Paper Plate Cow

William's cow.  He had a lot of help placing the pieces to glue.

Natalie's cow.  She did it almost completely by herself.  I love how she painted on eyes and a mouth and the alternating colors on the legs. 

We hosted a Sandra Boynton play date which mostly focused on farm animals from Barnyard Dance. I planned for us to make paper plate cows, but we ran out of time, so I did them with the kids later on our own. 

What You Need:

• paper plate
• card stock
• scissors
• glue stick
• printer (if using cow template like I did)
• brown and/or black paint
• circle stampers or sponges

What to do:

1. Before hand, print (or draw) the cow parts.  
2. Cut out the pieces.  Chances are your child is too young to cut all the pieces out well, so I recommend doing this in advance, too.  
3. First, glue the cow pieces on to the plate.  
4. Paint on spots.  

William hugging his cow.

Extras:

• If you need less mess, you could cut out construction paper spots to glue on instead.  
• Draw a face.
• Glue on googly eyes.
• Glue on a few strands of Easter basket grass, real grass, or cut construction paper to the mouth.
• Cut out a paper bell and glue it on the neck.  
• Tie a real bell on with a piece of yarn or ribbon.  
• Add an utter (with pink construction paper or pink paint)

Extensions:

• Read some cow books!  Barnyard Dance, Counting Cows, Click Clack Moo, Cow Loves Cookies, Kiss the Cow, etc.
• Count the spots.
• Talk about (compare and contrast) the size and shape of the spots.  
• Identify the parts of the cow.  Point out the ones people have versus the ones only cows / animals have.   
• Go to the farm and see some cows!
• Sing Old MacDonald. 
• Name your cow and write the name on a collar or bell. 
• Have your story dictate a story about your cow as you transcribe.  If you hang up the cow, hang the story with it. 

Crayon Hearts

You can Google how to do this, but I thought I would write it up anyway.  Here are two links to where I got my information.  This site gave me general instructions and this site I checked out when they didn't seem to be melting right.

What You Need:

• CRAYONS
• Oven
• Muffin tin / candy mold.  I used this one, but a lot of people appear to use this size.  I made hearts, but you can make any shape you can find a mold for.  I really liked the silicone mold.  They were very easy to remove. 

What to Do:

1. Prep the crayons.  
• I had years and years worth of broken crayons saved from when I was a kid and from teaching.  That gave me a huge head start.  I got about a third of a gallon sized Ziplock bag without having to break up many whole crayons.  In preparation for making these, I made sure I always took home the crayons offered at restaurants.  I used at least twenty of those.  
• Unwrap all the crayons.  This is the time consuming part.  
• Break them into small pieces.  The web sites said to use a knife, but we did just find breaking them by hand.  
• Avoid using the big, thick beginner crayons.  I found that those were still solid when all the others were melted.  
2. Preheat the oven.  One site said 230 and another said 275.  I wound up using 240 for two of the batches.  
3. Fill the molds.  If you have any especially pretty colors, put them on the bottom.  You can mix up all the colors like we did, or you can sort them by shade.  We filled the first two batches about half way and only about a third of the way for the last batch.  It depends how thick you want the crayons and how many you need to make with what you have. 
4. Bake for 15 minutes.  
5. Check them.  Ours always needed a bit longer, probably because they were a larger cup size.  The first batch went for 25 minutes (at 230 degrees) and the other two went for about 18 (at 240).
6. Remove the molds from the oven carefully and put them out to cool on a flat service.  (You don't want the wax spill or to pool to one side).  
7. They cool very quickly.  Ten or fifteen minutes and I'd say they were cool to the touch.  I then put them in the fridge for maybe another 10 just to be sure.  
8. Pop them out of the molds. 

Extensions:

