Pre-School

Inspired by Nature: Four Easy Steps to Follow a Child’s Interests

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Do you have bees, birds, squirrels, deer, possum, or other creatures milling around your neighborhood? It’s been wild animal week here at Casa Tinkerlab. We had two big discoveries at our house: a wasp nest in the eaves by our back door and a bird nest tucked into a hole along the siding of our [...]

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Creative Table: A Sticker Composition with Frames

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Setting up Creative Invitations like this is one of my very favorite ways to encourage children to explore new ideas and develop a visual language. Here’s the basic premise: Clear the table of anything that won’t be used in the invitation Artfully arrange the materials to provoke ideas Limit the choice of materials to just a [...]

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Make a Simple Room Fort

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Hello Tinker-firends! I’ve been busy with some family business and book edits that are taking a toll on my late-night blogging time. How are you doing? Until I get a better handle on these details I thought I’d share some quick snippets of tinkering inspiration from our days at home and out-and-about. Today we have [...]

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Vegetable-Dyed Easter Eggs

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This post was originally shared in April 2011. I’m trying to make a move away from synthetic food dyes and wanted to use natural, homemade dyes this year. Not only are these colors absolutely healthy for human consumption, but the process of making them is a wonderful lesson in creating art materials from scratch and [...]

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Paint with glue, and how to make your own colored glue

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My 2-year old is going through the phase of wanting to squeeze all the life out of any tube of paint, toothpaste, or glue that crosses her path. Have you had, or do you have, a child in that phase as well? I remember this phase well. When my older daughter hit it, I made [...]

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30 Valentine Activities for Kids

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My stats are telling me that a lot of you are searching my site for Valentine’s Day ideas, so I thought I’d pull together a mother-lode of kid-friendly Valentine activities for toddlers, preschoolers, and any other hands-on kids (grown-ups are welcome too). My 4-year old sort of tricked me into buying her a pack of [...]

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Snow Cream

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Snow Cream! Have you heard of it? My friend Jen at Paint Cut Paste has been talking my ear off about her favorite wintery dessert, a combination of snow and sweetened condensed milk, and I’ve been eager to try it for ages. And then there’s this gorgeous children’s book, Maple Syrup Season, that has made eating [...]

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Easy String Art Experiments for Kids

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“The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.” – Jackson Pollack, American Painter String Art Creating string art is a fun mix of art, creative thinking, and experimentation all rolled into one open-ended package. If you’ve been following this blog for a while you’ll know that when it comes [...]

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Marbled Paper Suminagashi

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Are you looking for a last-minute hands-on gift, or maybe an idea to bookmark for a cold winter day? I’ve been saving this Suminagashi kit for a quiet morning and it was a true winner with both my 2-year old and 4-year old. The process of marbleizing paper encourages creative thinking, open-ended exploration with ink [...]

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