Craft Time – Pretty Patterns for Mother’s Day

Wow, can you believe Mother’s Day is just a few days away? 

Over the weekend we made some cute flower magnets for M’s grandmothers. 

This craft was inspired one Sunday morning at IHOP (International House of Pancakes – yum, yum, yum!).  On the walls, there were framed papers, with egg-shapes cut from them, and patterned paper underneath, making pretty Easter eggs. 

With quick help from photo-shop, here’s an idea of what they looked like:Anyway, I really loved these, and tucked the idea into that little craft area of my brain.  When I saw a pack of pretty spring-themed scrapbooking paper at Target for 50 cents, I knew just what we would do with it.

However, it all turned out differently than the plan in my mind.  Doing the cut-out presented more of a challenge for M than I expected, and it looked more like a card than a piece of artwork.  We will probably do something along those lines sometime, but for now we modified the plans as follows…

Supplies: White cardstock, colored cardstock (we used yellow), marker, something to make a large circle and a small circle (lids), simple cardstock flower template, foam sheets or scraps, scissors, glue on a saucer, small paint roller, patterned paper cut into squares or small rectangles.  There was no measuring for this – I just snipped a few strips of paper into pieces.  If you want to make these into magnets, you’ll need magnets too.  I usually have a roll of magnetic tape from Walmart on hand.

Pour some glue onto your saucer, water it down a tiny bit, then use the roller to cover your white cardstock with a thin layer of glue:

Then, begin covering the cardstock with pieces of patterned papers; some will need to overlap in order to completely cover the paper:
                        look at those sweet baby hands!

 

Once your cardstock is covered, roll another layer of glue on top: 

While that’s drying, draw one large circle for each flower you are making on your colored cardstock, and cut them out: (M has 4 pairs of scissors, but couldn’t find any of them, and was allowed to use my sharp ones under close supervision.)

Draw small circles on foam (M picked pink) and cut them out too: 

Once your paper-covered cardstock is dry, use a template, or freehand draw two simple flowers: 

Cut them out. You will need the sharp scissors for this:

Dot some glue in the center of a large circle:

Pop on a cut out flower, dot it with glue in the center:

And stick on a foam circle:

We trimmed the yellow circles a little bit, and put magnets on the back, and now we have pretty magnets for Grandma’s and Nama’s refrigerators. :)     I love the variety of textures used on these (see the glitter and glossy spots?)!  Using fabric scraps instead of scrapbooking paper could add even more texture!

 

Some other ideas for Mother’s Day…

Paper plate and tissue paper flower suncatchers:

Foam mosaic flowers (or any shape mama likes): M made these for Easter when he was 2 years old (pre-blog).  I cut the cross and flower out, gave him scissors and strips of foam to cut the tiles, and he glued them on.  I still love these.  I put a little magnet on the back and they’ve been on our fridge ever since.  It would be fun to revisit this project now that he’s twice as old. :)  I think these would be perfect for Mother’s Day too!  And super-easy for just about any child to do.

I’m linking this up to Kids Get Crafty!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Flower 3-part cards – free printable

I made some flower cards for M, and am happy to be able to share them with all of you!

To use as Montessori-style 3-part cards, you’ll need to print 2 sets.  Keep one set whole, and divide the other set into photos and labels.  Have your child match the photos and the labels to the first set.

These are flowers M will see this spring and summer in our yard.  I love flowers, and spent a good couple of years researching and planning flower gardens for our home after we were married.  Since having M I haven’t kept them up as well as I had hoped. :)  That happens when your life gets turned upside down by a little person, doesn’t it?!

There are a total of 24 cards in this packet.  Eventually I hope to teach M to sort them into flowers that come from bulbs, rhizomes, bushes, or seed, etc.  You’ll see there are a few of each kind.  Please feel free to ask any questions! :)  Click on the image below to access the download.

These cards are for your personal use only.  Please feel free to link to this post, but do not post this printable directly on your website.  Thank you!

 

Linking to: 

Have a beautiful day! :)

Books of the Week – April 30, 2011

M has recently discovered Syd Hoff’s wonderful stories, and I’m rediscovering how much I loved them as a child.  We own Danny and the Dinosaur, which is a favorite, but M ran across the Syd Hoff collection at our library.  Interestingly, he knew they were somehow connected to Danny and the Dinosaur, because the illustrations are so similar.  (LOVE the illustrations!)

So, on to our new top four Syd Hoff books…

Sammy the Seal, written in 1959 :This is the story of a seal who lives in the zoo, but is allowed to have a day off because of good behavior. :)  What I love about Syd Hoff is his ability to really know the imagination of a child, and to make this kind of idea seem perfectly reasonable! 

Thunderhoof, written in 1971:This is the story of a wild horse who doesn’t want to be tamed, but eventually realizes that being loved isn’t so bad after all.  M likes to say “Good old feller” a lot after reading this book. :) 

Oliver, written in 1960:Oliver is an elephant who had hoped to be in the circus, but the circus doesn’t need him.  He spends time with some children (who adore him; who wouldn’t want an elephant to play with?), and eventually the circus realizes just how talented Oliver really is.

Julius, written in 1959: Julius is a gorilla and leaves the jungle to work at the circus.  He is the epitome of politeness – a real gentleman, and I really crack up at how he goes out of his way to be polite (this is a great model for kids!).  He ends up being pestered by a fly and scares a few people as he tries to shoo the fly away, but he is simply misunderstood.  Julius has such a big heart, and I think this was M’s favorite – he has asked for it daily and it’s one of his “in bed” books at night.

For more reviews of children’s books, check out Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns and Feed Me Books Friday.

