Educational, HEADACHE-FREE Toys for Christmas and Hanukkah

Are you dreading all of the noisy gifts that your children get for Christmas or Hanukkah? Do noisy toys drive you nuts? Do you feel that toys that require batteries have less educational value than a toy that is more open ended and imaginative? Then please check out this list!!

I am a mother of five children with sixteen years experience in parenting, My oldest is a sixteen year old girl, my second born child is a 14 year old boy with ASD, ADHD, and severe learning disability, my third born child has mild aspergers syndrome, my fourth and fifth children are 4 year old fraternal twin boys. I have also been the owner/operator for a parenting message board and chat room that ran for 11 years, and have organized 3 local playgroups over the years.  I have been celebrating Christmas as a Mom for 16 years. I know what it is like for your child to receive a slew of cute but VERY NOISY gifts! The toys just don't hold much play value. They become old hat after a while. They look cute and they sound like a great idea, but they really just end up at the bottom of the toybox after a few days or weeks.(if you're lucky) By purchasing open ended, smart, educational toys you will see a world of difference in your child's playtime. In the link you will be able to view amazing toys that will awe and inspire your children. If you do not find everything that you are looking for, the list you are about to click on has over 1000 awesome toys linked to it. If you are looking for something in particular that you do not see on this big list, or have questions on a toy... please feel free to email me twinsrock@cfl.rr.com



See the list HERE

Oooey Gooey Slimy SLIME

We make a lot of fun slime concoctions from the Dunecraft science kit with slippery spheres, gobbledy goop, silly squares, and jellystones.  Everyone that comes over to play just loves our slime concoctions. We make the gooiest, ooooiest, slimiest, funky slimes ever!!  The gobbledygoop itself makes an awesome non toxic slime. We really love mixing it with jellystones, slipperyspheres,  sillysquares, and shaving cream. The results are totally awesome!

 I am not a fan of slimes made with toxic or potentially dangerous substances like borax. GobbledyGoop has no borax or any other harmful substances in it, which is a huge bonus. I see there are a lot of science experiments that look really fun but they contain borax. Here is an article that talks about why borax is bad, and another one here. 

Here are a few of the concoctions we have made!  Links and photos! 

By the way, they are awesome for playdates and halloween kids parties!

Where to buy the ingredients!

• Fluffy Slime
• Mega Slime
• Glime
• Oooey gooey blacklight sensory bottles
• Firefly jars
• Marshmallow Slime
• Frosty Glow Slime
• Lemon Meringue Slime
• Glowing Messy Play
• Rainbow Snow Slime
• Sea Creature Slime
• Spaghetti Slime
• more new ones coming soon..... stay tuned

• This post will update when new slime concoctions are made!

mega slime with water ballz (giant water beads)

some dunecraft slipperyspheres in test tubes, slipperyspheres are waterbeads.

water beads and water ballz with some of our outdoor science lab stuff

INTRODUCING.....

 Our newest slime, marshmallow slime!   
(no marshmallows or sugar are in it)

We made the mega slime concoction, then played with it. Then we added more water and left it sit overnight. When we went to play with it the next day, we added a can of peach scented womens shaving cream from the dollar tree. Then we mixed it up really well and it made THIS!!  


The base recipe for MEGA SLIME is located HERE, after making mega slime just let it sit overnight with added water and then add a can of shaving cream the next day.


Mackenna (12) and Cameron (13) really loved this one!

Here are some other cool ways to use slime..... in a black light reactant sensory bottle. It is not really slime in the bottle but it sure looks gooey and slimy! I used mod podge and really goopy cheap hair gel from wal mart in these sensory bottles.

see the post on how to make it here...  oooey gooey blacklight sensory bottles

Here is another fun one, firefly jars and bloopy gloopy black light paint.  The bloopy gloopy black light paint is made with really goopy hair cheap gel from wal mart. It is definitely a fun slimy sensory experience.

see the post on how to make it here  firefly jars and bloopy gloopy black light paint

This is one of our newest and most unique slime concoctions... GLIME! It is a really fun slime that is not like any other slime. It is funky and gritty. 

Go check out the post to see how to make it , here!

Here is the post from our first awesome slime concoctions! 

