12 Ways to Learn While Playing with Food (Love to Learn Linky #42)

We all have probably told our kids at one time or another to not play with their food! Well, sometimes you can let them play and use it as a learning experience. Here are some awesome ideas for learning with common snack foods including goldfish, oreos, M&Ms, crackers and more!

How about some STEM learning with goldfish crackers? Use these free Goldfish Printables to practice math skills, and see how to engineer a Goldfish pulley system.

Read the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear and try this color matching activity with Teddy graham crackers.

Sort your lunch into different shapes with this free Shape Sorting Printable.

Have a blast cutting up your food with this Scissor Skills Lunch activity.

Got M&Ms? Practice spelling words with these free M&M Word Printables, and have fun counting with this M&M School Bus Math game (also includes free printable).

Try one of these 8 creative ways to learn with Oreos.

Learn about constellations with Fruit Gummies and this free printable.

Practice addition with these free Jellybean Math printables.

Make your own Very Hungry Caterpillar out of these healthy snack foods.

Learn to count to 100 with Skittles in this free printable basketball game.

LOVE TO LEARN LINKY

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Fun Ways to Paint with Kids from A Little Pinch of Perfect

Now it's time for some more links! I hope you'll join me and a couple of friends for a brand new linky party!

Bloggers, link up your posts every Thursday and watch as we round them up and share them all over the place.

Almost anything goes, we're just hoping your activities teach kids (or us!) something. (science, art, cooking, behavior, crafting, parenting, etc...)

Love to Learn Linky Etiquette:

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Free Alphabet Butterfly Puzzles (Love to Learn Linky #40)

Puzzles are a great hands-on way for kids to learn. They are a favorite at our house! My daughters love the challenge of solving puzzles and putting pieces together to create a picture. With Spring here I thought it would be fun to practice our alphabet and letter cases using this set of colorful, free printable Butterfly Puzzles.

This set includes 26 different butterflies with an uppercase letter and lowercase letter on each wing.

Since all the butterflies are unique, it is a great way for kids to check their own work to make sure the butterflies and letters match up. Great for independent and quiet time!

Click here to download your Free Alphabet Butterfly Puzzles!

LOVE TO LEARN LINKY

Visit my co-hosts to see their posts and features!

Spring Activities for Toddlers & Kids from A Little Pinch of Perfect
Inspiring Kids to Protect Our Oceans: Oil Spill Activity from One Time Through

Now it's time for some more links! I hope you'll join me and a couple of friends for a brand new linky party!

Bloggers, link up your posts every Thursday and watch as we round them up and share them all over the place.

Almost anything goes, we're just hoping your activities teach kids (or us!) something. (science, art, cooking, behavior, crafting, parenting, etc...)

Love to Learn Linky Etiquette:

• Posts should be about educating our kids in any way - science, art, cooking, crafts, behavior, parenting, etc. Please keep them family friendly and please no Etsy shops or giveaways unless they are relevant to the topic.

• Upload your direct post link to the InLinkz widget. Link up to 3 posts.

• Like the hosts on Facebook: Totschooling, A Little Pinch of Perfect, Left Brain Craft Brain and One Time Through.

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12 Creative Ways to Learn with Coloring Pages (Love to Learn Linky #37)

Coloring pages seem like the perfect quiet time or busy activity for kids. However, my daughters (and I'm sure my kids aren't the only ones) will spend about 5 minutes or less if I give them a coloring page and crayons. Granted, this may be because they are still young (3 1/2 and almost 2 yrs), but I wanted to find a way to engage my kids and also get some educational value out of a simple coloring page. 

Recently, we went on a vacation which involved an airplane flight as well as multiple car rides. While I thought I had packed enough activities, I ended up running out of things to keep them busy. I went out and bought some coloring books and decided to get creative!

Here are 12 ideas for creative ways of using and learning with coloring pages, as well as a list of my favorite free coloring page resources at the end!

