Crafts Archives - Page 13 of 20

78 4th of July Activities- The Sunday Showcase

June 28, 2014 By Deirdre

These are my favorite 4th of July activities for kids! They include crafts, science fun, math, and more. You are going to love them too. Come check them out!

Buggy and Buddy has the most wonderful 4th of July wands. They would be great to take to a parade, decorate a table, or just enjoy playing with.

3 Dinosaurs mix fine motor fun with crafting stars on paper in this Red, Whit,e, and Blue Star Craft. It looks like fun!

The Jenny Evolution has a wonderful round-up of 35 4th of July craft activities. This is a great resource

Mini Monets and Mommies used berries to paint fireworks! So cool!

Carrie Elle has American flag printables! They would be great for your color table.

Here a some of my favorite 4th of July Activities from my blog:

Fine Motor Weaving red, white, and blue ribbons are fun and a learning activity tied up in one activity.

A fold-and-thread necklace created using red, white, and blue paper is a lot of fun!

An American Flag mobile is a lot of fun to hang in your yard on the 4th of July.

Confetti eggs for patriotic holidays. My son loves making and throwing these.

34 Patriotic Crafts and activities is another great resource for the 4th of July!

Link Up Information

If you are here for the first time please read this informational post on Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas’ site for the full details. Anything kid-friendly and/or child-centered is welcome! You are welcome to share more than one post, but we don’t accept links for giveaways, shops, downloads for purchase, etc. They will be deleted.

An InLinkz Link-up

If you have other 4th of July activities that you think I missed and need to see, please leave a link for them in a comment below.

American Flag Craft for Kids

June 11, 2014 By Deirdre

Using a few simple craft materials you can create an American flag craft mobile that can twist in the breeze or decorate your child’s room. It is super easy! We made this mobile two years ago for a guest post on the blog Not Just Cute. I thought you would love to see it!

A flag mobile like this one would be great to hang up on Flag Day, Memorial Day, Veterans Day or the 4th of July. We have had it hung up in a tree in our yard on bright sunny days lately, but we take it in a night. It isn’t weather safe. It has spent the most time in JDaniel’s room hanging from one of the arms of his ceiling fan.

How To Make Our American Flag Craft for Kids

The first thing you have to do it so gather your supplies.

We used:

Cardboard box ( Colored poster board could be used instead)
Paint (Red, white and blue)
White construction paper
Fishing line
Plastic hanger (red)
Scissors
X -Acto knife

Directions for creating the mobile:

Trace the outline of a flag and mark off six stripes of equal length.

Draw wavy lines to separate each of the stripes.

If you are using poster board for your stripes, cut out the stripes with scissors. If you are using cardboard, cut out the stripes with an X-Acto knife.

Cut a four inch length from three of your stripes. The short stripes with be the blue area of the flag.

Now it is kid’s time! Have the kids color the three short stripe sections blue. Two of the long stripes and one of the shorter stripes will need to be painted white. Two of the shorter stripes and two of the long stripes will be painted red.

While the paint is drying, cut stars out of the white construction paper. We have nine stars on our flag.

When the paint is dry, glue the stars onto the short blue stripes.

Thread a needle with fishing line.

Use the fishing line to connect each of the small blue stripes to one of the medium sized or shorter stripes. Then connect the blue stripes to the red hanger with fishing line.

Next use fishing line to connect the longer stripes to the coat hanger.

Make sure the stripes will have enough room to spin.

Hang your mobile up and watch it spin.

I hope you like our tribute Old Glory!

Other Patriotic Crafts for Kids

If you are looking for patriotic crafts and fun, you may want to check out my Summer Crafts and Fun Pinterest board .

Follow JDaniel4’s Mom’s board Summer Crafts and Fun on Pinterest.

Here are some other patriotic crafts I have shared here on my blog:

Crafts for Kids: Painted American Flag

Bald Eagle Craft and Science Experiment

Patriotic Windsock

Paper Crafts for Kids- Patriotic Wind Sock

May 8, 2014 By Deirdre

Sometimes it is a simple paper plate crafts that brings the biggest pleasure. Recently JDaniel and I hung a simple paper craft paper plate in a tree in our backyard. We both found ourselves looking up at it as it twisted and swirled in the breeze.