See the post on how to make it here  fluffy slime and mega slime

Check out our slimy fun used at a big playdate we had...

see the post here      sensory,  motor skills and exploration playdate

NEW!
Frosty Glow Slime, see it HERE

Glime

Graham and Parker decided to pour some clear glue onto white paper, they were making all kinds of designs with it. So I suggested that we add salt to the designs, so that we could spray liquid watercolors over the salt later. They loved that idea! So we now have our salt and glue designs drying to be sprayed with liquid watercolors later!  The plastic storage container that we used to salt up the glue drawings, still had salt in it. So they asked if they could add more. I let them pour in more salt, then they wanted to add baby powder and shaving cream.... so I let them. They mixed it and played with it for a while. Then they wanted to add some liquid water colors and then.... white school GLUE! So, uh..... I said ok!  They added that all and mixed it all up. It became one of the coolest slime mixtures we have made up yet!!!  It is a gritty, dry but wet when squished slime. It sticks together in big freaky stringy chunks, and is really funky to play with!!

We call it GLIME!!

They played with it for about 15 minutes, then decided to add a little bit of water to the plastic container the glime was in. The addition of the water created a swamp like environment. So they added some more of their little action figures/men/animals. They always add their action figures to everything they do and play with.

See the other slimes we invented, fluffy slime and mega slime HERE

recap on ingredients for Glime: baby powder, sea salt, white school glue, liquid watercolors, shaving cream

light and sunshine

Just a few pics from the past few days of play and painting pumpkins!  We also did an experiment with water beads and tonic water! ;)

The great tonic water and water beads experiment

We soaked water beads in water for a day, as usual. Then we drained them and filled the carafe  with tonic water. The water beads soaked in the tonic water for two days. After that we drained the water beads again. What we observed was that the water beads shrunk down to a significantly smaller size, and became filled with tiny bubbles.  Then we refilled the carafe with water to see if they would grow again. We waited two days, again. After two days we noticed that the water beads did NOT grow again. They stayed exactly as they were after being in the tonic water for two days. So we drained the water and decided to examine them more closely!! During the course of the week, we checked the water beads out in the black light as well as sunlight and indoor lighting. Tonight we put them under the black light and noticed how very brightly they glowed!!  The tonic water really made these pink water beads look awesome under the black light!! We also noticed that they are VERY SQUEAKY feeling, it is so strange!! You seriously must try this!! They also DO NOT break as easily as a water bead soaked in water!!  Oh and they bounce even higher than a water bead soaked in water!!

This was a really fun science experiment!! I know we will try this one again, maybe we will change up the variables a bit!! Let us know if you try it too!!!!

water beads with tonic water

see all of the bubbles!!!!

They look so awesome right up by the black lights!!

Graham wanted to read by the owl lights

one of the light sets that Graham and Parker chose for their room, they are so pretty
that I am planning to keep them up year round!

a seasonal light set that Graham and Parker chose!

another seasonal light set that Graham, and Parker chose.

some of their lights.....just one part of the room

plasma ball

another child led sensory bin!

You can see our last child led sensory bin HERE!

This sensory bin was completely child led again. I had a container of dried beans out and was getting ready to put a lid on the container. Near to this container was a bag full of empty spice  jars. I had the empty spice jars and tea bags out to get ready to put them into their wooden toy kitchen. I was getting an activity ready for Graham and Parker in the same room, and they decided to play with the dried beans, the tea bags and the empty spice bottles.tea bags, they had a great time!!  They cut open the tear bags, dumped them into the container of dried beans and into the empty spice jars, put beans into the empty spice jars, added some toys to it all. They really enjoyed the scents! The point of me having the spice jars out there to be placed in the toy kitchen, was to be able to have nice scents while playing with their in the toy kitchen. So when they pretend to make food and put some spice into the food, they will smell the spice!! The spice jars still strongly hold the scents of the spices that used to be in them!

yah.. this is pretty random.  ALF in a pink Barbie jeep with a floppy sun hat.  ;)

penguins 

animals on the light table with light table acorns and pumpkins. They are in groups, with food.  hehe

Outdoor fun!!

This is a typical day of outdoor play, they had a friend over to play, did some painting, some science experiments, some sudsy, bubbly water play and swimming. I added some acrylic mirrors into the water and art play areas. We also painted pumpkins! We painted pumpkins last year too! You can see last that post from last year, HERE!

Starting off with vinegar and baking soda.......

They use this umbrella stroller for play, Parker likes to strap himself into it. Then he gets me to push him around.

Garland, pretending to row a boat!

Garland was pretending to row a boat