Sand Art, Toddler style

 Kenna is 35 months. I bought a few fun little crafts in an Oriental Trading Coop, and while some were super easy and age appropriate, I have to admit, a couple are kinda over Kenna's ability level. 

 Take this lil beauty, for instance. Sand art! It looked really fun in the pictures, but the art board is smaller than a postcard, and the bits to color in are sooo small. The sand came in itty bitty packets, and while the colors were vibrant, there were a lot of them. (kinda overwhelming to Kenna, who wanted to use all of them immediately.)

I let her lead the activity, and she really wanted to "color in the lines" nicely with the sand, so I took over the glue. I put a bit of glue, and then she sprinkled with a spoon. Since she went a little crazy with the sand, it didn't take long for all 6 packets of sand to be a giant pile of brownish purple sand on our tray. She could care less. As a matter of fact, as soon as I set her free from the fiddlely little art board, she grabbed a big piece of construction paper and got to work.

She squirted glue, sprinkled sand, shook the paper, and then recollected the sand in a bowl. It was awesome to watch. :)  We have done this activity every day this week now. We moved to glitter when we ran out of sand. I've mailed off sand/glitter art to every relative I know, just to get it out of here!  I am impressed with how tidy she is being, and how controlled she is with the glue. She even made some shapes with the glue, and some letters. WOW!  As it was drying, she enjoyed feeling the texture and smooshing the drying glue puedles.

Excuse me,  I have to go out and buy more sand. Maybe I should just get brown, since we all know that's where it will end up after lots of mixing!  

Christmas Craftiness

We have been doing a lot of Christmas crafts around here. One a day, to be precise. Which means I should have 15 crafts to share with you by now. Sadly, I have far less than that.  My main excuse is that I have three kids under three, and my hands are too full to do a craft and operate a camera.

Here is some of what we have done! 8 out of 15 ain't bad, people!!

 Salt Dough Ornaments- posted about these HERE. (And technically, we did this over two days- one day of baking, one day of painting...so we are up to 9 crafts!)

 Raindeer Cinnamon Stick.  This is easy and takes some great fine-motor work. Curl a pipe cleaner for antlers. Glue on a tiny pompom nose and eyes. Thread a bell onto red ribbon or a bit of floral wire (or a bread twisty tie or even a pipe cleaner). Draw on a mouth.

 I love this picture- Kenna is trying to thread the bell onto floral wire, and our cat Waffles is patiently watching. I can't tell you how often he sits and does "learning" with Kenna. He's the sweetest cat.

 Classic Snowman Snow Measuring stick. Early morning paint a paint stirrer white(Free from hardware store). Once dry, glue on the details. We used stiff felt to cut out a hat (Kenna cut it herself!) She cut a carrot nose out of foam, and glued on two tiny eyes. I wanted to draw a mouth with a sharpie, but she asked me to cut a smile mouth out of stiff felt.  I used a small strip of fleece to make a scarf. The indent of the paint stirrer makes a perfect neck.

 When all the details were dried, we lined up the stick with a ruler, and ticked off each inch. Kenna helped count and identify numbers. She isn't quite sure what the stick is for yet... wait til it snows and we go and measure how deep it is! It'll be so exciting! (I ambitiously numbered our snowman measuring stick to 8 inches... LOL)

 Foam stocking with foamie decoative stickers

 Tape art. I wanted to do some tape relief- where we tape, paint, and then peel off the tape to see the pattern. Kenna was so absorbed in pulling off pieces of tape and placing them on the paper, I decided to skip the painting this time. I forgot how much fun tape could be! We have a few rolls of Shurtape- colored, not-so-sticky tape- from my days as a teacher. The company(local to us) had donated a gabillion colored rolls to the school, so each teacher has a lovely stash for crafts and things.

 Handprint Santas. I did this with Kenna, and need to take time to do it with the babies (I think I need Handy Husband to help though- babies and painted hands are a recipe for disaster!!) I painted Kenna's palm "peach" and her fingers red. She stamped a couple prints, and then when it dried I added the details. Ho Ho Ho! (or as Kenna says, Yo Ho Ho! Apparently Santa is part pirate.)

Our lovely Cone trees, as seen here...

