Fruit Loops

 A few weeks ago (yes, I'm just getting around to posting now) my four year old friend and I decided to graph the frequency of colors in a cup of fruit loops. I drew the lines on the graph and the outline of the fruit loops in the first column, but she did the rest of the work by herself! What could be better than an activity that is fun, educational, and YUMMY?

Pizza!

October is national pizza month, and to celebrate, we made some pretend pizzas! We used a grocery bag for the crust, red paint for the sauce, red paper circles for pepperonis, and pieces of yellow tissue paper for cheese. When our pizzas were dry, we cut them into slices and wrote "Happy National Pizza Month!" on the back.  The kids gave them to teachers, friends, and neighbors!

Easy Tissue Paper Bowls!

A while ago we made these tissue paper bowls, but I'm just getting around to posting them now. To make one, you will first need to cut up a bunch of tissue paper squares. Next you spray a bowl with cooking spray then cover it with plastic wrap. Finally, you'll need a mixture of 1/4 cup flour and 1/2 cup of water. Then comes the fun part! Set your child loose with the flour and water mixture. They will need to paint the outside of the bowl and stick tissue paper squares to it. They will continue to paint and stick until they have at least 5 layers. I recommend painting a good coat of the flour water mixture over the entire thing when they are done, before leaving it out to air dry. Ours took three days to dry, but it was worth the wait! Ours were made with Valentine's themed tissue paper, but you can use whatever you have on hand. We are already planning on making some and filling them with candy for Christmas gifts!     

 

Finger painting

I recently started cutting up paper grocery bags and letting the kids finger paint on them.

It gives them a much bigger surface to paint, and it's stronger than construction paper. This was our little experiment with mixing yellow and red to make orange. It worked!

ABC

We've been working on this alphabet book to reinforce the letter sounds with my favorite three year old. It's coming along nicely, except for the X and Z pages which are still blank. The pictures so far have been cut out of old magazines, but I think I may just have to print out a zebra and a xylophone.

Oink, Oink

This is a piggy that my three year old made out of two formula lids. We have an overabundance of formula containers from her little brother, but I won't give them away to the recycling truck because they are so handy for crafts. We rummaged through the craft supplies and found a pink button for the nose, pipe cleaners for the legs, tail, and ears, and some funky red googly eyes.

cookie cutter painting

Last week, we did some cookie cutter paintings, which is a fun alternative to stamps. Somehow it turned into finger painting. Then it turned into a free for all. Then it turned into bath time.

Overalls

This is the latest craft my favorite three year old did. I free handed the shape of overalls on card stock and cut it out. She sponge painted them blue and glued on the buttons. (Thanks mom for those awesome buttons!)

Counting Beads

This is the latest project that I did with my favorite three year old smarty pants. I bought the foam numbers at the dollar store a couple years ago and forgot about them. I've had the foam beads for a couple years too, and have used them for lacing practice with my little friends. I rediscovered the numbers the other day and decided to use them for this. First I taped six pieces of paper together to make one large piece. (I didn't have any poster board, and sure as heck wasn't making a trip out with the poop troop for one thing.) Next I glued down the numbers 0-10 and drew the lines. Now it was time for my favorite three year old to glue on the beads. As you can see, she glued one bead next to the 1, two beads next to the 2, and so forth. I should also mention that she did this with no help, and got it perfect! She was very proud of her work and hung the finished product in her room.

chickooster

Ok, so I'm not really sure if this is a chicken or a rooster. I was calling it a chicken for the longest time, but then I remembered roosters have the red mohawk. In any case, it's cute, and simple. The head and body are paper plates. The body parts are all made out of construction paper. The wings are traced hands with the fingers stuck close together. The mohawk thingie is a hand print with the fingers spread apart. Obviously this one was made by a three year old, so things are a little out of place, but that makes it even cuter.

Hand Print Fish

This is a cute little hand print fish we made a while ago. The fish bowl is just a paper plate cut in half. The fish is a hand print with a google eye. Notice the HUGE google eye. Thanks mom!

