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.

Activity: Big Ears

When I first found this activity, all I could think about what PSAT's, SAT's, ACT's, and any other kind of standardized test that you can think of. You know, when they have you read a story and the you have to correctly identify the point of the story, and various aspects about it? Yeah... I was never did excell at those kinds of tests, which is interesting because I love to read. But regardless of the tests, this activity is still fun for kids, and could actually make a great party game.

What you are going to do is tell a story with lots of descriptive words. If you don't have a story like this on hand, here is how to write one. If doing it for a birthday party, you could write a story about the birthday kid and do it as one of your games.

Before you begin the story, have the child or children clothes their eyes and focus really hard on listening (use their big ears!). Then tell the story, remind the kids to listen for descriptive words (you may want to explain what a descriptive word is at the start of the activity). Once the story is over, you can do a number of things.

1. Have the kids write down the answers to your questions
2. Draw pictures of the objects that they remember (pink dress, blue eyes, etc)
3. Have the kids try to retell the story (you can have one kid do this, or have kids take turns after a few sentences each)
4. Have costumes and things on hand to act out the story.
5. Have coloring pages for the kids to color correctly (again, pink dress, blue eyes, etc)
6. Whatever else you can think of.

That's about it! I would advise keeping the stories fairly short depending on the age and skill level of your kids. And the more you do it, the more you can add to the stories. You could even grab some library books and then add more descriptive words if you like. OOH! Or how about 

Have you done any thing like this? Do you have a descriptive story to share or recommend?

Activity: I Spy Variations

I spy with my little eyes something... Red! Blue? Green? Plaid?

Instead of playing the regular eye spy where you spy colors, how about trying something else like this...:

I spy with my little eye something that is a triangle....
I spy with my little eye something dark....
I spy with my little eye something that moves....
I spy with my little eye an animal....

And if you are at a crowded place like a McDonald's Play Place, the mall, etc. try some of these:

I spy with my little eye someone who is dancing....
I spy... someone who is sleeping....
I spy... someone talking on their cell phone....

In any case, you can be as creative as you want with this game. You could even do it between rain showers when the clouds are all puffy. Whichever way you do it, have fun!

Have you done a game like this? What variations did you do?

Activity: When you are at the Grocery Store

I am happy to say that this activity can go MANY different ways for MANY different ages. You can teach kids anything from colors (apples are red, grapes are purple, etc), organization (milk go here, flour goes there...), meal planning (I want to make spaghetti - do I have what I need?) and even as far as cost analysis (How do I get the best value for my money? How can I stay on budget?). I studied many aspects of food and budgeting in college and actually still use a lot of my old assignments in real life. With all this in mind, let me share with you some fun ideas of things that I have done in the store with kids.

I have asked them to...

Find things that are a certain color
Find a specific food (cucumbers, apples, etc. - Mia is learning how to do this).
Count how many jars of peanut butter they see
Help me pick out the biggest (or smallest, prettiest, etc.) piece of food
If you have $1.00 and a donut costs $0.50, can you afford it? Will you have any money left over?
I have $10.00 and need to get these 4 things. Can you find the best price?

 There are lots of  other things that you can do, and as always, the questions you ask will depend on the age and understanding of the child. In our family, I want to have Mia involved in all sorts of things, from cooking, to planning, to shopping, and even storing food (canning, drying, freezing, etc.). I'm hoping that by the time she is 10, she can at least make Spaghetti all by herself (she may need help lifting the pot full of water and noodles), and by the time she's 14 (if not earlier) I want her to be able to plan a week long menu of dinners, and make a grocery list. When she's 16, I want her to understand how to find the best value at the grocery store. This kind of knowledge will help her a lot in college, as well as in her adult life. She will be able to use these skills as well as her budgeting skills to be able to save money and live well below her means.

Have any of you done something like this? At what age did you start? What activities or concepts with you focus on?

Activity: Matching Counting, and Colors

My friend Tara was recently able to get two infants down for a nap at the same time, thus allowing her one-on-one time with her 3 year old (Emma). Together, they got out craft box to do some, as she puts it, "big girl" stuff. When I saw this activity on her blog, I saw immediately how awesome it was, and decided that it needed to be shared. I asked her and she officially said that I could copy her post and share it with you all. Here's what Tara says:

I cut up some pipe cleaners so they were all different lengths. Then I traced them onto a piece of paper and numbered each one. Emma matched each stick to the correct one on the paper.

 After she matched them up, I taped down the top and got out the beads.

I helped Emma count the correct number of beads for each pipe cleaner. She then strung the beads onto them.

She loves to sort and match colors, so when she had finished stringing on the beads, we took them off and she sorted them into little bowls.

If you don't have pipe cleaner, you could use string, or straws might be thin enough to string the beads on as well. The advantage of pipe cleaner is the beads stay where they are placed instead of falling off. Makes it easier and less frustrating for those little hands and fingers.

Next time we do this, I will probably put down a cookie sheet first. Not too many beads fell off the table, but it would have kept them from rolling so far.

Activity: Beads and Cups and Things

Let's face it. Kids like to make noise! As parents, we hope that the noise won't be too loud or annoying. Fortunately this activity is neither loud nor annoying, which is always an A+ in my book! We started by getting out Mia's stacking cups (or any other cups or buckets that you would like to use). We also got out her bead necklaces and some little paper cups (the kind kids use in the bathroom). And then we just let Mia be creative! Here's what to do:

Items Needed:

Stacking cups or buckets

Paper or plastic cups

Beads (you could also use corn, rice, cereal, etc. but make sure that you stay at the kitchen table or outside for that).

Remember to look for my final review at the bottom of the post!

Stacking cups? Check!

Sit on the floor? Check!

Beads? Check!

Paper cups? Check!

One last smile before "intensive" creative thinking? Check!

Let the games begin!

Review:
Mia had a lot of fun with this activity. I think she continued to play with it for more than 30 minutes, which for a toddler is super impressive. I think she actually loved the paper cups the most though. As for the older kids, I am not sure if they would enjoy the same setup as Mia had, so here are some other ideas.

1. Get a package of "pompoms" (those little puffy fluffy balls you can find at a craft store). Any size will be fine. Then you can have the child practice their color knowledge by having them place the correct pompom color in the correct cup. Perhaps you could draw on the up so that they know what color is expected. Or you could write the words if the child is learning how to read.

2. Have older children try stacking a castle of cups using the paper cups. See how high they can stack things. Or if you have a TON of cups, see how high they can make a tower before it falls over.

That's all that I can think of at the moment, but I'm sure that you can come up with other ideas too. Would you care to share?