Canvas Project with the Kids

I bought a package for skinny 4x4 canvases thinking that we would do this project with the kids for my daughter's birthday party since she requested that they paint.  Ooooh I am so glad I ended up vetoing that idea to pain with a bunch of 4 and 5 year olds! I had the canvases so I thought that we could have some fun with them around the house.

I used my Silhouette and cut out a vinyl unicorn as requested.  My daughter wanted a pink unicorn so I had her paint the canvas all in pink and then let it try.  I then attached the vinyl unicorn and had her paint the canvas again in purple.  After she was done painting we peeled up the vinyl and had this.  She chose some ribbon out of the stash to make it into a door hanger for her room.

My 2-1/2 year old is into trucks, machines, etc.  I had him pick out which machine he wanted to do and he chose a digger.  I stuck his vinyl digger straight to the canvas and let him have a go with the paints.  Once he was done we peeled it up and had a white digger silhouette.  He wanted to be like big sis and picked out some ribbon so we could hang his project in his room.

Give Thanks Banner

As we were putting the Halloween Decorations away and taking out the few Thanksgiving Decorations we have my daughter said, "Let's make some more Thanksgiving decorations!"  So I looked through our craft supplies and found that I had purchased a pack of foam fall leaves.  I cut out the letters on my Silhouette for "Give Thanks" and let her color them anyway she wanted - she choose to do some in crayon and some in marker.  She also decided to add a sparkly jewel to each letter.  We then glued them onto foam leaves.  I found a coloring page turkey by doing a google search and then printed that out for her to color to have a break in the lettering.  Then I punched holes in the foam with my crop-o -dile and my daughter threaded them onto a ribbon.  Then we hung it up - tada!  It took 3 days of her brother's nap time to get this done so it held our interest for quite a bit.

Happy Halloween!

I saw this and decided to give it a go on our door.  I always see a project and think, "Oh yea, I could whip that out."  This took an hour.  I left a spot on the bottom of the door so the kids could still peek out the bottom of it.  It looked great the first few days.




Then by the end of the month you can see the mummy started to come unwrapped:)  Two looks for the price and time of one.  Our glass door gets a lot of sun in the afternoons and the tape I used on the inside of the door, as well as the streamers modified itself in the heat.  Hard to see from the picture but bright white at the beginning of the month and by the end streamers had yellow a bit, just like a real mummy - ha!

 I got the kiddos involved a few days later as we made pumpkin puzzles.  Saw a good tutorial and knew I had some orange sticks in the craft stash.  We used 5 sticks per puzzle and taped the outside edges to draw our pumpkins.  The we took the tape off and mixed them all up.

When we mixed just the 5 up - each puzzle went together pretty quick.  But them we mixed all the sticks up and it took them a little longer to do an we ended up with some fun faces in the process.

Halloween paper weaving

Wish I could say I cut this with my Silhouette or by hand but it was a kit. It was fun anyway and new decorations are always good!

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Fun Projects for the Kids

Since it was so hot this month I did a lot of projects to keep the kiddos entertained since we are inside more now than in winter!

 First up we bought these colored wood shapes on sale at Michael's.  Then I hot glued them to Popsicle sticks.  Now we use them with our puppet show box (big cardboard box with a hole in it:)).  

 Saw this idea on the web, but for the life of me can't remember where.  I took paint chips and use my square punch to make holes in them.  Then I ran them through my laminator and put them all on a ring.  The idea is find something that matches the color of the chip.  This kept us busy for quite a long time.  We also expanded on this idea by using buckets and the first person to fill their bucket with items of a selected color won.

The kiddos bathroom is painted a sand brown and there is sort of a beach them going on so I decided to go a step further and get crazy with my Silhouette.  I cut vinyl shapes out and placed them all over the bathroom.  It ended up looking pretty great and my youngest likes to laugh and say good morning to the crab everyday since its about his level on the floor.

Outdoor Bowling Set

I have a ton of puff containers that we had been through.  

 I thought I certainly could come up with something to do with all of these.  We decided to make an outdoor bowling set!  I gathered the containers, colored duct tape we had on hand, my glue gun, a funnel and bought a 5 lbs bag of rice and a kickball.

  I used the duct tape to seal the lids on.

I used the funnel to pour rice in about 2-3 inches full on the bottom.  Then I used the glue gun to seal the lid and placed an extra piece of duct tape over the opening.

TaDa!  We marked X's on the ground with sidewalk chalk where to place the pins and lined them up.  Then we took turns kicking the ball into the pins.  The kids had a great time stacking them back up and kicking them over again and again.  It was a really quick craft to do and my oldest even helped.

I Spy Bottles

For the Toddler Busy Bag Exchange Jessica made I Spy bottles.  She placed rice in empty water bottles along with buttons, a penny, a frog, swirl paperclip, erasers, poofs and a jingle bell.  Then she hot glued the cap on.  Before putting the items in she took a picture of what to look for, printed it out and then laminated it.  Here are some of the websites that gave inspiration: here and here.

Pool Noodle Lacing

This month's craft is similar to many others already posted. Gail asked us to be a part of a Toddler Busy Bag swap. We were so busy that I almost politely declined but I have to say I'm glad I decided to participate. I made a pool noodle lacing game taken from an idea here: http://planetoftheapels.blogspot.com/2011/09/busy-bag-swap-day-2-pool-noodle-lacing_01.html. I bought the noodles cheap at Target and used a sharp knife to cut them into 1 inch slices. Each bag got 9 numbered noodles and then various pattern cards for creating patterns with color or numbers. I also bought large bouncy balls and my husband drilled holes in them so that the noodles wouldn't slip off of one end of rope. This was very simple and very cheap to make! Hopefully kids are enjoying these, I know my daughter loves it. We're looking forward to getting our bags next weekend!

Word Families and Counting/Addition

 For this toddler busy bag, I used paint chip cards to create a words family set.  You match up the cards by color and then read the words.  The word families I did are at, an, en, ip, op, ug, and ing.  I laminated these with clear laminate contact paper.

 
I also made a number card set.  For the younger kids, there are pom-poms that they can place on the card and count and learn their numbers.  If you flip the cards over, there are addition problems that add up to the number on the back. Kids can either use the pom poms, or simply count the dots that are on the cards.  I laminated these with clear laminate contact paper.

Foam Shape Match

I coordinated a Toddler Busy Bag Swap with some moms and this is the project I took on. I was inspired by looking here, here, and here. I took a package of foam sheets and then used a Sharpie to make grids. I then found 2 sets of each shape. One set I glued down (with foam glue) onto the sheets and the other set I placed into a jewelry bag. I tried to make the sheets different levels of difficulty since we have a pretty wide range of kids that are the recipients of the busy bags.

Valentines Day Kids Crafts

So this month I enlisted the help of my son, Holden.  For Valentines day presents, I helped him make paper heart wreaths for the grandmas and a bird seed ornament for Daddy.  The bird seed ornament was made by cutting a heart out of cardboard, spreading shortening onto the heart, and then pressing bird seed onto the shortening.