• Lots of opportunity to talk about color with your child.   
• Younger children can identify about the basic colors (red, yellow, blue, etc), while older children can learn about shades and the more complex names for them (lavender, copper, teal, etc).  
• Ask your child to make up their own names for the different colors.  For example, school bus yellow or Elmo red.  
• As you fill the cups, play a game naming all the items you can think or see in the room that are of a certain color.  
• You can use this as a color sorting activity if you'd like to make your crayons only one color each. 
• Lots of math oppertunities, too.
• You can count the number of pieces as you put them in each cup.  
• You can estimate how many crayons you will need to fill a cup, then test your prediction.
• You can work on simple addition and subtraction using the number of crayons in each cup.  (Ex. "We have five in each cup.  How many do we have altogether?" or "We've put six in this cup.  How many do we have leave from the ten we started with?")
• You can work on early math skill of one-to-one correspondence.  Start with making sure each cup has one piece.  Then keep adding making them remain equal.  
• Before putting pieces into the cups, you can play making patterns with the pieces.  Ask your child to continue the pattern.  Ask your child to make up a new pattern.  
• Again, before placing them in the cup, pull out a few pieces and ask your child to line them up by size.  You could do length or thickness.  
• Talk about the shape of the molds.  You can also talk about the shape of the crayons: The ends look like circles or triangles, while the whole crayon is a cylinder.  
• Read  How is a Crayon Made.
• Watch this video from Mr Roger's or this video from Sesame St about how crayons are made.  The Mr Roger's one is almost 6 minutes and the Sesame St one only about 2 minutes.  By the way, I *strongly* remember that Sesame St one from my childhood.  
• Sing a song about crayons or colors, if you know one.  None readily come to mind for me.  :(
• Last, but not least, draw something with some crayons!!

For William: Just a Glue Stick, Please!

William loves glue sticks.  But, I didn't have many craft ideas saved for just gluing items on paper at random.  Lots of things don't stick with just a glue stick.  Pom poms, cotton balls, yarn, pipe cleaners: They all don't stick well without liquid glue.  Even so, most crafts I've seen on Pinterest or at activities we go to require the child to glue the pieces on specific places, which William doesn't like or isn't ready for.  So, here I'm collecting some crafts especially for William (though I'm sure Natalie will love them, too).  William really glues at random, but I could adapt a lot of the ideas to make them more fitting for Natalie.  For example, have her use small colored scraps to make a beach, water, or rainbow. 

Lots of these ideas are similar to stickers.  William likes stickers, but there is no glue stick involved.  Also, he cannot yet pull most stickers from the sheet, and he definitely cannot remove the white paper backing found on the cool foam stickers Natalie loves.  This makes using stickers very work intensive for both of us.  He quickly loses interest; either because I've handed him a sticker and it stuck to him or because by the time I can get him what he wants, he's thinking about something else.  So, I'll make some of these pieces, even if we could get them as stickers.  It'll be a good way to use up scrap paper. 

The goal is to prep the pieces and put them in ziplock bags so I can pull them out easily.  This type of prep should be easy to do while watching TV, so maybe I'll be making some construction paper fish, flowers, and cars tonight during Project Runway.

I'll post some pictures as we make them!

• Various mediums collage: construction paper, tissue paper, foil, card board, newspaper, magazine paper
• Various themed collage: basic shapes, letters, numbers, babies, animals, cars, buildings
• Tree with paper leaves (green or fall colors)
• Grass (green paper) with paper flowers and / or bugs
• Cars and roads
• Trains and tracks (photocopy Freight Train?)
• Ocean (blue paper) with fish
• Scales on a fish
• Stars (tin foil) on night sky (black or dark blue paper)
• Butterfly wings with rainbow colored pieces
• Feathers (real or paper) on birds
• Cut paper people and faces
• Day sky - snowflakes, clouds, raindrops
• Spots on a ladybug or leopard
• Stripes on a tiger or zebra
• Animals (farm, zoo, forest)
• Photocopies of book characters (Eric Carle animals, Sandra Boynton animals, Karen Katz babies, etc)
• Photographs (printed low ink on regular paper)

Seasonal ideas:

• Snowmen
• Santa face
• Jack'o'lanterns
• Turkey feathers
• Scarecrow head
• Hearts on big heart for Valentine
• Red, white, and blue stars and stripes (the 4th, Memorial Day, Veterans' Day, Flag Day, Presidents' Day)
• Shamrocks
• Designs on Easter Egg
• Easter eggs on grass (green paper)

Cookie Monster Sock Puppet

I prepped these for William's Sesame St themed first birthday party, but it was an activity we never got to that day.  Then, yesterday, Natalie saw the picture that inspired them on my computer and asked to make them.