Salt Dough

I love working with salt dough. You can do so much with it, the possibilities are endless. It's easy and inexpensive to make. You probably have the ingredients sitting in your cupboards right now. I like putting food coloring right in the dough. Once baked, the colors come out bright and beautiful. You can also paint it, cover it in glitter, or just leave it as is. This is the kind of baking I excel at. The finished product is supposed to be hard as a rock and tasteless! Here is the recipe I use, although if you search google you'll find a bunch of different variations.

Ingredients
2 cups white flour
1 cup table salt
1 cup water
1 tbsp vegetable oil

Mix all ingredients in a large bowl until they form a smooth dough. You can try to mix it with a spoon, but it wont's work. Get your hands in there and get dirty! If the dough seems too runny, gradually add a little more flour. If it's too flaky, gradually add some water. Once you get the dough to a workable consistency, you can either kneed in food coloring or leave it as it. Now you are ready to let your imagination go wild! Sprinkle some flour on your work surface and your cookie sheets to prevent sticking. If you plan to make ornaments, remember to punch a hole in the top with a straw! You can either let them air dry (takes wayyy too long for me) or bake them at 200 degrees until hard. After they are hard, you can paint them, cover them in glitter, or even write on them with sharpies. I like to paint on a coat of Elmer's glue to give them a nice inexpensive shine.

These are some salt dough valentines we made by adding food coloring right to the dough. We used cookie cutters to make the hearts, and sculpted the eyes and mouths by hand. We attached ribbons and wrote a message on the back with a sharpie.

Little hands hard at work!

A glitter covered ornament on the tree.

Ready to go in the oven. (These make great Christmas presents from the kids!)

Arrrrrrgh!

Just popping in to share a quick pirate hat I whipped up for my favorite little matey.

Matching Game

This is a game I whipped up tonight to use with the bambinos tomorrow. It's just a cookies and milk matching game. They match the number of chocolate chips on the cookies to the number on the glass of milk.

I made myself cardboard stencils and traced the cookies and milk on paper. Then I cut them out, drew on the chocolate chips and numbers and covered them in contact paper. I also watched my cat get stuck on a sheet of contact paper. Serves him right for gettin' all up in my business. :)

Traced milk glasses

For the 20th time, Get Down! Here comes the contact paperAll done

Play Dough

One thing all kids love is play dough. I make my own because it's cheap, easy, and you can actually encourage the kids to MIX COLORS! Here is the recipe I use.

You will need:

flour- 1 cup

salt- 1/2 cup

water- 1 cup

cooking oil- 1tsp

cream of tarter- 2tsp

food coloring

Here is what the kids can do:

Pour all of the ingredients except the food coloring together into a bowl. Stir it all up until it is smooth and then add food coloring a few drops at a time while continuing to stir until you get the color you want.

Here is the grown ups only part:

Pour the entire mixture into a pot and cook over medium heat. Continue to stir while it is cooking. It will gradually thicken until you can form it into a ball. Let it cool and then kneed it with your hands for a few minutes. Now give it back to the kids. It's ready to play with! You can store it in an air tight container or plastic bag.

Pop

One day when we were practicing letter sounds, one of my kids said "p is for pop" which got me thinking about popcorn. So I cut out the word pop from construction paper and had the kids glue popcorn on it. Then we ate the rest of the popcorn which was really my motivation to do this craft.

Butcher Paper

Butcher paper is always a good thing to have on hand. On a rainy day you can roll it out on the floor and just let the kids go nuts. In the summer you can tape it to a fence outside and let the kids paint it. It's great for making holiday banners, and of course for tracing each other. You'll notice in the picture, this little guy wanted to wear a football helmet!

No Beads? No Problem!

Stringing beads is a fun activity for pre-schoolers. It's great for their fine motor development and if you're lucky, you'll get a sweet little present when they're done. I buy most of my craft supplies from the dollar store though, and they don't always have chunky beads in stock. They do almost always have drinking straws. When you cut the straws into little pieces, they are perfect for beading. To the right, you'll see the neclace that was made for me in the year 2067???