Slugs & Snails & Puppy Dogs tails

Well, slugs and snails at least.  The spring weather seems to have brought them out all over our apartment complex.  And ofcourse the warmer weather means we've been outside more, so we're noticing more of the bugs, slugs and snails etc. 

With that in mind we spent some time the other day on a SNAIL craft (although my daughter insisted on adding spots and trying to convert her snail into a ladybug!).  Here's what we did:

Snails
* Empty ribbon roll
* Empty toilet paper roll
* glue or tape
* pipe cleaner
* googly eyes
* paint & paint brushes

1) First I cut the toilet paper roll into pieces about an inch wide. 

2) Then I glued them on to the ribbon roll - to make the head.  (I did learn that the glue doesn't stay stuck all that well if your kid drenches the thing in paint - and resorted to taping the heads on later.  So maybe using tape would be the best option here!

3) Let the kids paint their snails in whatever colours they like (as I said, my daughter added spots to hers!)



Painting the snail





4) Once dry poke 2 holes in the top of the snails "head" and thread a pipe cleaner through to make the "eye stalks/antennae/sticky-outie things" on the snails head

5) Add googly eyes

6) There you have it - very cute snails :)

Resurfacing and.... Letter R Rabbit

Where have I been (incase anyone noticed I was missing)...  Well, my Mum was here visiting from Swaziland.  We get to see her once a year, for about 2 weeks, and have to pack a ton of stuff into that short amount of time.  We definitely did do a LOT this time, and had tons of fun, in the midst of school, preschool and other activities too.  We did SeaWorld, and Hollywood, and the seals at the Children's Pool and an art museum, the library, the Mt Soledad Cross, Old Town, Baskin Robbins (lol) and so many other things.  It's wonderful that my Mum (who's terrified of flying) travels all the way across the world to see us.  The kids love it, I love it, it's awesome.  Except the end, when she leaves and we have to say goodbye for another year.  Luckily we live in the days of internet, email and skype, so we'll still be in touch.

It's been a while since she left though, and we've been slowly getting back into our routine.  The little guy and I even managed to do a letter recognition activity this week.  We're working on the letters of his name, and "R" is the next one to learn.  Since it's springtime I figured that a Letter R Rabbit would be perfect!

Letter R Rabbit

What you need:

• 3 different colours of construction paper
• glue
• scissors
• googly eye
• cotton balls

What we did:





Sticking on the cotton balls for a really fluffy tail



1. I cut out the letter R from beige construction paper, I also cut a small circle from this colour (for the tail).
2. I cut out some ears, a nose and some feet from pink paper
3. My little guy glued the letter R to the green piece of construction paper.  Then I showed him how we were going to make it into a rabbit, so he could glue on the ears, feet, nose and tail too.

4. He stuck on the googly eye (and was a little concerned about it only being one eye - it was hard to explain the whole "viewing it from the side" concept!)
5. He stuck the cotton balls onto the circle, creating a cute fluffy white tail for the rabbit.

It was quick and fun (and turned out cute) - yay!  Afterwards we read "Pat the Bunny", which is also really cute (if a little young for my kid - he liked it anyway).



Letter R ~ Rabbit



Letter recognition - matching game

Sorry I have been MIA for so long - there are times when the days just fly by and you have no idea what you did, or how it got to be bedtime again.  Well, that's what it's been like here - nothing particularly exciting going on, but we've been busy!

Anyway, in the midst of this all my little guy is finally showing interest in learning his letters!  I'm thrilled!!  He has had next to no interest up until just recently, so I'm happy that he wants to learn now. 

I devised this little matching game for him.  All I used was a computer to print a few words - I did his name, his sister's name, and Mummy & Daddy (I plan to expand at some point by adding more words).  I printed them all in little blocks, so their was clear separation between the letters.  Then I got some scrabble tiles (mine are from Michaels, not a scrabble game) and found the correct letters for him.  He has a grand old time matching up the letters on the tiles to the ones on the paper!  Sometimes I sit with him and tell him the names and sounds of the letters - other times I just let him do it himself.  It's all in a ziploc bag together - and he pulls it out to do it pretty often.

Quick, easy, fun and educational - who could ask for more!!??

Fun Face Flowers

That's right - yet more Valentine's crafts, lol!  I actually waited until the big girl was home from school to do this one because I knew she'd want to join in :)

We made some very cute flowers, with heart shaped petals, and little smiling faces in the middle - simple, quick and easy, yay!

Here's what we used:
- pink scrapbook paper, which I cut into hearts

Sticking down the stem - deep in concentration!



- green construction paper - which I cut into leaves & a stem (I should have made the leaves heart-shaped too!)

