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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!

Filed Under: Crafts, Halloween Tagged With: , , , ,

Pumpkin Face Puppet and Halloween Finger Play

2012
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We have been having so much fun with our pumpkin face puppets! My two year old is very excited that she knows all her shapes so we made our faces out of different shapes.  The puppets couldn’t be easier to make. All you need are a bunch of paper shapes, orange paper plates, and craft sticks.

 Here was her favorite one–she is a big fan of the oval mouth!

Then the older kids and I taught her the Pumpkin Face song and finger play.  And she has been singing it ever since!

 The finger play is pretty self-explanatory, but if you want to see them in action click on the video below!

Pumpkin Face Halloween Finger Play Video

For even more Halloween fun check out:

Filed Under: Crafts, Halloween Tagged With: , , ,

Go Orange for Hunger: Super Hero Capes

2012
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Today we have invited all of our friends to a Hunger Hero play date at the park in support of No Kid Hungry’s Go Orange days.  All of the kids are bringing food donations for our local food bank–and turning into Hunger Heroes!  I made bright orange capes for all of our Hunger Heroes to wear out of plastic tablecloths from the Dollar store.

They were super easy to make!

You can get 8 capes out of 1 108 inch table cloth.  I began by unfolding the tablecloth and using the folds to cut the tablecloth in half, and then into fourths, and finally into eighths. You end up with a 27 inch cape.

Then I folded the top corners in to make a cape shape.  Next I used scissors to poke a hole where each shoulder would be and tied a piece of yarn through each of the holes to tie the cape on.

And voila–a Hunger Hero!  I can’t wait to give these out at the play date this afternoon!

I am proud and excited to join Moms Fighting Hunger in supporting No Kid Hungry’s Go Orange for hunger days!  The statistics on childhood hunger in America are shocking.  1 in 5 kids in America are affected by hunger, that’s over 16 million kids.  And we’re not the only country facing this problem.

Moms Fighting Hunger aims to help you find ways to help in your community.  All month long bloggers have teamed up to share the many ways you and your kids can get involved.  Follow us and join in the fun!

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/MomsFightingHunger

Twitter:  https://twitter.com/MomsFightHunger

Pinterest:  http://pinterest.com/stacyofksw/moms-fighting-hunger/

This is a Moms Fighting Hunger Blog Hop!  So go and check out all the awesome ideas!

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Filed Under: Birthday Parties, Special Days Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Activities for Birds by Kevin Henkes

2012
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The author for this month’s Summer Virtual Book Club for Kids is Kevin Henkes!

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We read lots of Kevin Henkes books this month and especially enjoyed the book Birds, which is beautifully illustrated by Laura Dronzek.  The book may be simple, but it packed full of fun learning opportunities.  In the story Henkes talks about what birds look like, what they do and what they could do.

 In the story Henkes talks about what birds look like, what they do and what they could do.  He even hypothesizes what the sky would look like if clouds were birds.  We love to look for and tell stories about things we find in the clouds so my kids were very interested in the cloud page illustrations.  Then, of course, after we read the story we had to make our own bird clouds!

There are many ways that you can make cloud paint and our favorite is to mix together shaving cream, white paint and school glue.

There was a bit of a debate about what the best way to paint would be–fingers, brushes, Q tips, etc.  After a bit of discussion they all decided that thin brushes were just what they needed!

Fun Kid Activity Alert:  Cloud painting is such a relaxing activity and super fun to do outside on easels when the weather isn’t quite so hot!

The next Birds activity that we did was a color match memory game!  My 2 year old is extremely proud that she knows her colors and loves to identify them.  She was all over the beginning of the story where Henkes talked about all the different colors birds could be.  To build upon her color knowledge my 6 year old and I created a bird memory game for everyone to play.

The game cards are just 8 pairs of different color birds my 6 year old drew on halves of index cards.  We mixed them up, turned them over and took turns trying to remember where the colors where.  It took a couple rounds before the 2 year old caught onto the idea–during the second round she warned her brother not to turn over that purple card under there because she was going to get the match on her turn.  After he made the match himself she wisely learned to keep that info to herself!

The third Birds activity we did based on a page talking about what the sky would look like if birds made marks with their tail feathers when they flew.

This was a collaborative art project.  Each kid got to “be” a different color bird and use a feather to paint that birds’ path on the paper.  It was a lot of fun for them to work together and our colorful sky looks very cool hanging with all their cloud paintings.

