Creativity My Passion

Kids Craft: Styrofoam Egg Carton Butterfly

2012-01-31T13:39:00.000-08:00

Ah! Finally I got to post about our wonderful Egg carton butterflies. We made some of them during CJ's fourth birthday(last year) and missed to post it. Last week, we created a family of butterfly for another project and thought its a good time to show case them.

Made from egg carton lids, these butterflies provide an inexpensive decor. Best way to upcycle and at the same time cost effective fun. The kids can flap the butterfly wings and they are fun to play with too!

Materials Used:

Styrofoam Egg cartons lids
Child Safe scissors
Pony Beads
Mod podge/Elmers no run glue
Acrylic paint
Gift wrap paper/Construction paper
Glue stick
Pen
Butterfly template/Cookie cutter

Steps Overview:

Take out the egg cartons from the recycle bin.

For the egg carton butterflies we just need the flat portion, the lid. Cut out the egg holding part and draw the butterfly template on the lid as shown below

Cut along the template and you will get a basic butterfly. CJ loved this one. She started playing with it! Butterfly! Butterfly! Flap your wings!

After the basic step, you can either paint the butterflies with Acrylic paint or decorate with paper.

Gift Wrap Paper/Construction paper Butterfly

Apply glue with a Glue stick and paste the construction paper/gift wrap paper on top of the basic butterfly shape.

Cut along the shape.

If needed add pipe cleaner antennas and decorate/embellish with paint. The advantage with this one is you can add your finger in the middle and make a butterfly puppet

Acrylic paint Butterfly

Draw the butterfly shape on the egg carton and Cut the butterfly shapes from the egg carton lid. CJ wanted a butterfly family, baby, mommy and Daddy. So for the baby, we used a cookie cutter on a smaller egg carton lid.

Paint the Butterfly bases with Acrylic paint

Embellish with Pony beads/Glitters! Let them Dry

After the paint dried, I drew outlines of the butterfly with acrylic paint!

You can make a cloud of Butterflies! and admire your work!

Do check out our life cycle of Butterfly post to see how we used the Styrofoam egg carton for stamping the various stages!

Stay tuned for a wonderful Heart project!

T-shirt Makeover: Heart Doily and Bubble wrap Prints

2012-01-30T22:18:00.000-08:00

Now a days CJ wants to refashion her T-shirts! So When I saw the Adoily-able T-shirt on the Disney FamilyFun February issue, I knew CJ would love it. We gave our own personal touch by adding extra features - Bubble wrap and Pipe cleaner snowflake prints

Materials Used:

T-shirts(Pre-washed)
Fabric Paint
Bubble Wrap
Heart Paper Doilies(I got it from Walmart valentine decoration section)
Sponge brush
Clip Board/Cardboard to place inside the T-shirt

Steps overview:

We refashioned two T-shirts

T-shirt 1:

Place a Cardboard or clipboard inside the T-shirt so that the paint won't bleed through. I saw the idea of placing the clipboard at a blog, I don't remember the blog name.

Place the doily on the T-shirt at the place where u want the print. Be careful not to move the doily while painting or you can glue the doily to the shirt with a glue stick and remove it after painting.

Using a sponge brush carefully dab the paint onto the doily in an up and down motion. We did a mistake here we took lot of paint in the brush and moved fast. while painting the border be careful not to go outside the doily

Gently, carefully take/peel out the doily and let your kid adore their creation.

Cut the inner heart shape of the doily and use it as template to cut a heart out of the bubble wrap.

Using the heart bubble wrap, stamp/print in the center of the doily impression

Gently remove the bubble wrap and you will get a beautiful print

I was trying to be over smart:-( and placed the painted doily to make a second print below. But the print didn't come out good.

So we made one more doily impression using a new doily

Since the paint had spread out in the corners of the doily prints, to give a neater look I drew thin outlines of the doily with the fabric paint.

Let it dry and Set the fabric paint according to the manufacturer's instructions.

T-shirt 2:

We made the doily print and bubble wrap print same as above taking special care and correcting the previous errors(Neater finish). After that we made Pipe cleaner snowflake prints on top and bottom of the heart.

I would say you have to try this fun,easy,do able project with your kids. CJ was so proud of her refashioned T-shirts because of her effort and of course who won't love to show off their creation

We are taking part in the Collaborative Heart Project Fundraiser organized by Jaime at Hands on as we grow and contributing this project for the event.

Pipe cleaner Snowflake Stamping

2012-01-30T12:19:00.000-08:00

We made Pipe cleaner snowflakes and used them for stamping. The snowflakes are simple to make and the prints are beautiful. We just love it.

Materials Used:

Pipe cleaners
Paint
Poster board
Child safe scissors

Steps overview:

To make the snowflake

1. Cut a 12 inch pipe cleaner into 3 pieces of equal size(4 inches). Hold the 3 pieces together and tightly wrap a new pipe cleaner around the middle of the bundle, twisting its ends to secure it. Twist the middle pipe cleaner to form a handle like shape.

2. Straighten out the 3 pipe cleaners to form a six-sided snowflake shape as shown above. We made one stamp with the simple six-sided snowflake and one by adding pipe cleaner to the ends.

3. Cut 2 inch pieces from another pipe cleaner. Twist the pieces on the sides of the snowflake as shown.

4. Pipe cleaner Snowflake ready to stamp.

Dip the snowflakes in paint and stamp!

At the end of the six-sided snowflake prints, we stamped dots using the pencil eraser side

We made the below snowflake prints to go along with the book The Snowy Day: 50th Anniversary Edition

Fun Learning activity: Roll the Dice to 100 Game

2012-01-20T12:31:00.000-08:00

We love to play Snakes and Ladders game with CJ, its fun to learn counting and sequencing. But the problem is CJ gets really cranky when she has to go down the Snake and very happy when she has to climb the ladder. So when I saw the Roll to 100 dice game at mrsleeskinderkids blog floating around on pinterest.com, I tailored the game and made our own version.

To play this game all you need is a laminated 100's chart and a Dice. You can either download the 100's chart or make your own.

We played the game in two ways

Game 1:

Skills: Self control, Counting, Sequencing

Players: 2

Materials: Washable Markers/Dry Erase Marker, Dice, Laminated 100's Chart

Playing the Game

Players get to choose the color of marker, for ex: I choose orange and CJ choose purple. Player 1 rolls the dice and starts the game. Based on the number on the dice, the Player 1 colors the number of grids on the Chart.

Player 2 rolls the dice and Based on the number on the dice, the Player 2 colors the number of grids on the Chart.

Take turns and Continue until you reach 100.

Count the number of grids colored by Player 1, Player 2. The Player with the maximum grids win.

Game 2:

Skills: Self control, Counting, Sequencing

Players: 2

Materials:Counters/Tokens, Dice, Laminated 100's Chart

Playing the Game

The game is just like Snakes and Ladders with out ladders or snakes. Each player starts with a token on the starting square(number 1 on the chart), take turns to roll the dice and move the token by the number of squares indicated by the dice roll. The Player who reaches 100 first wins!

Isn't it fun to play games with a simple number chart and dice!

One Person Craft: Construction Paper Butterfly

2012-01-12T13:07:00.000-08:00

Sometime back I had blogged about CJ's emerging creativity and her one person crafts. She made the above butterfly with out my guidance or should I say my hindrance:-)

I think she got the inspiration for the craft from scissor cutting practices. Generally I give her a paper and we cut the corners to create patterns.

Materials Used:

Construction paper
Pipe cleaners
Paint
Child Safe Scissor

Steps Overview:

Butterfly 1:

Take a Construction paper

Fold in half along the horizontal direction as shown below

Cut a U shape in one corner

Cut as shown in all the other corners

Unfold and you have a butterfly shape

Add details and a pipe cleaner antennae. Butterfly ready!

Butterfly 2:

Fold in half along the horizontal direction as shown below

Fold in half along the vertical direction as shown below

Cut a U shape at the corner opposite to the folded edge as shown

Cut the other two corners leaving the folded edge as shown

Unfold and u have a different butterfly shape

Add details and pipe cleaner antennae. Butterfly ready!

Celery Stamping

2012-01-10T11:59:00.000-08:00

I got the celery rose stamp idea from Pinterest.com. So while doing the celery science experiment instead of pulling the stalks apart, I cut the stalks about 3 inches from the bottom. So we got a floral pattern(though we didn't have lot of petals).

To add more petals, I cut celery stalks of 3 inches size and Taped them to get a better floral pattern

CJ had fun stamping with the celery floral pattern

CJ's Art work! But she lost interest in a short span of time because they were too big for her tiny hands

Momma gave it a try! here is my artwork

We stamped with single stalks of celery too. CJ loved stamping with single ones.

I took out the outer stalks leaving 4 inner stalks alone. We stamped the inner floral design, added petal effects with single stalk celery and got the below rose pattern

Love the rose pattern!

How Plants absorb Water: Celery Science Experiment

2012-01-09T13:05:00.000-08:00

Finally we are back on schedule after all the holiday excitement! I'm so excited to start the year with a Celery science experiment. It clearly demonstrates how water moves through in plants. I got the idea from the book Thanksgiving Fun Activity Book. The Book explains the origin of Thanksgiving festival and suggests various activities for the holiday.

CJ wanted to do the celery experiment as soon as she saw the experiment on the book and after a month time we did the experiment last week. We talked about how the roots absorb water from the soil and the water travels up the tubes/capillaries in the stems to all parts of the plants

Materials Used:

Stalks of Celery with leaves
Clear plastic bottles/vases
Food coloring
Measuring cup
Water
Knife(to be used by the Adult)
Paper towels

* Please ignore the Orange extract in the picture above, I mistook it from the fridge for food coloring. Forgot to put it back while taking the picture

Steps Overview:

Fill a cup of water in the bottle and add food color. Adults can carefully cut the stalks of celery. Handover the stalks to kids and let them place the stalks of celery in the colored water.

All set! Now start noting the changes! We checked at intervals of two hours!

