Egg carton flowers

In an effort to squelch the screaming and hitting-fest on this Monday morning, I searched for a quick craft for the kiddos that I had the materials for, was quick to set up, and would work for both an almost two and almost 4 year old. Here's what I came up with:

It might be hard to see in the photo, but we cut up egg cartons and used the little cups for flowers. A hole was punched in the middle for the "stem" - pipe cleaners - and I traced leaves onto green construction paper and cut them out - these went onto the pipe cleaner. The kiddos used crayons and markers to color the cups. Once we get enough made, we will put them in a vase for display. 

This idea came from Craftbits.com - http://www.craftbits.com/project/egg-carton-flowers

This held their attention for approximately 10 minutes....It was fun for me though!

Camping with children

After a one year hiatus, we will be attempting to camp again with our children this weekend. Just one night, mind you. We wouldn't want to do anything crazy, any crazier that is, then camping with an almost four and almost 2 year old. We will be staying close to home - 20 miles away approximately. It's hardly worth the packing up of all the camping paraphanalia and lugging to the campsite. Or is it?

There will be a total of 12 adults and 11 children, who will play with eachoter and get dirty until they fall over from exhaustion.

I'll report back....

Mapbooking

As seen in the July 2010 edition of Marth Stewart Living - I cannot find a link to the article, so I'll do my best to explain.

Weed out all the maps that are no longer valid (old maps, things change) and use them in scrapbooks to display photos. This method works nicely to commemorate a trip. You can use them as borders with photo corners (think matte), as the page background or as an envelope (trace another envelope for size) to hold mementos that you want to keep loose but secure.

A fun spin on this would be to make envelopes for mailing - just use mailing labels for addresses, or if the map is light-colored, try using a dark permanent marker so the mailing address is visible.

I'm going to try both of these ideas before the summer is over! I better get on that...

Update

We were creative this weekend. Made a cute lacing card in the shape of a pear and a rocket ship bookmark that Atti shall use for playing with instead. I will post pics soon, and will be blogging again soon as well, as I have plans!

Eggs.

We colored eggs on Thursday and it was fun. OK, I'm lying. It was not that fun. Lots of water got spilled (yes, just water), there was screaming (courtesy of Meredith) and Atticus got tired of decorating the eggs after they were all colored so some are only colored, while others are stick-erd and crayon-ed.

One egg was being particularly pesky and rolling around on the table a bit while Atticus tried to restrain it - he pushed a little too hard and CRAAAACK!! He put "bandaids" (stickers) all over the cracked part and asked the egg if it felt better. He's such a sensitive little guy - he really is.

Meredith wanted to put her hands in the colored water, drink the water, dump the water, and pretty much anything else that involved the water. She lasted in her seat through most of the egg coloring, then I gave her the box 'o stuff to look through - a box containing origami paper, crayons, stickers, stamps and scissors (removed).

The best part will be watching the kiddos look for the eggs on Sunday :)

Puzzles.

Atticus loves them. It's what he prefers to do when he's home. I should think about making a puzzle for him. It would be creative....hmmm.

Toilet Paper Roll craft

We made a space man. I cut out a template, Atticus colored him - all green - and I pasted him to a toilet paper roll. Maybe we will make a whole village of toilet paper roll people....who knows! Oh, and this craft came from DLTK's website http://www.dltk-kids.com/

Homemade Valentines

Atticus' preschool is exchanging Valentines next week and some of the boxed variety are pretty cute, but we decided to make our own. We used supplies we already had, construction paper, glue and a heart-shaped ramekin to trace the heart shapes. I cut, Atticus glued and personalized each one with crayons. We've made 8, only 8 more to go!

A photo Atticus took of crayons through a plastic bag.

A completed Valentine!

Atticus grabbing his Valentines in preparation for personalization.

SOON

I promise there will be new content. Please keep checking back!

Reindeer with hand and footprints

On Christmas Eve, I thought it would be fun to do a place mat project with Atticus. We traced his hands and one foot to make a reindeer. It was a little above his skill level, especially the cutting out of the prints, but he sat at the table and cut up thousands of tiny pieces of paper which was great fun for me to clean up later....um, yeah.

Anyway, I had aspirations for us to make 6 place mats, but we ended up with just one for him. Here it is: