Crafts Archives - Page 14 of 20

{Five Little Turkeys} Stick Puppets and Rhyme

November 18, 2013 By Deirdre

Five Little Turkeys Stick Puppets and Song

Have you ever sung the song the Five Little Turkeys with hand print turkey puppets? If you haven’t you, really should. It really is a lot of fun. We did it recently at our house. We put this activity together, because JDaniel loves the Halloween book Five Little Pumpkins .When I clear out the stuffed animals on his bed, I usually find the Five Little Pumpkins under one of them. Finding a Thanksgiving song that was similar and making puppets became a mission of me.

On a pretty day last week, JDaniel and I made turkey hand prints on our deck. I had to be careful not to tickle him as I applied the paint. After a few JDaniel sized turkey had been created, it was mine turn to make a couple. I think he did a better job of pressing his hand down to make a print then I did. I made a few extra turkeys so we could decide which of mine were the best five little turkeys.

We were so fortunate to have warm day. The turkey dried quickly. I think the fact we used washable paint on white drawing paper helped too. Construction paper and acrylic paint seems to take longer to dry. When they hand prints were dry, we added beaks and feet.

Then they were ready to cut out. We also cut out twelve by eight pieces of cardboard from cardboard boxes in our recycling box. The cardboard would be used to make the turkeys a little bit stiffer. A colored popsicle stick was threaded through two horizontal slits I made in the cardboard.(I didn’t think the popsicle stick glued between the hand print turkey and the cardboard would stay in place.

The hand print turkeys were glued onto the cardboard pieces and then cut out. It was a little tricky cutting through the cardboard even though it wasn’t that thick.

When all five little hand print turkey puppets were done. We worked on the rhyme. It was easy to learn its words. Holding the turkey was a challenge. We found that JDaniel needed to hold some and I need to hold others or we needed a tool to help us. The tool we found that worked the best was a chip clip. Two or three turkey could be attached to chip clips and the clips’ handles could easily be held by two hands.

The side of the kitchen table with a white sheet over the back door was a wonderful stage for the five little turkeys to bob up and down and say their rhyme from. We also found the end of the end of a bed and the railing of the deck worked too.

After singing the son a few times, JDaniel took the Thanksgiving decorations of our living room mantle and create a play with the five little turkeys. It was truly amazing.

Here is the Five Little Turkeys rhyme we used:

Five little turkeys standing at the door,
One waddled off, and then there were four.

Four little turkeys sitting near a tree,
One waddled off, and then there were three.

Three little turkeys with nothing to do,
One waddled off, and then there were two.

Two little turkeys in the morning sun,
One waddled off, and then there was one.

One little turkey better run away,
For soon it will be Thanksgiving Day.

If you have the opportunity to make hand print turkey puppets, you may want to think about having them say a Thanksgiving rhyme. Five little turkeys on stick puppets and a Thanksgiving theme rhyme are just plain Thanksgiving fun!

How to Make Coffee Filter Poppy

November 5, 2013 By Deirdre

On Friday I showed you a cork painted poppy that JDaniel made. It ended up being a wonderful flower, but it wasn’t something we could give to Veterans or display in a vase. We created coffee filter poppies for that reason. I thought you would like to learn how to make coffee filter poppies too.

Before you start this craft you may want to read your children a book about Veterans Day. Below you will find some of my favorite Veterans Day books.

Putting the Poppy Craft Together

These poppies are so easy to make. The first thing you need to do is paint two coffee filters. We happened to have a red bingo marker. It was great for coloring the filter red. A few little bingo marker dots paint can go a long way. The filter absorbs the paint and spreads.

It took quite a while for our coffee filters to try. One of us used more than a little paint. If we had used less paint, they would have dried faster. I think they took about an hour to dry.

When they were completely dry, we put the two filters together and then folded the filters in half. Then in half again or into four quarters. I drew a heart shape on the folded filters and JDaniel cut it out. This gave us the poppy petal shape we needed. He did a great job cutting it out.