And finally, some more foam art, which I have to admit, she loves. Kenna loves stickers. It's so easy, and she loves it. That makes me happy.
If I find pictures of more Christmas Craftiness, I promise I'll add them here. There are sure to be at least 5 more crafts lurking around... Oh, I also promise to try really hard to remember to take pictures of the crafts we do each day for the rest of the month. 

Monsters!

I'm no artist, but this was a fun and silly glue activity for Kenna and I.  I drew heads in different shapes, added bodies and arms.  Kenna told me what shape mouths and noses to draw.  Then I gave her a bowl og googly eyes and a bottle of glue.  I told her mpnsters can have lots of eyes! 

Monster matching:  Got these erasers at the Dollar Tree. I lined up matches on our dry erase board, and Kenna used a marker to draw lines between each match.

Sorry- camera died and I resorted to my cell phone...  After we played it this way a few times, I added a twist. I lined up erasers on one side only, and drew squiggly lines to the other side. Then she had to follow the lines and put the correct matching eraser at the end of each line. (does that make any sense?) It was fun!

And of course we made Frankenstein's Monster! I found a tutorial online and we whipped one up with a toilet paper roll, a do-a-dot marker, and some googly eyes.  We looked at pictures of him online,and we spotted some other decor in the house that features Dr. Frankenstein's Monster!  :)

I have a few more montster activities planned before Halloween gets here, so be on the lookout! It's my favorite holiday! (You should see my house, all decorated and scary-like. I have more rubbermaid bins of Halloween decor than I do of Christmas. And that is saying a LOT. )

Halloween Tot Trays, Week 2

www.theprincessandthetot.blogspot.com has some great printables for Halloween/Fall.  We used our number rocks and these counting pumpkins together.

 Count the pumpkins and cover them with the correctly numbered rock.

 I think I got these from overthebigmoon.blogspot.com. Awesome Halloween themed clippy cards! We have mini-clothespins, and Kenna clips them on the correct number, after counting the pictures.

 Oriental Trading Craft- an awesome Candy Corn project that you could easily replicate at home- glue tissue paper squares to an acetate shape (use wax paper or contact paper instead).  When it dries, add a foam border and a string to hang.  Nice! (I have a picture of the completed project somewhere... ???)

 Tiny Drop Box- made this as a fun way to keep Kenna's cutting work organized. I took a small box, cut a little slot, and decorated it.  When she cuts paper strips into tiny squares, she deposits the slips into the box.

(Wonderful way to keep bits of paper from winding their way into Little Man's mouth) Her cutting strips this month have all been Halloween themed. I guess I need to retake some pictures- I am missing a whole ton of them. Grrrrrr. Go ahead and picture some cutting strips decorated with Halloween stampers.  Lovely.

This week, we did about five other tot trays, but they are mostly printables from Over The Big Moon, so I'll spare you the details. Go check em' out on her website! :)

I is for Ice Cream

 I is for ice cream and inch worms. I set up Kenna's magnet pom poms early in the morning so she could get it done first. She really dislikes it for some reason right now.  She's less cranky in the morning, so this is working for us. 

I gave kenna a melon baller (which was swiped while I was focusing the camera lens...) and told her she could scoop "ice cream into each little "bowl". LOVED it!

Where did I get that fun tray? Why, it was empty, sitting on the shelf at Walmart, so I snagged it and asked the cashier if I could keep it.  (She then decided I was a weirdo and didn't make any further eye contact.)

 I love this little counting game from confessionsofahomeschooler.  Counting, number recognition, and little inchworms.  This was harder for Kenna than I thought. She counts faster than she moves her fingers. We're working on it. She really loved the adorable inchworms! Now that my number rocks are dry, we can use those instead of the cards that we've been using.  It'll spice things up a bit.

This was a simple color, cut and paste activity I created- I used some ice cream clipart to make strips of ice cream. She colored the ice cream, cut them out, and then glued them down.  She really loves doing cutting and pasting right now, so I am embracing it. Look for other fun cut and paste activities coming soon! ( I would totally share the printout, but I don't know how. It's currently a PDF.  Suggestions?)

Name Puzzle

Cutting and pasting is one of Kenna's favorite activities. I created this fun game quickly- I wrote her first and last name out, leaving a little space between each letter. She diced it up with her scissors, and I scrambled the letters.

