Penguin Potato Winter Craft

We love finding things around the house to create art with.  My younger daughter just loves penguins and I  had her in mind when I found this craft.  We are big into re-using and re-purposing at our home so I used old brown paper bags and cut them up into squares with funky scissors.

** We like to find books on the crafts we are making to turn it into a mini lesson or just some fun reading time so we got out our penguin books after we made the craft.


What you'll  need:

• potatoes- 2 different size pieces. One for the larger black body and one for the white belly.
• non toxic paint-white,orange, and black
• googly eyes, one per penguin
• brown paper bag cut up into squares

Instructions:

• Dip the larger potato piece into the black paint and stamp onto brown paper
• take the smaller piece of potato and dip in the white paint, stamp over the black paint onto the body.
• use a finger to dip into the orange paint and create a beak and the feet.
• glue on a googly eye after the paint is dry

My daughter had so much fun with this project that she decided she wanted to make a whole "penguin family" on another sheet of paper which is what she is doing above.

Dorinda's shop, Raising Green Kids, offers eco-friendly products for your family. Follow her on Facebook and twitter and at her blog.

Tweet

25 Things For Kids To Do When Stuck Indoors

EtsyKids team member and mother of two, Katie of childhoodstore, who is also patiently preparing to wait out Hurricane Sandy, shares some really fun indoor activities to do with kids using stuff you already have at home (love that!).  Not in the path of Hurricane Sandy?  Count yourself lucky and bookmark this for later ... think endless freezing cold days of winter, indoor recess at the grade school, games and activities for classroom parties.

Like most everybody on the east coast we are preparing for hurricane Sandy, which means we are stocking up on batteries, waters and snacks. It also means I am preparing for the potential of a week home with both girls and no electricity. So here is a list of some activities we have done before that I am thinking we might revisit this week. Do you have any fun indoor activities for kids?

Shoe Matching Game
Play With a Box
Play With Waterbeads
Painters Tape Hopscotch
Bean Bag Games
Make a Cardboard Computer
Cave Drawing
Pipe Cleaner and Colander Sculptures
Walk the Line
Floor Puzzles
Play People Riddles
Shaving Cream Car Wash
Paint with Water
Post-it Note Art Gallery
Color Relay
Clean Penny Experiment
Form a Square Game
Play Dress-Up
Dance
Glue Painting
Make Plastic Straw Necklaces
Cloud Dough
Plastic Cup Printing
Apple Printing
Plastic Baggie Art

Tweet

Sensory Activity:: Puffy Paint ABC Cards

Bug is starting to learn her letters. She knows a good amount already and she can write an H {the first letter of her name}. I love having some hands on ways to learn so I came up with this for letter learning. Bug seems to like them and we have been working on one letter at a time each week. I have all the letters she knows in one pile and the ones to learn in another so she can play games with the letters she learned. I am thinking about gluing a photo of the letter sign on the back to help her with signing her letters when I'm not there to show her the sign.


What you will need:
-microwave puffy paint recipe {found here}
-microwave
-writing utensil {I used a Sharpie}
-cardboard {we used an old box}
-food coloring
-scissors/razor blade
-a squeeze bottle or a spoon
-patience


What to do:
-cut 26 small-ish squares out of your cardboard {big enough to write a letter on}
-draw in marker a letter on each square
-make the microwave puffy paint {I doubled the recipe and had a little more than enough}
-using your squeeze bottle {I used a spoon} trace the letter with your puffy paint
-microwave according to instructions below the recipe {I think we did it for about 25 seconds}

Here are some things you can use these for:

Have your children trace along the letters with their fingers.

Do crayon rubbings with the letters. {not sure how well these would work...but it would be worth a shot}

Make words with the letter squares.

Spread them all out, mix 'em up and have a letter search.

Glue a photo of something that begins with that letter or a photo of the ASL sign for that letter.

If you like this post and want to see more toddler activities please visit my blog, Tutus and Tea Parties. You can also follow me on: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest.

Tweet

Bring the Outdoors In: Beautiful Things - Collecting and Sorting

By Christine of Belly Bear Baby Gear

Items found in nature contain such beauty, and children seem to be particularly attuned to this beauty. With only a few simple items, you can encourage your children to participate in this fun and educational nature based activity.

All you will need is a paper bag (or other collecting vessel), an empty egg carton and the great outdoors!

Begin by giving your child a paper bag and bringing them outside. A walk in the woods would provide for some great diverse items for collection, but as you will see, your own back yard will do just fine.

If you are working with young children, you may need to show them what to do by placing a few items in their bag for them. Encourage them to collect as many small three dimensional items as they'd like.

