Craft Time! Cardboard Tube Crocodile

Crafts are back (somewhat)… yay!  I’ve really missed doing these things with M, we just did SO much when he was younger.  I had something artsy or crafty planned every day after naptime.  Hm.  Come to think of it, I miss naptime too…
We started with a paper towel tube, a toilet paper tube, some zig-zag scissors, green paint, googley eyes, glue, and 4 feet outlined on the back of a cereal box:

Cut a slit down the side of the t.p. tube, going about halfway down.  Then wrap it around to form a point at the end and tape:

Put the long tube inside the end of the short tube and tape together:

I drew a triangle on each side of the other end of the long tube:And then helped M cut along the lines with the zig-zag scissors.  Apparently there is no after picture of this.  The zig zags make it look like crocodile teeth.
Paint it all green:

Cut out the feet, paint them green too.  Then glue on the googley eyes and let it dry for the rest of the day:(That’s an old flexible plastic cutting board that we use for messy projects.)      
Then  glue on the feet:
Look, a crocodile!  Paint the inside of his mouth red and the tiny little teeth white IF you feel up to it.  If not, leave it like ours. ;)
We actually read a book about a crocodile around the same time we did this craft – Lyle, Lyle Crocodile, by Bernard Waber.So, I think this means I can link up to the awesome stART carnival (story + art = stART) at Michelle’s wonderful blog!  Yippee!
Have a beautiful day! :)

Sticker Collages and matching ABCs

We are leaving soon for a week long trip to visit my parents.  It will be fun once we get there, but the drive… oh, the long long drive… not sure that’s going to be as much fun. ;)  We’ll be in the car for about 6 to 7 hours for 2 days; somewhere around 12 to 14 hours total.  This does include some frequent stopping, which I feel is necessary for a small child.  If it were just hubs and me, it’d take about 11 hours and we’d do it all in one day.
Anyway, as you can imagine I’ve been trying to come up with good car activities for a 3 year old.  (If you have any input about this, PLEASE leave a comment!)  I want things that aren’t too messy, are engaging and interesting and novel for him, and won’t involve my turning around every 2 minutes (my neck aches just thinking about it) to help.  I do have a few things planned that we can do together for a while, and for which I’ll move to the back seat to be next to him, but I’m hoping he’ll be able to do and enjoy some activities on his own (besides dvds and cd books and coloring).
I had an idea about how to use stickers in a new way (new for M), and made up some little pages for him to do.  I’m not sure if this will be something I’ll have to help him with or not… I may decide to do one of them at home with him some time this week before we leave so I can gauge how easily he can do it on his own.  I thought I’d post these in case anyone else thinks it’s a good idea too. :)
I put together some little sticker scenes using half a sheet of construction paper.  These are foam stickers and we have a TON of them.  After I had the scene how I wanted it, I labeled each sticker with a letter, then wrote the same letter on the paper in the space where the sticker should go:
When it’s put together it will look like this:

Here are some more I put together.  I snapped pictures of some of them before I actually wrote the letters on them…
    The last one has some layered stickers.  I’m curious to see how he’ll do with that.  Can you tell that’s supposed to be a kite in the sky?
To store these, I put the papers in a pocket of the bag we’ll be taking with us, and all the stickers in a ziploc bag.  I labeled the back of each page with a shape, then labeled the back of each sticker with the appropriate shape. 
Let me know what you think!  These were fun for me to put together; I hope M has fun with them too.
Have a beautiful day! :)