1. Color By Number
This is a super easy way to turn a coloring page into an educational activity! Just create a legend of numbers and their corresponding colors, and write the numbers on the picture where the colors go. For a fun twist, you can play a roll & color game by rolling a die, calling out the number and then coloring one of the numbers in the picture. Keep rolling and playing until the picture is complete.

2. Color by Letter or Sight Word
This is the same idea as number 1 but you can use letters, words, shapes or anything else that your child is learning.

3. Color by Dots
Use a marker to create little circles, essentially labeling which colors go where on the page. Great for color recognition in young children.

4. Color by Sequence 
Write numbers or letters throughout the picture and ask your child to color in numerical or alphabetical order. 

5. Sticker by Number/Letter/Word
This one is a favorite at our house! Hide letters, numbers or words throughout the picture and also write them on a set of stickers (I like to purchase these circle labeling stickers at the dollar store). The child then places the stickers over the correct letter or number.

6. Cut & Make into a Puzzle
This one is really easy to prep. Just cut the paper into 4, 6, 9 or 12 pieces and let your child put it back together. You can also let the child do the cutting and it doubles as cutting practice!

7. Cut in Half and Complete Picture
Learn about symmetry or just let your child use their imagination to complete the picture.

8. Find & Color
Depending on the type of coloring page, ask your child to find a specific shape, object or character and once they find it they color it. Repeat until the whole page is colored. This would be great with a more complex coloring page with many different elements.

9. Make a Collage
We do this one a lot at our house. I give my kids craft supplies such as tissue paper, pom poms, feathers, googly eyes, scrap paper, buttons, etc and have them glue these things onto the coloring page. It usually comes out like a work of art! You may need to reinforce the paper or, if you are printing, you can print on cardstock or heavy paper. 

10. Turn into a Playdough Mat
Any coloring page can be turned into a playdough mat. Just laminate the sheet (or not) and give your child playdough to "color" in the picture. Tons of fun and great for fine motor skills.

11. Turn into a Lacing Card
This one works best if the coloring page is mainly one animal, object or character. Laminate the page (or print on cardstock), then cut out the main object and punch holes around it. Give your child a shoelace, string, yarn etc. to lace around the picture.

12. Cut out Characters/Animals/Objects and Make Story Puppets
Another idea that works only for certain coloring pages. Cut out the main characters, animals, etc. and turn them into puppets by taping a craft stick to the back. Ask your child to come up with a story and use the puppets to act it out.

Free Coloring Pages & Resources:

300+ Disney Princess Coloring Pages by What Mommy Does
35 Free Disney's Frozen Coloring Pages by The Kid's Coloring Pages
1000+ Free Disney Coloring Pages for Kids by The Farm Girl Gabs
Famous Paintings Coloring Pages by Super Coloring
Marvel Superhero Squad Coloring Pages by On Coloring
Robots Coloring Pages by The Art & Craft Giraffe
32 Free Zoo Animal Coloring Pages by Raising Our Kids
Animal Coloring Pages by Better Homes & Gardens
Eric Carle Coloring Pages by Mom Junction


LOVE TO LEARN LINKY

Visit my co-hosts to see their posts and features!

Dinosaur Crafts & Activities for Kids from A Little Pinch of Perfect
DIY Cardboard Rocket Ship and Space Play Ideas from One Time Through
Play Dough Robots from Left Brain Craft Brain

Now it's time for some more links! I hope you'll join me and a couple of friends for a brand new linky party!

Bloggers, link up your posts every Thursday and watch as we round them up and share them all over the place.

Almost anything goes, we're just hoping your activities teach kids (or us!) something. (science, art, cooking, behavior, crafting, parenting, etc...)

Love to Learn Linky Etiquette:

• Posts should be about educating our kids in any way - science, art, cooking, crafts, behavior, parenting, etc. Please keep them family friendly and please no Etsy shops or giveaways unless they are relevant to the topic.