What Do Need for Yours to Look Like Ours:

• Men's tube sock
• Piece of blue felt - Cookie Monster is like a medium blue
• Two googly eyes - medium or big size
• Scrap of black craft foam (or felt)
• Scrap of light brown felt
• Brown or black marker
• Scissors
• Glue
• Piece of paper about the size of a postcard

What to Do:

1. On the blue felt, trace a hand with the thumb and pinkie sticking out.  Now, I traced Natalie's hand.  That was a mistake for the original puppet idea I saw on Pinterest (scroll down to see it).  Her hand was too small; when I tried to glue it together, she couldn't maneuver her hand inside.  So, instead, I decided to change it into a sock puppet.  If you want a regular puppet, I suggest tracing an adult hand so there is plenty of room.  
2. Cut out the tracing.  
3. Cut a circle out of the light brown felt.  It should be about the size of a golf ball.  
4. Cut out the mouth from the black craft foam (or felt).  Make sure it is open wide ready to eat the cookie!
5. Now you are ready to start assembly.  Turn the blue felt for the body so that any tracing marks are facing down onto the table.  
6. Glue on the eyes, mouth and cookie.  
7. Draw dots on the cookie with the brown or black marker to make chocolate chips.  
8. Slide the paper inside the sock.  This is so that if the glue soaks through the sock, it won't stick together when it dries.  
9. Glue Cookie Monster on to the sock!  

This was William's first time making this type of craft.

Extensions:

• These are pretty easy to adapt for the other Muppets monsters.  You could make Elmo, Zoe, Oscar, and Grover without much adaption.  If you do make them all, its a great opportunity to talk about colors.  (Dover also makes these great Sesame St color themed sticker books you could use). 
• There are lots and lots of Sesame St books out there to read!  Our favorites featuring Cookie are ABC's of Cookies and Let's Eat. 
• You can have some fun pretend play / role play with any kind of puppet.  You and your child can take turns being Cookie.   You can just be silly, or you can do some serious role playing about sharing or emotions. 
• If you are big Sesame St fans, you can act out a favorite episode.  I'm a big fan of "Get Lost Mr Chips" from the most recent season (43), but any skit with Cookie and Prairie Dawn is usually pretty fun. 
• Sing "C is for Cookie."
• Make cookies!  Don't forget to let model reading the recipe and counting when you measure.  Also, let your little one help pour and mix.  
• If you are super silly (or brave) you could take your Cookie Monster puppet on a trip to a local bakery for a little field trip.  You could have lots of fun making Cookie pine over the cookies and press his face to the display case glass.  :)

Flowers for Button Practice

I made this little button practice craft for Natalie about 9 months ago and she wasn't  interested in it.  But recently, if I am wearing a certain sweater with buttons, she does them all up on me.  So, yesterday I pulled this back out.  Natalie LOVED it.  Not only did she think it was pretty, but she was *so* proud of herself for doing it. 

What You Need to Make Yours Look Like Ours:

• Seven pieces of felt = 1 full for background, green for stems, five different colors for flowers. 
• Five big buttons of different colors.
• Thread or embroidery floss.  I used green and then a different color for each button.  
• Scissors
• Glue or pins

Even if you don't have any materials in your home already, this craft only costs about $7, most of which is the cost of the buttons.  

What to Do:

1. Cut out the pieces.  I made the stems different lengths to make it more fun and so that the flowers wouldn't overlap.  The flowers I free hand drew and then cut out.  
2. Sew the stems to the background.  I glued it in place first to see if that would hold on its own.  While I didn't feel it was enough on its own, it did prevent me from having to pin the stems in place.  
3. Place a flower at the top of a stem and find the center.  Mark that on the background.  Repeat for all five stems.  
4. Measure the button against the flowers and cut the slit.  
5. Sew the buttons on to the background.  Test that the button will slide easily on to the flower once attached.  

Extensions:

• Read a book about flowers.
• Flower Garden by Eve Bunting
• Counting in the Garden by Kim Parker
• The Tiny Seed by Eric Carle
• The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf
• Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney
• Count the flowers.  Do simple addition and subtraction as you add and remove buttons.  ("You put on two buttons.  How many do you have if we add one more?"  or "Let's take off two flowers and see how many buttons are free.")
• Color identification.  You could also choose to have the button and flower match for a color matching activity.  You could make a flower for each of the major colors and write (or stitch if you are super crafty) the name of the color right on the flower. 
• Practice patterns.  You could draw a pattern for your child to copy or continue.
• Plant some seeds or seedlings.  
• Visit a florist or greenhouse and look at all the flowers.  (While there you could pick out the seeds or seedlings to plant!)  If that is out of the way, you could even just swing by the flowers in your local grocery store.  
• If its not winter, go for a walk and look for flowers outside. 
• Retice some nursery rhymes:  Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary; Roses are Red; Lavender's Blue.

