A Springtime Garland

The last two garlands I made were crocheted, so I had no help from the kids, but this springtime garland is all paper and all kid!! You can see my February garland here, and the March garland here.

But this garland came out sooooo cute, that even though it was made by the 9 and under crowd, I just love it!!

We used scrapbook cardstock and paper for this craft.

I made a pattern of a bunnies head out of a cereal box and Mark and Grace traced the pattern onto spring colored cardstock and then cut them out. We then cut triangles, about the same size at the bunny, out of patterned scrapbook paper.

Simply glue wiggle eyes onto the bunnies. Then glue a triangle nose onto the bunnies. This job fell to Kim and Luke. Gracie drew on the whiskers and mouths. So simple but so cute.

I then used a needle and cotton yarn to "sew" the triangles and bunnies together.

Hang and enjoy

I saw this idea somewhere out there in the world wide web. I would like to give credit to the original crafter, so if you have seen this please leave a comment so I can give credit where credit is due.

Quick and Easy St. Patrick's Day Wreath

I have been wanting a nice March wreath for my front door, and since we have a house full of Irishmen, I decided on a St. Patrick's Day theme.

I bought a big package of large shamrocks from the craft store. The package in in two colors so I alternated the colors and formed a wreath, hot glueing the shamrocks together into a circle.
Next the kids simply added foam shamrock stickers and shamrock "jewels".
All these stickers were very cheap at the craft store, much cheaper than buying a ready made wreath.
The beautiful final results---in less that a half-hour.
(I guess according to this picture, it could also be a frame for a cuties head!)

I hot glued string onto the back of the wreath to make a hanger for it.

It now adorns our front door---a invitation for any visiting leprechauns.

We Made It: Friday Showcase....Bookworm bookmark

We have been learning about invertabrates this week and we are always reading so I thought a "bookworm" was just the thing for this weeks craft. I found this idea, and it was simple enough for Grace and Mark to do on their own--with a little help with the glasses.

To get started, draw 6 circles on fun foam, making them a little smaller as you go along.

Cut out the circles.

Glue them, (we use foamie glue-it holds much better than elmers-)from smallest to largest.

We wrote "Let's READ" on our bookworms next.

Add some wiggle eyes. The project we found directions for had pipe cleaners as glasses, I didn't like these as our pipecleaners were too fluffy, I used crafting wire to make wire rimmed glasses.

Add a mouth and some hair and you have your own personal "bookworm" bookmark.

Check out the striking resemblance Mark has to his bookmark.

I love the hair on Gracie's bookworm!

We Made It: Friday Showcase....Buzzy, Buzzy Bee

Keeping with our springtime and insect theme, this week we made bees out of throw-away bowls. I saw the basic idea at DLTK crafts.

We started our bees by painting paper bowls yellow

Painting seems to have overtaken every other art activitiy in popularity around here lately.

Maybe it is the "messy" factor".

It took patience, but they got the job done.

Phew! That is a job well done, Kim!

After the paint on the bowls dried, I outlined stripes to be colored in with black marker. Kim and Luke just turned 3 and 4 so I gave them the outline, but the older kids easily did this step on their own.

Add a triangle stinger, wiggle eyes and draw on a mouth. We also used pipe cleaners to make antennea.

The pattern said to use wax paper for wings. We didn't have any wax paper so I used a clear laminating sheet to make wings. Cut a large heart from the clear sheet and then cut it in half down the middle. These make very nice bee wings. Glue them to the top of the bowl. Happy bee crafting!!

We Made It: Friday Showcase....Ladybug, Ladybug...

fly away home......

I found very cute ladybug crafts for this week's insect fun.

I found the pattern for this ladybug at First-School.

I cut out the pieces using foam sheets so we would have long lasting magnets.

Kimberly was very careful to get the eyes on "just right".

To help Kimmy get her ladybug pieces in the right spot, I put the glue down on the main red heart and Kim added the legs.

The legs are also L's---so we worked on a little letter recognition also.

Gracie made a different, 3-D ladybug. This pattern is found on this page, along with many other very cute ladybug activities.

I first printed this on regular printer paper, so that we could try the proper folding technique. After we knew how to accomplish the folds, I printed it on card stock and made our final ladybug. Instead of gluing the edges together as the directions told us, I used staples to hold the ladybug together.Putting 6 legs onto her insect.

Add wiggle eyes and antennae--and our friend is complete.

Our magnets have joined the growing crowd on the fridge.

Unplugged Project-Yellow-Egg Carton Daffodils

The Unplugged Project of the Week was: yellow. Around here in April--yellow mean daffodils, so I did a search and found these very cute egg carton daffodils from DLTK crafts.

The first thing you do for this craft is paint a single section of an egg carton yellow. My kids just love to paint---everything.

I love the look of little hands "working".
The stem of our daffodil was simply a rolled up piece of green paper, taped securely.The DLTK link has a printable pattern of the large petal and leaves. We printed this on cardstock and painted the petal yellow and used green markers for the leaves.
Staple the large yellow petal to a flattened end of the stem. Glue the yellow egg carton section onto the center of the large petal. Staple on the leaves and your lovely daffodils are finished.

We are blessed to have beautiful daffodils in the yard. So I sent the kids out to pick a bouquet while our homemade daffodil's glue dried.

It's hard to tell which are crafted and which are real!!

Next weeks Unplugged theme is: powder (I have no idea what to do with this theme.)