Colors for Tots–RED

Just in time for Valentine’s Day I am starting my Colors for Tots series with RED!!

Baby Girl or K (I refer to her as both) is now 15mos!  This last month we have been playing with RED!!

Here are some great ideas for introducing RED to your toddler.  Follow each month as I share ideas for introducing colors and teaching about COLORS!!  Next month is GREEN!

Discovery Basket

I found a bunch of RED items and put them in a basket for her to explore.  Red blocks, Red stringing Blocks, red pom poms, Red attribute blocks, red manipulatives (bugs), Red, Red, Red! 

For Valentine’s Day (and not pictured) I also added a red heart bracelets, red plastic heart necklace and red heart sunglasses (all from The Dollar Tree). 

Discovery Bottles

Red Glitter Bottle

Made from Clear Glue, some water and red glitter (I used larger and finer glitter).  The finer falls slower! 


The far left is plastic red hearts in a mix of baby shampoo and water (so they fall slower), the middle is the glitter bottle and the far right is red water beads!  I also put some small red plastic beans into a small spice jar (pictured in the basket picture at the top).  Made for a fun shaker too!

Art Collage

I got this great Color Art Collage from Alex Toys Jr on Amazon.  I got it on sale for $6, so it was well worth the cost in my opinion, full price is a tad much.  Keep an eye out for another sale!

Light Table

The sensory bottles and some other clear blocks and light table items in RED were lots of fun on the light table!

Now is a great time to find lots of fun red items at places like Dollar Tree to fill your sensory bottles, discovery baskets and for collage items! 

Blog Cruise goes live on Wednesday (2/4) at 8am!

Ikea Lack Table turned Light Table(DIY)

I found this awesome instructable on how to build a light table from an Ikea Lack Table.  I made it my goal to make one once we moved and were near an Ikea again!

Well, the lady we bought our house from left several things in the house, one of which was an Ikea Lack Table (not certain that it’s Ikea, but it’s the same style as a Lack Table). Lucky me!

The instructions were simple, however, the items they called for were a bit pricey after you added them all together. Even though it came to less than a ‘real’ light table, I couldn’t see spending all that money!

So, I decided to figure out a way to make one that was similar, but cost less!

Here is how we did it!  (with a little trial and error involved) 

1.  Take the lack table and draw a straight line around the table top 1” in from the edge. (Though honestly in retrospect I wish we had gone 3cm like in the instructable, b/c there was some extra supports we needed to remove and you will see there are some shadows in the box b/c of some other supports that were not removable).

2.  Use a straight blade to cut around the line and remove the top.  This part was NOT as easy as it looked, as a matter of fact my husband did this and was quite frustrated!  I don’t know if you have a true lack it would be easier or not. 

3.  Hollow out the inside, drill a hole in the bottom for the cord.

4.  Line the bottom with aluminum foil 

5.  Secure the lights (the rope lights I bought came with screw clips to secure the lights to the bottom of the table).  I used 2 strands of rope lights. (these pictures only show one strand of lights, I added a second later).

6.  We bought a piece of Plexiglas from Home Depot, one big enough to cover the hole and some plastic cutters to cut it down to size.  Originally we planned to fit it exactly to the whole size, but after my husband messed up one piece trying to cut it ($15 gone!), we decided to just cut one side and fit it completely OVER the hole.  Our piece is about 21 x 21” (the table is 21.5 x21.5). 

7.  Cover the underside of the Plexiglas with white contact paper (the trick was finding contact paper wide enough, which I did find on amazon).

8.  Pre drill the holes in the Plexiglas so you don’t crack it when securing it.

9.  Secure with screws. There was some space between the supports in the table and the top of the table (where we were going to rest the Plexiglas in plan A), we had to add a spacer to make the surface even before screwing the top on. 

This is what we were using previously – which was also a trial and error process. 

I have acquired lots of cool transparent toys to go along with the table.  I’ll make a post about those in the near future!

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Valentine’s Day (and Your Heart)

I posted all our tot school Vday activities before Vday, and meant to do a short after post with some updates, and show what we did with my 5yo as well….but never got around to it.  Well, better late than never, right?? 

do-a-dot on the window, we found these cool dot window markers, and decorated our windows!  (we saw a similar idea of tracing the lines on another blog…can’t remember which, sorry).

This was the first time the kiddos used our light table (since I made it) and they loved it, even c (15mos) was really into it!  Of course a lot of the gel clings got tore up by the littlest tot, but still fun!!

Using Color box 2 with Z, we’ve really been working on his colors, he has a speech delay, so it’s made it difficult, but he is improving greatly!

Some kindergarten math – graphing candy hearts, and chocolate addition.  We used a small bottle filled with water, glitter and 2 di.  He would shake it up, and then take the two numbers write them in the box and add them up.  He had small paper candies to use as counters if he needed.

You can find all the printables on my VDAY Pinterest board or on the other VDay blog post. 

I used this recipe for the chocolate play dough…I found that it would get dry and scaly looking quickly, so I added some EVOO to it…just a tad and worked it in, it made it much smoother and softer.

We also talked about our own HEARTS!
We listened to our hearts beat with a stethoscope, and we found and felt our pulses.

These are the books we used:

DIY Light Box

Well this was quite the process, I think I drove my husband crazy with this little project, but good news is that I have hopefully worked out any kinks, which will make the project all the more easier for you! 

Prototype 1 -

I felt like I had the perfect thing for a light box, it was a wooden box with a slide plexi-glass top, I coated the plexi glass with white contact and went and bought a light…but it was too thick.  So I returned it and got a different light…they fit, but were too close to the plexi- glass surface, so basically I determined the wood box was not DEEP enough.  This COULD have worked if it was about twice as deep as it was.

Prototype 2 -

I decided to try out another container I already had – a plastic shoe box.  I lined the bottom with white contact paper, and cut black paper to line the sides, and placed aluminum foil in the lid (for the bottom) with the lights on top.  This worked well, but the working surface was so small.  I may still use this one, but I really wanted a larger surface area.

Prototype 3 -

I went to the store to find some Christmas lights on clearance to try out in Prototype 1, and they were all sold out.  I did find a larger, deeper plastic container on sale for $6 and picked it up.  I lined the top half with contact paper, and the bottom half with aluminum foil, and places the 3 pack of lights inside that  I had bought previously.  They were not bright enough…so I pulled out some Christmas lights I had, and they worked well, except that a large section was not lit. 

Prototype 4 – THE FINALIST

Using the same container, I purchased some frosting paint, and some black plastic spray paint.  I also purchased a long florescent light and some spray glue.  I removed the contact paper and aluminum foil that I had on it (as pictured above) and painted it (as pictured below). I mounted the new light on the side, and glued a piece of aluminum to the bottom.  I think I may add one more florescent light to the opposite side, but otherwise I’m very happy with the results!

I got my ideas and suggestions for materials to use with the light table from a variety of sources you can find them pinned on my Light Box board at pinterest.

Here is some of the great stuff I’ve ordered to work with on the table (I know I got a bit carried away)