40 Days of Christmas \ Winter Crafts

 I won't be able to do them all, at least not one a day, because we will be starting a few days after Thanksgiving, but I got the idea of pre-planning a craft a day running from the day after Thanksgiving to New Year's Day.  Most of these are ideas from Pinterest.  I hope to write a short entry for each idea, including links back to the pins that inspired me.

I've tried to include ideas with varying degrees of difficulty so that not only Natalie (3 years) but also William (15 months) have crafts they will enjoy.  Other than planning and prepping materials, my big roadblock with crafts is finding a way William won't destroy what Natalie is making, so crafts they can do together at the kitchen table, which also allow me to divide my attention, are important.

Many of these ideas can be made using different medium, such as paper, card stock, felt, or craft foam.  Many items can be used as tree ornaments, greeting card covers, gift tags, or magnets. 

These are currently not in any particular order.  

1. Free play with Christmas stickers; stampers; and red, green, and white paint (afterwards cut into Christmas shapes and make gift tags, greeting cards, or ornaments)
2. Paper snow flakes
3. Hand print Christmas trees
4. Wrapping paper strip Christmas trees
5. Salt dough ornaments
6. Christmas card garland with clothespins (paint clothespins and / or decorate with pom poms and other materials to make reindeer, snowmen, Santa, elves, nutcrackers, Christmas trees, angels)
7. Pony beads on pipe cleaners - trees, wreathes, candy canes
8. Painting with pine needles
9. Decorating big pine cones
10. Footprint reindeer
11. Upside down gingerbread man reindeer
12. Felt cookie cutter cut outs
13. Felt hand print reindeer
14. Candy cane reindeer
15. Footprint snowmen
16. Cotton ball snowmen
17. Cut paper snowmen with pipe cleaners, pom poms, and / or buttons
18. Popsicle stick triangle ornament
19. No-sew felt stockings
20. Store bought kits
21. Pom pom snowmen clothespin magnet
22. Paper Santa face including hat
23. Paper Christmas tree with sticker ornaments and wrapping paper presents
24. Paper Christmas tree with green scraps, pom poms, jewels, buttons. 
25. Sponge stamping tissue paper for wrapping
26. Cookie cutters as paint stampers
27. Thumbprint Christmas lights
28. Thumbprint snowmen (on ball ornament)
29. TP roll Santa
30. Pom poms glued on big Styrofoam ball ornament
31. Green pom pom Christmas tree
32. Paper plate wreathes with sequin (variations with hand prints, glue pieces of green paper)
33. Paper bag reindeer with hand print antlers
34. TP roll reindeer with egg carton feet
35. Reindeer hat with hand print antlers
36. Puzzle piece snowflakes
37. Sprigs of holly
38. Paint with white paint on dark paper 
39. Santa's sleigh and reindeer scene with paper
40. Shaped photo frame ornaments from felt or foam
41. Jingle bell bracelets
42. Christmas / winter scene on long strip of paper (can make into hat)
43. Angel
44. Nativity scene
45. Polar bear
46. Penguin 
47. Paper Poinsettias  
48. Cheerio bird feeders in Christmas shapes

Cookie Monster Toss

Here is the original pin from Pinterest that I came across while looking for Sesame St. party ideas.

What You Need:
3 sheets of light brown felt
circular foam brush
paint
light brown thread
needle
scissors
batting / stuffing
black beans
bowl (optional to trace circles)
blue felt
picture of Cookie Monster
printer / scanner
black marker
cardboard box (ex. diaper box)



First, I cut out the circles for the cookies on light brown felt.  I traced a bowl we had in the play dishes.

I had purchased dark brown felt as well to glue on the chips, but Natalie said she wanted to draw them.  So, I got out paint and some circular foam brushes we have.  (They are part of a brush set just like this one). 

Natalie did an awesome job painting on the chips.  I got the idea to put some rainbow candies on the ones I painted.  I think Natalie's came out better.  She is able to paint without thinking about it too much.  So, her random chips look random, whereas mine look like I tried to make them random.

After letting the paint dry, I sewed two pieces together facing each other using a simple back stitch.  I left an opening to turn it right side out.  Next, I stuffed them with some batting and some dry black beans.  Then I sewed shut the remaining portion of the cookie.