Then the coffee filter was opened up in a half. JDaniel used the hole punch to create two holes near the fold. His holes ended up a little off-center, but that was okay. I would have put them closer together, but I was not in charge of the hole punch.

A pipe cleaner was then threaded up one of the holes in the filter and through a blue button. The pipe cleaner was threaded down through a second buttonhole and down through the second hole in the coffee filter. The ends of the pipe cleaner were then twisted around them to create a flower stem.

JDaniel then mushed the sides of the flower together into a tight bud. When he let go of the closed bud, it unfolded as a pretty bloom. The flower had pretty folds and a bell-like base.

This poppy will be sent to my sister and brother-in-law who are both war veterans. I bet you could make some to give to someone you know who has served in the military. The flowers will be easy for you to make now that you know how to make a coffee filter poppy.

Building Background

Below you will find a few wonderful books that will explain Veterans Day to your children.
The links below are affiliate links.

More Veterans Day Activities

Cork Painted Poppy

Hands on Counting Activities- Number Puzzles

Building Background

Below you will find some wonderful books about Veterans Day. Your children may not have a lot of knowledge about what a veteran is and why we remember them. Below you will find a few books that explain Veterans Day.

The links below are affiliate links.

More Veterans Day Activities

Veterans Day Craft - Cork Painting a Poppy

Cork Painted Poppy

Hands on Counting Activities- Number Puzzles

Halloween Craft- Button Pumpkin Face

October 25, 2013 By Deirdre

How Big Could Your Pumpkin Grow? out of the library. From the book’s cover I really didn’t know if it would be about two boys growing a big pumpkin or something else. I asked JDaniel to predict what the book was going to be about based on the cover. He thought it could be about growing pumpkins too. After we read the book, we did a Halloween craft I know you will love.

When we started the book, we found that book shares various places in the United States big pumpkins could visit. We traveled to a hot air balloon festival in New Mexico, to Vermont to see pumpkin boat races, and to Mount Rushmore to name a few. It was fun to see giant pumpkins side by side monuments and landmarks.

There is an area in the back of the book that shares a couple of facts about each place. We haven’t taken out a map to find each state and where the landmark is in each state yet, but I think we will.

What did we do to explore the book?

Halloween Craft

We made a button pumpkin face. Last year I bought a bag of colored buttons. (We have used them over and over again for learning games and crafts.) We sorted through the bag to find all the green buttons. The green buttons would be used to create the pumpkin face.

Then I pulled out come pipe cleaners and some orange grid circles. ( I found the orange circles at a dollar store in the houseware area. I think they were supposed to be coasters)

We tried arranging the button in various ways on the circle to create different eye, nose and mouth designs. Different sized buttons created very different looks.

When JDaniel found a face that he liked, we worked at adding one facial at a time. A section of pipe cleaner was threaded through two of each button holes. The ends of the pipe cleaner were then poked through the holes in the grid. Threading the pipe cleaner into the button holes wasn’t easy. It ended up being a tricky fine motor activity.

When the pipe cleaner was through the holes, the circle was turned over and the ends of the pipe cleaner were twisted and flattened. The eyes and nose buttons were put in place using this technique.

For the mouth several buttons were placed on a pipe cleaner. The pipe cleaner started at the bottom of the first button and continued being pushed up and down through the buttons’ holes until several buttons were on the pipe cleaner. Both ends of the pipe cleaner were pushed through the holes nearest them when we placed the mouth on top of the circle. JDaniel created little hooks at the ends of the pipe cleaner to hold them in place.

I thought we were done when the smile was in place, but I was told the pumpkin needed a stem. I decided to take a picture and post it on Instagram to see what other people thought about the pumpkin. The answers came back unanimous. A stem was needed. We threaded a couple of button onto a pipe cleaner and attached them to the top of the pumpkin.

The stem does look cute. JDaniel and my Instagram followers should be happy with how it stands out.

If you like this Halloween craft, you will love the crafts found on my Crafts for Kids Pinterest board.

I have decided to ask you to link your posts to the Read.Explore.Learn. Facebook page instead of running a link up. I hope you will stop by and share your children’s book related activities there.

