Pinterest Inspired Kid Crafts!

The kids and I love to do crafts, but now with school and all our other things, we seldom get to do any. So with yesterday being a nice, relax at home day, we busted out supplies. We checked out my Pinterest boards and pulled some ideas out. We finished 5 crafts, and got 1 started that will be finished today.




The first craft was this cute mug of hot chocolate craft from Melissa and Doug! They have this nice free printable and directions on how to do it. We did add the real hot chocolate mix to our mugs, and the kids insisted on using real mini marshmallows instead on the ones provided on the print out. I did use a heavy card stock to print this on. It helps to hold up against the mix and marshmallows.

Next up, our 100th day of school is coming up this week, and I find that any fun way to teach counting up that high is very welcome! This one comes from the blog For The Love Of Kindergarten but sadly the link no longer goes to a post. So I will link to the pin instead.  This was super easy! On heavy white card stock, I free hand drew the 100 in the middle, and using a ruler, drew lines making 10 sections. I used 5 different colors of paint (so use each color twice), we dipped q-tips into the paint and made 10 dots in each section. The kids then asked if they could paint in the 100, and we said, "Sure, why not!" They both though this was a fun way to count by 10's all the way to 100!

This very cute penguin craft was picked out by L. Super easy, and very fun! This one comes to us from Reading Confetti.  I used some bowls from the kitchen to use as tracers for all of the pieces. I used a white colored pencil to trace on the black paper, and let the kids all cut out all their own pieces. We then set them the way we wanted them to look, and got to gluing. We had extra paint left from the 100 craft, so we used that for the eyes. For other penguin craft ideas, check out what we did last year.

Last year for the 100th day of school, L wanted a special shirt to wear. I found this cute monster one from Simply Modern Mom! So of course we needed to copy it. ;-) Well, now that D is coming up on her first 100 days of school, she needed a special shirt to wear as well. We came up with a gumball machine that had 100 pompom gumballs glued on. Adam used Sharpie markers to draw the image on the t-shirt, and I used fabric glue to attach the pompoms or googly eyes to the shirts.

Free Fun Science Event!

All Indianapolis readers! Are you looking for a fun thing to do with the kids this Saturday?

Lakeshore Learning Store Science Fair!

Date: January 19, 2013

Time: 11am – 3pm

Location:  1300 E. 86th Street, Indianapolis, IN 46240

Event Details:   Calling all little scientists! Join us at Lakeshore Learning Store’s Science Fair for a fun-filled afternoon includinghands-on activities, live science demonstrations and experiments for kids! Plus, children can also participate in a special

craft activity and get a FREE Science Software* with any in-store purchase during the event/while supplies last!

Cost: Free/ Open to the public

Some activities include making and decorating your very own Thermometer as well as Magnet Activities, Observing & Magnifying Activities, Exploring Simple Machines and Exploring Hot & Cold with volcano demonstrations and snow play!

For more information please visit:http://www.lakeshorelearning.com/general_content/store_locations/122612_Event_ScienceFair.jsp

Have fun, and please let me know if you go and what your favorite thing was!

Snowmen fun!

Today was the perfect still on break, craft in our pjs kind of day, and what better craft then snowmen crafts!

Project 1:
Snowmen from Above

Supplies needed:
white, brown, orange, and whatever color for background and scarf construction paper
glue stick
scissors
pencil
black marker

I had cut the shapes out prior to use starting the craft. For the large white circle, I traced a salad plate. For the middle white circle, I traced a small bowl. And for the other circles I used a circle template back from my design school days. The scarf is actually a full circle slightly smaller than the head circle, with a rectangle sticking out. I had the kids glue down each layer one at a time. When they were all finished, they used the black marker to add coal eyes, buttons, and lines to the carrot. Very cute!