Then one by one, she picked out the letters and glued them down in the correct order.

She purposefully glued the 'e' down wonky- she said it was "silly".  I am really proud of how well she did her first name- we definately need to keep working on her last name! (and also on glue restraint...)

Easy cutting, spelling, gluing, and fun!

The Letter J

Gearing up for beach week! I have been setting some things out for Kenna to explore to prepare herself for our vacation.

I asked Kenna to picture what the waves at the beach look like. She asked for purple and green paint, and got to work.  I LoVE it! THis is the first time she has covered her entire paper with paint. I am totally in love with it. (kind of washed out in the photo- a lot brighter in person.) 

I put this in one of kena's tot trays, and was planning to do it with her, as usual. She got to it while I was unloading the dishwasher, by herself. She stamped the lette rJ about a billino times, then proceded to cut it out and glue it to some paper she scrounged up. I am so impressed with her!

THis is where I caught her- halfway through cutting it out! She wanted to know if she could have a jellybean now. ha!

E is for Elephant

Wheeeeeeee!!

We had a blast with the letter E this week. Kenna has an "E" in her name, so she knows the lowercase e really well. This made for a fun week. We did ELEPHANTS like crazy and I now know a TON of really cool/useless facts about the largest land animals in the world. :)

Red and black E Collage:

This was easy to set up and she really liked it. She can already identify lower-case e, so we worked more on upper-case E. I cut a bunch of different sized ones out of black construction paper, and left out a glue stick and a red piece of paper. After lunch, she wandered over to the table and got so excited! She spent a lot of time deciding where each E went, and hung it on her magnet wall as soon as she was done. I'm pretty proud that only one E was glued on completely backwards.

E Puzzle: Sorry for the sloppy game crafting- I should have made a nice pretty one for the photo, but honestly, I didn't have time! So here's what I did: I cut some foam to make the pieces of the E. Then I traced them, so it became a matching puzzle. (Make sure to make the top and bottom bars the exact same length, so as not to totally confuse and frustrate your toddler.) Simple, easy and a great "still waking up, don't talk to me, mommy" activity.


We started this project with some fun color mixing. I didn't have any gray paint (and with three kids, we just weren't rushing out to Hobby Lobby this morning...) so I decided to let Kenna mix some blue, green and white to see what we could come up with. We ended up with a really nice khaki green that actually suits our Elephant well! :)

I drew the Elephant with a sharpie and let her go to town with the paint and a nice soft brush. After it dried, I cut it out (with her guidance) and added some eyes. He is so easy and cute. After defending my "tusk" to my husband, I'll let you decide whether you can draw a better one, or just skip it.And yes, his ear is ugly- what can I say? Kenna was hurrying me!!

Toddler Christmas- tearing paper

So, I have a 22 month old who wants to cut with scissors and use a hot glue gun. Of course, she can't actually do those things (scissors in particular frustrate her to no end) which means I have had to be very creative in thinking up Christmas crafts that she can actually do and enjoy. My goal was to do one craft a day each day of December, but let's be real... I'll be happy to do one craft a week!

Today's craft started with the fine art of tearing paper- something that my 1.5 year old thrives on! I gave her a sheet of green construction paper and told her to go at it. That lasted about five minutes (a lifetime in toddlerland) and then she was ready for step two.


Step two was to dip each piece in some glue and cover a tree quickly drawn onto a piece of paper. Unfortunately, dipping flat scraps of paper was way too hard, so I changed gears and smeared glue all over the tree. Ahh- as easy as playing with stickers! She happily poked pieces of paper all over the tree, andI was amazed that she didn't place any outside the tree outline. My little OCD baby...

For the last step I whipped out some little red and yellow pom poms. "HOORAY!" she shouted, (pompoms are very exciting around here) and she lovingly stuck each little ball onto her tree as "christmas lights". Be aware, pom poms won't actually stick to paper with a light coating of glue, so while she napped, I securely glued each pom pom down with a big dollop of glue.

Not too shabby for the first toddler art project of the month! Next time, I'd let her color the white outline of the tree green first, or possibly paint it (silly me, I thought we'd cover the whole drawing with green paper! ha!) . I also forgot to let her decorate the star before we started- I'm thinking glitter!