After 8 hrs

A closer view of the color change

After 24 hrs

Closer view

Blue colored leaves and we also noted that the drooped down leaves got restored

Pink colored leaves

We cut the stalks to check how the water traveled. I showed the little colored pores to CJ, explained how each one acted as a straw to absorb water from the roots

By chance I got to absorb these colored string structures in the celery

I carefully peeled the upper layer of the celery so that I can show the capillary tubes inside the celery to CJ

CJ got so excited that she broke the celery and started analyzing on her own:-)

Blog Recap: Favorite posts of 2011

2011-12-31T09:36:00.002-08:00

Hurray! I’ve been consistently blogging in 2011. I really enjoyed each and every blog post and my third year of blogging(2011) has been phenomenal! Creativitymypassion facebook page reached 500 + likes!

Isn't it fun to look back at our work at the end of the year! Here's my favorite project from each month.

JANUARY

No Sew Apron from Shortalls - I just loved this project because the end result made my little princess super duper excited!

FEBRUARY

Beary Hug and Friendly Roar - We just love the handmade Valentine swap cards we made for the kids

MARCH

DIY Hopscotch play mat - CJ loves Hopscotch and the DIY play mat is a hit!

APRIL

Bird from a empty tissue paper box - It is CJ's most wonderful creative idea to recycle a tissue box into a bird. So it's a proud mama project!

MAY

Double Rainbow Painting - I love the beautiful Double rainbow that appeared at our home!

JUNE

Balloon Popping Birthday Countdown - I made this countdown for CJ's Birthday! She did have fun popping the balloons

JULY

Packing Peanuts and Packing Peanuts - We did lot of projects with Packing peanuts!

Packing Peanuts and Pipe cleaners

Packing Peanut Stamping fun

Packing Peanuts and Tooth picks geometry

AUGUST

DIY Pull String Pinata - We made the Pinata for CJ's birthday though I wrote the blog post in the month of August! I just adore the way it turned out!

Kid Friendly Glass Painting We turned a picture frame into a coloring page

SEPTEMBER

We had fun playing with Magnetic tape and Pom Poms - Magnetic Hungry Caterpillar

Magnetic Pom Poms

OCTOBER

Thumbprint Freight Train Freight Train is one of our favorite Train books. We made the freight train art to go along with the book.

NOVEMBER

DIY Magnetic Craft sticks play

DECEMBER

CJ's creativity - Goody Bag (one more proud mama moment)

Hand made cards

Hand print cake Birthday cards

Party Hat Birthday Card

1. Outside of the card 2. Inside of the card

Simple Christmas Cards

CJ is growing and next year,2012 we will have more home schooling activities, Fun learning and lot more! Thank you for all your support and encouraging comments!

Happy New Year!

Blog Recap: Top 10 popular posts of 2011

2011-12-31T09:36:00.000-08:00

I can’t believe it’s already New Year - 2012!! I thought it would be fun to review the most viewed posts for 2011. I'm surprised by the most viewed post because personally I have lot of other favorite posts. So I will have a separate recap of my favorites:-)

Here is quick recap of the top ten most viewed post according to Google Analytics.

#1 – Kids Christmas Craft: Glitter Salt Dough Ornaments

#2 - 1,2,3,4,5 once I got a Fish alive

#3 -DIY stamps: Foam counting blocks + Foam stickers

#4 - The Very Busy Spider: Spinning spider Web

#5 - Very Hungry caterpillar: Life cycle of Butterfly

#6 - Stamping fun: Pom Pom painting

#7 - Holly Bloom's Garden: Garden Painting(bundled Q-tips and different stamping techniques used)

#8 - Grapes Geometry, 2D-3D Shapes

#9 - Upcycle: Tape road play mat

#10 - Rainbow Bottle, Pot-O-Gold luminary

Tri Beads: Candy Cane Ornament

2011-12-27T21:51:00.000-08:00

The Tri bead Candy cane ornaments are very easy to make.

All you need is Tri beads and Pipe cleaners/glitter sticks

Thanks to Craftprojectideas.com for the Jingle Bells, and Glitter sticks

Steps Overview:

Fold over one end of pipe cleaner to keep the beads from falling off

Thread the tri beads

When you reach the desired length, cut off the excess and fold the other end to keep the beads from falling

Bend to form a Candy cane shapes

Attach ornament hanger and hang it from the tree

Jingle Bells and Outgrown Bangle wreaths

2011-12-27T21:17:00.000-08:00

We wrapped pipe cleaners/glitter sticks around outgrown bangles and created mini-wreath ornaments!

Materials Used:

Outgrown bangles
Pipe cleaners/Glitter sticks
Jingle Bells
Buttons

Thanks to Craftprojectideas.com for the Jingle Bells, and Glitter sticks

Mini Wreath 1:

Pipe cleaners + Jingle Bells + Buttons

Mini Wreath 2:

Door Hanger Jingle Bell Wreath, Thread Jingle Bells to the Pipe Cleaners and wind the pipe cleaner to the bangle.

Mini Wreath 3:

Wind alternating pipe cleaners to the bangle. Thread a jingle bell to a pipe cleaner that is wrapped at the bottom of the bangle.

Mini Wreath 4:

Wind pipe cleaner loosely around the bangle

Mini Wreath 5:

**when the kids use pipe cleaners/glitter sticks, be cautious of the sharp edges of pipe cleaners!

Upcycle: Danino cup Bell ornaments

2011-12-23T06:53:00.000-08:00

We upcycled Danino yoghurt cups to Bell ornaments. Easy to make and they look beautiful.

Materials Used:

Danino yogurt cups/Small disposable cups/Egg cartons
Rhinestone Sequins(Dollar aisle of target)
Pipe cleaners/Glitter sticks
Jingle Bells
Tri beads/Beads

Thanks to Craftprojectideas.com for the Jingle Bells, Tri beads and Glitter sticks

Steps Overview:

Poke a small hole in the center of the Danino yoghurt cup using a needle/pipe cleaner

Add jingle bell at one free end of pipe cleaner, twist and secure the jingle bell

From inside of the cup, Let the other free end of pipe cleaner into the cup hole.

To make the pipe cleaner stand in place we added tri beads on the top of the cup

Twist and form a loop structure on top. Use the loop to hang the ornament from tree

Decorate with stickers, glitters, buttons or as you wish. We decorated the bell with rhinestone sequins and embellished with a glitter stick bow. Hang it on the Christmas tree

CJ had lots of fun playing with it!

Upcycle outgrown bangles: Ribbon ornament

2011-12-21T06:45:00.000-08:00

We bought few Holiday crafts ribbon from the Dollar aisle of Target(One more interesting find). The ribbons are perfect for simple wrapping and weaving fun. I was inspired by the yarn bracelet ornaments on creative Jewish mom blog. CJ had lots of fun wrapping the ribbon around the bangles. Perfect activity to keep the little hands busy while boosting fine motor skills.

Materials Used:

Holiday crafts Ribbon(Dollar aisle of target)

Outgrown, Unwearable Bangles
Cellophane tape/glue/staple

Steps Overview:

1. Glue/tape free end of ribbon around the bangle
2. Start wrapping across the bangle
3. Keep wrapping until you reach the free end of ribbon. Tape the free end to the bangle.

Add a ornament hanger and hang it on the tree!

I felt the ribbon bangles looked cool as a ornament! But CJ wanted to play a game with it. She said "Mommy I made three of them, one for Daddy, one for you and one for me, so that we can play a game". The game was to place the ribbon bangles on ground, Stand on a start line, say ready set start and race to pick up the bangles. The person who picks up their bangle first is the winner. We played the game, it was fun too!

Are you looking for some more fun activities to do with the holiday ribbons? Check out the series of preschool Ribbon activities on Teach preschool site!

BTW, If you haven’t been over to Teachpreschool site hosted by Deborah, or her Facebook page, do stop by! Deborah has a fabulous website with lot of educational and fun hands-on Preschool activities and She is a great Inspiring person!

Rhinestone Sequins Play

2011-12-20T11:53:00.000-08:00

CJ's Preschool is closed for the Winter Break and we are doing lots of crafts. While shopping for the kids Christmas gifts, I found few holiday craft supplies packs at the dollar aisle of Target. Immediately I grabbed few packs, perfect for crafts during the winter break. One such item I got from dollar aisle of Target is a pack of Rhinestones sequins(65 count)

The rhinestones sequin are not very tiny, they are perfect to do Patterns/collages again and again.

All you need is a pack of rhinestones sequin(dollar aisle of Target) and a flat surface

We had lots of fun making different patterns using the sequins. You can also use glue and create simple cards but we loved to scramble and restart again with the new pattern

A love person

Scramble and restart!

Flowers and Butterfly

More Butterflies

Queen

Christmas Tree

No-mess and efficient glitter cleanup: Glitter Play dough

2011-12-20T06:21:00.000-08:00

How do you cleanup a Glitter mess on a tray? oops! Ignore the blog title:-)

Roll homemade play dough/store bought on the Glitter mess and knead the dough well so that the glitter doesn't flake off

Glitter Play dough for Christmas!

I don't prefer to use Glitters at our home because of the mess. But CJ loves glitters and she wants to use them for crafts. I was just wondering how to cleanup the glitter with out wasting, this method works perfectly. Try it out you would be thrilled to see the glitter get cleaned up in seconds and the kids will be excited to play with the glitter play dough!

Regarding the play dough,we made a batch of cooked Play dough, recipe from Tinker lab site. They turned out super soft! Thanks to Rachelle, Tinker lab for the wonderful recipe!

CJ's Glitter play dough creativity!

Thanks to Craftsprojectideas.com for the Glitters, Tri beads -holiday craft supplies package

Have you checked out Craftsprojectideas.com, they have a wonderful collection of Christmas crafts, kids crafts, how-to's.. and the products used on the site are all sold at the Kids’ Crafts aisle in Walmart stores.

Kids Christmas Crafts: Button Jingle Bells

2011-12-19T20:53:00.000-08:00

We made Button Jingle Bells. More then an ornament, CJ loved using it for her pretend school.

Materials Used:

Buttons of various sizes
Pipe Cleaners
Jingle bells

Thanks to Craftprojectideas.com for the Jingle Bells

Steps Overview:

Sort out buttons from Big to small

Fold pipe cleaner in half and thread the jingle bell to middle as shown below

Thread each end of the pipe cleaner through opposite holes on the Biggest button. Push the button tight as shown below.

