Traveling Clubhouse: Tray Table Town

The day for us had finally arrived. It was time to take the Clubhouse on the road :)

The evening before departure my Clubhouse Kid got a sneak peek of the "Traveling Clubhouse" activity bags as I packed them into the carry on. He was definitely excited to get his hands on them, and talked about them all the way to the airport the next morning.

Travel Tip: Preparing specialized activities, and having "special snacks" for travel will give your traveling Preschooler something to look forward to. Choose activities that will be new to them and snacks they don't usually get to indulge in. Let them sneak a peek before your travels at all of the goodies that are in store, and it should help to ease the transition when it's time to leave home and board a plane, or buckle up for a long road trip.

I was convinced that my carry on full of baggies would be completely used up by the time we landed in Buffalo, NY. Oh boy was I wrong.
In a good way ;)

In this post I will share the most popular activity for my Clubhouse Kid on our travels. Special thanks to some readers who shared a sandpaper and yarn activity on the Fit Kids Clubhouse Facebook page, they inspired me to create this activity bag.

Clubhouse Water Bead Pool

We have had a lot of fun with water beads here at the Clubhouse. From shrinking them to freezing them, from putting them in sensory bottles and baggies full of a variety of liquids, to putting them in sensory tables full of "worms". You name it, and we've probably done it when it comes to these bouncy little beads.

One thing had been left undone though, and after a few weather setbacks, we finally got to check it off of our list...

Clubhouse Problem Solving: Lemon Dough

We must make a batch of play dough at the Clubhouse at least once a week. We have tried so many different recipes, the Clubhouse Kids do believe they invented play dough. On this day we decided it was time for a fresh batch, and what better scent for Summer than lemonade?

The recipe I found only required 3 ingredients; corn starch, baking soda, and water. I had never used this recipe before, and I found it here. I decided to add some powdered lemonade mix, and a few squirts of lemon juice.

First, we brought 1 1/4 cup of water to a boil, mixing in the powdered lemonade and the lemon juice. The smell of lemons was strong, just the way we wanted it. 

Then we stirred in a mixture of 1 cup of baking soda and 1 cup of corn starch.

Clubhouse Storms mean Clubhouse Rainbows

Today was Clubhouse Summer Fun Day. We woke up this morning excited for all we had planned.

Then we noticed the ominous dark clouds.

This is Arizona though so it doesn't rain three times in one week, right?

Not even during monsoon season, right?
Wrong.

I had a very sad Clubhouse Kid on my hands, as he saw all of the activities we had set up outside start drowning under water, and heard Momma making all of the cancelled event phone calls.

Time to rescue this day before a sad Clubhouse Kid turned into a grumpy one. So I asked him, "What comes after the rain?"

Clubhouse Salt Dough Stars

After making our water bead Flag, we decided to dive right in to another patriotic activity to celebrate Independence Day.

First, how about a fun fact? The original 13 stars on the United States flag were to be white, on a blue background, to represent "a new constellation". So that's why there are stars on the U.S. Flag!! Who knew today's activity would turn into an astronomy lesson? :)

Now on to the actual activity. Salt dough. There are a few different recipes for this, but for us what always works is equal parts of all ingredients. For this activity, we mixed 1 cup of flour, 1 cup of salt, and 1 cup of water.

Once we had our dough ready to go, we rolled it out and used our star shaped cookie cutter to make our stars.

Clubhouse Flag

After looking at several photos of the United States flag in books, we decided to use a few different ingredients and make a flag of our own.