These flowers look more beautiful when you have a bunch of them as shown in the photo below. However, they also look great as just a couple or mixed into a homemade bouquet- more flowers to come in future posts.

You will need:

Cardboard egg cartons
Tempera paint
Wooden skewers
Model Magic

first, cut out the individual egg cups and have the kids paint the outside and insides of each cup. Once dry, poke a skewer through and place a small amount of model magic over the tip of the skewer creating a center and hiding the point from young hands and eyes.

Enjoy!

This fun gragger is a great keepsake and both quick and easy to make!

You will need:

Empty water bottle
Colored tape
Construction paper
Scissors
Toothpick
Pin to prick hole in cap
Glue
Tissue paper
Photo of child
Cardstock
Beans or beads

Use the construction paper, colored tape and scissors to completely cover the bottle. Open the cap of the bottle and insert 2-3 tablespoons of beans or beads for the noisemaker aspect. Cut out just the head from your photo and back it on card stock. Next, cut strips of tissue paper and make cuts partway across the strips. Turn over the photo and tape on the toothpick so that it extends beyond the base of the photo. Then place glue on the entire circle, and starting from the bottom up, glue down the strips of tissue paper. Trim off the excess. Use the pin to prick a hole in the bottle cap. Finally, place the toothpick end of the photo into the hole of the water bottle. If you'd like, add a drop of glue from a glue gun to really seal it in.

Enjoy!

In Family Fun's holiday edition this year, they had a great puppetting craft using wooden dowels as the bodies. Here, I've adapted the idea, using paper towel rolls instead.

You will need:

Paper towel rolls
Orange, white, and brown paint
Paintbrushes
Black and Red markers
Various crafting materials for the clothing and accessories

I used a lot of construction paper for the clothing of the various characters, and tin foil folded over numerous times for crowns and swords with random fabric additions. I posted each puppet in its various stages of completion so that you can visualize the steps. If you would like written instructions for any specific puppets, you can comment, and I will try to respond as soon as possible.

I will be away for the next week and a half or so, so I'll probably only blog occasionally during this time.

Enjoy your Presidents Week!

I found this idea in Disney's Family Fun magazine this past month, and was super excited to try it! As you can see in the picture below, it came out great!!

What you'll need:

Paper towel or toilet paper rolls
Scissors
White Paint
Paint brush
Single hole punch
White pipe cleaners
String for hanging

Start by cutting the paper towel roll into 1/2" strips. Press the rings flat so that they resemble a football in shape. Using the single hole punch, punch 1 or 2 holes in the same place on either side of each ring.
Paint the rings inside and out using the white paint. Once dry, thread the pipe cleaners through the holes, eventually closing the pipe cleaners so that you have a full circle-a beautiful snowflake!! Hang using the string!

Stay Warm!

Unfortunately, I left my camera at school today, so we'll just have to do this post picture-less.

1. The Mailbox magazine's winter issue from last year had a wonderful sensory bin idea that I'm looking forward to doing this year!

What you'll need:
Various shallow containers
Water
Winter animals- or any animals
Freezer

Fill the various containers with water and freeze. Once frozen, pour a few inches of water into your sensory bin and then add the ice that was frozen in the different containers. Finally, add those Winter animals- think penguins and polar bears. The ice will float, resembling the Arctic and let the kids have fun while the ice slowly melts.

2. Shaving cream!- resembles snow and is a lot of fun!

3. Cotton balls with some iridescent glitter- soft sparkly fun snow

4. Sugar cubes to build igloos

5. Recycle your packing peanuts as snow- you can add water in bowls which will allow the kids to stick them together and build with their snow

Have fun!!

I had a lot of fun putting this craft together because of its many different components!

You'll need:
Corks
White Paint
Glitter Spray
Blue Paper as background
White snowballs for snowman
Magazine cut outs of snowman accessories
Markers for detail

Use the corks as a stamp and dip into the white paint and then press on the paper. These will be your falling snowflakes. Once complete, spray the paper with the glitter to add a Winter sparkle and the illusion of fresh clean snow.  :)

Once the snow is dry, you can have the kids glue down snowmen. They can dress them up with cut outs of hats, earmuffs, and scarves. Finally, they can do final touches like eyes and mouths with a marker.

This is a fun activity that repurposes all of those unwanted clothing catalogs.

You'll need:
Scissors
Glue
Clothing Catalogs for Winter
Construction Paper
Head shot of each child (Optional)

If your children are not yet using scissors, during your free time, go through the catalogs and cut out coats, sweaters, gloves, scarves, pants, boots, shoes, etc. If your children are old enough to cut, rip the pages out of the catalogs in advance and have them cut out their favorite gear.

Next, give each child a piece of construction paper, or plain white copy paper- whichever you prefer. Have the kids assemble their person dressed for Winter. During your circle time, you may want to review the sequencing of what people need for Winter, and in general. Use the glue to stick the ensemble to the paper- a glue stick may work better because some of the parts may be more delicate and unable to withstand the onslaught of the liquid glue.

Finally, give each child his/her picture to place at the "head".

It's that fateful day! Right before the holiday, or at the end of whatever your current unit is, and you need to pack everything up and send it home, so that parents can ooh and aah over your creative genius! Now, if you've just finished a run of the mill unit- say transportation,- you'll pack up the crafts and send them home, explanations included in the newsletter. But when holidays roll around, like today when sending home Chanukah crafts, I think it's important to wrap them specially in order to convey the importance and "specialness" of the contents. It's a way to tell parents, babysitters, or whoever's picking the kids up to handle the crafts with care, and that the contents should be examined with joy and fanfare.

So how do you do it? Well, that depends on what and how much you're sending home. We sent home our Menorahs and Menorah mats today. I wrapped the menorahs in cellophane, tied them off with some repurpose fabric remnants and trims, then taped the ensemble to the Menorah mat. I placed them on each child's cubby, ad had a sign on the door asking parents to please take their child's crafts from there.

When I send home more than that, I try to find paper gift bags. If you don't have the budget for that, give the kids regular paper shopping bags, and have them decorate the bags with glitter, paint, stickers, sky's the limit! This also adds another craft to your schedule, and the kids are doubly excited to be taking home crafts in the bag they "made".

Then, a nice touch is to have the kids pack up their crafts by themselves. You can do this either by setting up the table with a bag and each child's items stacked next to it, or 1 on 1 with the kids to reinforce literacy, and have them find their crafts t place in their bag.

Finally, during your goodbye circle or routine- take one child's bag, and show the children what they'll be taking home. Go through each item, reminding them of the process and what it is. This also reinforces the kids' excitement when taking the crafts home.

Happy Holidays!

We all end up buying and receiving far more chocolate coins for Chanukah than we know what to do with! This is a fun a activity that you can do either with the wrapped chocolates, or with the recycled wrappers!

You will need:

Chocolate coins
scotch tape
printing paper
crayons

Simply tape the coins to the paper using the scotch tape. If you are doing this with the wrappers, tape them outside-down. Flip the paper over and hold the crayon at about a 30 degree angle from th paper, or unwrap the crayon and hold it so that it's horizontally parallel to the paper and color offer the whole paper. The kids will find the appearance of "pictures" magical!