Ice cold hearts for Valentine’s Day

 Early Valentine roses from my sweethearts – just had to show them off. :)

 

We did something different this year and made hearts from ice.  I saw an idea similar to this recently here.  It looked like fun, and they sure were pretty, so we decided to make our own version.  M is all about freezing things – he has loved to make colored ice since he was very little, so this was a good twist for that favorite activity.

Supplies – water, sparkly things, food coloring, silicone heart mold, and freezing temps outside.

First M filled the molds a little more than halfway with water.  We tried pouring, but decided to use the baster instead:

Then he added in some heart confetti and sequins, which pretty much floated on top.  I had foreseen this, and that’s why we only filled them halfway.  After freezing them we filled them the rest of the way and set them out to freeze again, so the sparkles were all contained in the middle of the ice:

We added yarn to the hearts prior to freezing so we’d be able to hang them up later:

See the wire rack in the photo below?  It’s best to place the mold on top of a rack or tray of some sort before adding all the water!  This makes it easy to transport.  I found this out the hard way. :)

After the hearts were totally frozen:

We added some salt (see the bits?) and a couple of minutes later we added drops of food coloring, then stuck them back outside to freeze again:

After we remembered them (3 days later!) we popped them out and hung them up:

 They are prettier in real life than these photos would suggest. 

 

We worried, a bit too late, about the sequins falling out when the ice melts.  M decided they will just make pretty decorations for the tree, but I’m thinking maybe pine branch tips or tiny pine cones would have been a better choice than sequins.  Oops!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Sweet Valentines

I couldn’t resist sharing the Valentines M has made so far.  Actually, these were all made within 24 hours of finding his art box last week.  He was a busy little cupid all day. :)

Can you see a theme running through most of these?  Apparently making heart faces is big this year.

(Ignore the date in the corner – my camera’s settings obviously need to be fixed.)

M hardly bothered to write anything on most of these, and then I ran across the one for his favorite cousin Sophie and on the back it said this:“Watch out for Captain Hook and Peter Pan!”  Haha – this is my favorite – such an unexpected (and mysterious, don’t you think?) message!  Little boys’ minds work in interesting ways, don’t they?  I hope his romantic messages improve beyond this at some point… or maybe I don’t, now that I think of it. ;)

And the sweetest valentine of all… a valentine pillow for baby sister or brother.  He worked for an entire day on this – sewing two pieces of felt together, with ribbons pinned on – so there’s something blue just in case – and then stuffing it up.

Check out that blanket stitch, he was so very particular about everything:

He was so proud of himself when it was finished!  He was going to glue more felt pieces on one of the sides to make a face (more faces!) but that hasn’t happened so far, and I love it just the way it is: 

Have a beautiful day! :)

Valentine Art Box

Let the Valentine-making begin!!

Whew, that’s a lot of pink and red!

I’m keeping it simple this year – just a few basic supplies.  I am neither in the mood nor energetic enough to do a lot of art cleaning up right now.

In our box this year… red and pink construction paper (cut in half); Valentine stickers – regular, foam, and scented (yum!); a couple of paper punches – a heart and a swirl, glitter in pink, purple, and an iridescent white; scissors, glue, a container of sequins and googley eyes (there are regular-shaped sequins and heart-shaped sequins); markers in shades of pink, purple, and red; a kit of foam finger puppet valentines (from Target dollar spot).

The foam finger puppet kit is basically this craft that we did a couple of years ago:(Target, quit stealing ideas from my blog – this is not the first time I’ve seen something we’ve done made into a neat little kit and placed in your aisles.)  (What?  Other people might have the same ideas because mine are not that original?  Nonsense!)

Happy month o’ love, everyone!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Learning by Heart – week 16

 

“The mother’s heart is the

child’s schoolroom”
– Henry Ward Beecher

{M is 4 years old}

We were fighting colds (and losing) this week, so not a lot happened on the preschool front.

Here are a few of the activities I threw together on the spur of the moment for M…

Hammering “nails” (golf tees) into a cardboard box:Honestly, I’m not sure what, if any, skill this works on.   Practical life, maybe?  But it sure is fun.  He used to love doing this with styrofoam, but cardboard does not give as easily as you might think and gave him a new challenge.  He decided to add some colored paper to make a design:And then he turned the whole thing into a surprise for Daddy.  The “design” on the left is a smiley face, and on the right he used the golf tees to spell his name.  What?  You don’t see it? ;)

More “picture pies”, like those mentioned in last week’s post:

 

About a year ago I found a little wooden puzzle on sale at Michael’s.  They are basically tan gram pieces, except the two large triangles that are normally in tan grams were cut into 4 medium-sized triangles.  I’ve looked all over the internet for printable puzzles to use with these, but haven’t had much luck in finding ones large enough to actually place the pieces on.  I finally picked up a book full of puzzles (I can’t remember the name and I’m too lazy to go look right now).  I’ve copied a few of the puzzles and enlarged them.  I’ve been placing a new puzzle on our fridge every few days and M has really enjoyed doing them.  He does need some help, but I’ve been very impressed at how well he’s done with these:

I glued magnetic strips to the backs of the pieces, and used wood glue to make the 4 medium triangles into 2 large triangles like a traditional tan gram set would have.

