President's Day Crafts

It's President's day again, and both kids had the day off from school. We had been reading some great books for about 2 weeks before. We stuck with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln this year. These 3 crafts were simple, easy, and use things that most people already have in their house!

The first one was a very simple Honest Abe. Originally found at Chalk Talk. I drew the basic shape out on just white construction paper. Just let the kids have at it with basic crayons. I love how they all came out slightly different and slightly the same.

This was a very fun Washington craft! Found on The First Grade Parade . They also had the kids do a writing prompt, which I wanted to do, but ran out of time. Start with a paper plate cut in half. To make the perfect skin tone for this craft, just mix a little orange in a blob of white. While the paint is drying, cut out the hat from blue construction paper. When all is dry and ready to go, add cotton balls for his wig and let the kids draw on his face. D made sure to add his false teeth and tongue!

I found this finger puppet craft last year and ran out of time. So I thought it would be great to try it this year. Originally found Kaboose and marked as for 4 years and up, I would say that even my very crafty 5 and 6 year old had trouble with this one. Made from just construction paper, tape, and coins, the kids had trouble rolling the paper and taping at the same time. With a little help from me, we were able to get it in the right shape. From there on out, I let the kids embellish them however they liked, and we had no more problems. Later in the day, the kids both put on a show using these little guys.

See what other fun crafts we have done in the past!
2012: President's day crafts
2011: President's day

Chinese New Year 2013

We love celebrating all the holidays we can, and Chinese New Year is one of them! We have done this now for many years. This year is the year of the snake, so we had to make a snake! We had crafts done in the morning, and then picked up some take out from our favorite little place. We had egg drop soup, pork egg rolls, pork fried rice, and fried dumplings.

I always have a decent stash of toilet paper tubes around the house because you really never know when they will come in handy! As soon as I saw this neat snake, I knew the kids would love to make it. Found here on Cheap Crafty Mama, we did things a little differently. We all took turns painting the sections, we used brass brads to hold him together, and L used a black bingo stamper to give him his wonky eyes. This turned out so cute, I think he might have to be left out for some time.

Last year we attempted paper lanterns, so this year I wanted to try something a little different. I saw these Good Fortune banners on Dim Sum, Bagels, and Crawfish.  She has a link to a step by step on how to make the characters. We had so much fun working on these, and they look so pretty!

2013 Valentine Craft day

This year we did our craft day a little differently. This year, I am no longer in the local moms group because we aged out with school. It makes me a little sad because we spent so many great years involved with it, that I figured we still needed to have a big craft day. So I got a room at the library for after school, and invited a bunch of our friends to join us. It was a huge success! I set up 4 crafts in different stations, and had everyone bring a snack to share. It worked out so well, that we are planning a St. Patrick's day the same way.

One of the craft the kids could make were heart sun catchers. I had hearts cut out of contact paper, construction paper heart frames, yarn, and tissue paper all pre-cut.

We did add 3 stories to the end of our craft time.

We also did one of our favorites. These always come out so nice looking! I cut the plain coffee filters into heart shapes and set out Valentine colors of washable markers. We encourage the kids to color in the entire filter.

 We then had the kid move down the table a bit and spray down the filter. This creates a fun tie dye effect. Always a fun craft!

 We did marble painted hearts. I had to come up with a way to do this and minimize the mess potential since it was in the library. A friend had donated these empty coffee cans to the Art Smart program at school, so I borrowed them for the afternoon. I had medium sized hearts cut out of white card stock. We only used red and purple paint, which still created some fun other shades after it was all done. I put the paint and a few marbles in a separate cup and used a plastic spoon to add them to the coffee cans. I made sure the lids were on tight, and the kids LOVED shaking the can and making loud music.

 And lastly we did the love birds that my kids and I had done a few years back as a fun and simple fourth craft. I had everything all pre-cut just making it easier, plus I knew that I didn't have enough kid scissors for all that were coming. This was fun to see how the kids really made it their own!

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.