To make Cookie Monster's face, I first tried to draw it, but I was unsatisfied and Natalie was really laying on the pressure to feed him a cookie right away.  So, we scanned a coloring book picture, cropped it, and printed it out.  At first, I was just going to color it in, but then I let Natalie color it.  So, when she went to nap, I then cut out the face and traced it on to some blue felt.  I free handed the mouth and eyes.  I used a piece of white craft foam for the eyes.  I cut out the mouth.

I next cut the top flaps off a diaper box. 

I held the face up to the box and traced the mouth.  I used a box cutter to cut the hole for the mouth.  I wrapped the whole box in Sesame St theme wrapping paper.  I didn't bother wrapping the bottom, so I literally just wrapped it around the box, which was super easy.  After taping the paper in place, I cut out the mouth hole.  The last step was to glue on Cookie's face. 

Even though I made this for William's Sesame St themed first birthday party, it wasn't played with at the party.  But, my kids have enjoyed it since then.  We were quick to learn that the rest of our play food fits in his mouth, so they mostly feed him that. 

While I made this as a party game, you can easily add a little educational value to it by:

• naming the foods you feed Cookie and discussing their shapes, colors, scents, and tastes.  
• counting items you feed Cookie.  
•  talking about the first letters for the foods you feed Cookie.  
• watching "C is for Cookie" and otherwise learning about the letter C.  
• making special cookies that have numbers, letters, or shapes on them.  
• reading alphabet books dealing with food such as ABC's of Cookies (which is a Cookie Monster book), Eating the Alphabet, or Feed Up.

Watermelon Purse

This purse is based off of a door hanging craft I saw on Pinterest.  You can see the original here. 

What You Need (to make your's exactly like ours):
Green felt
Dark pink felt
Light pink craft foam
White card stock
Six small black buttons
One pink and one green pipe cleaner
Ten green pony beads
Two googly eyes
Glue
Black marker
Scissors
Wavy line scissors (optional)
Two binder clips

What to Do:
This one required some night before prep.  I cut out all the pieces of felt, foam and paper.  My wavy scissors are cheap, so I did the waves by hand.  I cut two pieces of the dark green so that we could glue the edge to make the purse.  The pink and white were one piece each.  I made two small circles of the dark pink for the cheeks. I gathered the other items and put them in a gallon ziplock bag so we could put the purse together during a trip to Grandma's. 

When Natalie and I sat down to make the purse, we first glued all the layers of the watermelon.  I glued and she placed.  I then glued around the curved edge of the two dark green places and stuck them together to make the pocket of the purse. 

Next, I twisted the two pipe cleaners together. Natalie had told me when we were looking at a picture of the purse that she wanted both pink and green, so I decided we could do both by twisting them together.  Next, Natalie threaded on the green pony beads and I helped space them.  I glued the ends of the pipe cleaners in between the two layers of green felt to make the strap.  I realized quickly that it wasn't going to hold together on its own, so I used two paper clips to hold it in place, but if I'd been home, I would have used binder clips. 

To finish up, we glued on the beads to make the watermelon seeds and then the parts of the face.  I drew on the smile since Natalie isn't much of a drawer yet. 

Once it was done, Natalie was very excited to show it off.  My old regret was that I didn't make it big enough for Baby Kitty to fit inside. 

Extensions: 
Coming soon

Glitter Fireworks

I was waiting to to this project with Natalie for a long time, and finally the Fourth of July arrived.  This craft is easy, but very messy, especially if you let your kids be in control.

What You Need (to make your's exactly like ours):
Heavy paper
Watercolors
Brush
Cup of water
Glue (stick or bottle)
Loose glitter
Glitter glue
Newspaper or table cloth (recommended for easy clean up if working indoors) 

What to Do:
I forgot to buy poster board at the dollar store, so we lengthened this craft by painting a sheet of white paper.  We mostly used the blue, but we also added a little purple, black, and Natalie put in some brown.

We then let it sit and dry while we did something else.  Watercolor doesn't take too long to dry and it doesn't need to by 100% dry to move on, so we didn't have to wait too long.

