St. Patty's Decor

The kids are on Spring Break this week. Monday is library day, so since they are home they got to pick out their own books. KL chose a book of St. Patrick's Day crafts. This isn't the first time, she's an artistic child, she has checked out several "learn to draw" and craft and kid themed cookbooks in the past. Most the time, she looks through them and maybe picks out a few to try. Most the time it gets brought to me, I say I need to check and see if we have what we need, and it usually gets forgotten or we don't have the materials/ingredients.

This week, all the crafts were pretty simple, and she picked out 4 (I think) and only 1 did we not have the materials for. So here's what we made:

Cute little window garland. (She chose to let it fall down instead of combining them for a long chain across the top.)

These were pretty simple, I cut a ton of 2" paper strips in the colors of the rainbow. She glued them together to make long chains, and then folded them, what I always called, "snake" style. (Where you stack two and then flip them one over the other.)

Here's a few action shots:

(And a peek-a-boo, twin

The first 2.

Having fun folding, after she got the hang of it.

While KL was working on this, the twins were busy playing with the scraps. Since construction paper is 9" wide and I was cutting 2" segments, I had left over 1" lines. So I split these among the twins, gave them a glue stick and said have fun. (They don't get the glue very often, so they were pretty happy.)

Here is what KM came up with:

She made a lot of "x-rays" (this is what she currently calls the letter X), and then didn't want to be done with the glue yet, so she glued all of them on top of each other.

Here's KN's:

Sorry, the brightness is way up on this photo, I was doing my best to try and get the color to show (I should've taken the photo before I hung it in the window). I think it slightly resembles a prism - she was just gluing strips together randomly, there is not pattern to the madness, just simply glue and paper.

Also while KL was working, KK looked through to see what ideas were in the book and she found the rag/scrap wreath. So here's how her's turned out:

 The book used lots of green, I thought a touch of gold would be nice too.

So here's our all involved, individually, decor. It was a fun way to spend the first day of Spring Break, here's hoping we can continue to stay busy, but we also have a new round of sickness moving in so we'll see.

That's all for now,
Jo!

February's Crafts

Sorry I've been quiet, since the New Year we've been pretty busy.
The sickness kicked in (I had thought we were going to get lucky because we hadn't had anything in the month of December). The sport kicked in, so there was just less time to craft and even less to post.

In the month of February, there was obviously Valentine's Day. Here is the one craft we did:

This was originally a Disney's Family Fun Magazine craft, but I we'd done it before and I used a few short cuts that really left me with just using their idea more than anything else. I cheated (saving myself hours of cutting) by using heart shaped stickers for the ears. I also thought it would be cute to add a small one for a nose which wasn't part of the original idea. I skipped out on the feet, also to save me from hours of cutting and just glued it straight to the cheese. These went with one of the twins.

KL looked through a magazine for ideas and decided on Valentine's themed whistles for her class.

The other twin brought these I had bought a pack of 30 (or so) twistable Crayola crayons on sale a while ago and they've just been sitting unopened because school provides an ample amount of already opened packages of crayons. So I figured that was a good way to get them used.

After Valentine's Day, we had a wax museum for the school, and KK was required to participate.
So she chose Cleopatra for her famous person, and I said sure, not thinking about the fact that I was going to have to make/buy a costume for her. But I think we pulled it off (especially since I didn't even buy the fabric until a week and a half before and took a break to print/make/supervise 4 year old signatures on Valentine's).
Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of the full costume. I took a video of her speech from the night, but there's a few too many identifying markers so I'm a little uncomfortable posting it. So here's the pictures that I do have:

This was her necklace. This is a recent photo and it's been played with, so it's missing a few gems.
This was craft foam, spray painted gold, and then adorned with sticker gems, beaded strands, and metallic Sharpie in a few spots. Then we just hot glued a ribbon to each side to tie it on her neck.
(Kudos to the Orca for helping with the picture.)

The event is a fund raiser for her class so she needed a "bank" to collect the money paid to hear her speech. So we paper mached a pyramid and then we painted it gold.
And then there's her crown, we used craft foam and an embossing tool to press the snake shape, along with a few small red jewels for the eyes, and a few extra jewel stickers for the added riches emphasis.