When I said simple, I meant simple this paper craft requires only eight supplies to make. Considering two of the supplies are paper plates that really isn’t very many crafting elements to have to gather.

You will need:

Scissors or an Ellison press with a star block

Glue stick

Blue plates , two

Party streamers, red

Star template

Fishing line

Needle

Cardboard from a cereal box

We lucked out by being able to use an Ellison press to cut our stars out of the paper plates. If you don’t have one available to you, you will want to cut star you have drawn out on a piece of cardboard. You can then use the cut out star or the outside section that you have cut the star out of the star to draw the star on the plates. It is important to try to make both stars exactly the same. Yes, I know it could be a challenge.

Next you will need to cut out various lengths of the party streamer. We went with lengths that were longer rather than short. With the streamer strips cut out we then glued them onto the back side of one of the paper plates.

Then we glued the back of the second paper plaaate to the back of the first. The tricky part is making sure that the star cutouts on both plates line up. I had to keep turning our plates clockwise until I found the right way to line them up. If you try and try and don’t get it to work, it will be okay. It will add a 3-D effect to the paper craft plates as they spin in the breeze.

Finally we pushed a needle threaded with fishing line into the top of the paper plate. We tied off the fishing line to make loop in the fishing line. The loop was what we used to hang the paper plate wind sock like craft in a tree.

The wind was kicking up a breeze when we hung our paper plate craft up in the tree. It was such fun to watch the streamer tails slipping and flipping in it.

It really looked like our patriotic paper plate craft was dancing!

We didn’t use materials that could stay outside overnight. Just before bedtime I took the paper crafts down from the tree and hung it from the ceiling fan in JDaniel’s room. We will take it outside again for Memorial Day, the Fourth of July and Veterans Day just to watch it dance!

Here are some other paper crafts made with paper plates and more:

Paper Plate Sunflowers

Paper Lion

Paper snowman

What is your favorite type of paper to craft with?

Fun Activities with Chicks and Eggs

April 17, 2014 By Deirdre

This is the time of year for fun activities that feature chicks and eggs. Easter is part of the reason, but it is also the season that many birds give birth during. (We can hear the baby birds chirping outside our front windows.) A number of big and little chicks along with their eggs have been featured in posts on this blog.

Let me share twenty of them with you!

Cool Math for Kids- Easter Egg Learning– Children decorate a construction paper egg with primary shapes. They are then asked to record how many of each shape they used to decorate their egg.

Easter Chick- Read.Explore.Learn.– Shares several fun activities with chick and eggs. One activity includes a bingo dapper and a polka dotted chicken. Read.Explore.Learn.- Counting Chicks and Ducks- This post focuses on several math activities with a poultry themed. Working with one on one correspondence is one of them.

12 Ways to Learn Using Plastic Eggs– A dozen different learning activities using plastic eggs are shared in this post.

Dolch Sight Words- Unscrambling Egg Letters– Dolch sight words are hidden in plastic eggs. Children are asked to unscramble the letters to form Dolch sight words.

Green Eggs and Ham- Read.Explore.Learn- This post shares several green eggs and ham themed activities. A tic tac toe game with bacon strip crosses and green egg circles make this game really fun.

Fun Craft for Kids- Torn Paper Chick– Torn paper gives this spring chicks a feathery effect that is fun and super cute.

{Rabbit’s Food} Read.Explore.Learn– Shares a fine motor activity featuring math, carrot shaped eggs, and numeral writing.

Cool Science Experiments- Making Spider Web Eggs- Shares how to make hard boiled eggs that when peeled are going to have a spider web design on them. These have serious awe factor.

Cool Science Experiments- Making a Rubber Egg– Directions on how to create a bouncy egg are shared in this post.

Science Experiments for Kids- Spinning Eggs- This post includes are downloadable recording sheet. Children explore whether a hard boiled or raw egg will spin.

Science Experiment for Kids- Floating or Sinking Eggs- Shares via a science experiment sheet how to make an egg float in a glass or water. The experiment sheet also includes a section to record the experiments results.