I had invisioned using a liquid glue, like Elmer's School glue with the orange tipped bottle, but our bottle's tip was clogged beyond repair.  So, instead, we used a glue stick.  I made the firework shapes and showed Natalie how to sprinkle the glitter over the glue.  I quickly learned that I was going to have to give up control on this craft, especially when one of the caps on the glitter fell off and the whole container dumped.  I let Natalie put the glue where ever she wanted and pour out tons of glitter.  Natalie soon realized that she liked working with the glitter glue more than sprinkling the glitter.  So, she made blobs with that and I worked on my own areas.

When you are all done, you shake away the excess glitter.  You want to wait for it to dry some before you do this so the glue doesn't run / splatter and so all the glitter doesn't fall off.  We made a huge mess with the extra glitter.  I wished I had put down paper so I could just fold it and funnel the glitter into the container to use again, or just throw the whole mess away.  I recommend paper or a table cloth to let you clean up easily, or you could work outside.  

Natalie was 2 years, 9 months when we did this craft.  While she had a hard time focusing on making firework shapes and controlling herself with sprinkling the glitter, and older child would have just as much fun with this project and make more consistent results.  This was one of my favorite projects because I really enjoyed the results from the work I did. 

Substitutions / Alterations:
The easiest would be to use blue or black paper for the sky background. 

Other firework ideas:
Spiral edges on black - I got some posters for the kids that were on a spiral flip chart.  When I trimmed off the edges, I thought the pieces looked like fireworks.  You could get a similar effect with the edges of colored paper on a spiral, or by coloring the edges yourself. 
Tissue paper on black (we didn't try this one)
Yarn fireworks - We did this one to pass the time on the fourth.  I made the line of glue, and Natalie placed the yarn on on it.  You could also use ribbon. 

Extensions:

• This is a good activity for discussing colors with young children.  
• You can make your own glitter by mixing salt and food coloring, then baking it on cookie sheets.  Making the glitter gives you a further chances to discuss colors, especially primary versus secondary, shades, mixing, and more complex vocabulary.  
• If you want to move away from traditional fireworks, you can make shapes with the glue and watch them appear when you shake the excess glue away. 
• At the present, I can only think of one book with fireworks: Olivia makes a Band by Ian Falconer.  
• There is plenty of factual information to learn about fireworks, from how they are made to their history.  
• And of course, you can go see fireworks!

Pipe Cleaner Jewelery

This was a fast and easy craft we did one morning during William's nap.  I like two things about this craft in particular.  First, the product is something she can actually play use.  Often we make objects that are fun at the time, but too fragile to play with or that have to be kept away from Mr. Grabby Hands William.  These are functional and durable.  I wouldn't give one to William, but if he picks it up off the floor it isn't going to fall apart immediately.  Secondly, these are great fine motor practice.  I bought Natalie a threading bead set for Christmas, but she has next to no interest in it.  Making bracelets, she had lots of interest in.

What You Need:
1 pipe clearner (also known as fuzzy sticks) per bracelet
Pony beads
Scissors

What to Do:
As I said, this is fast and easy.  At just over 2 1/2, Natalie could do almost all of this on her own.

I measured the pipe cleaner around Natalie's wrist and cut it with a strong pair of scissors.  Make sure to leave at least an inch to twist it close when you are done. 

Next, I bent the end of the pipe cleaner so the beads wouldn't fall off.  This wasn't that necessary because the pipe cleaner was thick enough to keep the beads from sliding right off. 

I put out a variety of beads for Natalie to choose from.  She picked them up and threaded them on all by herself.  The stiffness of the pipe cleaner made this easier than when we made other bracelets using elastic thread later in the week.  (See a picture of those at the very bottom of this post).

Once Natalie filled the pipe cleaner with beads, I twisted the end closed.  After doing a couple, I realized I could wrap the extra around itself and cover one of the rough edges.  I then tucked the second end in under the last bead on one side.  

Substitutions / Alterations:
Making bracelets can be very diverse.  You could make them differently everyday for a month probably.  Instead of pony beads, you could use circle cereals, dry pasta, buttons, and a whole assortment of other types of beads.  Instead of pipe cleaners, you could use yard, plastic thread (we called it gimp growing up), twine, elastic thread, embroidery floss, or regular old thread.  The materials you use should be based on your child's age and skill level.  A very young child can start with edible materials on thick, stiff "thread."  In contrast, a 10 year old could be challenged with thread and buttons possibly even using a needle. 

I let Natalie choose her beads at random.  But, you can do all sorts of patterns depending on your materials. 

You could also make rings instead of bracelets.  We glued a button on to make a ring (see picture at the end of this post), but you could put on a few beads instead.  