• Upload your direct post link to the InLinkz widget. Link up to 3 posts.

• Like the hosts on Facebook: Totschooling, A Little Pinch of Perfect, Left Brain Craft Brain and One Time Through.

• Or follow the hosts on Pinterest: A Little Pinch of Perfect, Left Brain Craft Brain, Totschooling and One Time Through.

• Post our button on your site.

• By linking up, you agree to have your images shared with credit.

Link up and grab a button!

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Upper and Lowercase Letter Sort & Match Free Printable

You are going to love my next guest blogger, Tanya from Finding the Teachable Moments! Tanya is a homeschooling mom of three, blogging about educational activities, ideas and crafts. Some of my favorite posts of hers are Free Printable Rhyming & Cutting Activity, Huge List of Early Learning Themes and What Does my Child Need to Learn? (age 2 to grade 2). She is here today sharing a Free Printable Letter Sorting & Matching Activity!

One of the very first steps to learning to read is the ability to recognize both upper and lowercase letters. My daughter knows her uppercase letters, and she also knows many of her “baby letters” (as she likes to call them). But matching lowercase to uppercase letters is something she needs to practice, so I made this printable letter matching activity for her. I included a set of uppercase letters in a variety of fonts as well for children working on uppercase identification alone.

Each page works on five letters at a time. Just print out the uppercase letter page and corresponding lowercase (or uppercase) letters. Cut out the lowercase letters and spread them out. Your little one will choose one letter at a time and place it in the correct column.

The first page contains just vowels so the activity can double as a vowel-consonant lesson as well. There is no reason to try and do the entire alphabet in one sitting. My daughter was only interested in doing one page at a time.

You could laminate the letters and use it as a busy bag activity for a child who may be able to use it independently or do it alongside your child as an introduction to new letters.

Download your Free Printable Letter Sorting & Matching here!

Tanya is a homeschooling mom of three who is passionate about hands-on learning. You can visit her at Finding the Teachable Moments where she shares learning activities and teaching tips for children age 2 to grade 2. You can also follow along with her on Pinterest and Facebook.

Orange Tree Counting Activity with Free Printable

The next wonderful guest blogger in our series is Tarana from Sand In My Toes. Tarana is mommy to a toddler, writing about parenthood, activities and crafts for preschoolers. Some of my favorite posts of hers are Alphabet Matching Activity (with free printable), Hidden Letters Painting and Pasta Counting Activity. She is here today sharing a fun counting activity with orange trees!

Counting is one of those skills which gets better with practice. Toddlers can start counting pretty early if they are interested, and we have been doing counting activities since my son was two (he’s three now).

The reinforcing is important too, so counting is something preschoolers and kindergartners should practice routinely.

The only thing is that they tend to get bored with numbers at that age (or pretty much anything!), so I’m always looking for new ways to make counting interesting.

We loved doing this Orange Tree Counting Activity. Kids love anything bright and colourful, so this is a great activity to get them interested in numbers! And there’s a free printable too (link below), so you can set it up pretty easily.

The printable has tree cards from 1 to 20, but I only used the cards from 1 to 6 when we did the activity.

I cut out circles from orange craft paper to make the ‘oranges’, but you could use stickers, play dough, pom poms, or even finger paint!

I set out the cards randomly and placed the right number of oranges needed for completing them.

We first read the number on the card out loud and then glued on the oranges in the correct quantity. You don’t need to glue them on if you plan to use the cards again. You can even laminate the cards to make them last longer.

It didn’t take too long for us to complete the activity, and we’ll soon do it with the bigger numbers. Hope you have fun doing this too!

Click here to Download the Free Printable Orange Tree Counting Activity!

Tarana Khan is mom to a toddler, living an expat life. She loves writing and has done her stints as a copywriter, reporter and content editor, before embracing parenthood full time. She blogs at Sand In My Toes, where you can drop by to read more of her parenting and other adventures! Tarana also has a series called Busy Hands where you can find more activities and crafts for toddlers and preschoolers. You can also catch up with her on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest or Google+.

