Christmas Tree Ornaments (or wall hangings)

This week for our craft group we had a Christmas craft party! The kids made macaroni
ornaments, decorated picture frames, and pressed their hand prints into salt-dough ornaments.

1) Salt-dough ornaments: Salt-dough is like a homemade modeling clay. A simple salt-dough recipe:

4 cups flour

1 cup salt

1 1/2 cup water

Knead for 15-20 min. Roll out to 1/4" to 1/8" thickness and cut into desired shapes, poke holes into dough to avoid air bubbles. The salt dough was cut into circles big enough for the kids hands to fit into. Then a hole was made at the top so ribbon could be threaded through later. After the kids made their hand prints in the dough, we baked the dough for 20 minutes at 300 *F. After the hand prints cooled Mercedes and I painted them, we may also spray them with a sealant or gloss.

2) Foil and Macaroni Ornaments: I cutout cardboard circles, taped looped yarn to them, and covered the circles in foil. The kids glued macaroni pieces on and Mercedes later painted hers with some glitter.

3) Picture frame ornaments: Gluing four Popsicle sticks together in a square shape and backing with card stock was how we made these simple pictures frames. Then the kids could decorate as desired. They ended up being more ornaments than picture frames since the kids put stickers and things all over where the picture would go. But you can see an example I made in the picture.

Edible Jewelry and Christmas Decoration

This week in craft group we stuck to a simple classic, cereal necklaces. The kids threaded fruit loops and cheerios on their yarn and then we tied the ends together to make a necklace. The kids especially liked that their craft was edible.

Then a friend of mine gave me the idea of paper plate wreaths. This was something I made with my 3 yr old. I just cut out green paper triangles and red paper circles, and we also had some twigs to decorate with. Then I cut out the center of the paper plate and let Mercedes glue things on as she desired.

Happy Thanksgiving

This week we made thanksgiving crafts: decorating sugar cookies to look like turkeys (or just to look like whatever the kids wanted them to), and making thankful trees.

The thankful tree was something I made as a kid. I made the craft even more kid friendly though so my toddlers could be very involved.

Step 1) Make the "tree" with popsicle sticks. We glued them together with regular elmer's glue sticks. Hot glue guns would have worked better, but I was going for kid-friendly remember. So the kids had to use a lot of glue to get the wood to stick together, but it worked. We used a thicker wider popsicle stick for the trunk and colorful small popsicles sticks for the branches (I found the colored ones at the dollar store).

Step 2) Plant the trees in paper cups, using homemade playdough as the "potting soil" to get the trees to stand up.

Step 3) Have the kids decorate paper banners to wrap around the cups.

Step 4) Have an adult cut out leaf shapes.

Step 5) Help the kids think of things they are thankful for and write them on the leaves. Then stick the leaves to the tree. (glue or we used "scotch photo splits" that I have for scrapbooking, that way I could put them on the leaves and have paper on one side until the kids were ready to peel them off and stick them to the tree) The extra leaves we placed in the cup to fill out later as Thanksgiving approaches.

Have fun, hope you get a chance to be creative and enjoy some family activities this thanksgiving holiday.

Birthday Party Crafts

For our daughter's 3rd birthday party we went with a Fairytale theme, but tried not to make it too girly so the boys would have fun too. The bulk of the activities included two crafts. The decorated paper crowns, and made stuffed monsters.

I originally thought I'd have to go to a burger king to get crowns that I didn't cut out myself, but I found a pack of Teacher's board borders for 60 cents at Target and with a little paper extension that fit the kid's head great! Then we just had crayons and stickers for the kids to decorate them with.

The other craft involved more prep work and mom supervision; thus I can't take credit for it. My friend whose daughter's birthday we were also celebrating came up with this craft. She used felt and cut out random shapes, the sewed them and stuffed them (kind of like a pillow, but the result is a simple stuffed animal). Then she had other felt shapes, and eyes, and puff balls, for the kids to choose and then show her wear to hot glue them onto their monsters. The kids loved it! One suggestion I would have for this craft, is also making a simple upside down pocket on the back of the shapes where the kids could stick their hands and then they could become makeshift puppets.

Past Crafts

Since I don't have any plans for more crafts til Thanksgiving is a little closer, I thought I'd share some of the other simple crafts we did several weeks ago. Coloring or painting is a daily thing in our house, but there are ways to make it even more fun or interesting.

One way is to include paper shapes and cut outs and make a picture, then paint it. I cut out a rough shape of a tree with branches (pretty simple if you just want to wing it). Then I found a bag of fake leaves at the dollar store. I glued the tree shape on card stock and then Mercedes glued the leaves where ever she wanted to on the paper. After wards she painted it. We had a collection of real leaves too, but the fake leaves are less messy. With real leaves we did some shading, where you put the paper over the leaves and rub with a crayon.

Another craft we did was and educational craft about the life cycled of the butterfly. It was something I did in preschool so I thought it would be cool to have my little girl get to do something similar. We made four sections on a paper. Then had a variety of materials to glue on to represent egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, and butterfly. (we used marshmallows for the eggs, puff balls for the caterpillar, peanuts in the shells or spiral noodles for the chrysalis, and butterfly stickers or foam cutouts for the butterflies)

Paperplate Tambourine

This week in our toddler craft group a friend of mine had the idea for paper plate tambourines. I think it's a great craft for kids because it's something they can play with right after, and what kid doesn't like a noise maker? My little girls loved their multi-purpose instrument using it as a drum, tambourine, and shaker.

We had the kids decorate the bottom of two paper plates; with crayons/markers, stickers, and glue on gems. Then we put some barley in one paper plate (I'd also suggest dried beans). Then we stapled the plates together (bottoms out). We also taped the edges because barley grain is so small we were worried it might seep out in between the staples. Then the tambourines were ready for play!

Halloween Festivities

Crafts and art projects have become a regular thing at our house since I discovered my toddler loves to color, paint, and decorate. Our recent projects have been halloween themed.

1)We made monster masks. Just simple paper plate masks that my almost 3 yr old could paint and decorate herself, after I cut out the eye holes and glued on the popsicle stick handle.

2) We decoupaged little trick-or-treating buckets. (I found some cardboard buckets for 50 cents at Target) Instead of buying modpodge, we used diluted elmer's glue (3 parts glue, 1 part water) and it worked great (much cheaper too)! Just cut out magazine clippings or use scrapbooking paper, spread glue solution paste, and cover with another coat of glue solution, then let dry. Paint brushes and and popsicles sticks work great for tools, but also if you're not afraid to get messy, just use your hands.

In addition to the halloween crafts we've completed, we will be painting pumpkins instead of carving (a little safer and a lot easier).

Thanks for visiting my blog. Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions about crafts to do with toddlers. Have fun!