Extensions:

• This is a great opportunity for talking about colors.  While a child old enough to use colored beads might already have mastered the names of the basic colors, you could talk about the shades and more complex names (like navy, aqua, and lavender).
• Couting is also easy to practice while threading.  You can count the beads as you put them on the string.  Or you could go back and count them.  Or you could count the ones of a certain color or size.  This also leads into other math, such as adding two groups of beads of different colors or subtracting all the small beads from the total number.  
• Before making the bracelet, you could play with sorting and matching.  
• Depending on the type of materials you use, you can sequence the beads by size.
• You can practice the colors of the rainbow.
• You can start a pattern and ask your child to continue it to the end of the bracelet.  For the younger kids, you'd just alternate between two or three colors.  As kids get older, you can make the pattern more complex by varying the number of beads and their size or shape as well. 
• If you use beads with letters on them, you can practice letter identification or spelling.  We made bracelets with Natalie's and some of her friends' names on them.  See an example below.
• While not a school skill, making these bracelets is a great oppertunity to practice giving.  Natalie wanted to keep making bracelets, but she really didn't need more than one or two.  So, we made more for her friends and she got to enjoy giving away something she had made for someone else. 

Same idea but with letter beads and elastic thread.

Pipe cleaner rings

Pom Pom Care Bears

For those of you not in the know, from left to right: Cheer Bear, Funshine Bear, Good Luck Bear, and Grumpy Bear.

Natalie and I were working on a different project for Father's Day using pom poms while we had a Care Bear movie on in the background.  I looked down at the pom poms and couldn't resist pulling some out to make her a Care Bear.  We wound up with four and she still wanted more.

What you need: (The first four items listed should all be the same color)
Two large pom poms
Four medium pom poms
Three small pom poms
One tiny pom pom
One white small pom pom
Two black tiny  pom poms
White paper (a scrap will probably do just fine)
Scissors
Craft glue
Sticker or markers (to make the "belly badge")

What to do:
This one is pretty straightforward.  Glue the bear together in any order.  The large pom poms make the body and head.  The medium size ones made the arms and legs.  The small ones are for two ears and a tail.  The small white makes the muzzle, and the tiny colored pom pom makes the nose.  The two tiny black ones are for eyes.

Next, cut out a circle from the white paper.  Either use a sticker for the belly badge or draw the symbol.  Glue it onto the bears tummy.

Grumpy Bear came out the best, I think.  Note Care Bear movie in the background. :)

Substitutions:
You can use a white pom pom for a body if you don't have two large ones of the right color.  We had used our other yellow pom pom to make a bee, but Natalie was insisting that we make a Funshine Bear.  She didn't mind the white at all.

For two of the bears I didn't have tiny pom poms of the right color to make noses, so I used small sequins.  You could also use beads or a tiny piece of craft foam.  You could draw it with a marker or with puffy paint.

You could use googly eyes instead of pom poms, or use different colors.  She insisted on green for Good Luck Bear, who we made first, and then I didn't let her pick after that.

You could use felt or craft foam instead of paper for the background of the belly badge.

Extensions:
So, Care Bears is about as commercial and fluffy as you can get, but you can still have a little bit of educational value in there.

• Ask your child to line up the pom poms in size order.  
• Ask your child to pick out the pom poms letting her know what size, color, and number you need.  An older child could read a list, while a  young child you would want to tell one at a time.  
• Read a Care Bear book.  There are tons of them out there.  We own a couple; one was free and one 50 cents, both are used.  Our local library doesn't have any, but I interlibrary loaned some from our system.  I was able to get two or three of the ones I read as a child back in the mid 80's.  I'm looking forward to sharing that experience with Natalie since I have very fond memories of those books back in my elementary school library.  
• Make your own Care Bear!  You can either make him out of pom poms or draw him.  You can just make him and name him, or you could go in depth and really talk about his belly badge and what it represents.  
• The Care Bears do offer some opportunities to discuss real topics.  Some of the "generations" are more deep than others.  You can either discuss the caring situations from the books and movies, or you can talk about what each bear represents.  
• The Care Bears are a great opportunity to talk about colors.  You could label their colors, and even get really precise.  You could do color sorting, such as matching a crayon to the bear's color or going on a scavenger hunt to find items the same color as the bear.  And then there is also rainbows.  You could sequence the bears in rainbow order and talk, read, and experiment with rainbows.  
• I'm currently making Care Bear hopscotch.  Natalie just one day said she wanted to play it with her friend, so I've been putting it together.  I'm coloring in pictures of the Bears from a coloring book that I copied with our printer onto card stock.  Then I'm going to make some numbers using the punch out type teacher's use on bulletin boards.  Lastly, I'll adhere it all to a sheet.  I hope to put a backing on it so it doesn't slide on the floor, but might not since our play room is carpeted.  For rocks, I'm using rocks Natalie painted and I'm going to paint on the little star friends.  
• Color the Care Bears.  We have been doing a lot of this.  I have been using the same dollar store coloring book over and over by printing out copies of the same big pictures of the bears.  While coloring doesn't seem very educational, in just a few days, I saw a massive improvement in how Natalie colors.  Coloring is excellent fine motor skill practice.  