Her outfit was a black dress (she liked the black costume ideas better than white- we look into buying a costume, but they looked cheap but cost a fortune). I actually made her dress (very simply)- I bought 8 feet of fabric, folded it in half long-wise and then width-wise, and then cut out the neck hole and the width needed for her body. Sewed the seams for the sides and so the extra fabric on the arms just draped, since most costumes come with a ribbon that almost looks like a train but attaches to the hands. I don't even know what it's called, but I think we made it work, it still made it look flowy and regal.
On top of that we spray painted a belt gold, so she could cinch the waist and break up the black and allowed it the extra to fall down.
And finished it off with a pair of sandals that laced up the leg (that I found on sale for $10).

We accessorized with a wrapping paper tube and card stock paper cut to the shape of an ankh, also spray painted gold. Tada, instant staff.

I think the cheapest costume I found (which didn't include as much as I had here) cost $40, and we ended up spending a total of $35.

We also made a paper mache snake because she needed a "prop". I used spray paint to make it green, she designed and painted it's markings. Then we added a quick felt tongue.

That's all for now,
Jo!

Post It Clip Boards

This is what I decided on for the SLP for Teacher Appreciation. (If you only knew the amount of progress my KL has made in 2 years with her you would be buying her gifts too.)

They are cute little clip boards for Post It notes, and even a little bigger- they're about 5 inch squares, I don't remember the exact measurement.

Anyway, I saw the idea on Pinterest and thought it was too cute. The original idea used cardboard coasters but I was scared that they wouldn't hold up to frequent classroom use, so I set out for other ideas. I first I looked at the coasters still just to see if there was another option- maybe a sturdier plastic but at Walmart all I could find was round coasters- no go! I found 5x7 wooden plaques for $1 a piece (a little more than I wanted to spend) and picked them up in case I couldn't find anything else, and I didn't at Walmart, so I brought them home and tried to put a clip on them, but they were too thick- no go! So I headed to Michael's to see what they had- I was thinking wooden again, because I really wasn't sold on thin cardboard, but I wandered for a bit first and found the chipboard section of the scrapbook area. I found a pack of 6 chipboard squares, meant to be used as a base for a small scrapbook, held together by the metal rings you see in the picture. I still looked at the wooden crafts and found coasters, but they would've been a little more expensive and I like the idea of the bigger squares in case the kids are using scratch paper after the Post Its run out, or because they just need a bigger area.

So here's what I used besides the chipboard:

I also used Mod Podge, scrapbook paper, and washi tape- most of which you'll see as it's used.

So I started by putting a good coat of Mod Podge on the chipboard and then attached the scrapbook paper. I added a little weight as it dried so it didn't warp.

Then I trimmed the edges off with an exacto knife. I found that I had 4 (well 5 technically, because I have the blue in yellow also) cute gingham patterned colors so they could be similar but not the same.

After the base was all set I moved on to the clips- they are just blinder clips, I'm assuming they are "large" sized because there are 2 sizes smaller and 1 larger in most office supply stores, or even Walmart's office section. I looked to my washi tape collection and found coordinating colors.

And then I simply added a piece to both sides of each clip and tucked the extra under (I wanted to make sure it wasn't pulled off by a kid the first time they were used, so I intentionally left overhang).

Then I simply clipped them to the top of the board.

Since the chipboard already had holes, I figured they could be used to keep them together so I punched one of the 2 holes and used a ring that came with it to keep them together. Then I added the Post Its and they were ready to go.

I think they turned out pretty cute and here's hoping she can get plenty of use out of them.

That's all for now,
Jo!

Bug Week, Days 1-2

This week is a science week (we got a late start but hopefully we'll make it up later this week) with a bug theme.

On Monday we made roly polys (polies? I'm not sure how you pluralize that)-- how about pill bugs, that works.

On each segment we wrote a fact that we learned about pill bugs.
It was really simple, just 7 triangles held together with a brad (and you can barely see but there are feet and antenna there too). We drew a face on the front one and left off a fact, but the other 6 are informative.
Here's a few action shots:

(Assembling their bugs)

(Learning and writing her facts)

On Tuesday we made play dough fossils.

