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Screen Free Week Activities: Busy Bags!

2013
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Are you looking for some fun Screen Free Week activities to do with your kids next week? 

Then you’ve come to the right place! 

A bunch of kid bloggers have gotten together for a Screen Free Activities and Resources Blog Hop.

Busy Bag Activities for Screen Free Week

If you are used to letting your kids watch a TV show here and there for some downtime then the thought of going screen free for a whole week might seem a little intimidating.  None of us can be “on” all day long! 

Busy bags are little activities that you prep in advance that your kids can play and learn with independently…the perfect way to get the downtime you all may need without turning on the TV!

Here are 10 fun busy bag activities to get you started!

1.  Three Craft Stick Busy Bags from Making Boys Men

2.  Clothespin Flower Matching from Toddler Approved

3.  What Time is it? A Telling Time Review Game from Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas

Busy Bag Fun

4.  Number Wheel Busy Bag from Money Saving Mom

5.  Pom Pom Tong Transfer from The Princess and the Tot

6. Lego Duplo Building Inspiration Busy Bag from All Our Days

7.  Bottle Top Calculator from Learn with Play at home

8.  Broken Heart Puzzles from Coffee Cups and Crayons {me!}

Sticker story bag

9.  Sticker Story Bag from The Pleasantest Thing

10. The Little Inquiry Bag from Childhood 101

…and if 10 ideas are not enough, here’s our Busy Bag Pinterest Board!

Busy Bags for the Kiddos Pinterest Board

Ready to join in?  Check out the other screen free activities in the blog hop!

The Educators' Spin On It

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Easy Kids Craft: Upcycled Pencil Holder

2013
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Looking for an easy craft for kids this Earth Day?  Then try this upcycled pencil holder made from supplies you can find in  your recycling bin!

Easy Upcycled Pencil Holder Kids Craft

How to Make an Upcycled Pencil Holder:

1.  Look through your recycling bin or craft stash for a plastic or glass jar and a newspaper, magazine, or catalog.

2.  Cut the catalog into small pieces.

3.  Apply the paper pieces to the jar with watered down glue and a paint brush.  Brush a layer on the jar, stick the paper pieces on, and then paint over the pieces with more of the glue mixture.

4.  Let dry and fill with pencils, markers, toothbrushes, or whatever you would like!

Some of our very favorite kids crafts are made with materials you can find in your recycling bin.  Here are three more easy upcycled crafts that are easy enough for kids to make!

Upcycled Soda Bottle Planter

Egg Carton Jelly Bean Game

Upcycled Gingerbread House

Linking to:

After-School-Link-Up


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Egg Shakers and Song for Preschoolers

2013
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My kids LOVE playing with egg shakers!  They’re so much fun, easy to make, and (surprisingly) last for a long time.  I was just making a bunch for my son’s preschool class and realized that not everyone has made them before!

So here’s a quick “how to” along with our favorite preschool song to shake to…

How to make egg shakers

How to Make Egg Shakers:

  1. Put a scoop of rice, pebbles, granola, etc in the bottom of a plastic egg
  2. Line the rim of the bottom with glue
  3. Click the egg together and wipe away the excess glue
  4. Hold together for 15-20 seconds to set
  5. SHAKE!!!!

Egg shakers are good for older preschoolers who don’t put toys in their mouths, but even the big kids will still need to be supervised since the glue is only so strong.

 
And now for the best egg shaking song….

I Know a Chicken by Laurie Berkner!

(affiliate links)

According to her website the song was “developed out of an improvisation with the kids. They were playing with egg-shaped “shakers” and I needed a song to go along with it.” 

And the song she came up with is perfect–it gets kids moving and shaking and is so much fun!

I Know A Chicken Amazon download

I Know a Chicken iTunes download

What are your preschoolers’ favorite spring songs?  My kids also love Eggbert the Easter Egg and our Eggbert Puppet!

Linking to:

Tuesday Tots Link Party

Disclosure:  The amazon links in this post are affiliate links. 

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Chalkboard Easter Eggs

2013
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I have been loving all of the fun egg decorating ideas for kids I’ve seen this year!  One of my favorites was this idea from Super Mommy where she dipped her eggs in chalkboard paint.  I wanted to try it with my kiddos, but I was worried that we wouldn’t remember to get them back into the refrigerator.

Chalkboard Easter Eggs for Kids from Coffee Cups and CrayonsSo instead of chalkboard painting eggs we used egg-shaped rocks!  Genius, right?  Now they can stay out year round and be used in any way the kids can imagine!

Chalkboard Easter Egg Supplies:

    1. Egg shaped rocks–we found ours in the backyard.
    2. Rust-Oleum 206540 Chalkboard Paint (affiliate link)
    3. Colored Chalkboard Chalk (affiliate link)

Chalkboard Painted Easter Eggs for Kids

 How to Make Chalkboard Easter Eggs:

  1. Paint the rocks with chalkboard paint
  2. Let dry
  3. Decorate with colored chalk

What fun new ways have you decorated Easter eggs this year?

