Long-Weekly Unplugged Project: String Easter Egg Decorations

This weeks Unplugged Project was: LONG.

We made string Easter eggs.

I have been wanting to do this craft for some time now, and it seemed to fit nicely in the "long" theme.

For this project you need:

"long" pieces of cotton yarn

water balloons

1 part white glue to 1 part water

Cut the yarn in 12 t0 18 inch lengths.

Put the yarn into the glue/water mixture. Make sure the yarn is very saturated and then with your fingers, wipe the remaining glue off.
I liked using water balloons because they seemed to be the size I wanted my eggs to be, but you could use any size balloon.

Tie the balloon with thread and hang it up, (we just tacked it into the ceiling-this made it very easy to work on.)
Wrap pieces of yarn around and around the balloon--it is pretty messy--we hung our balloons right over the table to catch the mess.

Becky was very creative, and instead of just wrapping the yarn any which way, she wound the yarn around the balloon.

Let this hang and dry for about 24 hours.

After completely dry, pop the balloon. The egg makes the most wonderful crackling noise when the yarn releases from the balloon.

Hang them up and enjoy!!

Make sure to check out all of this weeks Unplugged projects.

Next weeks theme is : BOOKS

I shared this project over at the We Made It: Saturday Showcase. Make sure to check out all of this weeks great crafts.

Of Snakes and Rainbows and Saint Patrick

First and foremost I want to share our all time favorite St. Patrick books. It is quite a collection, but after all, we are Irish (some more than others!)

If you click on the book's cover, it will take you to the Amazon link.

This is our very favorite St. Patrick's Day craft book.

Our favorite Leprechaun book,

and our favorite St. Patrick video.

We have been enjoying rainbows and shamrocks, and now we are learning all about Saint Patick.

One of the stories we have heard about St. Patrick, is that he drove all the snakes out of Ireland by beating his drum to drive them into the sea. So what better that some snake crafts.
I found these springy spiral snakes at the DLTK website.

These snakes were for Mark and Grace to make.
First Mark and Grace decorated their snakes.

Nice job!

Lastly you simply cut the snake out along the black line, forming a spiral.

They came out great. I threaded a string through the tail of the snake. They spring up and down, and after we hung them from the ceiling, they twirl nicely in the breeze.

Kim and Luke made a colorful, rainbow snake, also from the DLTK website.

Kim and Luke, with my help, colored all the parts of the snake in the color of the rainbow. There is an option of printing this in color. This would have been a better choice for us, as the kids got tired of coloring and they needed a lot of help.

I cut out the pieces and then decided instead of just gluing the parts together, that I would put brass fasteners between each segment of the snake so that it could be played with, not just hung up on the wall.

We put the snakes together following the colors of the rainbow. Both kids are getting really good at naming the colors in the correct order.

Luke's snake.

Kim's snake is just lovely. You can see in this picture that I didn't cut around the snake's tongue. I thought it would rip off too easily if I cut it and made it so skinny. (Six hours after being played with constantly, they are still in one piece.)

Make sure to check out the other We Made It, Saturday Showcase posts.

Spinning-Top Art

We combined art, crafts and science this week when we made these spinning art tops.

We needed:

cardstock

scissors

crayons or markers

glue

q-tips (or something narrow to use as a spinner)

We cut out circles from the cardstock, about 3 inches in diameter. Put a tiny hole in the very center of your circle. This is for older kids, so they can make their designs around the center. Color a design you want to try spinning.

Above are some rainbow spinners. We used a q-tip with the cotton removed and sharpened at one end to a point. (Use whatever you have--that's what I say) Put this into the center of your cardstock. We then added glue to the top and bottom of this center point. We didn't do this at first, and the holes in the tops quickly became to loose to spin. Dry this in a glass as shown above for about an hour.

Then comes the spinning fun!

Even Luke-3 was able to get these tops spinning. It is also interesting to see the colors mix as they spin.

This top was colored in quarters with red and blue.The spinning results are a lovely purple. You can't see it very well here, but the top becomes totally purple. We also tried yellow and blue to make green, but I think the blue was to dark and we didn't get a real good green.

Here is a very badly videotaped example of our spinning.

An Apple Tree Craft

Emily, over at God's Canvas,
has been gracious enough to head up this weeks Craft of the Week over at the 4Real forum.

If was the perfect activity for kids that like to get messy.

In honor of autumn, we made apple trees.

The kids really enjoyed painting themselves so they could print the trunk and branches of our tree.

They then carefully dotted glue around their trees so they could affix the leaves, (torn pieces of contruction paper.)

Finally, we finger painted apples onto our trees. As you can see below, Gracie figured that she needed an apple for every leaf, and some have already fallen to the ground.

Thank-you 4RealLearning for another successful Monday afternoon craft.

Peanut Butter Play Dough

Yesterday, Crafty in Coffeeland, shared the St. Monica prayer board craft. She also shared a recipe for an edible St.John the Baptist craft.

We made our dough using 11/2 cups of peanut butter, 3/4 cup powdered milk,(we used quite a bit more) and 3 tbls honey. We mixed this into a playdough consistency.

Crafty in Coffeeland then made the head of St. John the Baptist after he was beheaded. (O.K., but my kids loved it and they sure know the story of John the Baptist's death now.)

We also continued to make many more sculptures.

Everyone enjoyed playing with it, and

it is completely edible.

Craft of the Week #5

This week, the Craft of the Week came from Crafty in Coffeeland . It is St. Monica's prayer board. We laminated the white paper and background paper together making a wipe-off board. We added a picture of St. Monica, a heroine of pray. Mark and Grace deocorated it and we hung it near out kitchen table because we always pray for people after we way grace at meals. This will certainly help us remember everyone that we want to pray for.

Mark wanted to pray for the soul of Grandpa Collins today, and we also are praying for the soul of our dear friend, Paul's grandfather.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen

Week 4--4Real Craft

This week Mary G, from St. Athanasius Academy, provided us the week 4 craft directions for the 4Real Learning Craft of the Week.

This weeks craft is simple paper weaving. We haven't done this before and everyone enjoyed it.

In fact some very big children are still working on theirs right now.

Now, if you are 5 years old there is nothing simple about paper weaving. It took Gracie a lot of direction to get the hang of the whole concept of this craft.

Mark is 20 months older than Grace and he caught on immediately. There must be a developmental stage that kids go through between 5 and 7 that make this idea click into focus.

But, you can tell by the pride in Gracie's face that she is very proud our her accomplishment.

Today just happened to also be the day that a package arrived from Montessori N' Such with our new wood cut food box. Mark made his weaved mat red and white so that is could be used as a place mat for his fruits and vegetables.

We laminated the mats so they will last longer. (please ignore the cute baby who was saying "cheese" during this picture)

I wanted to take a picture of our wavy weaving but this is as good as I could do---I wonder why?