you, Still Playing School for your awesome ideas and activities! Check out her blog for more creative playful learning activities! Also, be sure to check out the book activity that I sent to her, based on Harold and the Purple Crayon!
