South Tampa Speech & Language

Let me tell you about how I bought a large, festive cardboard fort (on sale 😉). My kids love to color and I envisioned us working together to make Santa’s Workshop—the anchor of our play area for the holiday season. Well…my preschooler was overwhelmed with how much white space was left to color. My fun holiday activity started to feel like a chore. Enter—PAINT. We keep washable paint on hand and painting the large white spaces was so much faster than coloring with markers or crayons. My preschooler was so happy to have a creative outlet AND feel like she “finished” something. We’re taking it slow—one wall at a time. I’ll post a pic in stories when we’re done prepping it for Santa!

Things did not go according to plan.
The plan was:
☑️ Preschooler sorts pom-poms into color-labeled cups
☑️ Toddler gets the full joy of dumping them back into the bowl
☑️ Then we stick them onto the “tree” using contact paper 🍂

What actually happened:
My preschooler fully embraced “work smarter, not harder” and just dumped the pom-poms RIGHT onto the sticky paper 😂 I scooped them back into the bowl and modeled “one at a time” for my toddler.

✨ Toddler language targets:
soft • shiny • squishy • sticky • on • off • push

✨ Preschooler language + preliteracy:
• Drew Jack-o-lantern faces and labeled emotions: happy, sad, angry, scared
• We connected each feeling to a real-life moment (“When do you feel angry?”)
• Practiced describing, storytelling, and using emotional vocabulary
• Later, while brother napped, she cut the “grass” = great for following directions and narrating actions (“cut, snip, more grass!”)

Toddler got lots of focused modeling + repetition, and we added in emotion face imitation, too—because even contact paper crafts can be full of language opportunities.

How would you use this craftivity with your little ones?

Materials from + and inspired by 🙌

What if I told you the toys don’t matter?
You don’t need every “deal” that pops up — especially when it’s not really a deal at all. (Seriously, check camelcamelcamel.com before hitting “add to cart.” 😅)

Your little one learns best from YOU — your words, your expressions, your gestures. You can build language skills with any toy…or even no toys at all!