Creative Family Fun

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Terri Thompson

Tropical Smoothie

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Every winter while the snow piles up around me and the temperatures drops below zero, I daydream about running away to a tropical location. Give me beaches, warm air, ocean breezes.

Sigh. Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?

Unfortunately, thanks to school and work, spending the winter where it’s warm is never an option. So, I just have to make do with what I have.

I can’t experience the tropics in its entirety, but I can experience it bit by bit through my senses.

Sometimes with my eyes, sometimes with my ears, and this time with my taste buds.

This yummy Tropical Smoothie definitely tasted like I should be sitting at the beach with a warm breeze blowing through my hair. Good-bye winter, hello tropics!

This dairy-free and delicious Tropical Smoothie will whisk you away to the beach. Enjoy it anytime you want a cold and refreshing treat. #smoothie #breakfast #CreativeFamilyFun

The idea for these smoothies started when we were working on our creations for Project:Around the World – The Bahamas.

The cold winter outside was making the girls and I wish we could hop a plane.

We read about the beaches, the weather, and the markets and we had music from The Bahamas playing in the background.

If we closed our eyes, we could pretend we were there.

We were only missing one thing – something cool and refreshing that tasted like a day in the sun.

Disclosure: This post contains Amazon Affiliate and other affiliate links. Please see my Disclosure Page for more details.

This dairy-free and delicious Tropical Smoothie will whisk you away to the beach. Enjoy it anytime you want a cold and refreshing treat.

How to make your Tropical Smoothie

Since we were learning about The Bahamas, I wanted to make a smoothie inspired by all that we learned.

All the fruit that we used are grown in The Bahamas – pineapple, mango, bananas, and coconut (milk).

We added a touch of orange juice, blended it together, and enjoyed our Tropical Smoothies.

This dairy-free and delicious Tropical Smoothie will whisk you away to the beach. Enjoy it anytime you want a cold and refreshing treat.

To make a good smoothie, you need some frozen ingredients. I cut up a mango, a banana, and opened a can of pineapple. I would have preferred a fresh pineapple, but you can’t always find good ones in Minnesota in the middle of winter.

Then, I placed wax paper on a sheet pan, spread out the fruit and then popped it in the freezer for awhile. I froze way more than we needed for one smoothie.

Once your fruit is frozen, you can pop it all in a plastic freezer bag so it takes up less room in your freezer.

If you do want to make things easier on yourself, check the frozen fruit section of the grocery store. I was able to find a bag of frozen pineapple and mango chunks for our next round of smoothies.

This dairy-free and delicious Tropical Smoothie will whisk you away to the beach. Enjoy it anytime you want a cold and refreshing treat.

It’s time to make smoothies! Once you’ve got frozen fruit, it’s really easy to whip up a batch of tropical smoothies.

Grab your blender (we have this one – it’s fab!), throw in your ingredients, blend until smooth, and enjoy.

Save this recipe. You’ll love it!

Tropical Smoothie
Make 1 smoothie

1/2 c. frozen pineapple and mango pieces
1/2 banana, cut into pieces
1/2 c. coconut milk
1/2 c. orange juice

Put all ingredients in the blender. Blend until smooth. Pour into glass and enjoy.

Note: I tried this smoothie using both frozen banana pieces and a banana straight from the fruit bowl. Either way works. If your banana is not frozen, you may need to add a couple of ice cubes before blending to get a good consistency.

This dairy-free and delicious Tropical Smoothie will whisk you away to the beach. Enjoy it anytime you want a cold and refreshing treat.

This yummy Tropical Smoothie definitely whisked us away from winter and onto a tropical beach.

It would make a delicious breakfast or a healthy snack.

So, the next time you want to experience the tropics, just blend up a Tropical Smoothie, grab a straw, sit back, and let your mind take you away to the beach.

Pick Two – A Fun LEGO Math Game

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My daughters’ school decided that this month was Math Facts Month. They’ve challenged all the kids to practice math, either fact families or math skills, each night.

They didn’t send home worksheets, flash cards, or any sort of manipulative. They just sent home a simple sheet of ideas and told us to have fun.

So, I took one of my girls’ current obsession, tossed it together with a little bit of math, and came up with a fun way to practice, Pick Two: LEGO Math Game.

Practice addition, subtraction, or multiplication with this easy LEGO math game for kids. #math #LEGO #education #CreativeFamilyFun

What happens when you combine LEGOs with math? Well, at my house, you end up with a kid who is eager to do as much math as possible. True story.

Maybe this Math Facts Month will be a breeze.

Disclosure: This post contains Amazon Affiliate and other affiliate links. Please see my Disclosure Page for more details.

