Category: Arts and Crafts

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Chameleon Craft (Animal Habitat Unit)

LD: orange chameleon, DD: pink chameleon, Mom: green chameleon, ED: multicolored chameleon. While on the hunt for Eric Carle craft ideas, I went to visit two of my favorite art websites: Deep Space Sparkle and Art Projects for Kids. Art Projects for kids showed a very cute picture of a chameleon. We read this book by Eric Carle: The Mixed-Up Chameleon. (affiliate link) I had the kids watch the slide show at Eric Carle’s Website about...

Theme Time: Eric Carle Books 0

Theme Time: Eric Carle Books

I set out a number of Eric Carle books (and books of asimilar style). Then I rounded up puzzles and gamesthat went along with the characters in his books. I alsoset out a simple craft for the girls which was a big hit. Ihad pre-cut caterpillars, butterflies and tissue paperpieces that they could glue on. Although DD would havebeen fine to cut up the tissue paper, ED would haveinsisted on...

Valentine’s Day Necklace; Valentine’s Day Heart Tree 0

Valentine’s Day Necklace; Valentine’s Day Heart Tree

I set out a couple of activities today with ED in mind, butall the kids participated. Above the kids are makingnecklaces. Below is our seasonal tree. You can always make your own tree out of pipe cleanersif you don’t have a little tree as we did at Christmas timeor find a branch and place it in a vase. http://mymontessorijourney.typepad.com/ has wonderfulseasonal activities like these. If you haven’t already, besure to...

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Forest Biome: The Mitten — Activities

Today in our study of the forest animal habitat we read The Mitten. (affiliate link) We read Jan Brett’s book first. Using the beautiful mitten masks by Jan Brett the kids reenacted the story by putting the animal into the mitten (the kids are holding up the masks in the picture above). The mitten is just a file folder, drawn in the shape of a mitten. Jan Brett’s printables for...

Valentine’s Gem Craft 0

Valentine’s Gem Craft

ED and DD just loved this craft!! LD enjoyed it too,but the girls begged to do more because as DD said,“the gems are SOoooo BEAUuuuuutiful!” We made some cornstarch clay with red food dye 1 cup cornstarch1 cup baking soda1/2 cup table salt1 cup water Cook in a sauce pan til it forms a lump (no morethan a few minutes). Roll the dough out, make heart (and other shapes!). Then...

Hearts Felt Board Play 0

Hearts Felt Board Play

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve brought out the felt board.ED and DD have enjoyed playing with the hearts I madefor them. The flowers and butterflies are just patches that Ihappened to have around in my sewing stuff. We made our own felt board out of two painting canvases;it folds in half for storage and is about 2 feet square.You can check out how I made it here and...

Fox Craft 0

Fox Craft

We also learned about foxes this week. Our fox was primarily a sewing craft. We used feltand did a few stitches to form a nose. Then theysewed the head onto the body with a few stitches. They pulled knotted embroidery thread throughto make whiskers. The tail was also sewed on, but we wound up justgluing the legs on (there was only so much sewingDD wanted to do!) The ears and...

Deciduous Forest — Diaorama Project 0

Deciduous Forest — Diaorama Project

This week we’re going to make a diaorama on thedeciduous forest and its animal inhabitants. First wemade deciduous trees. The kids used cut up tissue paperand placed the bits onto contact paper. Then we putgreen paper onto the contact paper and cut out a treeshape. We’ll add a tree trunk later. Our other project today was to make coffee groundsquirrels. The kids decided to use colored sand for thesmaller version...

Spaghetti – Yarn Art 0

Spaghetti – Yarn Art

Here’s the finished product of the kids’ arts-and-craftsproject last week. It took two days to dry thoroughly. This was a really good project even for ED (age 2) whocould pretty much do it on her own as long as I remindedher of the steps along the way: Put the spaghetti (or yarn) in the glueStir, stir, stirDump it on your plate

Spaghetti Art 0

Spaghetti Art

For this activity we needed cooked spaghetti (we usedfettuccine), bits of yarn or string and glue. We had onebowl of plain glue, and a bowl of glue + red food coloringanother with glue/yellow and another with glue/green. This activity worked best when I had them use a fork.My kids didn’t dip it in well enough to get a lot of glue.They really needed to stir it around a bit (and...

Mushroom Arts and Craft Project 0

Mushroom Arts and Craft Project

Our big project this past week has been making mushroomplay houses. 1) We covered rolled-up cardboard and a balloonwith paper mache. [1/2 cup flour + 1/2 cup water, stirin 2 cups of boiling water; let it cool and then dip thenewspaper and cover]

Mushroom Playhouse 0

Mushroom Playhouse

After lots more steps (attaching the balloon and stemparts with more paper mache, painting them, and coveringit with acrylic sealer) we cut out doors and the realfun began! We did a small step each day and overall ittook a week+ to make. The kids were really proud oftheir mushrooms when they were done.