It’s no secret, Mila and I love the beach. With her Mermaid Activity Box last week, I had her make a snack that matched: Beach Pudding Cups.
Honestly, I love that Mila loves the beach. She’s been to so many different beaches during her three years and each time she’s been obsessed. When we’re not there, she’s always asking to go back.
Anytime I can bring beach life to Ohio, I do my best to do so. I think this is why this snack was a hit with Mila.
Here’s what you’ll need to make this beachy snack:
Instant Vanilla Pudding
Graham Crackers
Gummy Fish or Sea Animals
First, make the instant pudding as directed in the box. I think all you need is milk with the pudding powder. It’s (the instant pudding) really simple if you’ve never made it.
Then, make graham cracker crumbs. I just blended in my blender!
Now it’s time to put it all together.
Get a clear bowl or cup and do a pudding layer first. I just eyeballed all the layers and didn’t do a specific amount.
Next, add a layer of graham crackers.
Repeat these steps until you get to the top. You want your final layer to be the graham crackers.
To finish it off, add fish and sea animal gummies. I also added a mermaid tail on top too. Next time I make this, I’ll mix blue food coloring to cool whip to make water too.
I think these Beach Pudding Cups are so cute for at home or even at the beach. Since I used our small Tupperware containers, it’d be perfect to put the top on and serve for a beach picnic.
Mila’s favorite part were the gummy creatures on top! She ate them all before she got to the ‘beach.’
This would also be a perfect after school snack since it’s so easy to make and out together. It made me feel like such a creative mom to do this with her.
She wanted to help layer the ingredients and did good too. So kids can essentially make their own after school snack!
What’s your favorite way to bring the beach home? Snacks, activities, or looking at old vacation pictures? Let me know in the comments.
Another week, another activity box for Mila to explore. This week is a Mermaid Activity Box. Since summer is still here and she loves the beach, I thought it was a perfect time to do this theme. It’s fun, education, and a hit with Mila.
Although I over-themed it for mermaids, this could easily be altered to be more about sharks, fish, or any other ocean creature too.
Like the Dinosaur Activity Box, the Mermaid Activity Box is filled with sensory items, toys, books, and educational activities for toddlers and preschoolers. All of this fits inside a book box from Target so it can easily travel from place to place.
These boxes are such an easy way to help promote learning for you little ones with multiple family members and friends.
Every time Mila sees me start to take items out of the box and put new ones in, she gets so excited to see what she’ll be working with. I think by just getting her to sit down with the sensory toys, books, and activity worksheets, it’ll help her prepare for preschool. it can be a huge adjustment to start learning how to sit down for crafts and activities the first time they go to preschool.
Anyways… here’s what’s all in the Mermaid Activity Box.
Mermaid Books
I’m a big supporter of Mila reading books every single day. Even if she’s making her own words up with the pictures. Books help kids understand concepts, worlds, and places they don’t have the opportunity or option to explore.
These four books are amazing. I’ve definitely showcased three of them on past posts before. They’re just that good!
In all of these books, we love the stories, but the illustrations are just gorgeous. I think they really capture the ocean vibes with all the blues. Mila’s favorite for a long time have been the That’s Not My… series. She loves finding the mouse and learning new words that describe what the books about.
I’m always on the look out for more books too. If you have fun ocean, sea, or mermaid inspired books you think we’d love, let me know in the comments.
Sensory Play Items
We love sensory play. There’s SO many options for kids to learn by feeling and exploring.
The beautiful resin letters are from Beags and Bubs. I shouted Danielle out last week for her letters and knew I had to showcase them for this activity box. She also created the seek and find activity too (the clear circle in the top left) and the sand play-doh. I would 100% recommend her to anyone. Her Instagram feed is beautiful and she can make custom letters that will be perfect for you child.
I also added her mermaid pop-it. Mila is just amazed by pop-its. Whenever she gets overwhelmed, i’ll give her one and it calms her. This one is adorable, but can easily be carried around too.
She also always loves slime and I gave her blue play-doh too. The seashells were included so she can make impressions in the play-doh. This will allow her to extend her play and be imaginative with the toys too.
I have a ton of different sticker and coloring books for Mila. She loves them both. For her sticker books, I usually have another page or cardboard for her to put them on too.
The two pictured above were found at Joann’s for cheap! The marker page was actually 70% off. Mila likes the way the black feels and I love that it’ll help her stay in the lines. I also have other coloring pages from older coloring books that she loves to color in.
Like with the Dinosaur Activity Box, I flipped through Mila’s workbooks and found mermaid and ocean themed pages for her to use. Usually preschool workbooks will have a huge range of themes they use in their books, which is awesome for using different themes!
Again, I love preparing her for preschool by giving her these pages now. It helps let her know that learning can be fun!
There’s also a ton of printables on Pinterest you can find for activity pages too!
Although they’re not added in this picture of the activity box, you can add so many other crafts and activities too. We’ve done so many ocean and mermaid themed sensory play and crafts that Mila has asked to do over and over again.
These crafts and sensory components can be put in bags or Tupperware containers to help organize them.
Wondering what crafts and sensory ideas you can do, check out this list:
Overall, this activity bin is so much fun and perfect for summer. Mila loved the girly-ness of it, but I love how it can easily be adapted for sharks or ocean play in general.
I can’t wait to share next week’s theme!
Again, if you have any suggestions about a theme or have something you’d like to see, let me know in the comments.
Water sensory bins are perfect ways to help toddlers understand the world around them. For Earth Day, I wanted to talk to Mila about keeping our world clean. A perfect way to get her to connect was through an ocean pollution cleanup activity.
Since Mila loves the beach, I wanted her to know how not throwing trash away can hurt other living things environment.
Obviously, toddlers can’t understand the concept of the whole world at this age. We still want to teach them about their actions and the results after.
To connect Mila with ocean pollution, I used some toys and trash she sees every day.
Here’s what you’ll need if you try this water sensory bin:
I placed Mila’s reusable mermaid and ocean stickers to the bottom of the container first. Also, I added some seashells and her favorite aquatic friends we have around the house.
Then, I filled up the container about half way.
We talked about how ocean animals (and mermaids of course) lived in the water. That all the oceans were their home. I asked her what makes a home? She said a clean place to have fun.
I’m pretty sure she saw my bowl full of trash at that moment.
After that question, I started throwing trash in the container. She definitely was a little confused. I told her sometimes the oceans get dirty because trash doesn’t get thrown away and other things don’t get recycled.
Soon, her ocean friends home were riddled with pollution. Until, I gave her the opportunity to cleanup!
I asked her if she wanted to help the ocean out and of course she agreed.
She used the spoon and strainer to fish out trash. Some of the trash was her fruit snacks, caps, and old ball she had in our house.
Honestly, her face seemed a little disgusted by all the trash. Somehow, she pushed through that phase and still had fun playing in the water.
Little by little, her hard work paid off. The ocean pollution cleanup was done!
We continued talking about trash and the ocean. She asked to do the activity again, and was still very concerned about saving her friends.
This water sensory was a great way to put environmental cleanup in Mila’s hands. She felt like she was helping the world around her and it might help teach her to do just that.
We love the Earth and connecting with all parts of nature. Activities, like this, can help our child love our world even more.
To find some other Earth Day activities, check out what these moms have planned:
Grey Skies & Rainbow Highs 