Thread the next smaller button, repeating the steps

When u almost get the shape of Bell, stop threading, leave a inch or 2 of pipe cleaner, and twist the free ends as shown and cut the excess pipe cleaner out.

Hang it on the tree!

or let the little one play around with the jingle bells! less heavy and Perfect for the little hands!

Pipe Cleaner: Shower Curtain Ring Ornament

2011-12-15T06:28:00.000-08:00

CJ likes bracelets and Head bands! Her new finding is to wear shower curtain ring as Bracelet. I wrapped glitter sticks onto the Shower curtain ring to make a festive Bracelet.

Before:

After:

CJ loved it. But after few minutes of wear, She removed it saying it was itchy. What do we do? We converted it into a wreath ornament.

All you need is Pipe Cleaner/Glitter sticks, Old Shower Curtain rings/Old Bangles

Thanks to Craftprojectideas.com for the Glitter sticks - holiday craft supplies package

Wrap the bangles/Shower curtain tightly with pipe cleaners/Glitter sticks, we used almost 6 Glitter sticks for the shower curtain

We added a Glitter stick bow on top and a tiny ball ornament in the center

We also used old bangles to create few ornaments! While wrapping the pipe cleaner at the end I made a loop structure to hang the ornament from the tree!

Glitter Pipe cleaners: Gift bows, Ornament, Gift toppers

2011-12-14T07:34:00.000-08:00

We made glitter stick bows and Gift toppers. Easy to make, inexpensive and perfect for the holiday season

Glitter Stick Bows - They look great as ornament add-on, Gift toppers or just hangings on the tree

Materials Used:

Glitter sticks(Glittery Pipe Cleaner)
TP roll tube

Thanks to Craftprojectideas.com for the holiday craft supplies package.

Steps Overview:

Flatten a TP roll as shown below

Fold it in half as shown

The rectangle shape in the pen sketches below is the folded toilet paper roll.

Wind/twist the Glitter stick around the folded tube as shown below or the pencil sketch

Take the free end of the wind towards the left, insert into the loops

Make a knot including the first free end

Slowly push the winds out and flatten out into a bow shape

Glitter Stick flowers can be used as Gift toppers, to embellish hair bands, Tree ornament

Materials Used:

Glitter sticks(Glittery Pipe Cleaner)
Pom Poms, Buttons
TP roll tube

Thanks to Craftprojectideas.com for the pom poms and the glitter sticks

Steps Overview:

Twist free ends of two/more glitter sticks together to form a longer glitter stick

Wind the glitter stick around the folded Toilet paper roll as shown below or in the pen sketch

Take the free end of the loop on the right and insert it into the loops towards the left. Take the free end of the loop on the left and insert it into the loops towards the right.

Remove the loops slowly out of the roll.

Stretch out the loops

Flatten it into a flower shape

Embellish with Pom poms/buttons

Don't they look beautiful

Glitter Stick Gift toppers- The steps are same as the flower except that we left them with the fluffy look

Use them as ornament add-on

Gift topper/Package topper

CJ wanted one on her head band too*

*Be cautious of the sharp edges on the glitter sticks!

Kids Christmas Cards: Santa Hat and Trees

2011-12-08T06:49:00.001-08:00

We had so much fun making the Party Hat Birthday cards that we made Christmas tree and Santa Hat cards. The cards are made out of construction paper and very simple to make.

Materials Used:

Construction paper(Green, Red)
Glitters
Glitter glue
Buttons
Pom poms
Child Safe Scissors

Thanks to Craftprojectideas.com for the holiday craft supplies package. The Glitters and Pom poms are from the package.

Steps Overview:

Christmas Tree Card:

Take a green Construction paper.

Fold the Paper Diagonally as shown below

From the top of the triangle measure 7 inches on each side of the triangle as shown below. Mark points.

Draw a line joining the two points as shown below

Cut along the line, Flip and your tree card shape is ready

Embellish with Glitter glue, Pom poms, Buttons, Glitters, Stickers...

Let it dry and the tree card is ready!

We made three different sizes of tree cards

Side view showing the inside of the card.

Santa Hat card:

After step 5 of the Christmas tree(to take pics continuously, I used the green paper to show the steps of the hat. Whereas we actually used red paper)

Open the card and measure 1 inch from the bottom and make a slit as shown

Close the card and fold the 1 inch paper upwards to give a hat shape

Glue the 1 inch paper! Basic Santa hat ready!

I wrote Merry Christmas and drew some Snowflakes with a marker. CJ wrote on them with Glitter glue

Embellish with white Pom poms and Santa Hat card ready!

One person craft: Goody bag

2011-12-08T06:12:00.000-08:00

Now a days,CJ wants to express her creativity and calls her crafts as "One Person Craft". She asks for a list of craft supplies, She comes up with her own creation using the supplies. I will be posting her crafts with the label : One Person Craft. The Goody bag is one such craft. She asked "Mommy can you give me some construction paper and Stapler, Going to create a surprise for you"

I think she got the inspiration for the craft from her School - thanksgiving purse craft.

Materials Used:

Construction paper - 2 nos.
Glitter sticks or Pipe cleaners
Stapler and staple pins
Pom poms
Glue stick

Thanks to Craftprojectideas.com for the holiday craft supplies package.

Steps Overview:

For the base of the bag, Staple the ends of the paper as shown in the picture(Adult Supervision needed). Glue the sides of the papers to form a bag shape leaving the top side alone open.

Bend a Glitter stick or pipe cleaner to a bag handle shape. Poke two holes for the handle. Insert the free ends to the holes and glue the free ends to the inside of the bag.

Embellish with drawings, Pom poms, buttons, Glitters

Though the bag is not sturdy enough to hold gifts, I think they are just perfect to hold season greeting cards, Party invites/ Birthday cards, Thank you cards

Glitter Sticks: Straw and Tri beads Star

2011-12-06T07:19:00.000-08:00

Inspired by the Easy Star Ornament on parents.com website, we created the below stars. They are easy to make and twinkle on the Christmas tree.

Materials Used:

Glitter sticks or Pipe cleaners
Tri beads
Straws
Child safe scissors

Thanks to Craftprojectideas.com for the holiday craft supplies package. The glitter sticks and tri beads are from the package.

Steps overview:

Cut straws approx. equal sized(1/2" segments).

Fold one end of glitter stick as a small loop or knot to keep the beads from falling. String cut Straws and Tri beads, leaving about an 1/2 inch stick at the end.

Bend into a star shape.

Twist the ends together

Attach a ribbon or ornament hanger to hang, I just love them on the Christmas tree

Party Hat Birthday card

2011-12-06T05:19:00.000-08:00

We made a birthday card for CJ's teacher. While browsing through pinterest.com, I found this really cute card from small fry & co blog

1. Outside of the card 2. Inside of the card

Materials Used:

Cardstock paper
Glitter glue
Child-safe scissors
Buttons
White paper

Steps Overview:

Fold the cardstock paper as a triangle as shown below. We just went with raw measurements. If you are making many cards and specific about measurements, you can use a template.

Draw a slanting line as shown.

Cut along the line

Cut coordinating bottom band rectangles based on the triangle card above. Adhere them with glue.

Cut a small circle and make it to look like a pom pom. Adhere the pom pom on the top of the cone. Embellish with glitter glue,buttons.

For inside of the card, Cut a smaller triangle from white paper and adhere it to the inside of the card.

Do check out the party hat birthday cards on small fry & co! The cards look so adorable and She has a very neat tutorial with template!

Handprint Birthday Cake card

2011-12-05T06:49:00.000-08:00

We made hand print birthday cake cards for CJ's preschool friends. We took this idea from Meet the Dubiens blog but we used the little finger alone for the candles. Have you checked Meet the Dubiens blog hosted by Jill, she has awesome simple ideas, we love all her foot and handprint crafts. She has amazing photography skills that shows every detail of her crafts! I wish I was her kid:-) enjoying all the fun cute Bento boxes she prepares. She has a wonderful collection of cute, fun lunches!

Handprint birthday cake card:

Materials Used:

Construction paper(Purple and White)
Washable Tempera Paint
Paintbrushes
Glitter Glue
Markers

Steps Overview:

Paint the palm alone don't paint fingers. Stamp on a white paper. Since we were making two cards, we made two palm prints side by side on a single sheet.

Paint little finger and print as many candles as you want on your cake

Using Glitter glue, decorate the cake. Set aside and let it dry. CJ in a hurry touched the glitter patterns and that's the irregular pattern at some places

Using a marker, draw on the candle flames. Cut out the cake pattern in a rectangle shape. Cut a Purple construction paper into half and fold the piece in half to create a card. Glue the rectangle cake pattern on the paper

Volcano: Baking Soda and Ketchup lava

2011-12-02T12:20:00.000-08:00

We ran out of vinegar while doing the Baking soda and vinegar volcano. Next day CJ wanted to do the Volcano experiment. I found this cool ketchup and Baking soda experiment in chemistry.about.com site. Hurray! We had lots of ketchup in stock!

Materials Used:

Muffin Pan
Tomato and Mustard Ketchup
Warm water
Baking Soda
Dish wash Soap
Empty bottle
Spoon for mixing

Steps Overview:

Muffin Pan lava:

I found this neat idea of using Muffin pan for the vinegar and Baking soda experiment on the chocolate muffin tree blog.

Mix few drops of dish wash soap with warm water. Pour the soapy water into the Muffin pan cups. Pour Tomato ketch into few of the Muffin pan cups.

Pour mustard sauce into different muffin cups(for yellow lava)

Mix well so that the ketchup mixes with the water

Add Baking soda to start the eruption. The 'lava' reaction is slow and steady when compared to the vinegar and baking soda eruption.

Mix, Mix, Mix!

Ketchup lava!

We did the experiment with a small empty bottle too!

How the Volcano Works

The ketchup contains vinegar which reacts with the baking soda to produce carbon dioxide gas. The gas bubbles expand and rise through the liquid, bubbling out the ketchup.

Observations during the experiment:

Muffin pan: I guess more ketchup and less water will give better results.