Linking to:

Tuesday Tots Link Party

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Christmas Fun: Holiday Ornament Exchange

2012
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Christmas Ornament ExchangeThe holidays are filled with exchanges…cookie exchanges, gift exchanges and ornament exchanges!  We took part in the Christmas Ornament Challenge and Exchange hosted by Red Ted Art, Inspired by Family Mag, The Imagination Tree, and Mom to 2 Post Lil Divas and got a beautiful ornament in the mail!

Christmas Ornament ExchangeWe were paired with All about the Whites who sent us this gorgeous Fabric Ornament Ball!  Head to her site to see the instructions and check out her fun ideas, like adding Jell-O to pancakes!

Christmas Kids Craft: Clothespin and Coffee Filter Angel Ornament

We sent one of our Clothespin Angel Ornaments! We have been busy making a ton of these lately for all of the kids teachers. What fun ornament have you made or received this year?

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Fun Kids Craft: Upcycled Gingerbread House

2012
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This month’s author for the Virtual Book Club for Kids is Jan Brett!  We checked out a bunch of her books from our library and have had lots of fun reading them.  My littlest one turns 3 on Saturday and is having a gingerbread themed party so, of course, the two Jan Brett books that got the most love were Gingerbread Baby and Gingerbread Friends!

In Gingerbread Baby, Matti is a little boy who uses a special recipe to make his own Gingerbread Baby who gets up and runs out of the house!  Everyone in town tries to catch him, but he eludes them all.  Meanwhile back at home Matti makes a beautiful little gingerbread house and leaves it in the forest.  Gingerbread Baby is so excited to see the gingerbread house that Matti made for him that he runs right inside and stays there.  All he needed was a loving home.

The kids loved that the Gingerbread Baby lived in the house Matti made so we decided to make our own.  We will be making lots of real, edible gingerbread houses at the party this weekend so we switched it up and made an upcycled gingerbread house!

Christmas Kids Craft: Upcycled Gingerbread House

 This upcycled gingerbread house is super easy to make!

Here’s what we used:

empty, clean milk carton

brown paper bag

bottle caps

glue (with a little water)

markers

paper tape

pipe cleaners

The kids ripped the bag (that had been used to wrap a package that came in the mail) into small pieces and stuck them onto the milk carton with watered down glue.  Once it was all covered they painted over the whole thing with the rest of the glue to make sure they would stay put.  Then the kids used markers to turn the bottle caps into candy and which I hot glued to the house for them.  Then they made little pipe cleaner candy canes and the house with colorful paper tape.

Once we had the house it was time to play!  In the story Gingerbread Friends, the Gingerbread Baby got lonely and went looking for someone to play with.  Eventually, he came home to find out Matti had made him lots of friends to play with.

So yesterday after rest time the kids woke up to an invitation to play with play dough to do the same thing!

Play Dough Gingerbread Friends Kids Activity

I haven’t made the gingerbread play dough for the party yet so I set out some pumpkin pie play dough we had, googly eyes, and faceted beads from Craft Project Ideas.  The kids were super excited and rushed right over to start creating.  They played for well over an hour and asked if they can do it again today after school.  Needless to say the gingerbread play dough friends were a HUGE hit!

Be sure to check out the other Jan Brett book and activity ideas from this month!

Disclosures: CraftProjectIdeas.com sent me the faceted beads free of charge and we have had a lot of fun playing with them.  This post was not sponsored by them and all ideas and opinions are my own!  This post also contains Amazon Affiliate links. :)

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Christmas Craft for Kids: Family Tree with Mini-Ornaments

2012
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Christmas Crafts for Kids: Family Tree with Mini-OrnamentsWe had so much fun doing my son’s preschool’s “family homework” last week!  They sent home a large green sheet of paper and asked each family to create a Christmas tree to be displayed at the school.  When we were talking about what our family should do the kids were adamant that we each make our own mini-ornament to put on the tree–which I thought was a great idea!

How to Make Finger Print Christmas Tree LightsAt first we were going to try and glue string bead necklaces (we have tons that we get at a local restaurant) onto the tree for lights, but they were too heavy so we did fingerprint lights instead.  Making fingerprint lights was all the rage in preschools a couple years ago, but if you’re not familiar with it you draw the string with a marker and then have the kids use stamp pads to stamp the light bulbs on the string.

Mini-Ornament Angel Kids CraftI made a mini angel ornament just the same way we made our Christmas Angel Ornaments, just without all the glitter!

How to Make a Felt Stocking OrnamentMy son made a Christmas stocking ornament.  He cut a stocking shape out of sparkly red felt and glued mini-poms to the top of it.  He couldn’t fit a name on the stocking so he used a paint pen to write our initial.  If you wanted to make a larger version of this to tie on the tree just hot glue a looped ribbon to the back of it.

Make a Christmas Wreath Ornament out of a Washer

 My husband came up with the ingenious idea of making a wreath ornament out of a washer!  He painted the washer with acrylic paint and then dotted red berries onto it with a tiny paint brush.  We have plans to make even more of these for the kids trees.

