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Share fun and giggles with your children. These engaging ideas will captivate and stimulate your child's senses and ignite your child's thirst for learning.

1. Fingerpainting with a twist. Try different fingerpaints besides the traditional store bought kind. For example: Chocolate pudding paint. Just buy a can of ready-made pudding from the grocery store. Or Jello finger painting: Mix together 1 package of Jello and 2 Tbsp hot water in a small bowl being careful not to overmix. Let cool 5 to 10 min. before using. Paint on tin foil for a neat effect. For some more edible food craft ideas visit create-kids-crafts.com.

2. Play dough. Play dough is fun to squish, squash and create with. No need to go out and buy some, there's a great recipe below. Make an easy playdough rose for an idea: 1. Roll out a thin, long snake and press it flat. Loosely roll it up like a rug from one end to the other. Spread and press each layer out a bit. 2. For the leaves, flatten a piece of play dough with your hands. Cut out 2 leaf shapes with a plastic knife and press them onto the bottom of the rose. For a photo of the playdough rose and other cool playdough creations for kids(little and big) visit my web site below.

3. Bubble blowing without tears. Here's a great recipe that uses 'tearless' baby shampoo that won't sting eyes if bubbles get splattered in little eyes. 3 cups water, 1 cup baby shampoo, 1/3 cup light corn syrup. Mix all together in a large bowl.

4. Oobleck. Who says small children have short attention spans? This alone fascinated my 2 yr. old at the time for 45 minutes. Recipe: 1 cup cornstarch, 1/3 cup water, 5 to 7 drops food coloring(optional). Mix water and food coloring together. Slowly add cornstarch. Do not stir. Let the mixture stand for 1 to 2 minutes. Pick a handful of the oobleck up and squeeze it until it forms a hard ball. Open your hand and the oobleck will turn from a solid back into a liquid. If it gets too dry after awhile, just add a bit more water.

Kool-Aid Playdough Recipe(Adult assistance and supervision required)

1 cup flour
' cup salt
1 small pkg. unsweetened Kool-Aid (6 g pkg)
1 ' Tbsp cooking oil
1 c boiling water

Mix flour, salt, oil and Kool-Aid. Add boiling water; stir and knead until cooled and smooth. Store in a plastic bag in the refrigerator. This playdough will be the color and scent of the Kool-Aid you used.

Remember to supervise little kids with these ideas to ensure that with some of the ideas they don't put things in their mouth.