Bottle: Fill the bottle almost full with water. Pour ketchup don't mix and add Baking soda for better eruption.

I think we will be doing the experiment again and again, Will keep updated about our findings!

Day 19 - Day 30 of Hands on Play Challenge

2011-11-30T20:20:00.000-08:00

Day 19 Challenge: Music Making

We sang Christmas songs and CJ made jingle sounds with her Jingle bracelets. She also played drum beats with her favorite instrument - dowel sticks and Slide

Day 20 Challenge: Paint

We painted our Salt dough ornaments

Day 21 Challenge: Have a party

We had a tea party with our stuffed toys

Day 22 Challenge: Investigate

CJ loves her magnifying Glass. So we had fun playing/investigating with it.

Day 23 Challenge: Printing with objects

We missed this challenge. stamping/printing with different objects is a hit @ our household. So we will catch up later.

Day 24 Challenge: Playful fun
We played our favorite tickle game. CJ sits in front of me showing her back. I trace a alphabet on her back with my finger and she has to guess the alphabet. We take turns. CJ traces the alphabet and I have to guess. It is a fun Sensory game. CJ calls it as tickling game. She starts giggling with the touch.

Day 25 Challenge: Small world play

We played with our Princess sensory tub.

Day 26 Challenge: Play in a box

I set out a cardboard box. CJ's instant response "Mommy I'm going to make a card board story box like Pinky Dinky Doo". CJ loves Pinky Dinky Doo episodes. We found it via Netflix Streamline. Cj asked me to streamline the episode because of the pink words title. After watching few episodes she became fan of Pinky.

Pinky is a 7-year-old girl, She and her younger brother, Tyler, discuss new words, concepts and use imagination and logic to answer some of life's questions. When a problem arises, Pinky says,"That gives me an idea" and Tyler says, "Pinky, are you going to make up a story?" and Pinky will say, "Yeserooni positooni!" and dances her way to a cardboard Story Box with Tyler and their pet Mr. Guinea Pig. Pinky uses a piece of chalk and her imagination to tell a story. Wanna know more, do visit the Pinky Dinky Doo website! They have a collection of games, videos and printables.

CJ started drawing with a chalk piece on the outside of the box

After sometime, she got inside the cardboard box just like pinky dinky doo

Her story doodle!

Day 27 Challenge: Dress up

CJ's favorite pretend play is "mommy and baby" game where CJ is the mommy and I'm her baby. So she got a mommy dress up. Mommy dress up--> Mommy's sun glass and a hand bag!

Day 28 Challenge: Create something for someone special

We made a Birthday card(Party hat card) for CJ's teacher and Hand print cake cards for her School/class friends.

Day 29 Challenge: Role play

Our newly appointed photographer's camera:-)

CJ loves to take pictures. During thanksgiving sale, we were window shopping for a Tripod stand. CJ got so much inspired that she created the camera mounted on the tripod stand with the building blocks. The Role play was completely CJ's idea. She took the role of a photographer and we had to model for the pictures. If she was impressed with our pictures she gave us(the picture models) treats/toys.

Day 30 Challenge: Keep on Playing

The challenge is from both - Hands on as we grow and Imagination tree, they have a detailed post on ways to keep on playing.

Wow! November was a busy month! Really I should thank both the amazing bloggers - Jamie of Hands on as we grow and Anna of Imagination tree, for the wonderful play challenge! The ladies did a wonderful job, the challenges were very simple and inexpensive. The 30 days of play challenge changed the way I play with CJ. I realized dedicated time/play(no distractions) is a must and was amazed by CJ's creativity, the way she comes up with the different ideas! That gives me way to nurture CJ's creativity in her own way rather than spoon feeding. Be her assistant and let her play:-)

The 30 days of play challenges can be found on Hands on as we we grow, The Imagination Tree, how we played here

Day 17 & Day 18: Reading and Fruit cereal Sprinkles

2011-11-30T12:20:00.000-08:00

Day 17 Challenge: Reading Tent

Find a cosy spot in the house (or garden if warm enough!) and create a reading nook using some material and cushions. Climb inside and read, uninterrupted, for at least 15 minutes!

The most cozy spot for reading is CJ's Princess bed. We didn't create a tent. But we did snuggle up and read books for hours together.

Day 18 Challenge: Kids in the kitchen

Get in the kitchen and spend some uninterrupted time with the kids making something together!

Homemade Sprinkles

We made fruit cereal sprinkles. I got the idea from the activity mom blog. CJ has a sweet tooth and she always stops at the sprinkles aisle in Walmart. So I had the sprinkles in the to-do list for quiet a long time. Finally we made it and CJ loved it!

Put the fruit cereal/colored cheerios in a ziploc bag and seal it. Use a rolling pin to crush them.

Sprinkle over Ice cream/yogurt and Yum, Enjoy your handmade sprinkles!

Day 16 Challenge: Hide and seek with stuffed toys

2011-11-30T07:33:00.000-08:00

BOOK: Ten in the Meadow

Out in the Meadow, the adorable little friends from Ten in the Den play a game of hide and seek. CJ loves the game of hide-seek and Ten in the Meadow is a great hit. The playful, rhyming text gives a good drive.

Bear is IT, at the starting of the book he is found counting against a tree and the friends hide from the bear. Bear shouts 'here I come' and sets on his search. He finds his friends one at a time or two at a time. Once found, each friend joins Bear in the hunt for the others. The author gives environmental and wordy clues on who will be found next. For ex Fox and badger are found hiding in a Burrow, Bushy tails and little paws on the tree for Squirrel and Raccoon, Beaver is found hiding under the lily pads. By Sunset most of the friends are found except for the little mouse. Finally they find him fast asleep in the den. The author however shows the mouse on many pages, his sneak is shown clearly. Towards the end, when the ninth friend beaver is found, the mouse is tired and he yawns but he is unnoticed by his friends. The author gives a hint here for the children to guess where the little mouse can be. The beauty of the meadow is illustrated by adding Mushrooms, Flying bees, Bugs and Butterflies to the green background. The beautiful scenery of the Fox gloves, Daisies, Blue bells, Oak trees, Brook, Water Lilies makes us blend with the nature. Towards end of the book the sinking sun, twilit willow and twilight glow of the sky are depicted attractively.

To know more about the author and his books visit his website

For the Book + activity, last winter we played hide and seek with our stuffed toy collection.

The Day 16 Challenge of 30 days to hands on play was to "Go on a Hunt" and the challenge is from Jamie of Hands On : As We Grow.

The hide and seek game was perfect fit for the challenge. This time we included some learning fun, we made a list of toys to hide and used the list for the hunt. Fun play along with writing and reading skills practice.

I helped CJ in making the list

Hide the toys

Find the toys using the list

Found you duck!

Day 15 Challenge: Packing peanuts and Glue stick

2011-11-30T06:39:00.000-08:00

Playing with Junk Challenge

Rummage through the recycling box and pull out some boxes, tubes, milk jugs and whatever else takes your fancy!
Following your child's lead, create something to play with together!

What we did:

We played with a box of packing peanuts. CJ played with the box of peanuts for a long time.

Sensory box - CJ had lots of fun scooping and pouring the packing peanuts into baskets and pails. Her imagination floated to picnic. We spread out the picnic blanket in the living room and she had lots of fun with the pretend food - packing peanuts.

After playing for sometime, I asked CJ whether she wanted to create a art using packing peanuts. She was totally into pretend play - picnic and so she opted to make a picnic basket picture. I outlined the picnic basket on the outside of a box. We used glue stick and created a collage with the packing peanuts.

CJ also made a butterfly with packing peanuts.

Magnetic Christmas countdown

2011-11-29T07:30:00.000-08:00

As usual CJ started "Mommy is it Christmas yet", that calls for a Christmas countdown tree. I have seen many a cute idea for advent calendars. But I wanted to make a simple, easy countdown. So I opted for Numbers magnets countdown. I was originally thinking to make a paper Christmas tree and add magnetic pom-poms one by one each day until Christmas. But CJ opted to do add all the pom-poms(pretend lights) and place the countdown numbers on the top.

Materials Used:

Green Construction paper
Magnetic pom-poms(Pom-Poms and Button Magnets)
Cookie Tray
Number Magnets
Alphabet Magnets

Steps Overview:

We made an Origami tree using the tutorial from Craft project ideas. Have you checked out Craftsprojectideas.com, they have a wonderful collection of Christmas crafts and the products used on the site are all sold at the Kids’ Crafts aisle in Walmart stores.

For the 3 sections of the Christmas tree, we used 9" construction paper square, 7" square and 6" square. After making the 3 sections of the tree, we glued the medium section on top of the largest triangle and the smallest on the top of the medium section.

I originally thought of adding a magnet to the wrong side of Christmas tree and attach it to the cookie tray, Add pom pom magnets one by one each day. CJ opted for adding the pom pom magnets as decorations one time, so we didn't add the magnet to the tree. We just placed the paper tree on the cookie tray and added the pom pom magnets to hold the tree in place

Look at the pattern, CJ added the pom pom magnets in a zigzag manner.

Add the number magnets and alphabet magnets for the count down

We also played the countdown once for CJ to know how it is going to work? Isn't it a fun way to learn number count down too!

Christmas Countdown Begins!

This post is also part of a special blog hop "Add A Little Learning To Your Play", hosted by Jill of A Mom With A Lesson Plan. Jill is celebrating first anniversary of her blog. Congrats Jill!

Do stop by and check the great ideas shared!

Christmas fridge magnets: Craft stick trees

2011-11-25T19:48:00.001-08:00

We made craft stick Christmas trees. We used buttons, Tri beads and tiny pom poms to decorate and added magnetic strip to hang them on the fridge

Thanks to Craftsprojectideas.com for the holiday craft supplies package. We used the green color craft sticks for the trees and the tri beads, pom poms for the decorations.

Christmas tree version 1:

Materials Used:

4 green craft sticks(Colored Craft sticks)
Buttons
Tri beads
pom poms
Magnetic tape
Elmer no run glue
Scissors

Steps overview:

Cut a green craft stick in half using scissors

Place one craft stick in the vertical direction as shown and the other craft sticks in the horizontal direction the bigger ones in the bottom and smaller ones(half sticks) on the top. Adhere the pieces with the glue. When I gave CJ the sticks, she glued the sticks to the paper. She thought we were creating a card:-) so you can make a card too!

