Friday Craft Corner (a few days early!)- Book Project

I love to do book projects that involve crafts. Well I just love to do crafts in general, but when I can tie them into a favorite book it is even better!


This week we were reading Chicka Chicka Boom Boom which is a book that we love. I had seen ideas for making the tress on other websites before and I combined a few ideas that I have seen.



We are reading Chicka Chicka Boom Boom to review letters in the alphabet. Madeline is doing really well with her letters and we have practiced all but X, Z and Q. After reading the story we made our own trees!

We started with tracing hand and arm onto brown paper for the trunk. Then I traced their hands and cut out four handprints for the leaves. Do-a-dot markers worked perfectly for adding coconuts. And lastly we used stamps to make the letters. Madeline did a great job with stamping her letters. Owen was quite messy with them but had a great time.

Owen working with stamps

I think he was trying to make fingerprints rather than use the stamps! Madeline loves stamps!

Owen's finished tree

Madeline's finished tree (she insisted that the leaves looked better this way!)

Friday Craft Corner

So I have been really bad about posting our crafts lately. We have been doing a ton of them too, I just don't find the time to load the pictures onto the computer and sort through them. I know it is a lame excuse but it is the one I am going with!

But here is what we have been up to (minus pictures, sorry!)

My kids love to have me trace their hands so we have been doing lots of crafts using handprints. Last week we made butterflies (review on b) and this week we made sunflowers (we were doing y for yellow). I found a cute idea at Ramblings of a Crazy Woman and modified it to use handprint leaves. I try to tie the craft into the letter of the week but I am not always able. The sunflowers were a bit of a stretch but it worked!



We also made kites the week we were doing k. Madeline is getting so much better with the scissors. I was really impressed with her cutting out her own kite. I am trying to give her more independance in that area and let go of my need for things to look "right." It is a constant struggle for me (a little OCD I think) but she feels so proud to show people what she made so I am working REALLY hard!



I found this awesome idea for spray painting here and bought some spray bottles last week. I was going to do the project this week but it rained and this is definatly an outdoor project. So this weekend when it is in the 80's we may take the easel outside and see what we can create. I will definatly take pictures and share them if we get to this!



We have also been drawing for fun. And Madeline's people are actually starting to look like people. This week she drew her My little Pony and I could make out ears, head, horn, eyes and legs. this is new for her and I am so proud of her growth. I can't take any credit since I don't do drawing lessons (I think she should develop on her own in that area) but she is doing awesome. Owen scribbles saying dada or mama and I'll ask him if he is drwaing dada or mama and he will smile and say yes. So I try to label his pictures (like I used to with Madeline) so we remember what he drew at each age.



I am working on a craft of my own, a way to display the art projects my kids are making. I found some awesome inspirations and am hoping to get some work done this weekend. If all goes well I will share my own art project next week.

Friday Craft Corner

I like to have my kids make gifts for mothers’ day for their grandmothers and their great grandmother. It is fun for the kids and (I think) more meaningful for the grandma’s and great grandma’s. So this year I was looking around online for an idea. I wanted my kids to plant flowers. But more than that I want them to make or decorate the containers that the flowers will go into. After some searching I found a few ideas that I combined into one (frugal) idea.
I know it is early to get started, but if you are growing seeds and want the gift to have an actual plant then now is the time to get started!

To start I bought impatient seeds. The packet says they do well indoors as well as outdoors. Hopefully this is true! If not, at least the pot will be re-usable. I was going to buy terra cotta planters but they are breakable. And my kids are VERY good at breaking things. So we settled on some plastic containers that I found at Target for 99 cents.

All the ideas I found online suggested using acrylic paints. Those stain. Again, my kids are VERY good at staining things. So instead I came up with a compromise. We will paint with poster paints and then I alone will spray the containers with a clear acrylic, water proof coating that adheres to plastic. After looking at a few sprays I even found one that is UV protective at Michaels. That cost $6.99.

So far I have spent less than $12 dollars on the gifts. All that is left to buy is the soil which I can pick up for about $3 (and use the remainder for starting my garden!). So the total for the gifts for three wonderful women is less than $13. Not bad!