Goldfish Printables for Preschoolers

Goldfish crackers are a favorite snack at our house. Pair them with the classic Dr. Seuss children's book and these free printable activities, and you have some great learning opportunities. You'll never look at goldfish the same way again. This post contains affiliate links.

This Free Goldfish Printable pack includes the following activities:
-Color sorting
-Number recognition 1-20
-Counting 1-10
-Patterns
-Color word recognition

Note: These activities were designed to be used with rainbow colored Goldfish crackers.

Click here to Download your FREE Goldfish Printables

Free FROZEN Alphabet Cards

My girls absolutely love the movie Frozen and anything to do with it. So I created these FREE Frozen themed Alphabet Cards to help them learn their alphabet and letter sounds. We also play a lot of fun educational games with these cards. The possibilities are endless!

These FREE Frozen Alphabet Cards include 26 images and words, one for each letter of the alphabet, featuring either a main character from the movie, or an object or idea with a movie scene as the image.

Just print them out, laminate each sheet, then cut out the cards. Here are some ideas for playing with these cards:

-Create an alphabet flip book that you can look through and practice reading the letters and/or words.

-Hang the cards on the wall to create a decorative alphabet chart.

-Play a memory game: make 2 copies of each card, lay them face down and play the classic game.

-Play a bingo game: Lay down a set of 9 or 16 cards to create a large bingo mat. Then, call out letters and have the child put a token on the correct card.

-Talk about each character or what is happening in each picture. Great for language development, imagination and memory.

These cards are excellent for many different stages of development. For toddlers it is a good introduction to the alphabet. Preschoolers will benefit from practicing letter sounds, and emergent readers can use these as simple words to practice reading.

Click here to download your FREE Frozen Alphabet Cards!

If you enjoy this printable, take a look at our

Free Frozen Learning Pack for Tots & PreK:

For a set of fun, DIY personalized ABC cards, take a look at our guest post,

26 Photos to Teach Letter Sounds:

Christmas Tree Learning Activities for Toddlers & PreK

Let's get into the Christmas spirit with some fun, hands-on Christmas Tree Learning activities! These FREE printable activities are designed for toddlers and preschoolers to practice math and literacy skills such as counting, number recognition, number quantity, shapes, alphabet recognition, letter cases, visual discrimination and more!

These Christmas Tree Learning activities are available for FREE to all email subscribers. Here is what's included:

Math Activities:

Number Tree Puzzle, including 1-10, 11-20 and 10-100 in both color and black & white.

Roll & Cover Game: Includes 2 difficulty levels. For an easier game, roll 1 die and cover the correct number (1-6) with a candy, pom pom or any other small object. For a more challenging game, use 2 dice, roll and add them up, then cover the correct number (2-12). Keep going until all numbers are covered.

Christmas Tree counting and matching 1-10 with pom poms. Includes both color and black & white, so can also be used for color matching. Printable comes in 2 halves that you tape together. 

Christmas ornament shape matching. Includes 10 shapes. Can be done as a cut & paste activity, or cut out the shapes for your child.

Literacy Activities:

Letter matching, both uppercase and lowercase included. This can be a cut and paste activity or the letter can be glued to bottle caps. Kids can match uppercase letters, lowercase letters, or uppercase and lowercase letters to each other.

Letter Case Sorting. Use the same letters from the previous activity and sort all the uppercase letters on one tree and all the lowercase letters on the other tree.

Visual Discrimination Activities:

Visual Discrimination matching. Print 2 copies of the sheet, leave one copy intact and cut the other one. Match the loose cards to the images on the sheet.

Memory Game. Use the same cards as above. Print 2 copies of the cards, cut them all out, put them face down, and play a classic memory game. Use only a few cards for an easier game.

These Christmas Tree Learning activities are FREE for all Totschooling subscribers!