Grab your LEGO bricks and practice addition with this fun hands-on LEGO math game for early elementary kids. It's such a fun way to do math.

Set up your activity

The set-up for this LEGO math game couldn’t be easier. Just grab a container and fill it with LEGO pieces. Try to find a variety of blocks of different shapes and sizes. I only used the basic bricks because the specialty pieces won’t really work well with this game.

I also grabbed a big base plate to give my daughter a place to organize her bricks.

The only other supplies we needed were a pencil and a piece of paper.

Grab your LEGO bricks and practice addition with this fun hands-on LEGO math game for early elementary kids. It's such a fun way to do math.

Play the game

The game itself is very simple.

My daughter would close her eyes and grab two LEGO bricks from the bucket. She then wrote out an addition problem for the set she pulled out using the bumps on the each brick.

(By the way, is there a technical term for the bumps on a LEGO? I have no idea!) 

For instance, if she pulled out a brick with 4 bumps and one with 8 bumps, she wrote the equation 8 + 4 =?. She then figured out the answer.

Many times she had to count the total number of bumps to get her answer. That’s okay, it’s all a part of learning to do addition.

Grab your LEGO bricks and practice addition with this fun hands-on LEGO math game for early elementary kids. It's such a fun way to do math.

The best part about this game is that it’s easily adaptable.

Try one of these other versions of this LEGO math game:

Create subtraction problems with your two bricks.

Pull two bricks and multiply the amount of bumps on each brick.

Practice greater than, lesser than, or equal to with your bricks

Your preschooler can decide which brick has the most amount of bumps or the least amount of bumps.

Have your preschooler count the total number of bumps on the two bricks s/he pulls out of the bin.

Grab three or more bricks and add them all together.

Grab four or more bricks and put them in order of largest to smallest, or vice versa.

Thank goodness for LEGO. Math Facts Month is going to be a breeze.

 
Grab your LEGO bricks and practice addition with this fun hands-on LEGO math game for early elementary kids. It's such a fun way to do math.

For more fun LEGO ideas, check out these other fun posts from the Early Elementary Blogging Team:

Hands-On Synonym Blocks Matching Game from Raising Little Superhereos
Spelling With LEGOS! from Preschool Powol Packets
LEGO Boat Engineering Challenge from Handmade Kids Art
Using LEGO to find Syllables from Rainy Day Mum
Area and Perimeter with Lego Duplos from School Time Snippets
Plural Nouns with LEGO from Still Playing School
Combinations of Ten Using Lego Figures from Lemon Lime Adventures
Estimating and Probability with LEGO from Planet Smarty Pants
Lego Bar Graphs for First Grade from Look We’re Learning
LEGO Learning Ideas for your kindergartners, first, and second graders.

 

A Week of After School Activities Plus the After School Linky Party – Week 19

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It’s After School Linky Party time! Winter has gotten really cold for us this week, so I’m looking for ideas that we can do inside. Luckily, there were many fun ideas linked up last week. You can find book lists, crafts, learning activities, and more.

I’ve pulled together five of my favorite ideas from last week in this after-school planner. Have fun playing and learning together!


(Pictured left to right)


Day 1: Practice your sight words with a fun game of Paper Football Sight Words from Sugar Aunts.

Day 2: Read a book about the Civil Rights Movement. Pragmatic Mom has a great book list for you.

Day 3: Practice weaving with a straw weaving loom. Mama Smiles shows you how.

Day 4: Who’s been out in the snow? Find out by going on an animal tracks scavenger hunt with Share It! Science News.

Day 5: Make and walk on a snowflake balance beam. Sugar Aunts shows you how to make one and some fun ways to play with it.

Check the linky below for even more great ideas.

 

Make sure to visit all the After School Activities Hosts:
The Educators’ Spin On It
Planet Smarty Pants
Boy Mama Teacher Mama
Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational 

Check out the link up below for even more great after school ideas. If you’re a blogger, please link up any ideas for elementary-aged kids (ages 5 and up).

 

Layered Paper Art Underwater Art Project

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I’m not a winter person at all. I don’t like being cold and I’m really not fond of snow, especially when I have to shovel it.

Luckily, Project: Around the World provided some welcome relief from the cold of winter.

I was very happy that we reached The Bahamas during the coldest time of the year. We got to experience a little bit of warmth as we spent a day exploring this group of islands in the Caribbean Sea. The Bahamas are a popular vacation spot for those of us in North America thanks to its tropical climate and miles and miles of beaches.

We went underwater to find our art inspiration and created these fun Layered Paper Underwater Art.

Create a fun ocean scene inspired by The Bahamas with this layered paper underwater art project for kids combining printmaking with wet-on-wet watercolor.

Fun Fact: The Bahamas is home to the largest flock of flamingos in the world! They make their home at Inagua National Park. 

