Candy Corn Art

Fall is my favorite season! I love the colors, the smells, kids being back in school, and all the excitement that it entails. I also love Halloween crafts. I love doing the crafts, saving them, and using them year after year for my Halloween decorations. My mom did the same things when we were kids. Like mother like daughter I guess! It is no wonder that I am constantly looking for new fun crafts that kids ages 3 and older can do. I went through my Pinterest Halloween page and decided on a craft.

Here is a summary of one that we did this week.

This is my finished candy corn. 

Candy Corn Artwork

Materials Needed:
Craft glue sticks or wet glue
Black, white, orange, and yellow construction paper
White crayons
Scissors


Directions: have either you or the kids, depending on their ability to use scissors, cut small squares out of the yellow, orange, and white construction paper. The amount of squares you will use will directly correlate to how many kids your have. If you only have one or two children doing the craft, then I'd only cut on page of each color into squares. You can always cut more if needed. We had plenty left over when we were done.

This is my 3 year old daughter's candy corn.

Next, using the white crayon, draw a candy corn shape (triangle with rounded edges) on the black construction paper. Then instruct the kids where the colors "should" go (orange on bottom, yellow in the middle, and white on top). And if you are anything like me, just let go of color placement perfection preferences now, or you will be pretty stressed out when trying to get a 3 year old to follow your color instructions perfectly.








Now and let the kids have fun! And remember, the idea of all crafts for children is to have fun, enjoy themselves, and develop important fine motor skills in the process.

This is how my daughter decided she wanted to craft instead.

Wednesday is Library Day!

It's no surprise to those that know me that I love to read. And happily, I have transfered much of that love to my daughter, Mia. As this is the case, we are usually at the library for one or both of us at least once a week, particularly on Wednesdays.

In our area, the libraries has baby story time, Toddler time, and Pre-school time, where the teachers uses songs, actions, and books to teach concepts. It's a lot of fun and the kids get to wiggle while the parents/guardians participate or talk amongst themselves. Sadly, story time stopped between Thankgiving and Christmas, but it will be starting up again next week. And since I knew in advance that the library would be closed here and there around the holidays, I decided to check out a lot of books in advance, so that we would'nt be scrambling for things to read.

Since it was Christmas time, we got books about Hanakkah, Santa, Jesus, and other holiday topics. My favorite books turned out to be the ones where a song was put to pictures in book form. Like "Away In A Manger". I ended up singing through the book slowly, and Mia couldn't get enough. She even started singing with me. :)

What are your favorite library or book memories? Do you and your family have any favorite holiday books?

The Thankful Tree!

Seeing as Thanksgiving is at the end of this week, I thought it would be fun to do an activity about being thankful. I got out my supplies and got to work. Here's how it all went down.

Items needed:

Constuction Paper (I chose fall colors because of the season)

A large paper bag (I grabbed one on my way out of the grocery store)

Scissors

Writing Utensels (crayons, pens, dark pencils, etc.)

Clear Tape (such as scotch tape, or masking tape would also work)

Large paper bag from the grocery store.

     I cut off the very bottom of the bag, and then along one of the side seams. Then I cut "branches". I don't think that there is a right or wrong way to cut the branches.

I taped the tree to the refridgerator.

  I cut out the leaves ahead of time so that I didn't have to deal with kids and scissors.

Here are Mia and her cousins. I'm getting the tape ready, and they are waiting to put more leaves on the tree.

We're just about done! I can't get them the tape fast enough....

     I think that this activity worked really well. Brooklyn (almost 5) was able to write some of her "thankful" words by herself, but the grownups had to help the littlest kids (2 and 20 months) . The only problem that I had was not being able to get little rolls of tape ready as quickly as the kids wanted. They were very good at waiting for their turns though.

Here is a list of some of the things we were thankful for:

Fishies (gold fish crackers)

House

Clos (This is how Brooklyn spelled Clothes)

Family

Mommies and Daddies

Bed

Love

Forgiveness

Church

Scriptures

Sun

Heat

Animals

Toys

etc.

Have you tried something similar? How did it go? What suggestions or ideas do you have?

Let's give a hand to the turkey!

With Thanksgiving coming up at the end of the month, my crafting thoughts turned toward my much younger school days. Many of you probably did a craft like this at some time in elementary school, or girl scouts, or something like that. I decided that I would give it a try with my 19 month old.

Items needed:

Fall colored construction paper
Scissors
Scotch tape (or masking tape would probably work)
Crayons, colored pencils, or markers (if you use white paper like I did)
1 paper bag (I used a small bag, but if you are doing this with multiple kids, then I would use a larger back for the turkey body)

I started by tracing her hands onto a piece of white paper. You could also use colored paper, I chose to let Mia color her own "feathers". Since she's so young, I also did the cutting. Older kids could probably do the cutting themselves, with supervision of course.

Once the hands or "feathers" were colored by both of us (we took turns), we took them all to the refrigerator. Where you decide to place the turkey is up to you (i.e. the wall, refrigerator, dish washer, etc).

I am adding scotch tape to the lesser colored sides of the hands.

And now it's pretty much like "pin the tale on the donkey", only without the blindfold. I handed the ready taped "feathers" to Mia, who then put them on the refrigerator.

I forgot to mention that I cut out the turkey "body" by just making a bowling ball shap on a paper bag that I grabbed on the way out of WINCO, along with my other groceries.

After the "feathers" were all up on the refridgerator, I arranged them around the turkey until it looked like this.

So there you go! How has it worked with your kids? Any tips, comments, or suggestions?