Kids Science- Egg Carton Catapult– Half of an egg carton becomes a catapult with just two other materials we all have a home. There aren’t any fun activities with chicks or eggs in it ,but sure is fun to fling objects from a catapult that used to contain eggs.

Science Experiments for Kids- Frying Eggs on the Driveway– During a heatwave we decided to see if we could fry an egg on the driveway. It worked. JDaniel is still talking about this experiment.

{Science for Children} Falling Chickens– This post shares the book Loopy Coop Chickens Letting Go and a science experiment we conducted with cupcake liner chicken.

Easter Game- Egg Toss Bottles- Two recycled juice bottles are transformed into plastic egg catchers. This looks like an easy game to play, but catching the egg in the catcher is trickier than it looks.

Plastic Egg Snake– Old plastic eggs become a fun threading activity in this fun post.

Deviled Egg Recipe for Kids– Walks you through how to turn hard boiled Easter egg into a delicious snack that your children will love.

Easter Bunny Salad with Leftover Eggs– Leftover hard boiled eggs and toasted bunny croutons make the salad in this bento lunch fun and delicious!

Deviled Egg Recipe for Kids– Walks you through how to turn hard boiled Easter egg into a delicious snack that your children will l

{Kid’s Lunch} Apple Chicken Salad- Shares a delicious chicken salad with an apple crunch.

These fun activities with chicks and eggs covers a wide array of learning skills and fun foods. I hope that you will find at least one or two egg and chick theme activities here that you would like to try.

Easter Craft for Kids- Bunny Themed Treat Bags

April 8, 2014 By Deirdre

Bunny bags are a fun Easter craft! We created bunny bags to contain some special treats for JDaniel’s teachers at school. They are really wonderful and we decide to send some yummy treasures their way. This fun Easter craft was super easy to create using materials we had at home. JDaniel’s rabbits fun facial features made his teachers super happy.

Materials Needed for This Easter Craft:

Brown paper lunch bags

White construction paper

Pink construction paper

Pink pompoms- small

Wiggly eyes- large

Magic Markers

Glue Stick

Hole Punch

Index Card

Ribbon

We started by gluing white construction paper cutouts of a bunny’s head to the brown paper bags. I went ahead and cut them out ahead of time. You could draw an outline of the bunny’s head for your children to cut out or have them cut out the bunny head free hand.

Next we glued some pink ear inserts onto the bunny’s ears.

Then we glued on the pink pompom as the nose and the wiggly eyes. Having the eyes and noses in place on the bags really seemed to help us both picture where the other facial features would need to go.

I went ahead and added a mouth to the one bunny bag that I was going to do. It would be a good example for JDaniel. He would be able to make a bag similar to mine was what I was thinking. I was wrong. He created unique bunny faces for each bunny that were more awesome than mine was.

JDaniel’s bunnies ended up with eyebrows, eyelashes, and super fun mouths. One bunny even had hair. They were so cute. I couldn’t help smiling from ear to ear as each one was completed.

We set these fun Easter ideas aside to dry overnight. When we knew for sure that the eyes and noses were solidly in place, we added the treats to the bags. Each teacher got a number of pieces of Hershey’s Easter candy from a box of candy I was sent to use to make Blonde Brownie bunnies. They also received a Blonde brownie bunny.

When the bags were filled, I folded down the top of the bag once and place two holes in the flap with a hole punch. We placed a foot long piece of ribbon through the holes. Onto one end of the ribbon I put a gift card I had made in advance. Each card read “Hopping You Have a Great Day!” Then the ribbon was tied in a bow.

This Easter idea turned out so well. I think the best part of the bags were the facial features JDaniel added to them.

If you are looking for more Easter themed crafts, snacks and learning activities, you may want to visit my Easter board on Pinterest.

Spring Craft- Recycled Daffodil

March 4, 2014 By Deirdre

Spring is still a few weeks away, but after all the snow, ice and freezing temperatures it was time to create a recycled daffodil spring craft. We needed something bright and cheerful to put on our refrigerator. Daffodils remind me of spring. Their bright yellow petals just seem to symbolize the warmth and sunshine associated with spring.

