Crafting with Kids: Baking Soda Clay Ornaments

Every year I choose a special ornament that goes with something special that happened that year to add to our Christmas tree.  My mother-in-law did this and wrote the dates on all my husband's ornaments from his childhood and when he and I got married, I wanted to carry on the tradition.

This year has been an especially hard year for us and trying to find an ornament has proven quite difficult.  While scrolling through Pinterest, I found the answer to my dilemma...

make our own ornaments! Perfect. And with all our Mother Goose Time supplies, this would be fun, easy, and hopefully a family tradition!  

It started with this Pin (follow it for the BEST recipe...pure white clay goodness!)  

 

Once we made the clay and added a few drops of Peppermint Essential Oil to our recipe to trigger all the senses, we gathered our supplies, including our letter cookie cutters and shape stamps from Mother Goose Time.

Sweet Pea and I would make balls of clay. Afterwards I would press them flat with the bottom of one of our glass plates.  This allowed for a great circle shape that was equal in thickness and smooth in texture.  Sweet Pea would then get to work with her stamps and cookie cutters.  

We really wanted an ornament that was an "A", since Sweet Pea's name starts with "A".

Do not forget to use a straw or toothpick to make some holes to lace ribbon into your ornament!

Our ornaments needed drying time, so I put them on a cookie sheet and placed it on the counter for a few days, rotating them to help with the drying time.  The recipe made a ton of dough that keeps when wrapped in damp paper towels and in a plastic ziploc bag with hardly any air in it.  

It's sitting on my counter now, a full week later.  

Sweet Pea loved doing this activity so much that the next day she asked for her "White Playdough" to make some more ornaments.  So we used our "O" cookie cutter to make some wreaths.

After a few days of drying, it was time to paint our ornaments.  I put some red, yellow, and blue tempra paint into some cups for Sweet Pea and she grabbed her paintbrush. 

Mother Goose Time has given us so many opportunities to paint and work on fine motor skills, especially in their Invitations to Create!  I was so impressed with Sweet Pea's painting technique as she held the paintbrush.

     

Finger painting always wins out eventually, of course! 

After the ornaments dried, I laced some ribbon through the holes and put some glitter glue on the star.  I painted the "O" green and added embellishments to make our wreath ornament.  The pine cone pressing that Sweet Pea added to the "O" made the ideal texture for the wreath.

All of the ornaments are so beautiful on our tree and they are perfect to commemorate something great that happened this year:

all the learning, painting, and fun my girl and I have had with Mother Goose Time. 

     

Tot School: Teaching One-to-One Correspondence

Reciting numbers and memorizing their names is one thing....

Understanding that those numbers mean a certain amount is a whole nother ball game.

One-to-one correspondence is the ability to match one object to one corresponding number or object.

Each month Mother Goose Time sends some kind of math manipulative and some new number cards.

This month, as we study Winter in the Woods, Sweet Pea received some teddy bear counters along with the "4" and "14"number cards.  We only use the 1-10 number cards since Sweet Pea is just 2 years old.  

I decided to set up a little math match-up station after her nap and this is what it looked like.

And it was a failure.  I had way to much going on.

-Brand new toys (bear counters).

-Number cards she had not really been exposed to before.

-Shape cards she hadn't really been exposed to before either.

When you combine all the above with a 2 year old and start asking her questions...

it's just too much.  I was not getting the results from Sweet Pea that I was hoping... such as her placing the bears on the shapes and then counting and picking the right number symbol that went along with the shapes. 

It was just too much, and you can see what she did below. 

She had fun, but she didn't even play with the bears for very long!  I needed to reassess. So we made a deer mask, and I said we would play with the bears again tomorrow.

Round 2: The Next Day aka Bear Day

I had to ask myself 2 questions: 

"What is the first thing I want her to learn?"

Answer: I want her to be able to match one bear to one shape... one to one correspondence.  

Numerical symbols could come later. So I got rid of the number cards. 

Question 2:

"How could I keep her attention longer with the bears?"

Answer: Hide them and make her find them.

Our bear day had us building a den from some brown paper shreds also known as a perfect item to hide plastic bears in.

So while she napped, I set up our math station placing bears in an aluminum pan and hiding them beneath brown paper shreds and only placing our shape cards on her table.

She had a blast finding the bears!  And she did exactly what I was aiming for the first day without any problems! I would ask her to place one bear on each shape and she did.

 

 

She did great matching one bear to one shape! 

We were able to count "One bear on One circle",

 "One, Two bears on One, Two triangles", and

 "One, Two, Three bears on One, Two, Three stars."

She started losing interest by the time she was getting bears to go on the 4 squares, but she and I both had a lot of fun.  I could see her success, and I am so glad I reassessed and changed things up.  

My mom's words still ring in my ears now like they did when I was a child,

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again."

We will definitely try this one again, although I might hide the bears in something different.