Here is the progression of her coloring.  Started as scribbling, then moved to coloring the smaller areas, and then the whole figure!  Yeah Care Bears for motivation!

You Cut, They Paste (and sometimes paint)

Some days, Natalie wants to watch a lot of TV and others she doesn't.  On the days she wants to watch more than I want her to, I've started the compromise that she can watch if we do related crafts while the movie is on.  We first did this with Bee Movie and bee crafts.

We put in WALL-E the other day and I put out tin foil shapes to make robots.  I was very impressed when Natalie (aged 2.5) insisted that she glue the pieces on herself to make WALL-E and EVE.  (Can I also add that she has started a WALLE game, too.  She is WALLE and I'm EVE and she brings me toys to look at like when WALLE shows EVE all this possessions in his home). 

Here she is finishing up EVE.

WALLE is on the top and EVE on the bottom.  The marker scribble is the cockroach WALLE.  She made these with just basic shapes. 

A few days later, we were watching Lilo and Stitch and she said she wanted to make ... guess who ... Lilo and Stitch, and then later Nani.  Since I didn't want her to just sit watching the TV, I got out the construction paper and the glue stick and cut out the pieces for her on the fly.  I cut, she glued.  Again, I was super impressed how well she glued everything into place with very little help from me.  She's already asked to make Lilo again more than once. 

Nani, Lilo, and Stitch.  We didn't have any red paper for Lilo's dress.  I cut out the shapes specifically for this craft and she put them all together. 

Here she is in her hula outfit gluing a second Stitch on a different day.

Our second set of Lilo and Stitch.  She said she wanted to make them doing the hula.

Here are Lilo, Nani, David, and Stitch surfing.  It was her idea to make this scene, but it was a little too complicated for her to put together, so I did a lot of the gluing.  In hindsight, a larger sheet of paper probably would have made the difference. 

Then today, when Natalie asked to watch Cars, she said she wanted to paint Lightning McQueen.  So, I set her up with the paint, and while she painted, I cut out the shapes of the main characters.  After she was done with her painting, we then painted the shapes of the cars and glued them on to a big poster board.  This project took almost an hour!  I was really proud of Natalie's attention span, and also her attention to detail on most of the pieces.  For myself, I was proud of my ability to let go of control and let her paint Sally purple-ish and Guido with only a little blue.  It was cute how after she finished each car she said something like, "Okay, guys, all done!"  Natalie helped glue this one, too, but I put the pieces down since they were still very wet with paint.

The final product!

Here she is painting and you can see Lightning McQueen paving in the background.

She was very methodical with Luigi

Close up of Lightning McQueen.  Yes, he is kinda purple ... and I just let it go.  I did give him the lightning blot. 

Close up of Mater. 

Close up of Guido.  (My husband and I love when Guido changes the tires in the final race). 

Close up of Luigi.  I gave him his hat, but we didn't have any black paint.  That's why all the tires are funky colors. 

I really loved these projects and can see us doing them over and over in different variations.  Not only do we have a huge cast of TV, movie, and book characters to make, but different mediums to explore.

Here are some ideas I'm thinking about for the future:

• Care Bears with different colors of construction paper with stickers for the tummies.  
• Muppets like Kermit, Elmo, and Bert.  Maybe use felt or fake fur for the monsters.  
• The Very Hungry Caterpillar with tissue paper.  Make circles for the caterpillar and glue down tissue shapes over a template of the butterfly wings.  
• Piggie and Elephant, probably craft foam unless I buy some gray construction paper