Decorate with buttons, Tri beads and pom poms. Let them dry.

Cut a magnetic tape into half and glue the strip to the wrong side of the tree.

Hang it on the fridge.

Christmas tree version 2: CJ came up with the idea of creating triangle shapes tree and she made the below tree.

Materials Used:

6 green craft sticks(Colored Craft sticks)
Buttons
Tri beads
pom poms
Magnetic tape
Elmer no run glue
Green construction paper

Steps Overview:

Glue the craft sticks on the green construction paper in triangle shapes as shown below. Decorate with buttons, tri beads and pom pom. Let them dry. To give a neat look you can first draw a triangle shape on the paper,cut it and then glue the craft sticks.

Cut along the craft stick tree outline to get a tree shape.

Cut a magnetic tape and glue the strips to the wrong side of the tree. Add a masking tape on top of the magnet as shown below. It helps to avoid scratches on the fridge.

Hang it on the fridge

Do check out our magnetic craft sticks post! We can create different versions of tree with the magnetic craft sticks too!

No-carve: Play dough and Pumpkin Turkey

2011-11-23T20:06:00.001-08:00

Do you still have pumpkins laying around? CJ had lots of fun decorating a Pumpkin into a turkey.

CJ was playing with play dough yesterday and all of a sudden she got a messy idea of putting the dough into the gift boxes under the Christmas tree. She thought that was a pretty cool idea! To distract her I suggested "why don't you decorate the pumpkin with play dough". CJ was very much satisfied with the idea and started playing with play dough and pumpkin

I saw this wonderful idea of decorating pumpkins with play dough over at Teach Preschool blog hosted by Deborah. If you haven’t been over to her blog, or her Facebook page(25021 likes) please take a look. She has a fabulous website with lot of educational and fun hands-on Preschool activities

When CJ covered the pumpkin stem with the play dough, the pumpkin looked like a turkey. So I asked her whether she wanted to make a turkey and immediate response was "YES". I gave her some feathers and She made a pumpkin turkey!

Gratitude/Thankful Heart Turkey

2011-11-22T20:41:00.001-08:00

We love the book - My Heart Is Like a Zoo.

We had made bear and lion Valentine swap cards from the book. When I saw the heart Wooden turkey craft at classified mom, I got the idea of creating a thankful heart turkey. Starting this year, we are planning to ceate a thankful/Gratitude turkey every year, so that CJ can write what she is thankful for.

Materials Used:

Construction paper
Poster board
Markers
Child Safe Scissors
Glue stick

Steps Overview:

We played around Picnik software to create different heart templates of the Turkey.

Heart Turkey - Version 1

Heart Turkey - Version 2

Pencil sketches of the turkeys

The different heart shapes template

What we did:

We took print out of the pencil sketches and the different heart shapes template

Using the different hearts template, we cut the heart shapes out of construction paper.

CJ glued on the hearts to a poster board using the pencil sketches as reference

After gluing the feathers, She glued the body of the turkey

Head/face, wattle, beak, Wiggly eyes in the order. For the wattles, we cut a heart shape into half. Then she glued in the Wings and the feet.

I asked CJ what she is thankful for and with the spelling help she wrote them in the turkey feathers! In one of the hearts she wrote "me" and Says "Thank you God for making me, me". She likes the Butterfly song(If I were the Butterfly) and the lyrics! Totally amazed how she linked the song lyrics with the thankfulness!

Kids Christmas Craft: Glitter Salt Dough Ornaments

2011-11-22T19:48:00.000-08:00

Glitters! Glitters, perfect for the Holiday season. I personally don't prefer using glitters, but we figured out a way to seal glitters from falling/scattering of the craft. About the glitters pack! Yeah! We got them in the holiday craft supplies package from Craftsprojectideas.com

Have you checked out Craftsprojectideas.com, they have a wonderful collection of Christmas crafts and the products used on the site are all sold at the Kids’ Crafts aisle in Walmart stores.

We reused the dough from the volcano mountain and the baking soda eruption play.

3 cups of flour(we ran out all purpose flour so we used wheat flour, it worked perfectly fine)
1 cup of salt
2 tablespoon cooking oil
1 cup of water

Mix 3 cups of flour, 1 cup of salt, and 1 cup of water. knead the dough with 2 tablespoons of cooking oil.

It worked perfectly fine. You can also use the Salt dough recipe.

Salt dough Recipe:

1 cup of flour
1 cup of Salt
1/2 cup of water(add little by little)

Mix the flour and salt. Add the 1 cup of water little by little and Knead into a dough. If it is too sticky then add more flour.

Materials Used:

Tempera paint or Acrylic paint
Cookie Cutter
Salt dough
Painting brush
Glitters
Gloss Lustre Mod Podge
Straw
Rolling pin

Steps Overview:

Roll out the dough on a flat surface/Place mat using a rolling pin.

Cut out different shapes using cookie cutters. Poke a hole on top of each shape with a straw so that a ribbon can be threaded later through the hole.

Place the cookie shapes on a Cookie tray and Bake at 250 degree for 2-3 hours or until they are completely moisture free. We did a mistake here, in a hurry I took some of them out and broke few. That made us to let them dry in the air for 24 hrs.

When dry, paint the ornament. We used tempera paint without diluting in water. Ignore the tooth pick impressions, I was trying to be extra crafty:-)

Let the paint dry for few minutes. We painted all the ornaments at a time and started with the first ornament which was little dry by the time. Apply a coat of Mod podge and sprinkle glitter. Shake off the excess.

After finishing all the other ornaments, Apply one more coat of Mod podge on top of the glitters. It helps to seal the glitters. Mod Podge gives a glossy finish too!

Thread with a thin ribbon and hang.

Kids Christmas Craft: Jingle Bracelet/Ornament

2011-11-21T12:02:00.000-08:00

We made Jingle Bracelet and Ornaments using the Holiday craft supplies we received from Craftprojectideas.com Thanks once again for the supplies! In the box of supplies, CJ's most favorite is the glitters, Jingle bells and the Tri-beads. As soon as we got the box of supplies, She came up with the idea of threading the Tri-beads with glitter sticks to make a Jingle Bracelet.

Materials Used:

Glitter Sticks/Pipe cleaners
Tri-Beads
Jingle Bells

Steps Overview:

Form a loop structure as soon below at one end of the glitter sticks. The loop structure will hold the beads from falling and will be helpful in forming the bracelet shape/wreath.

Start threading the beads. CJ decided the colors of beads and she threaded in a random order. You can thread the beads in a pattern.

Once you have threaded to desired length, String in the Jingle bells.

Insert the free end into the loop and Twist the ends together. Push the twisted ends in between the Jingle bells and hide the ends. Festive Bracelet ready!

We also made wreath ornaments by fastening a ribbon to the bracelets!

Day 14 Act a story: The Thirsty crow fable

2011-11-18T08:06:00.000-08:00

Book: The Crow and the Pitcher: A Retelling of Aesop's Fable (Read-It! Readers: Fables Yellow Level)

Day 14 Challenge: Act out a Story!

Spend [at least] 15 minutes of uninterrupted time reenacting a favorite story of your child's!

What we did:

We reenacted our favorite fable "The Thirsty Crow". It's one of my favorite childhood story.

Materials used:

Measuring cup or a clear cup
Stones, pebbles, Almonds
Water

The story!

There was once a thirsty crow. She looked for water here and there. At last she found a pot of water. But the pot had very little water at the bottom and the crow was unable to drink it. She picked up some stones and dropped them into the pot one by one. The water came up! The crow drank the water and flew away happily!

In the story, the clever crow drops pebbles into the pot/pitcher to cause the water level to rise. I thought it would be a cool activity to explain water displacement and buoyancy. But CJ was least interested to know the reason. She was having more fun playing and experimenting. First we used Almonds because I was not sure whether CJ will get too involved in the story and drink the water.

We filled a measuring cup with water to a level. you can also use a clear cup and mark the water level with a marker. Then we dropped the almonds bunch by bunch. As we added, the water level increased. Finally the water came up and as expected my crow did want to drink the water:-)

1: The crow found a cup of water. But there was a little water and the crow was unable to drink.
2 & 3: She dropped the almonds one by one and the water level increased
4: The crow drank the water and flew away happily

We gave it a try with tiny rocks too.

Water level came up!

Suddenly CJ started to remove the rocks from the water and she said "Mommy! I got an Idea! See If I remove the stones from the water, water level goes down again. Wow! Its like a Magic"

Extension of the activity: Vary the materials and weigh them, Note/record the observations What material displaced the most water? Which displaced the least? Does heavy object displace more water?

Day 12 & 13: Turkey Disguise Family Project

2011-11-16T08:12:00.000-08:00

We received this really awesome box of Holiday craft supplies from Crafts projects ideas. CJ was SUPER-DUPER excited and wanted to use the glitters as soon as we received the pack. She asked "Mommy is it Christmas! Did we have a Santa visit?" Thanks to Craftsprojectideas.com for the wonderful Holiday Surprise!

Do check out Craftsprojectideas.com, they have a collection of craft project ideas - Seasonal, Rainy day crafts and Teacher's corner. Every month they feature crafts based on a specific craft material - Material of the month. The products used on the site are all sold at the Kids’ Crafts aisle in Walmart stores. We love them for that, no special trips to craft stores, Just pick them when you do grocery shopping.

CJ got home a turkey coloring template from school. The project was to creatively disguise him so that he can be saved from becoming the Thanksgiving dinner.

The Princess obsessed girl wanted to disguise him as Princess Aurora. Mommy thought he has a outline of dancing peacock. Since it was a family project, we had a discussion with daddy. Daddy felt princess and peacock both were great idea. After seeing the green glitters CJ decided to go with the peacock idea.

Materials Used:

Poster board
Pistachio shells
Glitters
Blue and green Acrylic paints
Blue construction paper
Q-tips
Blue Glitter stick
Tri beads
No-run Elmer glue

Steps Overview

First we cut the turkey outline from the template and glued him onto to a poster board.

I got a print-out of a peacock coloring page. So that CJ can compare the similarities.

For the peacock feathers, we glued on Pistachio shells.

We let it to dry for an hour and applied glue to the white spaces in between the shells. Sprinkled with glitters(from the Holiday craft box) and Shake off the excess

CJ colored the body of the turkey blue to look like a peacock body and glued blue construction paper wings. Using green acrylic paint, we colored the shells. To give peacock feather effect, we made blue dots using q-tips.

For the peacock crest, we used blue glitter sticks and tri beads(from the holiday craft box)

Day 12 Challenge: Field Trip
We were visiting our friends place which is almost 2 hrs drive from our place. Though we didn't plan a field trip, We did enjoy our long drive. As usual we played I spy, Call me Mr.Riddles games. Watched Passing clouds, Passing fields, Grazing cows, horses in the Farms/Fields. Had a discussion on the Fall colors and watched the beautiful color changed trees. We also love family singing so we recited some of our favorite songs.

Day 13 Challenge: Sticky Art
We had planned the Turkey disguise project activity for last Sunday and what a coincidence, the challenge was an open-ended creative play challenge, involving just one key element- stickiness!

Day 11: Outside adventure - Acorn Tossing game

2011-11-15T19:22:00.001-08:00

Book: Disney Princess Ready, Set, Throw

In the story, Briar rose(Sleeping beauty) and her aunts help the squirrels gather nuts(pecans) to a squirrel hole by playing a game. The game is to toss pecans into a tree hole. Everyone gets a turn, they toss five pecans one by one into the hole. CJ loves the story and the game.

Indoor play: We played the game by tossing the ping pong balls into a basket. CJ wanted to aim at a tree hole. So we also used an empty tissue paper box and acorns.

Aim and Toss the ball into the basket

Just miss!

The Day 11 Challenge of 30 days to hands on play was from Anna of Imagination tree to spend 15 minutes of time taking a walk outside and turn it into a mini-adventure, whatever the weather! We took the tossing game outdoors

Outdoor play: CJ wanted to play the game by tossing acorns into a tree hole. We set a tree stump with a hole as target and fixed a start line. Together we gathered a pile of acorn near the start line.

Game:
Each player gets five acorns.
The players take turns, Each player throws/tosses the acorns one by one at the tree hole/Target line.
The player who tosses max. acorns into the hole wins.

We enjoyed the game. It was real fun to play it outdoors.

Day 10: Concoctions - Erupting Volcano

2011-11-14T07:34:00.001-08:00

The Volcanoes CJ knows erupt bouncy balls (Dora's Bouncy Ball episode), foamy pink, purple liquid and she thinks they are super cool and fun! May be we have to read books about the real volcanoes. When we read the book - If You Take a Mouse to School, few months ago(back to school books), She said "Mommy look at that Volcano experiment. Can we do that at home" and I said oh yeah we can try it one day. Finally the day arrived. Yay! We did it! and a big thanks to Jamie - Hands on as we grow for the concoctions challenge.

Day 10 Challenge: Concoctions

Spend [at least] 15 minutes of uninterrupted time mixing concoctions with your kids.

Concoct a mixture of ingredients you have in your cupboard [flour, spices, sugar, cornflour, cornmeal], or vinegar and water. Explore how they combine and what happens. Stir and mix, or squirt and spray. Add color to make it interesting if you choose!

Baking Soda Volcano

CJ insisted on making a mountain and then the eruptions. So we got the idea to Build a Baking soda Volcano from about.com Chemistry site

For the Mountain/Cone

3 cups of flour(we ran out all purpose flour so we used wheat flour, it worked perfectly fine)
1 cup of salt
2 tablespoon cooking oil
1 cup of water
Plastic bottle
Baking pan

Mix 3 cups of flour, 1 cup of salt, and 1 cup of water. knead the dough with 2 tablespoons of cooking oil. I guess play dough/Salt dough will work perfectly too.

Place the plastic bottle in the pan.

Mold the dough around it into a Volcano shape. Don't cover the bottle opening or drop the dough into the bottle.

Volcano cone/mountain Ready!

For the Eruption

Baking soda
Vinegar
Food coloring
Warm water
Dish Wash liquid

Fill the bottle almost full with warm water

Add few drops of food color, CJ wanted a pink lava so we added pink. Add few drops of detergent. The detergent helps trap the bubbles produced by the reaction and so a better lava.Add 2 tablespoons of baking soda. Slowly pour vinegar and watch out for the erupting volcanoes:-)

The advantage of the baking soda Volcano is you can recharge your volcano to make it erupt again and again.

Blue Volcano!

More Vinegar!

More Eruption!

and our first Vlog

If you are trying the experiment, don't throw away the dough, Stay tuned! We have a fun project coming up!

Day 9: Princess sensory tub

2011-11-10T20:16:00.001-08:00

Day 9 Challenge: Sensory tub play

CJ's school has lots of sensory tubs - Rice, Shaving cream, corn, Sand, Cooked pasta, dry pasta.... and her teacher says CJ loves sensory play the most. To avoid the repetition of play I generally skip the sensory play @home. But I got fascinated by the pink Fairy Sensory Tub on Imagination tree, My pink and princess obsessed girl will love it! Making pink rice in half day was impossible so we made a lentil princess sensory tub.I showed CJ few lentil boxes and asked her what type of lentil she wanted. She said "Mommy, lets make Garden, Sand and rocks". So we used Mung Dal, Brown Masoor Dal and polished Masoor Dal(Orange)

Materials Used:

Lentils - Mung dal, Masoor dal(orange and brown)
Clear plastic container
Shallow cardboard box
Hair clips
Fake flowers
Princess toys
Pink cups
Paper towel rolls
Straws
Measuring cups
Disposable Cups, ziploc containers

Sensory tub

We started filling a clear plastic container but it was little deep and that meant lot of lentils

So We shifted to a shallow cardboard box.

Lentil layer!

Princesses and friends!

Hair clips on the garden, Carriage on the rocks!

I added some fake flowers too!

Mommy! The flowers are in the garden! Silly you!

Sensory Play

After we completed the sensory box, on CJ's request, we shifted the box into the clear plastic box. I thought that was a better idea, easy to store after play. All set for play! I gave her few measuring cups, disposable cups and straws. I noticed that she was having more fun scooping and pouring the lentils.

I made her a Paper roll castle so that she can pour lentils. The pink girl placed few pinks cups as castle!

CJ saw my castle tower and said "Mommy, your castle is not having a door. I want my princess to go in and out" so she made a paper roll castle with door

Princess in!

Princess out!

Lentil Rain!

Falling Hair clips!

After playing for few hours, CJ asked for a ziploc container and said "Mommy, wait its a surprise for you!"

Surprise! Flower Garden!

Day 8: Water Play - Row, Row, Row your Boat

2011-11-09T19:00:00.000-08:00

Day 8 Challenge: Water Play

Spend [at least] 15 minutes of uninterrupted time playing with water with your kids.

Floating paper boats in water is CJ's all-time favorite water play! Who doesn't love paper boats!

I like making paper boats and playing with them in the rain puddles. May be because of my interest, I think we have been playing with paper boats since CJ was 18 months old. But with CJ its not only on rainy day, we play with them anytime. She has never got bored of the play and keeps her engaged for hours together.

The origami paper boats really float for sometime but they sink when the paper gets soaked. The boats are easy to create, you can follow the directions for making an origami boat from the Origami-instructions site

Fill a Dish pan or bath tub with water and Row, Row, Row your boat

Generally I make her miniature size boats but this time she requested for bigger ones. After few minutes of play the boat started sinking. I asked CJ whether she wanted to make some more. She replied "Mommy, Can you make some better boats so that I can give my princesses a ride"So I made her a better boat with the Styrofoam egg carton.

After CJ had fun floating her princess in the boat. She started pouring water into the boat.

I explained to her that the boat was going to sink. She replied "Yes, Mommy I want the boat to sink" so she kept on adding some more items to the boat!

Finally a wrecked boat!

Day 7: Mega Doodles - Body tracing and Coloring

2011-11-09T10:03:00.000-08:00

Day 7 Challenge: Mega Floor Doodle

The Challenge was to create a large sheet of paper and let your child create, scribble, draw, whatever they wish.

Our Mega Doodle Chart!

I was thinking to set up the Mega doodle chart before CJ came home from School. But missed! So CJ and I started to create the chart together. We used Ikea Easel Paper roll. We cut sheets of paper from the roll and taped them together to form a Mega size chart. When we completed the chart, CJ came up with the idea of body tracing. They had done the activity at school for the "About me" theme.

First I traced CJ's body with a pencil

After I completed CJ's body tracing, She said "Mommy come on its your turn, lie down I'm going to draw you". But the chart was little small so we made one more chart for mommy. CJ was very happy to trace a outline of mommy!

We also made a body tracing of Daddy when he came home from office. CJ made crying faces on both of our outlines. Looks like she is the Happiest person in the family:-)

After CJ completed coloring my outline, she said "Come on Mommy, its your turn to make a beautiful princess out of my outline. I want you to make a smiley face"

While I dressed up her outline, Princess CJ was ordering "how her dress should look!", flowers, princess picture and.... She got excited and joined in with me to color.

Mommy! Princess Aurora has a yellow hair!

Princesses love to play outdoors! Coloring Sky!

Princesses loves flowers!

Princesses love Beautiful hair do and dress up! Hair style and Pink Headband!

The Mega Doodles was real fun! There was a down pour of creative ideas from CJ! We had so much fun with it that we left the sheet lying on the floor for the whole day.

Before CJ went to bed we had a fun learning activity too! We played "Can you doodle something that starts with the letter A or B or ...." The game went on for quiet a long time. We took turns - CJ would say a letter and I had to doodle. I would say a letter and she gets to doodle. CJ also practiced her writing skills

Day 6: Family Time - Snakes and Ladders

2011-11-08T21:34:00.000-08:00

DAY 6 CHALLENGE: Family Together Time

Spend [at least] 15 minutes of uninterrupted* time as a family! Simple as that. Carve out some time to sit together and enjoy a few minutes as a complete family.