There are so many more activities that could be done with the story!  We will definitely be doing more with it. What fun things have you done with Birds?

We’re participating in the Summer Virtual Book Club for Kids’ blog hop!  Check out all of the awesome Kevin Henkes ideas below and then stop by Toddler Approved and many of the other sites for a Kevin Henkes giveaway!

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Filed Under: Crafts, Learning Activities, Reading Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Create an Alphabet Puppet Theater

2012
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We had a ton of fun with July’s Summer Virtual Book Club for Kids’ author Audrey Wood.  And yes, I know it’s already August. Better late than never!

There are so many great books by Audrey Wood and her husband Don, but we became obsessed with the series of books based on the alphabet that she did with her son Bruce.  Alphabet Adventure, Alphabet Mystery, and Alphabet Rescue follow the adventures of a set of precocious lowercase letters.

In the first book, Alphabet Adventure the letters prepare to go to school and become Charley’s alphabet.  Then Alphabet Mystery and Alphabet Rescue chronicle the escapades the lowercase letters get into.  All three of my kids loved seeing the lowercase letters personified in the story and asked for our magnet letters so they could act the stories out.

They were having so much fun with the letters we decided to make letter puppets to use in a puppet show!  We couldn’t find a set of already cut lowercase letters so one of my friends cut out a set for us on her Cricut.  Then I laminated the letters and hot glued them to craft sticks.

And the kids got to work on the theater.  I got a little carried away freehanding the opening and it was too low for the kids to sit behind.  We compensated by placing the cardboard on top of our train table, but you may want to only cut yours half as tall if you decide to make one for your house.

After they finished the puppet theater they made some additional puppets to help them tell the story.  I loved listening to the three of them work together on this!  Creating a puppet show based on a book is a fantastic way to promote story comprehension and pretend play.

We even had a storage pocket on the front for all of our puppets!

Then is was showtime!  After a little bit of discussion the kids got busy telling us the story of Audrey Wood and Bruce Wood’s Alphabet Rescue.

I was amazed at how well they remembered the details of the story and how they worked together to retell it to my husband and me.

We have had a ton of fun with our lowercase letter puppets and they have been the stars of subsequent original stories.  The kids have loved playing with the Charley’s Alphabet books and the letter puppets and have been developing many skills in the process such as letter identification, phonemic awareness, retelling, comprehension, and story structure.

We can’t wait for next month’s (okay this month’s) Summer Virtual Book Club featuring Kevin Henkes!

Check out all the other fun activities you can do with Audrey Woods’ books:

Linking up to:

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Filed Under: ABC Activities, Crafts, Learning Activities, Reading, Writing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Colorlicious Color Game

2012
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This month’s challenge for The Little Book Adventure was to create a game based on a book.  When I explained it to my 6 year old she immediately said, “Oh, let’s do a game for Pinkalicious!”  They decided that they wanted to make a game where the players pretended to eat food and then turned the color of the food.  So that’s what we did!

They collected food in different colors and we made a color die to roll to decide which food to eat.  To make the die we duct taped two waffle box corners together to form a cube and then covered each side with a different color square of construction paper.

Then we designed game boards.  They wanted people on it in each of the colors, but this was the best I could do in Word!  If you want to use them too, just download the free COLORLICIOUS GAME BOARD PRINTABLE.

Then the big kids colored the faces and added googly eyes!  This was also the point they decided to change the name from Coloricous to Colorlicious–I admit it’s catchier, but I didn’t want to waste the supplies so this one is still on their boards.

Then we were ready to play! We started by rereading the book.  Then they took turns rolling the color die and eating the food.  They used a goldfish to mark the corresponding color face on the game board.

They really put their acting skills to work while eating and loved pretending that they were turning different colors!

 We kept playing until all of the faces were marked.

As you can see they had a blast playing!  And each got to practice colors at their level.  The two year old identified and matched the colors for us.  The four year old identified each color word on a chart, and the six year old practiced spelling the words for us.  Tons of fun for the whole family!

Linking up to:

 My Little Bookcase

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Filed Under: Crafts, Learning Activities, Reading Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Camping Themed Kids Activities

2012
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Is anyone else shocked at how fast this summer is flying by? It seems like the last day of school was just yesterday.  One of our favorite activities this summer has been doing Camp Whamma Jamma with some of our friends.  The mom had asked me if we wanted to participate in a mom-run home summer camp and I couldn’t say yes fast enough!  We picked a couple days in the month of July and took turns hosting a themed camp.