- White cardstock - to stick the flowers onto

- Photos of your kids (or you, or granny & grandpa, or whoever you like) - which I cut into circles



- Sparkly stuff to stick on - because my kids are never satisfied unless they have sparkly stuff add to their creations!



Sparkles are serious business!!



Once I had cut all the shapes out I showed the kids how to make the flower from the hearts.  We put a big glob of glue on the cardstock where the flower was to be, and then went about sticking the petals on.  The little guy needed some guidance since he kept wanting to stick the "humps" of the heart in the middle of the flower - the big girl got it all on her own. 

After the petals were in place we added the photo of the kids to the middle.  They were both super amused by this!

Then we stuck on the stem & leaves, before going to town with the sparkles!

Fun Face Flowers - complete with LOTS of sparkles!

Lacing Heart Garland

In keeping with all the other Valentine themed crafts, we made a heart garland here a couple of days ago.  It was fun, and it turned out even better than I expected (which is always nice).

What you need:
* cardstock (I used an empty cheerios box)
* scissors
* paint & paintbrush (I used red, pink & purple paint, since we're doing this for Valentines Day)
* hole punch
* yarn (or something to lace the hearts onto)
* beads
* tape

What we did:

Painting the hearts

1) First I used a heart stencil to draw hearts on the back of the empty cheerios box (you could freehand them too) and then cut them out.

2) Then the little guy painted all 8 hearts - I was sure he'd lose interest, but he stuck with it and did all of them.

3) We let the hearts dry (and went and had a snack - always a good distraction)


Painted heart with the hole punched in the "humps"



4) Once they were dry I punch holes in the "humps" of the hearts and we began lacing them onto the yarn (I wrapped the end of the yarn in tape to make it easier for the little guy to thread through the hearts and beads).

5) I tied a knot on one end of the yarn and we laced in through one hole on the heart and out through the other, then we put 2 beads on, then a heart etc etc. until we were done.



Concentrating hard while lacing the hearts & beads



6) The results - a very cute heart garland hanging on my wall!

Very pretty heart garland

Valentine Trees

It's the beginning of Valentine arts & crafts season here :)  I've seen some really cute things around blogland and they inspired me to get my kids involved.  So our first Valentine themed activity was these little Valentine Trees



The little guy painting his "tree"



First we went outside to hunt for the perfect sticks to be our "trees".  Then I stuck the sticks in some styrofoam and let the kids paint them pink & red (outside in the beautiful sunshine we had that day).  While they were drying we came in and made some heart ornaments to hang on our trees - I just cut hearts out of scrapbook paper, and cardstock.  The big girl was able to cut her own, but the little guy obviously couldn't.  I punched a hole in the heart, put some thread through it and tied it (this was the hardest part for me, lol, I kept dropping the thread & couldn't tie a knot for anything!).



Decorating her "tree"



We also took the labels off some glass jars (ours were from premade formula samples way back when the little guy was actually little!) and poured in some red & white beans.  I put ribbon around the jars too, and let the kids decorate with heart stickers.

Then we brought in our pretty painted trees, "planted" them in the jars and hung our ornaments on them.  Ds decided to add the styrofoam bits to the top of his because they looked like snow to him....??



The little guy's Valentine Tree complete with styrofoam snow



The big girl's "Valentine Tree"



I think they turned out pretty cute!  They're now proudly displayed on top of my desk.

Martin Luther King, Jr Day

Well the kids were both off school today for the holiday, and our plans for a playdate with friends fell through (feel better soon - all of you!!) so we were home all day today.  We did a lot of the usual chores, laundry, dishes, etc but the kids also needed to be entertained so I tried to do a couple of MLK Day things with them.

First we did a colouring page - just printed off the internet.  To change it up a little I had the kids paint it with watercolours, instead of just using crayons and/or markers.  They both enjoyed the change!  Sometimes the smallest change to a common activity can make it *new & exciting* again.  I was impressed with how much Little Mr concentrated and tried to get his picture 'just right' (and that he didn't wet the paper so much that he made a hole!)

The little blurb on the colouring page telling us about Dr Martin Luther King, Jr led to an interesting discussion with my big girl about equality, people's rights and why oh why people want to be mean in the first place??!  We talked a bit about the famous "I have a dream" speech and then decided to make a poster about our dreams.  We got a big piece of paper and I put "I have a dream" on the top.

I forgot to take a photo, but here are our dreams.  I started by saying I have a dream "that no-one would ever go hungry".  The little guy didn't get it at all (he's 3) he dreams (apparently) about "the moon" and "chugga chugga choo choo trains".  Gotta love him!  The big girl understood the project better - her dreams were "that everybody would be nice to everyone", "to do things that no-one else has done" and "that everybody could have friends".  What a sweet girl she is!