This project was inspired by this post on Mrs. Knight's Smartest Artists


Project 2:
Q-tip painted Snowmen snow globes

Supplies needed:
white, black, brown, orange, and red washable paint
q-tips
paper plate
blue construction paper

I had the blue circle pre-cut prior to the craft, and once again, I used a salad plate to trace. I squeezed a dollop of each paint onto the paper plate (this makes for easy clean up). I also got out tons of q-tips. They used a new one for each color. I set out a sheet of paper towel so we had somewhere to set our dirty q-tips. I explained to the kids that we were dotting the paint on with the q-tips. They both started to smear and wipe the paint, but corrected themselves quickly. L did complain at the beginning that it would take too long. But once he got the hang of it, he had a ton of fun.

This project was inspired by this picture on Flickr.

Homemade Puff Paint Snowflakes

We were inspired by the beautiful puff paint snowflakes over at Inner Child Fun, that we just had to try it!

Today was the first day back from break for Adam, but the kids still have a few days off. I figured it was a perfect snow themed craft in our pajamas kind of day!

Supplies needed:
self rising flour (found in the baking aisle)
table salt
water
squeeze bottles (I happen to have these for decorating cookies, but you can recycle any squeeze plastic bottle from the kitchen)
food coloring (optional)
blue and white construction paper (I cut our full sheets in half)

In a bowl, mix equal parts flour and salt. I used 1 cup of each and that made more than enough "paint" for us to use. Add enough water to make it the same consistency as pancake batter, ours was about 1 cup of water. Stir well. Divide into the bottles. I added some plain white into 2 bottles, then added a few drops of blue food coloring to the third that was left in the bowl and added that to another bottle.

Have the kids draw whatever snowflakes they like! We each did 4 drawings!!! Now comes the fun part, place 1 sheet in the microwave and cook for 30 sec. Some of ours didn't take that long, it really depends on how thick the paint is on the sheet. The kids loved watching it puff up while it cooked. They also loved taking turns setting the microwave and taking the sheets out. These now hang proudly on the outside of our apartment door. It's fun to think that anyone coming over to our apartment or our neighbors apartment will get to see these. We also thought it would be tons of fun to do these for Valentine's day in different shades of pink, red, and purple.

 Before the microwave...

 After the microwave.

2012 Advent Calendar

Our December was crazy busy! On top of the normal holiday buzz, we saw Adam have his first week long buisness trip, and everyone get very sick. No fun on the sick part, let me tell you! I was the last one to get it, and it hit me worse than the rest. Luckily we were all pretty much back to normal just in time for Christmas.

Some of the fun things we did this year on our advent calendar were reading holiday stories, watching all our favorite holiday movies, crafts, doing good deeds, making snowflakes, seeing the Nutcracker, our annual trip to Chicago, seeing lights, making cookies, putting the tree up, and so much more!





The good deeds that we did were putting a ton of quarters in the carts at Aldi, buying lunch for the car behind us at McDonalds, reading to D's class and bringing in cookies, bringing in cookies to surprise L's class, handing out suckers to kids at the store (with parent permission first of course), and trying to hand out flowers to people coming in at the airport. The flowers at the airport did not work as we had hoped. People ignored the kids, said no, or just ran away from them. Shocking! So we saved them and gave them to Adam and his boos when they returned home from their trip.

 You can see these ladies running from poor D.

 Handing out suckers to kids

 How could you say no to this face?

Happy to have Daddy back!

 Where we got to see the Nutcracker ballet. It was the first time seeing it live for both kids, and they loved it!

 Making classic spritz cookies

 Seeing Cloudgate (The Bean) on our trip to Chicago

 D eating a banana and Nutella crepe at the German village in Chicago

 I had to have some potato pancakes!

 Christmas at the inlaws house. Always a great time!

The tree after Santa had visited

 L and Adam checking out the microscope L got.

 My mom had gotten us a Wii and a bunch of games. It has been a huge hit, here L is dancing away to Just Dance Disney!

D asked for a makeup kit from Santa and he brought her this great Barbie set.

And that silly Santa brought mustaches in stockings. They sure do make for some fun pictures!

Featured Post at Little Indiana: Scented Candy Canes

I had the honor of being one of the bloggers featured on the Little Indiana: A Very Hoosier Holiday series last month! We made these fun scented candy canes! Go check out how we did it.

http://littleindiana.com/2012/12/a-very-hoosier-holiday-scented-candy-cane-craft/