After entering your email address, you will receive a confirmation email to complete your subscription. You will shortly receive a Welcome email that includes a link to this pack. If you have not received this email, please check your spam folder, or email me at totschooling@gmail.com. Thanks!

What can I expect as a Subscriber?:

-You will receive free printables that are not available for download on the website. This includes holiday and seasonal packs, as well as other themed activity packs.

-You will get access to a growing collection of Board Book Printable Activities.

-You will receive 2-3 emails per week with new posts, freebies, sales and additions to the site.

-You will receive a special subscriber discount for the Online Store.

-Your information will never be shared with anybody else.

Snowman Letter Matching Puzzles (Love to Learn Linky #20)

Today was the first day of snow for us this season, so it seems fitting that I write this post about a snowman learning activity! This is a free printable puzzle for preschoolers to practice letter sounds and letter cases! Match these 3 pieces to create a snowman: an uppercase letter, a lowercase letter and an object that begins with that letter sound.

The snowman's hat contains an object that begins with each letter of the alphabet. Match the upper and lowercase letter that makes the beginning sound to complete the snowman! This is great activity for practicing letter sounds and letter recognition.

Click here to download your Free Snowman Letter Matching Puzzles  

And now for some more Snowman activities shared at the Love to Learn Linky!

10 Snowman Playdough Activities by Our Little House in the Country
Bubble Wrap Snowman by Crafts on Sea
Easy Snowman Craft for Kids by Spark & Pook
Snowman Light Table Play by Where Imagination Grows
Snow-Dough Snowmen by Multicraftingmummy
Snowman Stained Glass Windows by Our Little House in the Country

Visit my co-hosts to see their posts and features!

Five Minute Crafts: Pumpkin Pie Painting from Left Brain Craft Brain
10 Fun Christmas Learning Ideas for Preschoolers from One Time Through
Snow Inspired Fun for Kids: Crafts, Activities and More from A Little Pinch of Perfect

LOVE TO LEARN LINKY

Now it's time for some more links! I hope you'll join me and a couple of friends for a brand new linky party!

Bloggers, link up your posts every Thursday and watch as we round them up and share them all over the place.

Almost anything goes, we're just hoping your activities teach kids (or us!) something. (science, art, cooking, behavior, crafting, parenting, etc...)

The Love to Learn Linky is Hosted by:

Totschooling: Viviana is a blogging mom to a toddler and a preschooler, sharing ideas and resources for early education. She specializes in unique, hands-on printable activities that are educational, fun and inspire creativity in young minds.

Left Brain Craft Brain: Anne is an ex-engineer, current stay-at-home mama writing about crafty ways to encourage creativity (and brain power!) in our kids. Each of her projects gives kids the chance to learn about a new subject and do something crafty at the same time.

A Little Pinch of Perfect: Katie combines creativity, play, and learning for the perfect mishmash of fun activities that keep kiddos entertained throughout the day. She wholeheartedly believes in the power of play and feels that all activities naturally provide a fun way to learn.

One Time Through: Sue is an Elementary School Teacher currently on leave to be at home with her preschooler son.  She shares ideas for connecting and learning with kids through meaningful, play-based activities that nurture curiosity and creativity.

Love to Learn Linky Etiquette:

• Posts should be about educating our kids in any way - science, art, cooking, crafts, behavior, parenting, etc. Please keep them family friendly and please no Etsy shops or giveaways unless they are relevant to the topic.

• Upload your direct post link to the InLinkz widget. Link up to 3 posts.

• Like the hosts on Facebook: Totschooling, A Little Pinch of Perfect, Left Brain Craft Brain and One Time Through.

• Or follow the hosts on Pinterest: A Little Pinch of Perfect, Left Brain Craft Brain, Totschooling and One Time Through.

• Post our button on your site.

• By linking up, you agree to have your images shared with credit.

Link up and grab a button!

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An InLinkz Link-up