Disclaimer: This post does contain affiliate links.

Follow JDaniel4’s Mom on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.

Fall Leaf Craft Owl

October 23, 2013 By Deirdre

The leaves have started cascading down from the trees in our front yard. The yellow, brown and green leaves remind me of the colors of an owl’s feathers. Well, maybe not the yellow. JDaniel and I used some of those leaves to create an owl fall leaf craft.

I grabbed a cardboard box from our recycling bin to use as the base for the owl. It was just the size a wanted for the base and had sections of it that were yellow and white. We could use those later for the beak and the eyes.

JDaniel helped me glue the leaves on to the cardboard owl outline. At first we tried to hold the leaves in place and found that they kept trying to curl up or lift up. The solution to that was to stand on the leaves until the were almost dry. ( I guess we could have put a book on them or something else heavy.)

When JDaniel noticed the little boys next door and their dad doing yard work he lost interest in what we were doing . After helping me add a few more leaves he headed off to help them drag branches to the road. Since I sit outside to watch him anyway, I placed my feet on the leaf craft owl to hold the leaves down. It didn’t take long for all the leaves to be stuck in place.

Later after a lot of outdoor play time we added the owl’s eyes and beak. The eyes and beak had been cut out of the front section of the cardboard box. Eyeballs and an outline were added to the beak with a black marker.

The leaves in the our fall leaf craft owl will curl up and may get a little brittle over time. We didn’t put a coating of water and glue on top of them. It will be fun to see of the craft evolves. If we don’t like how it turns out, we can always make a second owl and add a coat of water and glue to that one.

You will find more fall crafts on my Fall Crafts Pinterest board. You will find another fun owl craft with cup liners and torn paper and an owl hand puppet.

What are your favorite ways to play with leaves?

Preschool Craft- Cupcake Liner Pumpkin

October 20, 2013 By Deirdre

On Saturday we sat down at kitchen table to create this cupcake liner pumpkin and JDaniel announced that it was for preschoolers. It was easy enough for preschoolers to complete, but I think children outside of preschool would like to do this craft too.

What supplies did we use to make preschool craft?

Black construction paper, white crayons, cupcake liner with a Halloween theme, glue, and Crayola Metallic Crayons.

How did we make this preschool craft?

Preschool Craft - Cupcake Liner Pumpkins

The project started with hand drawn pumpkins on black paper. I drew the pumpkins although I think JDaniel could probably have drawn his own. White crayon was used to draw the pumpkins. Any color would do! The cupcake liners will be covering the crayon edge or most of it anyway.

We flattened out a bunch of Halloween themed cupcake liners. I love to collect cupcake liners to use in JDaniel’s lunches. We have several different Halloween liners from prior Halloween’s lunches. We used the pattern of the liner facing out or this activity. If you hoping to create a more muted colored craft, you could use them so the inside of the liner is facing up.

We talked about trying to place cupcake liners so that they were not totally covering up the liners underneath them. JDaniel did a good job of leaving some of each liner exposed. We learned that if we placed glue along the outside edge of the liner the liner didn’t curl up after we had several liners curling up.

Somewhere along the way we received or purchased metallic crayons I thought they would be great for this project. The green metallic crayon worked out well for coloring the stem. It had a little sparkle in it. JDaniel had forgotten we have them and loved how the green crayon marks shimmered. I think we will be taking them out again soon.

The craft could have been declared done when the stem was colored, but I decided to cut the pumpkin out and try mounting it on white paper. I think the stem and some of the cupcake liners stand out better with the white background.

If you are looking for a preschool craft, I hope you will try this cupcake liner pumpkin. If you have children that are older or younger, I hope you will too. The cupcake liner collage effect is such fun to create. Preschool Halloween Craft Cupcake Liner

Fire Truck Craft

October 6, 2013 By Deirdre

One of the fun things I have been doing to help JDaniel’s class this year has been to help with the SEEDS program. It is right up my alley. The program is like Read.Explore.Learn. and you know how much I love to explore books.