We went into a little detail about fossils but they were too distracted by playing with the play dough and plastic bugs.
Here's our bugs (I ordered from Oriental Trading, but they were a little smaller than what I wanted but there were plenty to play with):

Then they pretty much just made an imprint, whether by folding the play dough over or using another piece to cover the top and then pull it off/open it up and see the imprint left by our bugs.

Here's a few action shots:

(KK tried to get one of each kind all in one big piece, but it tore as she was lifting it up)

That's all for now,
Jo!

Bird Week, Days 6-7

On Friday we made bird cages!
(Complete instructions can be found here.)

This one took a little time, but was really cure so worth the effort!
We used Country Crock lids and I stiffened them up by adding some cardboard underneath (which was not in the instructions but I thought it'd be a good idea).

The girls did a lot of the tracing and gluing: 

They even threaded the wire through the "bars" of the cage, but needed mom's help to make the loop. 

Since I used KL's finished project to show you what we did here is KK's: 

Then on Saturday we made owl masks: 

(The template can be found here.) 

We started with the simple ones (the blue is KK's and the red is KL's), and we made those by folding them in half to cut symmetrically on the sides. (I kept referring to  paper snowflakes but that apparently confused the girls.) Then we had a little more fun with our more extravagant ones (KK's is the green, KL's is the orange). KL wanted to curl hers like KK did but it was past bed time by the time we finished so it didn't happen, but I like it as is anyway. 

Here's a few action shots: 

That's all for now, 

Jo! 

Bird Week, Day 3

Today we made "curly birds."

For this craft I saw a picture, unfortunately it was pinned from a search page/home page and so it took some searching and I still never found the original source or instructions. Boo :( But it seemed easy enough so I thought we'd try it.

We started with the body. We cut 1" wide strips of paper from a magazine. Then we cut them to lengths of 5", 6", 7", 8", and 10" (saving the part you cut off). We rolled them and glued them, leaving about an inch hanging off the largest to attach the other tail feathers. Then glue together in sequence.

For the head we used the extra 4" and 3" sections (cut off from the 6" & 7" body pieces) and curled them and glued them in sequence and attach to the body.

The tail feathers are a 5", 4", 3", and 2" (the 2" should be the last remaining piece from the original cutting- if you used magazine 10" lengths) glued underneath, lining up with the 1" overhang from the largest body circle. Then I curled the ends just a little.

The beak is a 2" piece. It's folded to look like a beak, and cut to a tip (like a beak). I glued my beak shut, KK didn't, she wanted and open beak (KL like to be just like mom, but she didn't glue her's until after I took her picture).

So all together, you need:
1-10", 1-8", 1-7", 1-6", 2-5", 2-4", 2-3", 2-2" (one cut to a beak).

The original picture also included one cut a little wider and rolled between the two layers of the head for eyes, but I didn't feel like doing that.

All done! Here's the action shots:

That's all for now,
Jo!

Bird Week, Day 1

This week, we switch to an art week with a bird theme.
We started with a circle parrot:

 (I'm so ready for those bangs to be grown out enough to tuck behind her ears and while we're just at home she refuses to clip them back!!)

It was pretty easy, I saw the idea online but it wasn't any more than a picture.
It's 3 red circles (1 cut in half), 1/2 of an orange, blue, green, and yellow circle. Then a smaller white and black circle (the black is a quarter circle for the beak, and then a smaller circle for the inside of the eye, which I just cut out of another quarter piece). I used 3 inch circles for the bigger and 2 inch circles for the smaller and I think they're perfect sized, but you could easily change it to be smaller or larger.

Here's a few action shots:

That's all for now,
Jo!

Rainbow Week, Day 1

Today we switch to a week of games!! I'd say it's a great way to get them up and moving, but a few aren't really up and moving games. Our new theme for this week is rainbows.

If you remember, I did all the painting while the girls were away (it's just easier that way). Painting the outside circle of paper plates (I did two of each so both Big Ks had a set) and a paper towel roll.

I took a circle cutter and cut out the middles (I'm sure scissors would work just fine too since there's a line to cut on already, no struggling to make an even circle).

To finish the stand I cut 1/2 inch slits up from the bottom, folded them up and taped them to another paper plate to secure it.

 (I did tape it all the way, this was just to let you see the way I did it. I took a piece of tape for each tab and overlapped the piece before.)

Then off they went:

(KL kept scooting forward)

That's all for now,
Jo!