It’s that time of year when school gets out and students are graduating! If you’re like me it’s hard to come up with ideas of what to get 18 year olds and even college graduates. Fortunately, I’ve come up with a list of great ideas that the graduates you know are sure to love!

First off, I’m going to put a plug in for our College Student Cookbook. You can either buy the hard copy, or you can buy a digital copy that they can use on their iPad, Kindle, and other tablets. You can read the original post we did about the cookbook for more details, but basically it’s a really simple cookbook that is perfect for students. The recipes serve two and only require a few kitchen supplies.

College Student Cookbook 

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That said, here are some other great ideas!

• Amazon Prime Membership (a little pricey if you aren’t the parent, but have a couple people go in on it!)
• Sauce Pan
• Frying Pan
• Make a bouquet of kitchen utensils
• A collection of your favorite recipes in a cute recipe book
• A basic cookbook
• Pillowcases
• Headphones
• Frisbee, Volleyball or football
• Amazon Giftcard
• Graduation Necklace
• An oil change :)
• Games such as Ticket to Ride, Monopoly, Settlers of Catan, Loaded Questions, Bananagrams, Set, and Quirkle
• Card Games such as Phase 10, Rack-o, Uno, Skip-Bo or playing cards (from the dollar store)
• Cash or Gift Cards

In my family, our aunts and uncles generally give us cash and someone finds a cute container to put it in. I have to say, I loved having the extra money when I was in school!

For more ideas on gifts check out this list of 10 ideas. And of course, Pinterest is always a great way to find tons of websites and people with great ideas. Good luck with your graduation gift giving! If you haven’t already, don’t forget to check out our College Student Cookbook and Missionary Cookbook, more details on the original post.

College Student Cookbook 

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Missionary Cookbook 

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How can I teach shapes to my toddler or preschooler? What is a fun preschool shape activity?

Smiley Man is getting into this stage where he really likes scissors. I’m in this stage where I like to ban scissors because of a few scissors cuts that have happened somewhat recently (cuts in the couch, haircuts, cuts in my favorite rice warmer). Yeah, let’s just say that not everything is perfect in my household. ;)

Anyway, I wanted to capitalize on Smiley Man’s interest in cutting, but I also wanted to provide a controlled environment for him to practice cutting. Luckily, this cutting practice goes perfectly with learning shapes. Not only will this activity help to teach shapes, but it will also give your toddler or preschooler some great cutting practice!

Start with a red piece of construction paper. You don’t have to use red, but we will be using these cut shapes as “pepperoni” to go on our shape “pizzas” that I’ll be posting about next week. Fold the paper into 8 long strips and cut them apart.

Each strip of paper will be used for a different shape. Draw lines on the rectangle to make a bunch of that shape. Okay, I know that sounds really confusing, but here is a picture of Smiley Man cutting my long strip that will be a bunch of squares.

Hopefully that makes more sense now. For the non-straight shapes (circle, heart, oval, star) you can just draw lines to make squares and then draw the shapes in the squares. Here is my long strip for circles.

Once you are done prepping the rectangles, get your toddler ready and pull out the scissors. Usually toddlers will need help with holding the paper and sometimes they will need help with opening and closing the scissors. Try to let your toddler do as much as he can by himself, but don’t worry if he needs a lot of helping.

When you finish cutting a long rectangle into the shapes, talk about that shape and its characteristics (look at these squares, they all have four sides, let’s count the sides, etc.). We made little piles of all the shapes to keep them separate, then we put them into baggies to save for our shape “pizzas” that we’ll do next week.

This was a great way to give Smiley Man some controlled scissor practice and it was also a great way to teach shapes!

What is a fun cut and paste activity that is good for preschool?

I have another fun cut and paste activity for you today and it is perfect for preschool. I made some sorting colors cut and paste pages. There are three different pages you can print or you can just print one for your preschooler. Each page has 8 pictures with two different colors. Simply have your preschooler cut out each picture and then glue it in the box with the same color at the top.

Little Bear went through a small phase a few months ago where he didn’t want to cut anything. I guess it was getting difficult for him and was taking a long time and the end result didn’t turn out perfect. Little Bear can be a bit of a perfectionist (unfortunately he gets that from me and from my amazing husband, so the poor kid has a double whammy). So, I think cutting was frustrating because it took so much effort and he could see that he hadn’t done a good job.

For a while I tried to limit the number of cutting activities that we did because I was trying to be sensitive to his frustrations. However, when we did do cutting activities, I tried to make them extra fun so that he would be willing to try. I found that colorful cutting activities (like these sorting colors cut and paste pages) were the perfect thing to get him motivated.

These sorting colors pages are pretty simple and don’t really need much explanation. Little Bear didn’t really need any instructions to complete the pages; he just needed some scissors and glue. These pages are in color, but you could also print the pages in black and white and start the activity by coloring the pictures the correct color. That way, this becomes a color, cut, and paste activity. Hopefully your preschooler enjoys these sorting pages. Don’t forget to check out my cut and paste apple tree from last week.