What could we use to make the spring craft ideas yellow petals?

A yellow cupcake liner would make a perfect cup or corona. (The more scientific name for the center area of a daffodil.) Deciding what could be used for the petals was more of a challenge. Yellow cupcake liners or construction paper could easily be used to create the daffodils petals, but they have been used by children for decades for them. It took awhile to come up with a more unique or creative material to use for them. Finally it came to me. We have stacks of telephone books delivered to our house every year. The yellow pages of a telephone book could be recycled to make daffodil petals for our spring craft.The trick to using the yellow pages was to find pages that were yellow. Many of the pages had large ads on them that were a myriad of colors. It took some searching, but we found some.

When we had the petals cut out of the telephone book pages, we cut out two leaves and a stem out of green construction paper Then we were ready to create a recycled daffodil.

Placing the first set of petals on was easy. A little glue was added to the back of them and they were placed on a piece of bright blue construction paper. The second set of petals was turned or rotated a few times until the right look was achieved for this spring craft.

Adding the cup and the stem was much easier and took very little time. Making sure that the stem was tucked under the petals rather than on top of them was done quickly. I was told that real flowers don’t have their stems in the front.

Each of the leaves was added one at a time. Very little planning went into adding them. They each received a dab of glue and then joined the stem on the recycled daffodil.

Then the final touch was to scrunch the cupcake liner a little to make it look at little more natural. Yep! That is what was needed to make it more real. The center of a flower can look a little bit crushed.

While spring has yet to arrive outside our house, this recycled daffodil spring craft sure makes it feel like spring in our kitchen.

Here are several other ways to bring spring into your house:

Spring Craft – Spring Weather Headband

{Earth Day Lunch} Leftover Signs of Spring

Nature for Kids Observing Spring with Your Senses

Observing Spring with Five Senses

Health Lunch Recipe- Butterfly Bento

I hope you enjoyed getting to see some of our ways of getting ready for spring including our spring craft a recycled daffodil, if you would like to see more you can visit my Spring Crafts board on Pinterest.

Deirdre Smith writes/owns JDaniel4’s Mom. After twenty years as a elementary school and technology resource teacher in Northern Virginia, she became a stay at home mom in upstate South Carolina. Her blog features ways she and her 5 year old are exploring learning, crafting, creating healthy meals and living life to its fullest. Deirdre can also be found on her blog’s FB page. You can also check her out on Google+.

17 Olympic Themed Activities for Kids

January 17, 2014 By Deirdre

The symbols of the Olympics have inspired 17 Olympic themed activities for kids posts on this blog and for some of the posts I wrote for Kid’s Activities Blog. The Olympic rings, torch, and Olympic values are each represented in the posts below. I hope you will be inspired to create them at your house or in your classroom with your children.

Crafts

The Olympic torch above was made by sponge painting various shades of red, yellow, orange and black paint. My son loved marching around the living room with it during the opening and closing ceremonies.

A paper towel wrapped around a kitchen spoon was another fun way we explored painting. It was supposed to look like an Olympic torch.

Food Creations

Olympic Symbols Bento Lunch displays various finger foods created to look like the Olympic rings, torch, and victory wreath.

Olympics for Kids- A Gold Medal Meal shares a muffin tin lunch featuring a Nilla wafer gold medal and a cheese popcorn torch.

Olympics for Kids- Read.Explore.Learn. introducing a wonderful Olympic themed book called Elympics and a bento lunch that explores the main character in the book.

Olympics for Kids- Edible Torch is post I wrote for the Kid’s Activities blog. We made a ice cream cone and some wonderful snacks into a fun torch. It tasted great too.Olympics for Kids- Fruit Filled Olympic Rings shares a great way to learn the colors and meaning of each ring. These fruit filled rings were a great visual display of the rings and their colors.

Learning Activities

Printable Olympic Passport with Learning Activities shares various ways a passport I created can be used to help children work on writing, researching, and pretend play. The ways you can use the passport are endless. I bet you can come up with several of your own.