When my girls and I started Project: Around the World last January, I had no idea how much we would love it. We’re learning so much about the world, making quite a lengthy travel wish list, and having fun together. We’ve made it though one year and all the countries that start with an “A,” now it’s time to move on to another year and another letter of the alphabet.

Disclosure: There are Amazon Affiliate and other affiliate links in this article which means, at no additional cost to you, we could receive compensation for our recommendations. You can read our full disclosure policy on our Disclosure Page for more details.

Create an underwater scene inspired by The Bahamas with this layered paper art project for kids combining printmaking with wet-on-wet watercolor. 

I’ve been inspired by the wealth of layered paper art projects I’ve seen all over Pinterest and have been wanting to try something similar with my girls. (Here’s a great example.)

We used two different art techniques to create our paper and combined the two together for our finished underwater art project.

Wet-On-Wet Watercolor

The first technique we used was wet-on-wet watercolor. This process is so simple and so fascinating. Kids can create beautiful artwork with this technique alone.

The key to the process is using thick paper suitable for watercolors. Regular copy paper will tear easily once wet.

Before painting, we soaked our paper briefly in water. Don’t leave it sitting in the water; you don’t want soggy paper. Once our paper was nice and wet, we use our pan of watercolors to paint the paper. We weren’t trying to make actual pictures, just a pretty colorful design.

Tip: Put your wet paper on a plastic tray for painting, so you don’t get the table wet.

Create an underwater scene inspired by The Bahamas with this layered paper art project for kids combining printmaking with wet-on-wet watercolor.

Bubble Wrap Printmaking

While our wet on wet watercolors were drying, we used a printmaking technique to make our background.

We used another sheet of watercolor paper, blue and white craft paint, and bubble wrap for this part of the project. Thanks to all the packages we received recently, we had a variety of sizes of bubble wrap to choose from.

I cut small pieces from an assortment of bubble wrap. The girls used the paint to paint over the bumpy side of the bubble wrap. Then, they turned it over and pressed it onto their paper. They did this over and over using different colors of paint (blue, light blue, and white) layering it on top of each other until they were satisfied that it looked like water.

Create an underwater scene inspired by The Bahamas with this layered paper art project for kids combining printmaking with wet-on-wet watercolor.

Combine to make your layered paper underwater art project

We waited a couple of days until we finished our project. We had some plans which kept us really busy, which is why we waited so long. You only need to wait overnight for all of your paper to dry.

Once everything was dry, the girls drew fish on their watercolor paintings. Then, they traced the fish and added details with a black Sharpie. They cut out their fish and arranged them on their bubble-wrap printed paper. For the last step, they glued all their fish to the paper.

It was so much fun exploring a tropical location with a on a cold winter’s day with our underwater art. We stayed inside, stayed warm, and learned a lot. I love this project!

Create an underwater scene inspired by The Bahamas with this layered paper art project for kids combining printmaking with wet-on-wet watercolor.
If you enjoyed this underwater layered paper art project, the above photo is perfect for sharing on Facebook or you can share on Pinterest.

Travel the world without leaving home with art projects inspired by all the countries. To find all our projects so far, please click here or on the image below.

You may also like one of these ocean crafts:

Watercolor and Salt Beach Scene

Beach Themed Paper Plate Wreath at Rainy Day Mum

Coral Reef Watercolor Art Project at Rainy Day Mum

Recycled Egg Carton Ocean Animals at Homeschool Preschool

A Week of After School Activities Plus the After School Linky Party – Week 18

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It’s After School Linky Party time! Are your kids back at school yet? Mine started back today. It’s going to take a couple of days to get back in the rhythm of school days, so this is definitely the week to take it easy on after school activities. Play a game, make simple art, or do one of the fun activities included in this link-up.

I’ve pulled together five of my favorite ideas from last week in this after-school planner. Have fun playing and learning together!

(Pictured left to right)



Day 1: Play the Dictionary Game with Grandma Ideas. This sounds like so much fun!

Day 2: Watch a science video. PragmaticMom’s son curated this awesome list of fun videos.

Day 3: Make some cool art work. The Educators’ Spin on It shows you how to create this pretty winter birch tree painting.

Day 4: Practice writing by making a homemade book. Growing Book by Book has a great round-up of simple DIY books.

Day 5: Build a place value snowman with this printable from Math Geek Mama.

Check the linky below for even more great ideas.

 

Make sure to visit all the After School Activities Hosts:
The Educators’ Spin On It
Planet Smarty Pants
Boy Mama Teacher Mama
Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational 

Check out the link up below for even more great after school ideas. If you’re a blogger, please link up any ideas for elementary-aged kids (ages 5 and up).