Creative Gift Idea: smART Pixelator

I love gifts that are also activities, because they keep kids occupied, help them focus and give them a goal to work toward. The folks at Flycatcher sent me and the girl a smART Pixelator to try out, and I think it would be a great gift for creative kids, crafty kids and those who love technology.

At a glance this is a peg board with melty beads, but the Pixelator is an electronic device you plug in. Insert the included memory card pre-loaded with designs, add the pegboard to the top and fill in beads using the enclosed tool.

You can also use the device’s app to take pictures of anything and have them be turned into pixelated designs you can re-create in pegs.

My daughter tried out a couple of the simple designs included on the device, then we tried taking a picture of an anime-style character she drew. We had to simplify it a bit in the app and then she changed some of the colors so as not to run out of beads (it actually ended up bigger than we intended, but that was probably my fault).

It was fun and easy to use and the resulting designs were cute. The girl said it was easier to add the beads in by hand rather than with the little tool that’s included; try both ways to see what you like.

When working on a long project the device can time out and turn itself off. Sometimes this made the device reset and we had to download our pattern again or scroll through all the different patterns on the memory card to find the one we were working on again.

This would be great for a creative kid who likes to make their own magnets, charms, decorations for cards or whatever else you might use melty bead projects for (it should be noted these are different from Perler beads and are not interchangeable; they sell their own brand of beads available in many colors). It might also encourage kids who aren’t that crafty because the screen showing the pattern makes it easier to complete than using a printed out pattern.

If you’re looking for a creative, fun gift for a kiddo in your life (package rates it ages 7 and up), check out the smART Pixelator.

Did you know that October is Squirrel Awareness Month? I didn’t know we needed more awareness of these little creatures, but let’s take it as a sign to learn more about squirrels!

Let’s start with some fun facts via Kids Konnect: did you know there are five subfamilies and more that 280 species of squirrels? The smallest are pygmy squirrels and the largest, the Bhutan giant flying squirrel, can be longer that 4 feet (1.2 meters).

Tree squirrels can climb down trees so fast because their ankles can rotate 180 degrees, allowing them to grab the tree bark as they go down. While most squirrels don’t survive their first year of life, they can live five to 10 years in the wild and squirrels have been known to live up to 20 years in captivity!

Rhythms of Play has more fun facts and tips for observing squirrels if you want to add some real life nature to your nature study.

We always like to start these collections with life cycle and parts of the animal printables, so let’s grab the squirrel life cycle an parts of a squirrel worksheets from Montessori Nature. (It doesn’t look like these are free any more but they have a whole unit study on squirrels you can buy that includes life cycle and parts activities, characteristics of different kinds of squirrels, a printable poster, information about predators and more.)

Grab the squirrel lapbook printable (free with email address) from Homeschool Share to learn the parts of a squirrel, where they live, what they eat, whether they hibernate and more. There’s also a nut taste test printable, a place for making observations about squirrels, life cycle of an oak tree, games and more.

Simple Everyday Mom has some cute squirrel themed worksheets including tracing the letter s, labeling the parts of a squirrel and a letter s maze. She also has more activity pages with a squirrel theme, including matching, a more traditional maze and a counting and graphing activity.

Work on letter recognition with this squirrel and acorn game printable from Teaching Mama. I love the idea of hiding the letters in a fall themed sensory bin for kids to find, identify and match to the letter on the worksheet.

For older kids you can do this “if I were a squirrel” writing prompt from Lesson Planet.

And throw in a little counting with these squirrel and acorn tens frame printables from JDaniel4’s Mom, which you can use to count real acorns or any other little fall themed thing you have handy.

Have you read?

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