Reusuable Mazes for Preschoolers

My preschoolers around here love to do mazes, and I am forever printing mazes off the internet only to have them completed in minutes and the kids asking for more.

I came up with a solution to this problem which I thought others may like to use with their own preschoolers.

I have printed easy mazes from the internet, laminated them and then bound them together with big key rings, forming a reusable book. The laminate is perfect for dry erase markers.

This group of mazes have a "spring" theme. I plan on other seasonal themes as the year rolls on.

Luke is an expert at completing mazes.

Kimberly does surprisingly well. She will be 3 in May and she especially loves the mazes with an easy path. I found this Dora the Explorer maze here.

Good job, Kimberly!

You can see the key rings above. I used a hole punch to make the holes.

I found most of the printables at DLTK Kids. They provide a large assortment of mazes all put into categories--this is a super resource for very easy mazes!

Goin' fishin'-Tot Style

We are going fishing, fishing for letters, shapes and numbers.
First I cut different color fish out of foam sheets, and then inserted a brass brad fastener to make a fish eyeball. This fastener is also what is attracted to the magnet on the fishpole.

For the fishing poles, we used a 7/16"- three foot dowel, cut in half to make two poles. These are very sturdy. Daddy drilled a hole in the end of each "pole" to tie the fishing line on to. I used a circle magnet for the "hook" and embroidery floss for the line. The kids have since broke this line, so I am going to try regular yarn next. Luke enjoys "reeling" his line in. This takes a lot of patience on his part, but he takes his time and succeeds.

Everyone has been having fun with this. Above, Gracie appears to be helping someone catch a fish.

I have added the letters of Luke's and Kim's names to the fish, along with the numbers we are learning (1-3) and some different shapes.
I have all sorts of ideas for other "fish" we could make. Basically anything we are learning about could be made into "fish" to help in learning, such are little felt animals, or we could even make pictures of stories in sequential order that the kids could catch in the proper order. I'm thinking it would be simple to laminate small pictures and just stick a paperclip on them to catch the magnet.
I am sure there will be updates about this activity as I add to it.

Toddler "School"

Kim and Luke skipped nap today, and began a total melt-down at around dinner time.

I have been trying to find activities that they could begin doing which would fall under the category of "active" learning.

This very simple scooping and pouring activity changed their dispositions immediately,

I plan on trying to see if they can sort the colors into different containers, but today they were very happy to scoop and dump, scoop and dump. In fact, they wouldn't stop to eat dinner, so Amy and I fed them as they continued to scoop and dump.LOL

It actually suprised me how much they enjoyed doing this. I will certainly save this for times when they need to be "contained" in one spot.