We played the game - Snakes and Ladders.

Back in India when we were kids, during the hot summer holidays, its one of the games we played as a family. Its our favorite childhood game.

When we saw the "Snakes and Ladders - puzzle and game" at the Borders Store closing sale, we bought it with excitement. We enjoy the game as a family. Though most of the times the game ends when CJ loses and starts to cry.The game is a fun way to learn number sequencing and counting.

Day 5: Play Dough Exploration

2011-11-08T20:48:00.000-08:00

Day 5 Challenge: PlayDough Exploration

Step 1: Make some play dough together and let your child help with the measuring, stirring and kneading!

Step 2: Go around the house and garden, looking for unusual objects to collect into bowls. Stones, pebbles, feathers,...

Step 3: Lay out all the objects with the play dough and start exploring together!

We played!

Step 1: CJ loves kneading and mixing. So generally we make white play dough and then knead in colors.

During Halloween, we made a batch of play doughs and so we used them for our play

Halloween play dough
Black - Grape flavor kool-aid + white play dough*
Orange - Orange flavor kool-aid + white play dough*

We also made pink, green and blue using food coloring

*White play dough recipe - here or you can also use the recipe from The Imagination Tree site posted with the challenge (see the above link). Do visit her site for a variety of play dough recipes!

Step 2: I looked around the house and found some silly bands. I handed them to CJ

Step 3: CJ had fun exploring with the silly shapes.

But after few minutes of play, she started to make her own creations

We have been doing The very Hungry Caterpillar book - life cycle of Butterfly crafts that she made one with play doughs.

Play Dough: Life cycle of Butterfly (Oh my pinky girl!)

1. Pink Egg, 2. Hungry Caterpillar, 3. Cocoon- caterpillar covered with black dough, 4. Butterfly

Feeding food to her hungry caterpillar

Colorful Hungry Caterpillar

A Spider with Mustache and Beard

Finally a spider web with a family of spiders (CJ says the ball structures are spiders)

Day 4: Musical Island Jumping

2011-11-08T14:56:00.000-08:00

After 3 days of sickness, We got all geared up to play the pending challenges -30 days of Hands on Play

DAY 4 CHALLENGE: Pretend Islands
Spend [at least] 15 minutes of uninterrupted time making islands, pretending to be on the islands and even jumping to and from each of them with your child

We added Music to the Island Jumping and played just like Musical Chairs. Instead of chairs, We had different shape islands and when the music stops, stop jumping and freeze. We used a Blue play mat as Water. The game was a perfect one for my bouncy girl.

At first, I thought of having pillows and hula hoop as Islands. It was CJ's idea to have different shapes.

FREEZE!

CJ got so excited that she started to imagine slides and sofas as islands!

30 days to Hands on play: Build a fort and Building Blocks

2011-11-03T21:10:00.000-07:00

The Day 2 Challenge of 30 days to hands on play was to "BUILD A FORT!" and its from Jamie of Hands On : As We Grow. When CJ was almost 18 months old, I started building tents using a table and blankets for her to play in. From then on its her favorite hide out and she loves dens, tents. But after we bought CJ a Igloo tent, we completely forgot the fun. The challenge made us to enjoy our own fort. Thanks Jamie for the Challenge! Isn't Building forts fun!

Now that CJ wants to explode her creativity, I told she can create a Fort using two chairs and a throw blanket. She said "Mommy, chairs will be the wall, I need a roof". First I thought of providing her a cardboard but then I recalled a big art Foam board. So she placed the chairs as shown below and roofed it with the foam board. Covered them with throw blanket and fort ready!

After sometime CJ started calling it as her princess castle. For quiet a longtime she had an eye on the foam board. But I had not let her to use it for coloring. Now she got a chance, her imagination started running to the princess world and she said "Princess roof is not looking colorful, Can you please give me some crayons".

She went inside the castle and started coloring the Princess roof!

Yesterday we were unable to work on the Day 2 challenge so we combined Day 2 and Day 3 challenge. Today's challenge is from Anna of The Imagination Tree to spend (at least) 15 minutes of uninterrupted play"BUILDING WITH BLOCKS AND DUPLO"

When I challenged CJ to create something with her building blocks, she said "Mommy, Why can't I use kitchen tissue rolls to create a rocket ship"

Sorry Anna! I didn't want to disappoint her so I gave a go on it. We used Bounty tissue rolls because they have a nice plastic wrap round and they are perfect Jumbo Building Blocks.

Take 1:

Oops! Crash! thump!

Gearing up and Gathering

Take 2: She used three rolls as base and the rocket was ready for Blast off!

She shouted "The count down begins! 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 Blast off!"

CJ made a castle for..

King George!

Can you guess what she built!

It looked like a castle, the top two looked like Turrets. But CJ says its a spindle. This time her imagination floated to "Sleeping beauty".

Oh my! Thanks Anna for the challenge! We had lots of fun playing with the kitchen tissue building blocks!

After few hours of play, CJ dismantled her spindle and placed them all on top of the fort roof/castle. She says those things are to save her from torrent. On seeing my puzzled face, She said "Mommy, those bumps will cause the water to go down when there is a heavy rain fall"

PS: It's a Rainy day!

30 Days to Hands on Play Challenge

2011-11-02T12:16:00.000-07:00

Have you checked the 30 Days to Hands on Play Challenge hosted by the two amazing bloggers - Hands On : As We Grow and The Imagination Tree. We are excited to play along, how about you?

The Challenge

Everyday of this month play at least 15 minutes along with your kids without any interruptions

Get Inspired by new Play ideas

Yesterday was the kick off day and Day 1 Challenge was to think about the challenge, form a mission statement and know your kid like what they like to do, Interests

Here we go!

Mission Statement:As my little girl is growing big, I would love to spend quality time with her. I aspire to improve her reading, writing skills through fun learning and play.

CJ(4 yrs and 4 months old) Interests:
She is a very energetic and Bouncy girl. So she loves all the games and play that keep her moving.. tag, hide and seek, ball, Dancing to music, Race..

She loves open ended, imaginative, pretend play. She pretends to be Princess, Mommy/Daddy, Teacher, Big sister, Big brother, Rock star... Has lots of imaginary friends.

Humorous, Fun loving girl, likes all silly stuff - Silly stories, Silly songs...

Books, Books! She tries to associate all the books we read with the day to day happenings. So she loves all the Book + Craft activities

Now a days, She has started to ask for one person crafts i.e. her own creativity. Equip her with craft supplies and she will come up with her own creations. Loves abstract art and Junk models.

Spooky Math

2011-11-02T07:25:00.000-07:00

CJ did this Spooky Math activity at school. Boo! I know Halloween is officially over but it looked so simple and interesting that I wanted to share it with you.

Draw ghost faces on beans. Cut a haunted house template from Black construction paper. Glue on an Orange sheet. Write numbers on the Haunted house with chalk/white crayon. Count the beans/ghosts and glue against the numbers.

Christian Pumpkin

2011-11-02T06:59:00.000-07:00

Have you wondered how pumpkin relates to Christian? We got the below message from CJ's School Newsletter.

How is a Pumpkin like being a Christian?

A woman was asked by a coworker, What is it like to be a Christian?"The Coworker replied, "It's like being a pumpkin. God picks you from the patch, brings you in, and washes all the dirt off you may have gotten from the other pumpkins.Then he cuts the top off and scoops out all the yucky stuff. He removes the seeds of doubt, hate, greed, etc. Then He carves you a new smiling face and puts His light inside of you to shine for all the world to see."

CJ also bought the construction paper Jack-o-lantern craft from school. They made it to go along with the Christian Jack O' Lantern Poem.

I am a Jack O' Lantern, my light will shine so bright
For I am a Christian pumpkin, my symbols tell what's right.

My nose is like the cross, on which our Savior died
To set us free from sin, we need no longer hide.

My mouth is like a fish, the whole wide world to show
That Christians live in this house and love their Savior so!

The story starts at Christmas, my eyes are like the star
That shone on Baby Jesus and wise men saw from afar.

My color it is orange, just like the big bright sun
That rose on Easter Day, along with Gods' own Son.

And so on Halloween, let's set our pumpkins out
And tell the trick or treaters, what Gods' love is all about!

Magnetic Craft Sticks: Craft Stick + Magnetic Tape

2011-11-01T20:48:00.000-07:00

We like all magnetic stuff. This time we tried our hand on craft sticks. Eek! I meant to post this yesterday. Hope you all had a fun filled and Safe Halloween!

Materials Used:

Craft Sticks
Magnetic Tape
Old Cookie Tray
Markers
Heavy duty Scissors to cut the craft sticks

Steps Overview:

Cut Magnetic tape as small strips that fit to the Craft sticks. Remove the adhesive tape and stick the magnet to the craft stick. In the picture, don't get scared by the black mark that's CJ's Halloween stamp,

Magnetic sticks ready for play.

The Magnetic sticks were fun to play with. Only problem we faced was some of the magnets kept falling out. To secure them, I added Masking tape on top of the Magnets. You can also hot glue or stick the magnets with glue.

We made Shapes!

In order to create Alphabets, I cut some of the craft sticks in half and added the Magnets.

We Built a House!

We made a Pumpkin Puzzle! First I lined up the magnetic craft sticks on the cookie tray and let CJ to color them Orange. Then we drew the eyes, nose and mouth.

Rainbow Puzzle! Just color the magnetic craft sticks in different color and assemble them to form a Rainbow!

One Little Pumpkin sitting on a gate!

Incy Wincy Spider Headband

2011-11-01T13:28:00.000-07:00

CJ was the Flower princess at the school fall festival and so I thought it would be fun if she dressed up something different for the Halloween costume contest at the library. But an inexpensive one! "Incy Wincy Spider" - her costume was a shirt and pant with spider pictures(we got them from WALMART) and she carried the Hula Hoop spider web. To make it more spidery, I made her a Spider headband.

