Christmas ornaments

I saw this idea early in the summer and couldn't wait to do it with them. All you need is any

-Solid ornament
-white paint
-colored paints (Although I've heard of people using colored sharpie markers)
-Tinsel (optional)
-Black sharpie
-Clear acrylic spray

I painted the kids hands really good with white paint. I used crayola paint. I let that dry overnight before even touching them again. The next day I took an old medicine dropper and put paint in it, then put it inside the ornament and shook it up to coat it whatever color I wanted. I used green for Cole's and red for Eva's. It took quite a few times of putting more paint in to get it completely coated.  For Kennedy's I put red and green tinsel in them. I'm glad I didn't do this for Cole and Eva's because it took forever.

I used a black sharpie marker for the eyes and mouth and wrote his name and year on the palm of the hand. I then took a really thin paint brush and painted the nose and scarf on the snowmen. I'm no artist by any means, so don't mind my "scarves."

I tried to paint Eva's little hand, but she still keeps her hands in a fist and was not happy I tried to pry them open:)  So I ended up painting her feet. I've seen cute ideas where you paint their feet brown and made them into reindeer, but I already had these done. I just wrote her name and year on the opposite side of the ornament. I didn't realize how big her feet were until I did these. Girlfriend has some long feet:)

(Don't mind the picture quality. For some reason I didn't get them in focus when I took them)

Before we painted the inside.

This is what it looks like with tinsel in it.

A little late but....

Our turkey craft we did before Thanksgiving turned out super cute! All you need is:

-Finger paint
-Brown, tan, orange, red and white paper
-Googly eyes

Use fall colors to make 4 or 5 prints of their hands on white paper for the feathers. Cut out a big brown circle and a smaller tan circle, a red gobbler thing, a beak and the legs. I didn't have googly eyes so I used a marker. Glue it all together and voila!!

So we've been so busy with the holidays and making fun crafts, I haven't had time to update my blog in a while. I promise this week I will put up some of the crafts we've been working on. Hope everyone is having a great holiday season so far:)

Turkey Time!!

Our first Thanksgiving craft was a hit. Well, I thought so at least! At this age they didn't do too much so they ended up playing with play dough while Jenny and I put the turkey's together. But hey, they look cute and I figure we can do them for the next couple of years and they will have no idea:)

I always found it easiest when I worked at the school, and especially now with toddlers, to have as much ready ahead of time. So this is the order I did things (I took some of the pics at the end that's why they might not look in order)

What you need:
Toilet paper rolls
Colored construction paper
Scissors
Googly Eyes or a Black Marker
Red paper for the gobble thing (I have no clue what it's called:)

1. Cut a triangle slit in the tp roll for the beak.

2. Cut the gobbler out of red paper...I ended up re doing ours because they are too thin. I found it easiest to cut a thick "J" This one was too thin for me:/

3. Trace the child's hand.

4. Cut out the hands. To save time and patience of the kids, we only traced their hand once then stacked the paper together and cut them all out at once. 

5. Glue the hand to the back and draw the eyes, or glue the googly eyes on the tp roll. If you can see the marks from where you traced their hands, flip the paper over so that is on the back and can't see it.

6. Watch the kids enjoy, but not too much. By the end of the day, Cole's only had 8 "feathers" left.

Eva helped supervise:)

The final product. 

Inside Paper Fun

I posted a few days ago about letting them play with chalk outside, but now that it's getting cold we are going to be bringing it in. We taped butcher paper to the walk and gave him chalk. He also loves to use crayons and put stickers on it. Don't worry, crayon is easily wiped off the wall with a wet rag, at least ours was. I have no intention of giving him markers or anything permanent:)

(Don't mind the awful picture quality, it was night and awful lighting in our family room)

Sidewalk Chalk

That's pretty much all there is to this activity. Cole and Stella LOVE playing with it!! I kept it on my front porch all summer and just let Cole go at it when we were outside. This was great when I was super pregnant and it was really hot and I didn't want to chase him around:)

For the winter (well when winter gets here) I've already bought butcher paper and have some hanging on a wall. We brought the chalk in this weekend and he was having a blast using it on the butcher paper. I'll get pictures of that later.

Look at that concentration:)

This is my favorite face he makes. It cracks me up!!

He also really enjoys dumping his bucket in different places and putting them back.

Home Made Play Dough

This was a big hit. I remember my mom making this for me when I was younger. It's super easy to make, and edible if they eat it...although I'm sure it won't taste very good!

Play Dough Recipe:
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup salt
1 Tbsp alum
2 cups boiling water
3 Tbsp oil
Food coloring
-If sticky, add more flour-

It looks awful when mixing up:/

Split into however many colors you want and mix together. I had to use quite a bit!

Voila!

We used popsicle sticks and wine corks to play with it.

To add "Texture" we used these blocks that Cole already had.