Bug Week Kids Crafts

This week our homeschooling curriculum was all about bugs…the kids loved it!  This was a great unit with all of the cicadas out and the flies, gnats, dragonflies, butterflies, etc.  And tons of fun crafts, too!

We started out by cutting out bug pictures and classifying them by how they move: crawl, slither, or fly.  Then we glued them on different pieces of construction paper.  Both kids really enjoyed this activity.  They even acted out crawling and flying!

Then we made construction paper flowers with pompom centers and pipe cleaner stems.  I had the kids put their thumbprints on white construction paper with yellow paint, and we made little bees and glued them onto Popsicle sticks.  Also a big hit.  This was a great way to teach them how bees get nectar from flowers and take it back to their hives to make honey.  Top that off with a peanut butter and honey sandwich, and this is a wonderful bug activity!

Finally, and by far my favorite craft of the week, we made a ladybug tic tac toe game.  The bodies of the ladybugs are cut up cardboard egg cartons painted with acrylics.  Of course, anything that involves painting goes over really well with my kids.  Once those were dry, we glued on 1″ pompoms for the faces, two googly eyes and black chenille stem antennae.  Colton did a lot of the gluing…we just used tacky glue for most of it.  He has been loving bug week!  I hot glued the ribbon on for wings because the tacky glue just wasn’t cutting it.  The board is just orange poster board with black construction paper squares glued on.  This was one of my favorite crafts so far because it was something the kids could really help with plus they learn how to play tic tac toe.

The rest of the weekend is going to involve a 10 Commandments train and a Cat in the Hat hat painting.  I was going to do those today, but I really want to laminate the 10 Commandments train.  And I just found out that my dad got my mom a laminating machine for Christmas.  How did I not know this for six months?!?!?!  She asked if I would like to use it…um, yeah, duh.  So I’m going to laminate those tomorrow.  I can’t wait to see how it all turns out.

Happy crafting!

Glittery Jesus Fish Mobile

This is quite possibly my favorite craft to date…a glittery Jesus fish mobile.  I found the idea here.  Now if you’re like me, the thought of setting your kids loose with glitter will make your stomach turn.  But I was pleasantly surprised to find that this was not a bad clean up at all.  The kids absolutely loved painting glue and sprinkling glitter.  And Colton adores the Jesus fish anyway, so this craft was right up his alley.

And the finished product…  We wrote I Heart Jesus on the cardstock.  Colton did a great job writing his own!

The other craft we did this week was a paper plate bird.  They’re cute, but they weren’t nearly as big a hit as the Jesus fish mobiles.

Mother's Day Kids Crafts

For the week of Mother's Day, we did a foam house family portrait.  It’s just foam tacky glued to poster board with family pictures.  The kids had fun with this one and it looks cute.  Then we did curlicue signs for my mom, sister, and grandma.  These are cardstock backings with decorative paper on top.  The “writing” is strips of construction paper rolled up.  Those little curlicues took forever to make.  So this ended up being a mostly me project since the kids lost interest pretty quickly.  Both of these ideas came from a craft idea magazine my parents found.  We also made Mother’s Day cards.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of those.  But they were inspired by a craft from Oriental Trading.  We cut out the kids’ handprints and a folded flower pot shape from cardstock.  We glued one handprint on the inside of the front flap of the flower pot and the other handprint on the inside of the back flap.  Then we decorated the fingertips with foam flower stickers.  It turned out pretty cute…wish I had remembered to get a picture….

Wood Animal Craft

Here is a little frog and a butterfly made out of little wood shapes (they sell these in a large bag at Michaels).  The original idea called for painting these, but we are doing a lot of painting this week, so I opted for just having the kids use markers.  I helped fill in the color a little bit.  Then we just used Alene’s tacky glue to put them together.  You can also add a magnet to the back.  I was going to do that, but the kids are enjoying carrying them around and playing with them too much.

Weather Chart

This is a fun little weather chart we put together several months ago using printouts from the Nick Jr. website.  It’s been an awesome tool for the kids to learn about weather and days of the week.  I’m thinking a laminator would be a good investment, though, since it’s showing some wear and tear.

Zoo Crafts

 

In honor of zoo week in our homeschooling, we made cute paper plate and construction paper lion masks.  Both kids drew the faces on…Colton’s on the left, Kaitlyn’s on the right.  I love them!  As far as kid friendliness of the craft, I would say it’s pretty good.  They enjoyed drawing the face and curling and gluing a little bit of the mane, but they lost interest in the mane pretty quickly.  Once the masks were done, they had a blast roaring at each other though!  We also printed up some animal pictures from our recent trip to the zoo and made a collage.  That was a fun lesson in identifying animals and learning to spell their names.

Four Seasons Chart

This is a cute four seasons poster the kids and I made using printouts from the ABCJesusLovesMe curriculum.  It’s a fun way for the kids to visualize the seasons and learn how to spell them.

Birdhouse Painting

I picked these cute little houses up at Michaels for $1 a piece, and the kids had a blast painting them.  Kaitlyn chose to go all brown for hers.  Colton, on the other hand, wanted to try every color.  I love how they both turned out.  We also did a short lesson on feather pens, using some feathers and paint to try writing.   The feathers I had weren’t great for the project, but I think it got the point across.

Candy Train Party Favors

These little candy trains were among my favorite touches for my son's 5th birthday party.  He had a Thomas the Train theme, and I thought these would make cute favors.  The idea I found online called for rolls of Lifesavers to serve as the main body of the train.  But if anyone has looked for those rolls of Lifesavers lately, you’ve probably seen that they just aren’t readily available anymore.  After going to five stores, I gave up and found these push pops instead.  I thought they worked absolutely perfectly.  And with the wonders of a hot glue gun, these fun little favors didn’t take long at all!