I had the first session and did a camping theme. So fun and easy to pull together!

The first camping activity was decorating sit upons!  Originally, I was going to have them make the sit upons themselves, but I had so many other activities we weren’t going to have enough time so I put them together the night before.  I cut a large repositionable contact paper rectangle for each kid and filled them with crumpled magazine pages.  Then before I sealed them I stuck a short ribbon into the open side for a handle.  The kids then personalized their sit upons with crayons and stickers.

  Then it was time for some stories.  We read Maisy Goes Camping by Lucy Cousins and When We Go Camping by Margriet Ruurs.  The kids especially loved When We Go Camping, the illustrations are amazing and each page contains a footprint for the reader to identify.  We highly recommend it!

Next up was a “hike” in the backyard!  We gathered lots of fun things like rocks and leaves.  Everyone got to pick a special rock to turn into a pet.

And then made crayon rubbings of some of the leaves they found!

For a snack we had trail mix and s’mores! Since our campfire was made out of tissue paper, I roasted the marshmallows for everyone on the gas stove.  You can’t go camping, even pretend camping, without roasting marshmallows!

After a snack we went outside for archery practice! I found the coolest tutorial on I Can Teach My Child for making mini bows and arrows.  You have to check it out!  We had so much fun with them–once we figured out which way to hold the bow!

After archery the kids had free play time and enjoyed trying out the cardboard tent and campfire until they got too hot and headed inside to cool off.  After a little bit of unstructured time we gathered back together for another story and craft.  We read Eric Carle’s The Very Lonely Firefly and talked about what would happen if you were to catch a firefly in a jar.

Then we made our own inspired by the ones from Come Together Kids.  We followed Laura’s directions for glow in the dark firefly jars except we used our fingers to make the bugs instead of a paintbrush.  Then we tried them out!  The kids went into a dark room with their glowing jars and “caught” glowing bugs (purchased from the dollar section at Target) that I had hid all over the room.

After a busy morning the kids were ready to take their bag lunches and their sit upons out to the campfire for lunch!  Definitely a fun (and sunny) camping filled day!  What fun camping activities have you tried?  We’d love some more ideas!

Linking up to these great blogs:

Filed Under: Learning Activities, Reading, Themed Parties Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Busy Bag Swap Ideas for Kids

2012
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A couple weeks ago I invited some friends to kick off the summer with a busy bag swap!  What better way to get ready for summer travel than to stock up on new activities?  If you’ve never heard that term before a busy bag is a self-contained activity or project for kids.  For this swap the activity did not have to be reusable, it just had to have all the pieces and instructions needed for kids to complete.  There were 6 moms who could make it so everyone brought 6 copies of their busy bag and we got together for a mom-only night of tapas and sangria.  A moms night out with lots of cool activities to take home–we obviously had lots of fun!

I made these gel writing boards I had seen on pinterest from Play Dr. Mom.  They are tons of sensory fun and can also be used for drawing, letter and number writing, math problems and lots more.  Check out her site for the easy instructions.

This is a free giraffe counting printable from Prekinders that one of the moms laminated to make it reusable.  She included play dough so kids can practice counting by making leaves on the trees and a dry erase marker for writing addition and subtraction problems.  The play dough leaves become a manipulative kids can use to problem solve!

Another mom also did play dough mats and laminated full sets of these great math mats from Homeschool Creations! There in the play dough set kids can make the numbers from 0-20 out of play dough while practicing counting and reading the number word. Kids can practice number writing and one to one correspondence with the wipe off number cards.

And I can’t give you a link to this funny faces set because one of my friends actually drew it herself!  My kids have had lots of fun making different faces and then coming up with their own story about their creation.  This could even be something that kids can make for themselves.

And this is a super cool Spin and Spell from Michelles Charm World!  Kids can come up with their own real and nonsense 3, 4 and 5 letter words.  Such a simple and fun spelling tool!

And last, but certainly not least are these patriotic lanterns adapted from the Crafting Chicks!  The mom who brought these prepped the craft for everyone and included enough materials for each kid in everyone’s family to make one.  Since our swap took place right before the 4th of July this craft was perfect!

We had tons of fun at our first busy bag swap and are planning another one for before school starts.  Have you ever participated in a busy bag swap before?  What cool busy bag ideas have you done?  Feel free to leave the link in the comments because we’re all looking for new ideas for next time!

