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.

Pumpkin Painting

I posted this on my personal blog, but it's a craft so I figured I'd post it here too. My neighbor and I started this last year, we bought small pumpkins and let the kids just paint them with finger paints. Easy and fun!! They loved it. Last year was a little hard since they were so young.... (Cole was 7 months, Stella was 12 months, and Kennedy was 5 months old last year)

Stella

My chubby bubby, Cole

This year Cole was 19 months and Stella was 24 months old... much better:)

Stella was so dainty about it:)

I love Cole's expression. Cracks me up!!

Ta da!

Pipe Cleaner Activity

So I really can't come up with fun names for these things:) I found this activity on pinterest and thought Cole would enjoy it. I think he's still a little too young to get the idea so I modified it for him. This is great for his eye hand coordination too, so an added bonus.

All you need is pipe cleaners and a strainer. What you are supposed to do is have the put the pipe cleaners in the holes of the strainer. Since Cole is still a little young for that and I put a bunch in and he REALLY enjoyed pulling them out!! Then he would take the pipe cleaners all over and hide them in things, dump them out and repeat....that's his thing right now:)

 

Notice the mess in the background....that means we were having fun:)

Bag of Paint

I tried coming up with a creative name for this, but I got nothing:) In a lot of the pics you will see with Cole his bff and neighbor, Stella (and my great friend Jenny) or the little girl I babysit and Cole's other bff, Kennedy. This day Stella came over. It was rainy and icky out, so we decided to try this craft we saw on pinterist.

I used a gallon ziplock baggy and squirted a bunch of paint into it. I made sure I got all the air out when I was sealing it. If there is air in the bag, it won't work very well. Once we put the paint in it and de-aired the bag, (I think I just made up a word) I taped it to our back window door. The first bag I put up mysteriously got a hole in it, so watch out for that. Also, if you have a curious toddler like me, I learned I had to tape all the way around all 4 sides or someone enjoyed pulling the bag down.

So after we figured out all the kinks we showed them what to do. At first they didn't care for it, truthfully. After they had been up for a little bit, they started having fun with it.

Apple Painting

We did this a few weeks after we went apple picking and had lots of left over apple. I cut each apple in half, then on a paper plate I put good size blobs of finger paints. I had to show him what to do with the first couple ones, but after that he got the hang of it.

 And when we were done, we were able to use our fun apple peeler and enjoy a few more of the unpainted apples before they went bad:)

 

 

Finger painting

It's a fun easy craft that every kid should do!!! Cole is not a fan of getting a lot of icky things on his hands during dinner, so I thought this might actually help with that. (Added bonus!) I have found a few recipes to make your own finger paints, which I will try and share later. For now, I just used the good ol crayola finger paints.

At first he was not so sure about this whole "getting messy" thing:

 

But by the end, he was a pro!!

All I did was squirt each color on the paper and let him have at it. Easy enough, no?? When he was done with the paper, I let him paint his tray. Messy, but he really enjoyed it.