Have a beautiful day! :)

Learning by Heart – I See the Moon

“The mother’s heart is the child’s schoolroom”
– Henry Ward Beecher

{M is 4 1/2 years old}

      M is in love with the moon.

It all began with If You Decide To Go To The Moon , by Faith McNulty: I heard about this book from Natalie over at Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns, and thought M would like it.  Well, he did.  He couldn’t get enough of it and was instantly fascinated with outer space in general, and the moon in particular.  We have previously read books about outer space and the moon, but none of them sparked his interest as well as this one.

So we began a very simple little moon unit. 

We watched the launch of the space shuttle Discovery in February (yes, this is a pretty late post) live on the laptop:It was thrilling, to say the least.  He talked about it for days afterward.  I couldn’t quite get him to understand that they weren’t going to the moon, but oh well. :)  He loved learning about how everything is weightless in space and how the astronauts can float around inside of the space shuttle.  He wanted to get into the nitty-gritty details of how they live in it, especially how they go to the bathroom.  sigh.  It’s all part of learning, right? ;)

We played games with some beautiful space flashcards I picked up from Target over a year ago.I was smart enough to get two sets at the time, although I wasn’t smart enough to think of a way to use them.  But once M’s interest in all things outer space was in high gear, I remembered this post of Ticia’s, where she created a game for her kids using these same flashcards.  Click on the link to her post to get the specific details.  This was fun and as soon as one of us had a card covered we flipped it over and read all of the interesting information on the back.  I think it would’ve gone a bit more quickly if we’d had more than just 2 players though, or if I had separated the flashcards into smaller groups.

We learned a bit about the phases of the moon too. 

We watched this video:

  

We looked at this page of the Starchild website a bit:The website is part of NASA, and has tons of interesting things for children to learn about.  I highly recommend taking a look!  We only went over the moon phases web page, but I think we’ll be back to learn more!

I made some moon phases Montessori-style 3-part cards.  I couldn’t find exactly what I wanted online (for free anyway), so I used a public domain photo of the moon, and edited it to show the various phases:  

We had an art project waiting for us as M matched up these cards and labels, and I felt like he was hurrying through it to get to something more fun.  However, he has since talked about the “gibbous” moon on his own, so I guess some of it stuck! :)

You can download and print the Moon Phases 3-Part Cards here:

M had fun making a little outerspace artwork.  We used black paper, green and blue chalk dipped in water, aluminum foil, scissors, sequins, silver glitter glue, and two circle-shaped lids:
I showed M how to hold a lid and draw around it at the same time in order to draw a circle.  He cut one circle from foil for the moon, and one was drawn onto the black paper with chalk.  He drew some areas of land on his “earth circle” and then colored it in with wet chalk (wet chalk on black paper is fun, and a good art project all on its own).

He drew a face on his moon, then sparkled up the the rest of outer space with some sequin and glitter glue stars: 

On a trip to visit my parents, we were lucky enough to find this amazing book in a box my mom wanted me to look through:I’m not sure if or where it can be found, but it is truly amazing. :)  It is filled with facts, and after reading it, you can unfold the pages:Open it up:And you have a 4-foot long space shuttle model!  M was in space shuttle heaven. :)  There’s a lot of great details, like a satellite in the cargo area:And a pull-out section showing the control panels and the area the astronauts live in:(sorry that picture didn’t turn out so well!)

There were several other moon-related books we read; here are M’s favorites…

The Moon, by Seymour Simon: This is long, but packed with information.  M wanted to read this one several times a day for two weeks straight.

I Took the Moon for a Walk, by Carolyn Curtis and Alison Jay:

Moondance, by Frank Asch:

Happy Birthday, Moon, by Frank Asch:

  (M loves all the Moonbear books by Asch!)

The Berenstain Bears on the Moon, by Jan and Stan Berenstain:

I’m linking this post up to Preschool Corner, and Weekly Wrap-Up, as well as Science Sunday!  Be sure to check them all out!

Have a beautiful day! :)

 

Art Time - Painting with Melted Crayons

We did this little art project a couple of days before St. Patrick’s Day; I liked the idea of using crayons to paint a rainbow, and it turned out better than I imagined.  M loved this and we’ll definitely do it again sometime soon.   I first saw the idea in a MaryAnn Kohl book (either Scribble Art or Preschool Art) about two years ago, but have since seen it around the blogosphere a couple of times too.

Using melted crayons to paint a bouquet of flowers would make a wonderful Mother’s Day gift, or any spring-time sort of artwork!

We began with a bucket full of M’s “naked” (no paper) crayons.  He loves removing the paper and sharpening crayons, so this step was already done.  Seriously, if you need an activity for a rainy day, have your child peel paper off of crayons and then sharpen them with a crayon sharpener.  M could do this all day!  

Next we chose several crayons in various shades of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple.  We broke them up (lots of fun!) and placed them by color into an old muffin tin, lined with paper cups:

I placed the muffin tin in a 400 (Fahrenheit) degree oven.  It took about 10 minutes for the crayons to completely melt.  In the meantime I boiled some water and poured it into a cake pan.  Once the crayons were melted I set the muffin tin into the cake pan too.  The hot water was there to keep the crayons melted, as they tend to harden pretty quickly.  If you have a warming tray you could use that instead.  I really need a warming tray!  :)

I had pre-drawn our design and M used q-tips to paint it with the melted crayons:

    

The crayon went on very thick and created an incredible texture.  I just loved it! 

M’s finished shamrock and rainbow:This looks so much more amazing in real life. :)

It was so much fun, we just had to make something else, so a quick heart was drawn and painted (and Mama got in on the action this time!):

 

Linking to:

Have a beautiful day! :)