We recently received a copy of an awesome book in the mail called 150+Screen-Free Activities for Kids by fellow blogger, Asia Citro from Fun At Home With Kids. I love the book and am going to share one of my favourite activities from it today – called a Pom Pom Shooter that you can easily make with your kids to have an indoor snowball fight, play a fun and active game of pom pom tag, and more!
Stick around until the end – and you’ll find the entry details to win one of 4 awesome toys featured in the book!
*This post contains Amazon Affiliates Links for your convenience. Please see our full Disclosure Policy here. I was also sent a copy of 150+ Screen-Free Activities for Kids by the publisher in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.
Before I show you how much fun we had with the Pom Pom Shooters, let me tell you a bit about Asia’s new book. It’s geared towards babies, toddlers, preschoolers as well as older children and is FULL of fun and easy-to-prep activities.
This book has entire chapters each on slimes, doughs, and homemade paints. Some of my favourites are the taste-safe glowing-slime, melting ice-cream dough, and magic expanding paint.
All of the unique recipes (and there are tons of them!) have easy to follow instructions, pictures of kids playing with the materials, and tips for storing, using and troubleshooting recipes.
As a parent of a boy with severe peanut allergy, I also appreciated that each recipe indicates whether the product is taste-safe, and contain any allergens (nuts, soy, dairy, gluten, eggs, etc.)
In another chapter dedicated to small world play, Asia describes the value of these activities for storytelling, language development, and role play.
At the age of 3, Onetime is just starting to get into this kind of activity (see our recent Snowy Wonderland Small Play Bin). I found so many great ideas here for inspiration for our play! (Oh, and I LOVE the fizzing-foaming car wash idea.)
And finally, our favourite activity of all, the Pom Pom Shooters, came from the chapter of Do-It-Yourself-Toys.
I made the shooters in a few short minutes, and Onetime and I were off to play!
It took a few demonstrations of how to work the shooter before Onetime could do it himself effectively, but once he “got” it – he was thrilled.
We first tried pom poms as the book suggested. We used sparkly blue and white ones in my shooter, and red and green Christmasy ones in Onetime’s red shooter. We had a blast just shooting our pompoms all over the living room, trying to see how far we could make them go. Way too much fun to stop and take pictures of my messy living room!
Then I got a new idea – we’ve been doing a bunch of activities around here lately with foam balls (see our Wintry Sensory Learning Bins), and so it made sense to give these a try in the shooters. I wanted to see if the lighter balls would pop even farther than the pom poms.
To our delight – we discovered that the shooters work really well with all sizes of foam balls as well! And voila – an indoor snowball fight!
Onetime and I had so much fun shooting “snowballs” at each other – and neither of us got hurt in the least! We even tried a game of pom pom tag, as the book suggested, and that kept us giggling and active for another 1/2 hour.
I tried to capture Onetime’s glee in a photo, but he’s been camera shy lately and more interested in being the photographer. So…he took this shot of me about to aim the shooter at him! Not bad for a 3 year old huh?
I could see using these for a fun activity at a birthday party or family holiday get together, or even as a way of shooting confetti into the air on New Years Eve! So much fun. What a great idea!
If you want to find the instructions for this awesome DIY toy, as over 100 other fun ideas for your kids, be sure to pick up your copy of Asia’s book. 150+ Screen-Free Activities for Kids is available world wide. You can purchase your copy at any of the stores below:
Amazon US:
Amazon UK
Amazon CA
Barnes and Noble
From your local US bookstore
Book Depository
Fishpond AU
This book would make a fantastic gift for anyone with children. Make sure to grab a copy for your child’s teacher, daycare provider, babysitter, relatives, and all your friends! Wouldn’t it be fun to place it in a basket along with some of the supplies for projects?
That’s it for today. If you’re looking for other Wintry kids’ crafts and activities, be sure to follow our Pinterest board: Follow One Time Through’s board Winter Kids Crafts & Activities on Pinterest.
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