I decided to share a fire truck theme book with them called Meeow and the Big Box is about a kitten who uses a big box to create a fire truck for pretend play. We first heard this book shared at a library storytime focused on fire safety. The librarian created a visual using a box that walked us through each of Meeow’s steps. The children just loved this book.

Creating the Fire Truck Craft

I only get about half an hour to read the book and do the craft. To save time I try to have everything cut out and ready to glue down. I even do a trial run on my own or with JDaniel to time it. He loves getting to be a guinea pig for his class.

Here is how the trial for this craft turned out:

First, we put the body of the fire truck on black paper. Then JDaniel added the windows and white bumper area. I think I could have cut a long strip for the bumper. It didn’t stick out very far in the front or back of the fire truck. I may need to make these a little longer for the class.

The windows for the fire truck were moved around a lot. JDaniel had ideas about where they needed to go and not go a couple of times. They really could go anywhere on the front of a fire truck and could be turned vertically or horizontally. I think not having a specific place for the windows gives the children can invite to make their trucks unique.

After working on the windows, JDaniel worked on adding the yellow accessories to the truck. The ladder could have gone anywhere on the truck or even on the roof of the truck. Both of the lights could have gone on the top or on the front. The trial run ended up with one of the top and one on the bottom.

The last thing to go on the fire truck craft was the wheels. I am not sure that fire trucks have brown wheels, but black wheels would have blended into the black background so, I went with brown.

I think it will be fun to do this craft with JDaniel’s class. We had fun working on it together. It would also be great to create with your children during National Fire Safety Month in October. They would probably like to read Meeow and the Big Box and make a fire truck too.

Simple and Fun Reading Strategies- How to Teach a Slug to Read

September 13, 2013 By Deirdre

Links below are affiliate links.

How to Teach a Slug to Read shares the steps a slug goes through to learn to read. If you want to teach a slug or child how to read, you will easily be able to follow these steps. They are simple and fun reading strategies.

Simple and Fun Reading Strategies- How to Teach a Slug to Read

Without giving to much away here are some of the steps:

Put labels on his favorite things.
Read books your slug will be interested in.
Show your slug words that they will see over and over again.
Help him sounds out the words in the book.

We loved the commentary between the slug and his mom on each page. They have the best chats about each step. The pictures in this book are wonderful too. I confess we have giggled a lot as we read this fun book.

What did we do to explore this book with reading strategies?

We looked at several simple and fun reading strategies from the book and from my experience as a teacher.

Highlight a Page from a Book

The book suggested that highlighting favorite words in a text. Rather than actually highlighting in a book I found a passage online about slugs for JDaniel and I read together. I read JDaniel the text and he highlighted fun slug related words.

We will try this activity again. I may photocopy a page from a favorite book or find passage online again. It is a great way to work on building vocabulary and learning new words.

This same activity could be used to find sight words or words with specific sounds in them. You may decide to keep a journal of found words or maybe even create a homemade dictionary of them.

Slug Reading Guide

A paper slug glued onto a stick made a simple reading guide. What is a reading guide? Well, it is a pointer or flat tool that can help children focus on one line of text at time. The guide was put together so that the slugs slime line would be right under the text. The slug’s eyes could be used to find and point to particular words or areas of text by holding the stick so the slug’s eyes are lined up with the words. This is great way to look for sight words.

Reading guides are so easy to make. You may want to make different guides for each theme or unit of study you are doing.

Slug Tracking Guide

Learning how to track your finger while reading text can be done using a folder with solid lines where the text would be. Dotted lines connect the solid lines and mimic the movement your fingers would making as they move from one line to the next. The lines can me drawn in any color you like. I chose yellow so the lines would like like slug slime lines. Yes, my guy got to run his finger right over drawn slime! How cool and gross at the same time. This activity is great reading warm up and help put into muscle memory the flow of text in a book.

Anticipation Building

We did one more activity to go along with this book. I will be putting it up next week. It was such fun I thought it needed a post of its own.

Reading tools and strategies can help young slugs and young children learn to read. Do you have a favorite reading tool or strategy for helping children learn to read?