Pom poms were sorted into old applesauce cups displayed to look like the Olympic rings in a post called Olympics for Kids-Color sorting. We had great fun sorting the pom poms with chopsticks.

Threading felt leaves onto a pipe cleaner is a great fine motor activity. It also creates a fun laurel wreath for your little Olympian.

Olympic Themed Graphs and Charts features seven different charts, graphing sheets and diagrams that children can used during the Olympics or leading up to them.

Dream Big- Read.Explore.Learn. is a post that shares a wonderful book about Michael Jordan’s Olympic Dream. It also shares a sight word basketball game.

Olympic Values

I wrote a series of posts on the Olympic values during the Summer Olympics of 2012. They were great fun to write and we all learned how they practically applied to our lives.

This series was a lot of fun to write and I think it was a lot fun for you to read.

The first post in the series was called Olympic Values: Respect and focused on self respect and knowing one’s limit.

The second post was called Olympic Values: Growing Excellence and was about doing your best.

The final post in the series looks at the Olympic Values: Friendship and I talked about JDaniel’s working on making new friends.I hope you find an idea among these 17 Olympic Activities for Kids.

Great Chinese New Year Activities for Kids

January 12, 2014 By Deirdre

I have some great Chinese New Year activities for kids to share with you. Chinese New Year is Friday, January 31st this year. It is one of those holidays we really enjoy celebrating at my house. I thought you might like to celebrate it too. This post shares fun meals and snacks. There are crafts and learning activities too. I am hoping there is something in this post that is calling out to you.Fun Meals and Snacks

We went to visit a Chinese market to search for fun and unique foods to try. JDaniel and I ended up selecting items for a chicken stir fry along with mango gelatin, rice cookies, and some tropical fruit. It was truly an adventure. If you have a Chinese market in your area, you may want to take your children to explore it. We found food items at ours that we would never have found at our local grocery store.

A roll of crescent rolls was all that was needed to create a crescent roll snake. A simple green dyed milk wash gave the snake his green tint.

We used to participate in a weekly link up called Muffin Tin Monday. A few years ago I created a green tortilla dragon lunch for a post called Muffin Tin Monday- Happy Chinese New Year!

Crafts

We used some old Easter eggs to thread together a snake for a post-Chinese New Year- Snake Activities.

This post also features dragon activities from No Time for Flashcards, Read-Set-Read, Kids Activities Blog, Carrots are Orange, Wildlife Fun 4 Kids, Baby Centre, The Imagination Tree, and 3 Dinosaurs. I was and am so thankful to those blogs for letting me share their creative ideas in this post.

Cupcake liners can be used to make really cute fortune cookies. We used bright red metallic cupcake liners for ours.We explored triangles, parallelograms, and squares while we created a Chinese shape snake. We used black paper to create on. It really helped the shapes in the snake pop.

Learning ActivitiesI gave JDaniel a print out displaying the animals that are a part of the Chines zodiac. He was asked to search the toy box and play bins in his room to find animals that matched the animals in the printout. We were both surprised to find all of them.(The second link below is an affiliate link.)

Moving yarn, straws and cotton with child friendly chopsticks was fun not only for JDaniel, but for my Sunday school class too. I place the materials into a sensory table at church and the kids loved transferring the items with chopsticks. We usedHog Wild Sticks chopsticks for this activity.

Deirdre Smith writes/owns JDaniel4’s Mom. After twenty years as a elementary school and technology resource teacher in Northern Virginia, she became a stay at home mom in upstate South Carolina. Her blog features ways she and her 5 year old are exploring learning, crafting, creating healthy meals and living life to its fullest. Deirdre can also be found on twitter as @jdaniel4smom and on her blog’s FB page. You can also check her out on Google+.

5 Little Firecrackers Craft and Song

December 29, 2013 By Deirdre

Five Little Firecrackers Craft and Song - This fine motor activity would be great to do for any patriotic holiday like the 4th of July. Kids can weave their own designs on the cardboard fire cracker they paint.