I thought about having the kids go to town with painting the pots. And while I am sure they would be masterpieces I wanted to do something a little simpler. So instead I decided to have them make handprint tulips on each pot. Two handprints per kid, and two kids= four tulips on each pot. I allowed Madeline to choose the colors for each flower pot for her hands. Then after allowing the handprints to dry I went back with green paint and added in leaves and stems. With a sharpie marker I wrote the child’s initials under each handprint and around the rim I wrote Happy Mother’s Day and the year. Jon the sprayed them with the acrylic gloss sealer to make them waterproof.

On the second day we added soil and seeds. We will water the plants and hopefully have some beautiful plants to give away on Mothers’ Day next month. My backup plan if the flowers do not grow is to go out and buy some flowers and replant them. Hopefully I won’t have to do it, but it could happen! I also plan to tie a pretty ribbon around each pot.

Come back and visit before mother’s day to see how our plants turned out!

Friday Craft Corner

Here it is again a day late. Oops!
This week we were working with rainbows so we made rainbow necklaces that you can eat with Fruit Loops. To do this all you need are fruit loops (normally I buy store brand but the real things were on sale for $1.50), yarn, small cups and a paper for sorting the fruit loops.
I had the kids sort the fruit loops first by color and then had them string them in any order they wanted to. I was babysitting that day for two other kids (four kids total which makes for a houseful for preggo Melinda!) and I was busy helping everyone so I didn't get many pictures. The kids had a geat time though. The oldest is almost 8 and he liked making his own pattern as he went. Owen was the youngest and he was able to string a few fruit loops on his own while I held the string. Afterwards everyone enjoyed eating their products!


A sorting sheet, a cup of fruit loops and an almost finished necklace.


A very happy Owen after eating his fruit loop necklace!

Friday Craft Corner

This week was a simple craft, we finger painted. I love fingerpainting but we don't do it very often. This is possibly due to the almost two year old in the house =) But after how well it went on Tuesday I think we will bring them out more often.

We have four colors in our basket- red, yellow, blue and green. Four is more than enough with my kids. I start out by putting small dollops of the colors directly onto the paper. Of course they each just have to start out with all four colors. For this reason four colors are plenty. Plus they mix on the paper and can make lots of different colors

When Madeline first started fingerpainting when she was about 2 1/2 I used large sheets of paper, but not the special finger painting paper. I am frugal about arts and crafts and at almost $7 a pad the finger painting paper just struck me as a waste. Well, after many paper rips, messes and crying I decided to splurge on real finger painting paper. It was SO SO worth it.

I also put both kids in smocks. What did we use for smocks? Daddy's old white t-shirts. They are huge but they work so well. They covered the kids completely and they didn't cost me a dime! How awesome is that?

Owen started out just using his index fingers. He was a little uncertain. By the end he was full out into it using hands and arms to smush it around. he kept asking for "mo" paint. I would turn his paper so he could use the paint that was splotched in different areas before adding more to help with drying time.



Madeline got into it right away. Then she started mixing colors to see what would happen. I did NOT let this learning opportunity pass me by. We talked about what would happen if we mixed red and blue, red and yellow, blue and yellow. The she tried mixing yellow and green and said "it didn't change!" So we talked about it a little. Then she lost interest and went back to her masterpiece.



All in all the rugrats spent about 20 minutes quietly painting. They each made two pictures. The clean up took me all of 7 minutes, including washing hands, and it was well worth it. We will be using finger paints again in the near future!

Friday Craft Corner on Saturday

I am a day late this week. Jon has been home on school vacation which is wonderful but it always throws my schedule off.

This week I tried another craft basket. I filled it with pompoms, different shaped scissors, glue, caryons, glitter glue pens, construction paper and foam sticker shapes. Madeline and Owen had a great time and these are the results:

Madeline's final creation

Owen's final creation

Fridat Craft Corner

I was inspired by Tired, Need Sleep and her art box activities for her son. Instead of handing my kids a project and the materials to complete it, I gave them a basket full of materials and an idea to work with. This week we worked on valentines projects.


In the basket was glue, markers, crayons, do a dot markers, construction paper, valentine colored tissue paper, stickers, heart shaped doilies and ribbon. I let them have fun and they created some masterpieces.



With Owen I put glue all over his paper and let him go to town. He had quite a few layers of hearts on his papers and he had a great time. He would put doilies and hearts on the paper and I would add another thin layer of glue and let him add more decorations. I also helped him peel stickers (which he LOVES) to add to his creations. He was very pleased and actually spent about 20 minutes working on his cards!