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links.

{Read.Explore.Learn.} Is Your Buffalo Ready for Kindergarten?

August 23, 2013 By Deirdre

Is Your Buffalo Ready for Kindergarten?Well, is he? The buffalo in this wonderful book by Audrey Vernick thinks he is ready and so does friend. Kindergarten does have some challenges for him. He doesn’t cut well with scissors. He does eat grass at recess and have trouble fitting on a swing. He can’t finger paint due to not having fingers. He can hoof paint though.

Is Your Buffalo Ready for Kindergarten Activities

Other things he can do well. He can take turns and cooperate. He can keep his cool when called names for being clumsy. He can share with others. He is big enough for everyone to sit next to a story time. A buffalo has all the skills he needs to start and stay in kindergarten.

I love the humor in this both. Both the words and illustrations share ways that new kindergartners might find challenges in a way that will make them giggle. Being able to giggle when your anxious about something new is a very good things to be able to do.

What did we do to explore Is Your Buffalo Ready for Kindergarten??

Painting with Hoof Prints

I took a sponge brush and cut out a triangle from it to make the brush look like a hoof print.

JDaniel used the hoof shaped brush to paint on a card board pizza circle. (The buffalo had hoof painted in the book and I thought it would be be fun for JDaniel to hoof print too.) He had been given white, brown, yellow and black paint to blend and paint with. The paint was layered over and over again on the cardboard circle. The hope was that is would look like fur when it dried.

For some reason he started by layering single colors that were not brown first. Once he had established a foundation of black and white, he did add layers and layers for brown. All different shapes of brown ended up being created when he started to blend them.

When the pizza circle was completely covered, we set it aside to dry.

Cutting Practice

While the painting project was drying, we moved on to some cutting practice. One of the things JDaniel was supposed to have worked on this summer was cutting. His preschool teacher said we needed to work on it.

I drew the parts of a buffalo we were going to need to add to the pizza circle head to create a buffalo. There were ears,a nose, a beard, and a tuft hair. I drew them onto brown paper bag paper so, they would be easy to cut.

JDaniel did a great job of cutting out ear curves, an oval and the zigzagged beard and hair. There were a few slips of the scissors, but not many. I think he will be ready to cut out objects when he is given them at school.

Made a Buffalo Head

After JDaniel had cutout all the brown paper pieces, I add outlining if needed to them with a black marker. I also cut out some eyes, a smile, nostrils, and some horns to add to the facial features we would need to decorate the pizza circle to create the buffalo’s head.

Then arranged them on the circle to see how they would look. When we had the pieces just where we wanted them, we glued them onto the card board circle.

I think he can out well. He looks a little different than the main character in the book Is Your Buffalo Ready for Kindergarten?, but not that different.

Counting Hoof Prints

Since we already had a hoof print brush, I thought it would be good to practice our number recognition skills. JDaniel was asked to put the correct number of hoof paint brush prints in to the space that had that number in it. The spaces were a little narrow and ended up with overlapping hoof prints in them.

He also had to push the brush down to make the pointed area of the brush show up on paper.

Conclusion

I believe that not only the buffalo in the book is ready for kindergarten JDaniel is too.

I have decided to ask you to link your posts to the Read.Exlore.Learn. Facebook page instead of running a link up. I hope you will stop by and share your children’s book related activities there.

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Back to School Shape Craft- Circles

August 16, 2013 By Deirdre

This week JDaniel and I looked at the book Away We Go! by Chieu Ann Urban and explored circles while doing a Back to School shape craft. It is a wonderful board book about transportation. Each page has shape cutouts that allow you to view shape cutouts on the upcoming pages. The cutouts are each a part of a vehicle. There are kinds of vehicles in the book everything from construction equipment to space vehicles.

Back to School Shapes Craft- Circles Away We Go!

Children are invited to look for particular shapes on each page. It is kind of like a shape I Spy book for young children. Despite JDaniel’s post preschool age, he enjoyed looking through the picture and hunting for the shapes. The brightly colored pictures and seeing how each shape cutout would be used in the next picture was a lot of fun.

