Welcome Spring!

Today officially ushers in spring!  I've heard it may snow a little bit tomorrow, but I haven't brought myself to look at the weather.  This first day of spring has been gorgeous!  We started planting our garden today...we're a bit behind, I know.

Here's the first picture of this year's garden.  They don't look like much now, but I love when the first little sprouts break through the soil!  I tried to find some flowers to photograph in honor of spring, but the only live flowers I could find were so tiny I needed the Super Macro.  Then I just supplemented with a shot of the fake flowers on my door wreath :).

         

The craft for today was making little pom pom caterpillars.  The idea came from a craft in the Oriental Trading catalog.  Normally, I am more than happy to support that company by ordering their products, but Kaitlyn really wanted to do this craft today.  So I improvised with things we had on hand. And once they were made, we of course had to take them outside....

 

I also started my determined quest to replace my Scholastic book club addiction with regular trips to the library.  So Kaitlyn and I went to the one right down the street today.  She got to play in the activity center and with the educational computer games, so she had a blast.  I was also thrilled to find that they carry a ton of Thomas the Train and Veggie Tales videos!  Why didn't I use the library before, I wonder.  Happy Spring!

Easter Crafts

Our computer is finally back up and running!  I'm going to share a few Easter crafts I've done with the kids over the past week and a half.  It's funny because you can never really tell which crafts will be a hit with the kids and which won't.  I thought the chicks in an egg craft would be one that the kids would love, but that was actually the least favorite of the below crafts.  Every kid has a different craft personality, but I think it's good to try a wide variety, even if some are a flop with the kiddos :).

 

Here's the chick in an egg craft.  I thought it was adorable.  And don't get me wrong, the kids thought these were cute...they just weren't as into them as they have been into other crafts.  These are made from foam sheets, with foam flower stickers.  We used glue sticks to attach everything and a small brad to make the hinge.

 

I'm a sucker for anything that includes the kids' hand or footprints, so I fell in love with this Angel craft idea the moment I saw it. We just used cardstock, stickers, glue sticks and markers to make these.  The body is their footprint and the wings are their handprints.  Both kids really enjoyed having their feet and hands traced, and they really liked the final product.  Kaitlyn was much more into the decorating than Colton though.  As you can see, she even decorated herself!

 



And then there's my favorite craft of the week!  These little styrofoam bunnies are sooooo cute!  The kids had a great time making these.  They got to participate in every step of the craft, so that kept them happy and involved.  They cut the pipe cleaners (with a little bit of help) and stuck them into the styrofoam eggs.  Then they placed the eyes and used a glue stick to add little cottonball bunny feet.  These are still getting a lot of play time!

Fun Kids Craft Ideas

I want to share some really fun craft ideas along with a shout out to the Nick Jr. fan club web site.  I found this web site a while back when Kaitlyn started getting into Bubble Guppies.  They have a ton of printables.  I've found that the coloring pages aren't really worth it for us because you can get whole coloring and activity books at craft stores and dollar stores for under $1.  But the craft ideas are awesome!  We've done a few recently that I will share.  But this web site has everything from holiday cards and mobiles to board games and 3D projects, all with templates that you can print right from your computer.

 

For Kaitlyn, we did a Bubble Guppies hanging name sign and an Umizoomi Castle.  The hanging sign originally called for it to say "FALL," but I printed extra templates and modified it a bit to spell out her name.  This is just paper printouts glued onto foam sheets with foam letters on top.  The castle is just printed out templates wrapped around a shoe box and some toilet paper rolls.  It's great for teaching numbers, and there are plenty of other character templates to keep this fresh.  Kaitlyn has the Umizoomi characters and the Dora characters sharing a castle at present :)!



This is one of the fun board games they have.  If you have access to a laminator, this would be very durable.  Right now, ours is just paper on poster board for some stability.  But the kids have fun playing.  This one is a number game that involves number recognition and counting (forward and backward!), so it's a good learning tool.



This one I saved for last because, while it was obviously inspired by the Bubble Guppies hanging sign, there was no template for it.  Colton tends to be one of those kids who likes things that either don't have much out there as far as fun ideas (i.e. the Fisher Price Laugh and Learn Puppy) or cost money for pretty much everything beyond coloring pages (i.e. Thomas the Train).  He loved Kaitlyn's hanging sign so much because he is really into letters and spelling his own name, but the Bubble Guppies aren't really characters he gets excited about.  So it took some improvisation and Google searching, but I came up with Thomas and Percy pictures that were similar enough to make a cute template, put some white foam clouds on them, and added his name.  He was thrilled!!  If you have a Thomas the Train lover, this would be a really fun project.  They get to use glue sticks and spell their name...what could be better!  But even if your kids are not into the characters on the Nick Jr. web site, you can still find fun ideas to modify.  It's free to join.  Happy crafting!!