5 Little Firecrackers craft and song is the latest five little holiday song and craft we have done for the blog. It all started with JDaniel deciding he loved the book The Five Little Pumpkins. Since then we have explored the songs the Five Little Turkeys and Five Little Christmas Trees. I am going to be on the look out for more five little songs to share with you and him in the next year.Just as with the other five little songs we did a craft to help illustrate the song. This time we did a pipe cleaner lacing activity and craft.

Five long rectangles were cut out of the top of a pizza box. Then the cardboard rectangles were colored with a red marker and a red metallic crayon. It is a little hard to see that the firecracker’s surface sparkle a little in the picture above, but in real life it does sparkle.

Once the firecrackers were colored, random holes were punched into them. As you may remember JDaniel loves using the hole punch. I think lots of kids do. It is a great fine motor tool so when we have the opportunity pull it out and create with it. If you want your children to thread or weave in a particular pattern, you may want to punch the holes yourself. Our holes were really random.

When the holes had been punched, it was time to weave sparkly gold pipe cleaners through the holes. The weaving was done randomly from the top of the firecracker to the bottom. A little of the pipe cleaner was left at the top so the firecracker would have a wick.

With all the firecrackers ready, we started singing and almost chanting the song. It was so much fun!

Here is the Five Little Fireworks Song:

5 little fireworks standing in a row5 little fireworks standing in a row5 little fireworks standing in a rowAnd if 1 little firework decides its time to goWhoosh!There’ll be 4 little fireworks standing in a row3……….. 2 ……… 15 Shiny Rockets in the sky5 Shiny Rockets in the skyWatch them flying oh so high!If one shiny rocket goes BANG! BANG! BANG!There’ll be 4 shiny rockets in the sky3…….2……..1

If you like this patriotic activity, here are some more your children will enjoy.

Fine Motor Weaving Patriotic Colors
Water Gun Fireworks Painting
Bald Eagle Craft and Science Experiment
Grandma’s Garbage Truck and Parade Float
Musical Star Shaker American Flag Mobile
Chalk and Bow Fireworks Craft
Patriotic Lantern
Fireworks Straw Painting

Do you have a five little something song that I should share? If you do, please leave the name of it in a comment below.

Homemade Christmas Cards- Old Card Stencils

December 6, 2013 By Deirdre

The holidays can be a crazy and busy time of year. There just doesn’t seem to be the time to enjoy small family moments. We have to plan many of them in advance or create a Christmas bucket list of them so they won’t be forgotten. Knowing when we will put up our Christmas tree and work on homemade Christmas cards actually seems to help my family savor the moments rather than rush to complete them so we can move on to something else.

Previous years my son and I had time during weekdays to get some of our bucket list items done or to sit and craft. Since he has started kindergarten and I have gone back to work it is been more challenging. There are only so many hours in a day that we are awake and together much less to sit at the kitchen table and craft.

Homemade Christmas Cards- Old Card Stencils

I recently had some unplanned time think over crafts and projects I wanted to do for Christmas. Over the Thanksgiving break my son and husband went to spend the holiday with his family. My sister Shell and I spend the holiday with my mom at the hospital. (She is at this writing is still seriously ill) While I sat at her bedside, I worked on a list of Christmas themed projects to do with my son.

While she wasn’t able to chat with me, I chatted with her about what I was doing and projects she had made for Christmas.

Our tree growing up was filled with milk weed seedpod ornaments painted gold with tiny plastic holiday themed creatures in them. She made door decorations and put together very unique and special wreaths. I think it was due to seeing her crafting when I was little that I craft today. Because I craft today my son has learned to enjoy creating things with his hands.

My guys got back on Saturday and I started working on a homemade Christmas card stencil project that I had come up with while sitting by my mom’s bedside. JDaniel had I have the best time making cards for my mom. They are not fancy or even keeping to one Christmas theme. They are special because we made them together. Taking the time to sit and work on Christmas projects despite a busy schedule means we will have Christmas memory or Holiday “MOMent” to carry forward.

Snowman card is the one I made and the one JDaniel is touching is his.

I was selected for this opportunity as a member of and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.

You will find more Homemade Christmas cards and other Christmas crafts on my Crafts for Kids board on Pinterest.

What is one of your Mom moments? Have you ever made homemade Christmas cards?