What did we do with this book?

Back to School Shape Craft

JDaniel worked with circles to fill outlines of Back to School shapes I had drawn for him. There was a school bus, an apple, and a pencil. He was given a muffin tin filled with colored circles. Each color was a part of a zone or area on the Back to School pictures.

The apple was the easiest to fill. It really only needed red circles. I didn’t give him any guidance as to how to fill the apple or how to many circles to use. I just wanted to fill in the area of the apple. When he was finished, we talked about how the word area is a math word that describes how many of an object can fill up a space. I wasn’t concerned that the circles overlapped and were not side by side. The idea was just to fill the inside of the apple.

The bus was a little bit trickier for JDaniel to fill. There weren’t many rounded edges outside of the tires. The circles were more or less just placed into the bus. I like the layering that was done of the tires. I thought about having JDaniel add windows to the bus, but I wasn’t sure that the round windows would look right.

Circles might not have been the best shape to fill the Back to School pencil. They were fine for filling the yellow section of the pencil. The eraser area and tip of the pencil are narrow areas.The circles didn’t fit as well in them.By the time we got to the pencil JDaniel was circle crafted out. This Back to School Shape craft with circles was too much to do at one sitting. I should have put out one shape a day.

The author of Away We Go! has designed a set of shape activities that feature transportation you can find them on her blog Chieu Ahn Urban. I think they are well done. I have decided to ask you to link your posts to the Read.Exlore.Learn. Facebook page instead of running a link up. I hope you will stop by and share your children’s book related activities there. Disclaimer: I was sent a copy of the book Away We Go! to review.
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Gnome or Fairy Home – Read.Explore.Learn.

July 5, 2013 By Deirdre

The Fairy Ball (Bella)is a book we read a long time about about a little rabbit that finds her way to fairy ball. JDaniel and I really enjoy reading about how Bella ended up a the ball in search of chain of flowers she had made that disappeared and headed off to find it. Recently we came across a fairy house in the garden in front of a B and B my in-laws stayed in when they were in town. Seeing that beautiful house inspired us to look at the book The Fairy Ball again. Afterwards I thought it would be fun for us to build a fairy home of our own. JDaniel thought fairies were okay, but a home for gnome might be better.

We gathered a bunch of items out of our recycling bin and headed to an area of our yard that contains some pretty flowers. A gnome or fairy would want a pretty place to live.

What items did we take from the recycling bin?

plastic berry box
beverage carrier
paper towel tube
plastic candy tray
plastic peanut jar
assorted plastic lids
cardboard candy box

Then I pulled some weeds that been growing like crazy around the flowers due to days of rain out of the ground. We decided some of the weeds would be great for decorating the gnome or fairy home.

Building a Gnome Home -Recycled Materials Activity

With all our supplies gathered we got started.

Building the Gnome or Fairy Home

We started with the gnome or fairy home structure. An old candy box was decided on as the floor and wall of the home. The candy tray would be various rooms for the gnome or fairies.

An old beverage tray became the roof. We tried the carrier right side up and upside down. It was decided upside down would be the best. The cup holders kind of looked like skylights.

The paper towel holder was placed behind the gnome house. It looked like a chimney to us. Every house needs a chimney I was told.

A plastic berry container was the gnomes side porch. Our house has a front porch, but the gnomes apparently prefer having one on the side.

The old peanut jar was a garage from the gnome mobile. I guess even gnomes like to keep their cars dry in the rain. The peanut jar’s lid was used at the gnome home’s front door.

The bottle lids were used to create stepping stones for the gnomes. I guess they like hopping from stone to stone as they head into their home.

The weeds were woven into the drink carrier and placed on the garage. Some dandelions were placed in the gnome or fairy rooms as decorations. There were a few weeds place in the doorway and the jar lid was then replaced at the home’s entrance.

It is amazing how such simple things made a wonderful gnome or fairy home.

How did you explore books this week? If you have a post you would like to share, please link it up below. Once you have added your post, please visit at least three others.