Candy Cane Pipe Cleaner Christmas Tree OrnamentMy first grader made a mini-version of one of her very favorite ornament crafts, pipe cleaner candy canes!  All she did was twist 2 pipe cleaners together and bend into shape.  Easy peasy.

Make a Christmas Ornament out of a Bottle Cap

 My almost 3 year old made an ornament out of a water bottle cap.  She used markers to decorate the cap and then I hot glued a pipe cleaner hook to the top of it.

We had so much fun crafting this Christmas tree together as a family!  What projects has your family done together lately?

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Christmas Kids Craft: Homemade Snowflake Ornaments

2012
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Snowflake Ornaments: Easy Christmas Kids CraftThe trees are up in the kids bedrooms and they are ornament obsessed! They decorate their bedrooms trees with homemade ornaments each year and have been asking to make more ornaments since we made our angel ornaments last week.  So yesterday we made popsicle stick snowflake ornaments!

Snowflake Ornament Kids Craft with Popsicle Sticks

We started by gluing three craft sticks on top of each other (above) to form the snowflake shape.  We used these funky shaped ones we had leftover from making mini bow and arrows.

Painted Craft Stick Snowflake OrnamentsThen they painted the sticks with a paint brush.  They wanted to add glitter to the paint to see if it would make it sparkly.  It worked a little bit with the purple and blue paint, but was a total bust in the white.

Easy Homemade Snowflake Ornaments for Kids

 So, after they painted the snowflakes we added lots of silver glitter!

Easy Kids Ornament: Craft Stick Snowflakes

Once they were dry I hot glued twine to the top and they hung them on their trees!

Homemade Snowflake Craft Stick OrnamentsThey look so pretty sparkling on the trees!

Easy Kids Craft: Craft Stick and Button Snowflake Ornaments My oldest kept going and made some from colored popsicle sticks, buttons, and ribbons!

Do your kids like to make ornaments?  What will you decorate your snowflake ornaments with?

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Christmas Kids Craft: Angel Ornament and Picture Book

2012
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The Tomie dePaola book we chose for this month’s Virtual Book Club for Kids, Country Angel Christmas, got us into the Christmas spirit a little early this year!

Country Angel Christmas book by Tomie dePaola

The kids loved the story and asked me read it to them multiple times this weekend.  It is a beautifully illustrated tale of the year the country angels planned the Christmas celebration.  The older angels were busy making preparations, but there seemed to be nothing left for the three littlest angels to do.  That is until their secret project with St. Nicholas saves the entire celebration!

After reading we discussed who the characters were and how they felt throughout the story.  It is easy for kids to identify with the angels who feel left out and they were able to make a lot of text to self connections.  We also looked at the situation from the point of view of the older angels and discussed how they weren’t intending to be mean to the little angels.

Then we made our own angel characters!

Coffee Filter Angel Christmas Ornament

We began by mixing glue, water, and silver glitter together to make a “paint” for the angel wings.

Make an Angel Ornament Craft with a Coffee Filter

The kids painted the sparkly glue mixture all over white coffee filters.

Clothespin Angel Ornament Kids Craft

While the coffee filters were drying (and drying and drying) they used markers to draw the angel’s bodies on wooden clothespins.  The girls also added twine hair.

How to Make a Clothespin and Coffee Filter Angel Ornament

Once the coffee filters were dry we stuck them in tothe clothespins.  We twisted pipe cleaner halos and stuck them inside as well.  The kids had lots of fun playing with their angels and decided they wanted to turn them into ornaments for their bedroom Christmas trees.

Christmas Kids Craft: Clothespin and Coffee Filter Angel Ornament

I taped, but plan to hot glue, wire ornament hooks to the back of the clothespins and they hung them on their trees.

(Don’t worry nothing else is decorated for Christmas yet!  We bought the youngest her tree the other day and everyone wanted me to set theirs up too.  We’ll wait on the rest until after Thanksgiving.)

Easy Kids Craft: Coffee Filter Angel Christmas Ornament

Since all of the supplies were out we kept going!  We made many more angel ornaments to give away at Christmas!

We had tons of fun with this month’s author! Go check out the blog hop for all the cool activities bloggers have done with Tomie dePaola books!

Disclosure: When we went to make our craft this morning I realized we were out of clothespins!  Luckily, I remembered that CraftProjectIdeas.com had sent me a bunch of fun craft supplies in the mail including clothespins and they worked perfectly! CraftProjectIdeas.com gave me the clothespins for free (thank you!), but did not in any other way sponsor this post and all opinions are my own.

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DIY Spooky Spider Lawn Decor

2012
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Oooooooh! Spooooooky spider!  That’s what my kids say every time they see the spider my husband made last year for Halloween.  We were re-landscaping our yard right before Halloween last year and we didn’t get our outside decor up until the last minute.  Our neighbors go crazy with decorations and the kids did not think out house was spooky enough so my husband made this cool DIY spider from Family Fun‘s website.  He basically followed their tutorial, but used glow in the dark eggs and stuck with all black for the body color.

How awesome does it look in the spider web?!?

Spoooooky spider!

What cool Halloween decorations have you made for your yard? Leave the link if you have one!

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