K Day: Kings, Kool-Aide, Kazoos, and Kabobs

At first, I thought coming up with something for K Day was going to be a challenge. But for some reason, I ended up having lots of time to look around for ideas and came across so many cool things other people had done, that the real challenge was trying to narrow it down.

When I was little, I always loved to play pretend. So, if I can, I try to incorporate some sort of something that the kids can use their imaginations to play with later. For K, I came up with King. I did my best to explain what a king was and what one did, and then I gave each boy their own crown so they could be kings. (I got the crowns for free at Burger King.) At one point in the planning process, I had considered decorating the crowns as an activity, but since the focus was on king and not on crown, and since those are really similar sounds and could be confusing to a toddler, I decided to leave the crowns as is, since they say King on them.

I found the idea for our next activity here. She used it as a letter I activity, but I chose to focus on the Kool-Aide part and use it for K :) but you could do either. For Kool-Aide painting all you need is a 9x13 pan, a sheet of white paper, a package of your favorite color Kool-Aide, and an ice cube.

Put the paper in the pan, dump out the powder from the packet, and put in ice cube in on top. Move the ice cube around while it melts and it will paint a cool picture with the Kool-Aide. In the directions on the other page, she has her kids hold onto the pan and move it back and forth to slide the ice cube around that way. I had the kids use their fingers because #1 My 9x13 pan is glass, and I don't trust Scientist with it, and #2 Ideally you would do this activity outside where the sun is shining and that would help to melt the ice, but since it SNOWED (uggghhhhh) today, we stayed inside and the ice wasn't melting as quickly as we would have liked, so by using our hands we added a little body heat to help it melt faster.

From doing this project we learned that Kool-Aide has a tendency to stain your hands. Oops. I guess Scientist and I will be sporting little green monster fingers for the next couple of days. He's ok with that idea, me not so much.That's probably why in the directions it has you move the pan around instead of the ice cube. I also decided that you don't want to let the ice cube melt too much, or it just makes a big colorful puddle. Next time we do it, we'll probably just go until we get a cool design and then take the ice cube out. Another thing, don't let the paper sit in the pan to dry, or it will stick to the bottom of it.

After our art project, the kids needed a little wiggle break, so our next activity was well timed. I found some little plastic party kazoos at the dollar store. I showed them how to hum into one end. They loved it and marched around making kazoo music. Even Sponge got into it. After watching the boys for awhile, he started making a kazoo noise with his lips. I was pretty impressed with how observant he was. I gave him my kazoo, and even though he couldn't make the kazoo make the noise, he could still make the noise with his lips while holding the kazoo up to his mouth. It cracked me up.

Next it was snack time...bring on the kabobs! Fruit kabobs, complete with the fruit of the day, Kiwi! I cubed apples, bananas, strawberries, grapes, and kiwi and put them into separate bowls. Each of the boys got a kabob skewer and got to put whatever fruit they wanted on their kabob. They did really well putting the fruit on too, I was proud. A good work out for the fine motor skills. And very tasty, and healthy. A plus all around. Scientist was kind of a banana hog, but other than that, things went really smoothly. When they were done kabobing, I showed them how to eat the fruit right off the stick with their mouths. I told them that's how kings did it ;) They thought that was great.

(And no, I did not have Scientist wear his Knight in Shining Armor shirt on purpose today, just a coincidence)

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