Sean was particularly drawn to this patch of grass and rocks in our yard. He discovered big and little rocks as well as a few left over acorn caps. As your child collects more items, this is an opportunity for you to build their nature vocabulary by naming and labeling what they are collecting.

Once your bags are nice and full bring them inside and pour the contents into the top portion of your egg carton.

Sit back for a moment and enjoy the spoils of all your hard work. Allow your child to study the items and consider how they may be sorted.

Young toddlers will simply enjoy exploring the items and filling the cups in the egg carton at random. You can begin encouraging them to notice the similarities and differences by explaining "Let's put all the rocks together" or "Look at all the pink petals".

When working with older children you can encourage more advanced sorting skills. Allow them to study what they have collected and decide how they will sort the beautiful things they have found. They may decide to sort by color placing all the brown things and pink things together, or they may decide sorting by type of object makes the most sense for them.

This activity will encourage your child to begin developing their mathematical thinking skills such as sorting objects varying by one or two attributes all the while enjoying the natural objects they collected. Take a moment to enjoy the beauty found outside with your children and help foster the next generation of nature lovers.

Christine can be found online on her blog Belly Bear Baby Gear, facebook, and her etsy shop:

Tweet

Under the Sea Craft Projects

By Cori of Peace, Baby! Batiks

Finding Nemo is all the rage at my house these days, temporarily bumping Lightning McQueen from most-favored-toy status. We’ve borrowed ocean books from the library, visited aquariums, and pretended we were Nemo and his friends.

So, when I started planning the monthly arts and crafts activity for my MOMS Club, I scoured my Kid Stuff Pinterest board for simple projects related to ocean creatures. I settled on two painting projects: paper bowl jellyfish and paper plate fish.

The jellyfish were inspired by this project from First Palette and this one from Creekside Learning. I told the kids we were making octopuses; as we moved along with the craft, they informed me the octopuses looked more like jellyfish. I went back and looked at the original ideas, and of course, they were right!

We started our jellyfish by painting the bottom of paper bowls. Some kids painted the whole thing; others, like my son, just painted the base of the bowl. I glued googly eyes onto each one. We used tape to attach streamers around the bowl for tentacles.

The fish were inspired by these beautiful paper plate tropical fish from Crafts by Amanda. For the fish, give each kid two paper plates. Have them paint one to be the fish body and help them draw fins on the other plate (or draw them for little guys), and paint those shapes.

When everything is dry, cut out the fins and tape or glue them into place. Draw an eye or attach a googly eye. Too cute!

Here are some other fishy crafts we’ve tried or want to try:

Paper plate octopus, via Artsy Craftsy Mom

Egg carton fish, via Crafty-Crafted. Ours are still a work in progress; we need to add stripes, fins, and eyes.

Squishy fish aquariums, from Teach Preschool (one of my favorite blogs!). We used light blue hair gel and added food coloring to make the gel bluer.

Tweet

Ice Cube Painting

By Cori of Peace, Baby! Batiks

My son really likes to paint, so I’m always looking for different methods of painting. I don’t always want to get into the messiness of finger painting – especially indoors -- and water colors aren’t always as much fun as the bright colors of poster paint.

I saw ice painting demonstrated one day while we were watching Sprout, and I was intrigued. I modified our activity a bit from the directions posted online, using watercolor paper instead of paper towels and cardstock. I like the heaviness of watercolor paper; it can take a lot of paint!

The night before you want to paint, prepare your ice cubes. Put a little poster paint in the bottom of the cubes of an ice cube tray. Fill with water and mix well. Add half of a craft stick to make a handle. Pop into the freezer and let them set overnight. We’ve had success with solid colors as well as glitter paints.

When you’re ready to paint, take the ice cube tray out of the freezer and let them sit for a few minutes before trying to get them out of the tray.

Pull the cubes out, give each kid a piece of watercolor paper, and let them go! First, the kids rubbed the cubes on the paper.

When they were fresh from the freezer the colors were lighter.

Then, as the cubes thawed, the color went on thicker and darker.

Then, the boys discovered pieces of the ice cubes fell off if you hit them on the paper or pressed them like a stamp. By the end, we had soaking wet, colorful pieces of art!

Variation: In honor of Earth day, I made green, blue, white, and silver glitter (just for fun!) paint cubes and cut our watercolor paper into circles.

My son discovered it was fun to paint his hand and then stamp it onto the paper.

My son told me his painting shows Earth right after it was formed. (He’s a bit of a space and planet nut.) Mine shows Earth later in its developmen, or so he tells me. J

Tweet