Filed Under: 4th of July, ABC Activities, Crafts, Learning Activities, Math, Reading Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Naked Mole Rat Play Dough Activity

2012
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One of our summer activities is to participate in Reading Confetti‘s Summer Virtual Book Club for Kids!  Each month she chooses a different author and participants read one of his/her books and do an activity related to the book.  This month’s author is Mo Willems.  We love Mo Willems here and ended up reading, and rereading, 4 of his books last week–The Pigeon Wants a Puppy, The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog, Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed, and Pigs Make Me Sneeze!  Such great reads, we definitely recommend all of them!

Once of the most reread books was Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed.  It’s the story of a naked mole rat who likes to wear clothes.  In fact he likes to wear clothes so much he opened his own shop.  His clothes-wearing makes the other mole rats very uncomfortable and they take the issue to Grand-pah for consideration.  You’ll have to read it yourself to see how it ends, but I will go out on a limb and predict you’ll love it.

They loved the idea of the naked mole rat getting dressed and wanted to make their own mole rat to dress up.  The 6 year old drew a naked mole rat on construction paper and we laminated it so we could reuse it.

 Then the kids got to work!  They made tons of play dough clothes and accessories for our naked mole rat.  Including a light saber!

After they had all the socks and sandwiches and shirts and light sabers they needed it was time to dress him up!

They used the play dough props to reenact parts of the story and to role play how the mole rat should react to his friends when they don’t like that he wears clothes.  All without any prompting from me.

Doing crafts and activities to go along with a book not only increases your child’s enjoyment of the story it helps develop their comprehension skills and allows them to better internalize the author’s message.  The activities don’t have to be elaborate or “pinnable”, it’s the simple activities that are can be the most loved.  Especially, when kids are given the chance to do them over and over and over again.

Linking up to:

Make sure to check it out to see all of the Mo Willems book and activity ideas that other bloggers come up with this month!

Also linking to:

   While we were busy creating mole rat clothes out of play dough the folks at The Imagination Tree, Sun Hats and Wellie Boots, and Nurturestore were hosting a play dough play date!  Stop by to see TONS of great play dough recipes, why playing with play dough is important, and lots of fun ways to add play dough into your play.

Filed Under: Crafts, Learning Activities, Reading, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Tinkerlab Creative Challenge: Flower Projects

2012
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It’s time for another Tinkerlab Creative Challenge!  The kids love these challenges so much that sometimes I will find them “hosting” their own challenges for each other or their friends.  And I adore watching each of their creative processes.  Seeing how they create and modify and recreate until they are satisfied is fantastic.  You can actually see how they are thinking.

This month’s creative material is flowers.  I have to say that for me this material would definitely have been challenging, but not for the kids.  They right away decided that they wanted to work with fake flowers.

So we picked out some at the Dollar Store and invited some friends over to create with us.

And create they did!  Our little group consisted of 2 kindergarteners, a 4 year old, an almost 3 year old, and a 2 year old.  They gathered lots of supplies from the craft room and got to work “figuring.”  They threw out ideas and tried out different things and worked very hard.  The 2 and 3 year old were much more interested in the non-flower supplies and created and cut and glued to their heart’s content while the 3 big kids finalized their creations.

 And here’s what they came up with!

The 4 year old’s original idea was to make a bird house out of flowers.  Her had to modify his idea when he realized that flowers themselves would not be sturdy enough for birds to stand on.  He decided to use a milk jug as the house part and cover it with flowers.  He needed me to help him cut the jug and after I cut where he told me he decided it looked more like a bird feeder than a house.  So a bird feeder it became!

My little kindergartener saw the flowers and immediately wanted to make a fairy garden.  And actually almost finished making one when she decided that fairies would prefer real flowers.  After some tinkering she decided to make a blanket for her dolls.

Our little kindergarten friend had never done a Tinkerlab challenge before and couldn’t decide what she wanted to do at first.  She asked her friends for ideas and together they brainstormed many options.  After looking over the materials she decided that she liked the idea of making a hair clip holder the best.

We had a lot of fun creating with flowers this month.  I highly recommend taking a Tinkerlab Creative Challenge if you haven’t already.  You’ll be amazed at the results!

Linking this post up to Tinkerlab, of course!

Filed Under: Crafts, Learning Activities Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
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