The spider is the same one from the Hula Hoop spider web post. I cut his legs short and put girl wiggly eyes. We made the pipe cleaner spider using the Tutorial - Fuzzy stick spiders on Craftprojectideas.com. Since the body of spider is twisted pipe cleaners, I just slipped in the headband on the back of the spider as shown in the picture below. The spider can be hot glued to the headband too. But I wanted to use the headband without the spider too so I preferred the removable one.

Flower Princess Wand

2011-11-01T12:06:00.000-07:00

For this year Halloween, CJ was Flower Princess. The Princess costume didn't have a wand. How can the flower princess be without a wand! So I came up with a wand fit for the costume.

Materials Used:

Fake flowers
Smiley Ball or Styrofoam ball, 2" diameter
Hot Glue
Kabob sticks/Bamboo skewers
Ribbon
Fabric Glue

Gather all the Supplies

Steps Overview:

Gently slip in the sharp edges of the Bamboo skewers inside Styrofoam ball (refer to picture 1). I used two Bamboo skewers to give a sturdy structure
You can either Hot glue the flowers or poke hole and Fill in the flower. I used the second one, I poked holes in the ball and put in the flower stems one by one
Continue poking holes and cover the entire ball with flowers ***PS:Since I ran out of flowers I just covered the front view with flowers and the other half with felt
Starting at the top of the bamboo skewers i.e. joining portion of the ball and sticks, adhere the ribbon to the sticks together with fabric glue. To hold it in place, secure it with a clothespin. Wind the ribbon all the way down the sticks to the very end. Glue in place and secure with another clothespin. When dry remove clothespins and tie a bow at the top of the wand

Flower Wand Ready!

The flower wand can be used as a flower topiary too!

Closer view!

Magic Painting: Appearing Ghost and..

2011-10-27T07:29:00.000-07:00

When I saw the Ghost jokes painting at boredom busting mommy, I knew CJ would love it. We made magic paintings to go along with our all-time favorite Chant In the Dark, Dark woods.

In the Dark, Dark Woods
In the Dark, Dark Woods, there was a Dark, Dark House
In the Dark, Dark House, there was a Dark, Dark Stair
And up the Dark, Dark Stair, there was a Dark, Dark door
And behind the Dark, Dark door, there was a Dark, Dark Shelf
And In Dark, Dark Shelf, there was a Ghost!

Materials Used:

White Paper
white crayons
Black Poster paint/Tempera paint

Steps Overview:

1. Draw the pictures/scenes with white crayons on different papers
2. Paint the paper with black colors and see the pictures appear.

Books:

Diwali cards

2011-10-25T13:07:00.000-07:00

We made Diwali greeting cards using Picnik software.

CJ designed the below card. She instructed me on where to place the fireworks, size and the colors.

Yes! We are having lots of fun creating Birthday cards, Mothers day, Fathers day cards... using the Picnik software. It's real fun. I'll share how to make them if anyone is interested!

Wishing all my Indian Friends and Family a very Happy Diwali! May the festival of lights Sparkle Happiness, Peace and Warmth!

Simple DIY Memory Game

2011-10-21T19:58:00.000-07:00

Last week, one day I was sick with a severe back pain and wanted CJ to work on a craft with out my help. The "Mini Notepads" from Party city shop came to my rescue. I got a bunch of them while we were shopping for CJ's birthday and they were in the craft box unnoticed by CJ.

I gave her the materials and explained how to make the memory game. Equipped her with my digital camera and said "its your day honey, you can take pictures of the steps". CJ enjoyed creating her own memory game with an added fun of photography

DIY Memory Game

Materials Used:

Mini Notepad from party city
Sticker book
Big Notebook
Glue stick

I got the sticker book and notebook in the back to school clearance sale. The mini notepads are very cute and approx. 2 X 2 inches in size. The look similar to post-its.

Glue the mini notepad pages like flaps. (you can also use post-its)

In a random manner, fix identical pair of stickers below the flaps. Open the flaps and find the match. Memory game ready!

Indian Corn: Fall hat

2011-10-20T07:37:00.000-07:00

Indian/Variegated Corn Kernels + Glue + one Creative kid ---> Beautiful Fall hat

The Hat decoration Idea is from CJ. She asked "Mommy can you please give me some corn kernels and glue. I'm going to do one person art!" I think she will start her own blog soon:-))

CJ modeling her Fall hat!

Halloween: Watched! Googly/Wiggly eyes Art

2011-10-20T06:47:00.000-07:00

During an eye clinic visit, I saw a Googly eyes wall art and had saved the project idea for Halloween. They had just glued Wiggly eyes on a paper and framed it. It's a super simple craft, perfect for kids!

Materials Used:

Picture frame(The ones I used are from Ikea, 2 for $3.99)
Googly Eyes(Wiggly Eyes 120 Pack Assorted Sizes and Colors from Walmart)
Glue stick
Black construction paper or white paper colored black
Elmer's washable no run glue

Steps Overview:

I removed the glass from the picture frame and replaced it with the colored black paper.

Then we started gluing the wiggly eyes in pairs

There were some unpaired, single eyes in the pack. We glued them on the frame.

Do you have the feeling of being watched?

CJ loved her art work. As soon as dad came home, She showed him and said "Daddy you're being watched!"

I used Picnik software Halloween fonts and created the below Halloween words template.

We took print out and cut the letters out. We used Washable glue(Elmer's no run school glue) and glued the letters on the frame. So that we can remove the letters out and reuse the frame after Halloween.

No carve: Drip Paint Pumpkin

2011-10-19T13:21:00.000-07:00

While coloring the bottles for the Pumpkin and Ghost luminary, I had also colored a bottle blue and dripped the excess paint to a cup. I was feeling lazy to store the paint so I poured the paint over a mini pumpkin.

The paint created a beautiful drip art on the pumpkin.

CJ was pretty impressed with the pumpkin art and wanted to try her hand on a bigger pumpkin. She said "Mommy this is a one person art and you don't disturb just give me the craft supplies", Now a days she just wants to show her creativity. It was her idea to use oral dosing syringes and droppers for the art.

Materials Used:

Pumpkin
Acrylic paint
Washable paint
Glue/Mod podge
Dropper
Oral dosing Syringes(the one with no needle)
Paper plate or cup to hold the pumpkin
Twine

Steps Overview:

Place the pumpkin on a paper plate

Mix - spoon of paint + spoon of glue/mod podge + 2 or 3 spoons of water. Blend thoroughly. You can also use paint alone. My daughter loves to mix and this also reduces the usage of paint.

Drip paint all around on top of the pumpkin

Since its a bigger pumpkin, we moved to the edge of the blue paint and added more paint!

one more layer of blue paint, at the end of pink

Let it dry.

I felt the pumpkin looked pretty cool. But CJ wanted her pumpkin to look similar to mine and so she poured some more blue and white acrylic paint.

Finally she got her pumpkin look like the smaller one!

To give a more appealing look, I wrapped a twine around the pumpkin stem!

Three Little Pumpkins or Six little Pumpkins sitting on a Table!

Colored bottles: Pumpkin and Ghost Luminary

2011-10-19T07:43:00.000-07:00

We love luminaries! Remember those Decoupage Tissue paper bottles - Recycled bottle Aquarium,Music notes luminary, Rainbow bottles/Pot-o-gold. I wanted to try something new this time and we used the simple method of tinting the bottles with acrylic paint. I got the inspiration from the blog post - Colored glass jar using glue + food color on craft berry bush blog

Materials Used:

Acrylic paint
Bottles(glass/plastic)
Modpodge/Elmer's glue
Paper cups/Styrofoam trays for mixing
Permanent markers
Masking tape
Plastic spoons
LED Tea light

Steps Overview:

Safe guard your work area and clothes

Mix - 1 teaspoon of acrylic paint + 1 teaspoon of mod podge/Elmer's glue + 1 teaspoon of water. Let them blend thoroughly.

Pour the mix into the bottle

Swirl the paint inside the bottle so that the whole inner surface is coated with paint

To remove the excess paint, Tilt the bottle on a cup or close the bottle with lid and place it upside down until all the paint drips down. I left it stay for an hour or so. The more you get the paint out, the faster it drys

Use a paper towel and wipe off any paint that may have dripped onto the outside of the jar. Use a wet paper towel to make it extra clean.

Let it dry. The lesser the paint inside the faster it drys. The bottles took 2 days to dry.

When I tried a Google search for Jack-o-Lantern faces, I got some cute templates from Martha Stewart, here and ideas from Crafts by amanda, here.

On the Orange glass jars, I just free handed the faces with permanent marker. For the ghosts jars, Since I thought of reusing the jars as vases, I used masking tape for the face. First I free handed the expressions on the masking tape and cut them out. After placing the tapes on the bottles, CJ colored them black with the markers.

Aren't they cute!

Illuminated with LED tea lights!

No-Carve: Indian corn Pumpkin decoration

2011-10-13T07:59:00.000-07:00

Have you ever plucked kernels from the variegated corn cobs? Oh my they are perfect tiny jewels! We did this activity during Thanksgiving season 2009 and stored the kernels in a Ziploc bag. Last year we used some of the kernels to create a sunflower art and stored the remaining. I took out the bag of kernels and let CJ decorate her mini-pumpkin with the jewels. I don't why, I have an aversion towards sprinkling glitters on the pumpkin so generally I let CJ to paint them with washable paints. Decorating the pumpkin with kernels was a fun activity, boosting fine motor skills and Glitter-free!

Materials Used:

Small/Mini Pumpkin
Variegated corn kernels
Elmers no run glue (Washable school glue)

Steps Overview:

Apply glue on a small surface of pumpkin and place the kernels on the glue.

Continue until the whole pumpkin is covered with the kernels.

Let it dry for 24 hrs or more

I have plans of getting more Indian corn cobs this time too! How about you?

More no-Carve inspirations!

Decorate Pumpkins with Playdough by Teach Preschool

Feather Pumpkin by Tinkerlab

Pumpkin Cups by Teach Preschool

Pumpkin Suncatcher by Happy Hooligans

Paper Pumpkins by Come Together Kids

Mr and Mrs. Pumpkin Head by Meet the Dubiens

Paper roll pumpkin by little family fun

Paper pumpkins by little family fun

Pumpkin Pocket Craft by Classfiedmom

Rainbow pumpkin by creativity my passion:-))