 

We have had some beautiful weather, and M bundled up to go outside and ride his bike on the cleared-off driveway.  Ah, the feeling of freedom that comes from a bike. :)

 

And, of course, there was some valentine making.  I will not bore you with the hundreds of valentines M made, but I’d like to show you the ones he was most excited about:

These are for Max and Thor, two dogs.  Yep – he loves them and a whole lot of love went into making these valentines. :)

 

We also baked up some yummy valentine cookies, which we also painted.  I think I first saw the idea over at The Artful Parent - she used food coloring and water for the paint.  I’ve been reading MaryAnn Kohl’s book, Discovering Great Artists, and in it she mentions egg yolk painting, which sounded awfully interesting to me, so we decided to combine the two ideas.  We whipped together an egg and some food coloring, painted it onto cut out heart cookies, and had a lot of fun!

  

I’m linking this post up to Preschool Corner and Weekly Wrap-Up; be sure to check them out!

Have a beautiful day! :)

 

Preschool Craft – Valentine Piggy Backs

This was kind of a spur-of-the-moment-craft, but I am so pleased with how cute they turned out, and M loves them!

Supplies:Pipe cleaners, googley eyes, hole punch, pencil, heart stickers, pom poms, glue, and hearts cut from sturdy cardboard (1 large, 1 small for each completed craft); I used pinking shears to cut them out for a bit of extra decoration.  Decoupaging the cardboard with scrapbook paper first, then cutting out the hearts would be super-cute too!

We ended up using a couple of extra supplies too: A craft stick broken in half, and 2 more small cardboard hearts, one for each finished craft.

Make faces on one big heart and one small heart:

Use the googley eyes, pom poms for noses, and the foam heart stickers for lips:
Punch holes on the sides of each heart for the arms.  Thread through your pipecleaners, cut to size, then twirl them around a pencil to make them curly.  Sorry there’s no photo of this step, but you’ll see how they look in photos below.

Punch holes in the extra hearts you cut out, big enough for your child’s first two fingers to go through:
and attach that heart to the bottom back of your big heart. 

As you can see in the next couple of pictures, our small hearts on the bottom did not have the finger holes in them at this point.  We ended up having to take them off to punch the holes in them, as it was just too hard to do with it all put together.

Add glue to the back of the big and little hearts that have faces on them, then attach the craft stick to hold them together, little heart guy on top, big heart guy on bottom:

Turn everything over and admire your happy little Piggy Back Valentine People:

 Aren’t they sweet?!

And this is what the holes in the bottom heart are for:

Hee hee – lots of fun! :)

I’m linking this up to Kids Get Crafty!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Preschool Arts and Crafts – Valentine Suncatcher and Art Box supplies

Suncatcher Craft

Honestly, we are in some sort of suncatcher rut around here.  M loves hanging things in the windows “for the birdies to see”, (never mind that our stinker of a red squirrel has pretty much chased away all the birds and other squirrels – grrr).  But if you search for “suncatcher” or “sun catcher” (because I like variety in my spelling) on my blog I bet you’d get 50 hits.  Or somewhere around 10 or so, maybe.  But it feels like 50.

Anyway, they are pretty, right? :)

For this little craft we used black paper, tissue paper scraps in a few colors, a black marker, scissors, and contact paper.

I folded the paper several times and drew half hearts on the folds here and there: 

I always love to give M a little scissor practice, and he thinks it is so cool to open up the hearts.Last year I set out folded scrapbook paper with half hearts drawn on his activity shelves, and he happily sat and cut out about 20 hearts, acting surprised each time. :)  Oh, the joy that was 3 years old.

Cut a piece of contact paper that is slightly smaller than your black paper, and stick it on to the front of your paper.  Flip it over and stick on the tissue paper pieces. 

M wanted purple, but we didn’t have any, so I showed him how to make purple by layering the bright pink with the blue. 

When it’s finished, flip it over to the front, and hang it in a window. :)

 

ART BOX supplies for Valentine’s Day

Last year, M was still making valentines for everyone he knows well into March. :)  So I decided to get a Valentine Art Box ready for him right away this month.  I don’t really post about his Art Box much anymore, but it is still a significant part of almost every day.

(My craft/school supply room is also our exercise room.  So, yes, that is a treadmill that the art box is sitting on.  It’s the most use it’s gotten in months, hee hee.)

I spread everything out to give you a good look:In the Art Box: paper doilies, markers, regular and craft scissors, buttons, a variety of stamps (including several trucks to “man it up” a bit, hee hee), stamp pads, several patterned papers (the little ones on top are metallic and I cut them into smaller pieces to get more use out of them), watercolor pencils, pom poms, pony beads, glitter foam cut into heart shapes, regular sequins and heart-shaped sequins, googley eyes, foam heart stickers, ribbons and rick-rack cut into small pieces, craft punches, and glitter glue.  There’s also regular white and colored construction paper in the box, as well as glue and watercolor paints.

Let the Valentine-making begin! :)

I’m linking this up to Kids Get Crafty!

Have a beautiful day! :)