Madeline first chose to put stickers on some doilies which she later deemed decorations and put up on the back window. Then she took construction paper and glued tissue paper hearts on them along with doilies and ribbon. She used her own glue so it took a long time to dry. I am trying to teach her to use small dots of glue, but she prefers globs and well, glue is cheap so I don't worry about it too much. I cut out the hearts for her and Owen to glue to the paper. We are still working on scissor skills and since I wanted her to enjoy the project I did the cutting, plus tissue paper is not as easy to cut since it is flimsy. She cut up her ribbon and loved it. Madeline worked on her decorations for over half an hour.



Since both kids' attention span with crafts isn't usually this long I think I will approach more projects this way. It is easier for me, less planning involved, and it is great to see the final creations!



The cards came out super cute and if I could find my camera you could see for yourself =)

Friday Craft Corner

This is actually the craft we did last week, but I was too sick to post it. I found the idea on another blog and I am truly sorry that I can't remember what blog it was. I found the idea before my computer crashed and I lost all of my favorite links. Lukcily I remembered the craft, but sadly not the blog.


This week we painted with ice cubes. To do this you need:

ice cube trays filled partway with water
food coloring
craft sticks
coffee filters


Start by adding drops of food coloring to the ice cube trays. I chose to make two yellow, two blue, two red and two purple (one for each kid).

Insert craft sticks and put tray into freezer overnight.

The next day take the tray out of the freezer and remove the ice cubes from the tray. The original post where I found this idea suggested letting the ice cubes sit for a few minutes as they paint better when they melt a little. I didn't preplan and instead used the microwave for about 8 seconds.

Give each child the ice cubes (I put them in bowls) and coffee filters. Have the children paint the coffee filters with the ice cubes.

Allow to dry.


I cut ours into heart shapes and we taped them to our front window for valentines day decorations. You could also use this as a lesson in coloring blending and mixing.







I also froze some clear ice cubes with craft sticks to use at a later time. I want to have the kids color with markers and then bleed them by painting with ice cubes. I will post pictures when we do this!

Friday Craft Corner

This week we started making our valentine decorations. Truthfully I would have started a couple of weeks ago, but I thought Madeline would drive me nuts counting down the days if I started too early.
So today we made hearts. It went along well with our H theme. It is an activity I found on dltk-kids. Madeline really liked it because it gave her a chance to use her scissors. This is a skill we are still working to master, but she likes to try sometimes!
What you need:
two different colored pieces of construction paper
scissors
glue

Draw a heart outline on one piece of paper.
Cut the second paper into strips. Allow your child to the cut or tear each strip into smaller pieces.
Glue the cut/torn pieces into the heart outline.

It was very simple. My 1 1/2 year old glued his pieces, including a long strip of uncut paper, onto his heart as well. Ours are now decorating our backdoor.

Friday Craft Corner

This has been a quick week. I have not had time to post at all due to life in general. I didn't post on Tuesday about ways I save money becuase I lost my internet connection again (I think we finally have it all fixed) and I didn't post Thursday about our homeschool because this week was a review week and I was exhausted from spending the morning at a local childrens museum.
But I am getting it today. Today is my first installment of my own Friday Craft Corner. I love to do crafts with my kids. And I have been trying to record these ideas more often as well as trying to find a way to store or display them. But that is another post for another day.

Today's craft is Snowmen Bottles. (sorry I dont' have a pic of mine) To make these cute guys you need to following:

empty water bottles (or another size willl work, I chose something small) label removed
white paint
black paint
paintbrushes
paper eyes, buttons and eyes
ribbon for the scarf

They are very simple to make. First paint the bottle white and let dry. While the bottle is drying you can paint the lid black (we didn't end up doing that). When the paint is dry glue the eyes, nose and buttons on with white elmers glue. Then tie a scarf around the neck and you are done.
To weigh ours down and keep them form constantly falling over I added water. Another idea I had (just didn't get around to) is filling the bottom with sand or rice and then adding white microfiber filling. This will help make the snowman even whiter.

I combined this actual idea from a few different ones I saw around the internet. This method worked best for my kids ages and attention span.

What crafts have you done this week?