The 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! 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 … [Read more...]
Christmas Kids Craft: Angel Ornament and Picture Book
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! 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 … [Read more...]
DIY Spooky Spider Lawn Decor
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 lawn decor inspired by one we saw on the old Family … [Read more...]
Pumpkin Face Puppet and Halloween Finger Play
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 … [Read more...]
Go Orange for Hunger: Super Hero Capes
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 … [Read more...]
Activities for Birds by Kevin Henkes
The author for this month's Summer Virtual Book Club for Kids is Kevin Henkes! (amazon affiliate link) 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 … [Read more...]
Create an Alphabet Puppet Theater
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 … [Read more...]
Camping Themed Kids Activities
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 … [Read more...]
