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Saturday, June 30, 2012

Oh Canada

Today we made Canadian flags!  Little Monkey enjoyed making the button rainbow so much that I finally figured out another craft to incorporate buttons! The boys had lots of fun creating their own flags.  I have some smaller flags, that we take with us to the Canada Day parade, that I showed the boys.  We talked about the colours on it and where the colours were (ex. red on the outside, white in the middle).  We also talked about the maple leaf in the middle and that it was also red.  I already had a maple leaf template from doing fall leaves so I used that one.  I cut a piece of card stock in half so that one piece made two flags.

I pre-taped the lines for the two outside stripes of the flag and the maple leaf.  We did the button maple leaf first.


We painted the outside lines next.  I didn't get a picture of it because once I explained where they were to paint, it went pretty quick!  Little Monkey was concentrating so hard to keep the red paint to the outside only.  I wish I had gotten a picture of it because he was quite focused!  I was so impressed with how well both boys did painting within the lines!  They were pretty excited to see the finished product. Little Monkey keeps telling me his is 'the same' as the actual flag I used as an example.  
Little Cousin

Little Monkey

I am going to attempt a maple leaf tee-shirt with Little Monkey after supper tonight.  If I can find a white tee-shirt for Little Princess she will also make one! :)
I hope everyone has a nice Canada Day tomorrow, and those in the United States, I hope you have a great Independence Day!




Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Comb painting

We had so much fun creating an ocean today!  I decided to use combs to try and create waves in the blue paint.  It was great in theory.  The boys had lots of fun exploring the different patterns with different combs.  Little Monkey really enjoyed this craft and was very focused on covering his whole paper in blue paint.  Little Princess even got in on it!  She was a little more interested in eating the comb, so we tried to focus on slapping it down on the paper.  We ended up a little blue, but had lots of fun.





Once the papers were covered we put them aside to dry.  They took all nap time and into snack time to dry!  We may have used a little lot too much paint.  The papers were curled up so it looked a bit like a fish bowl.  I went looking through my stickers and found some fish and seashell ones.  We added them and some of our crayon fish.


We really had a lot of fun with this one.  It was great to watch the children explore the combs and all the different things they could do with them.  They impressed me by using every part of the combs and the concentration they used to make their ocean scenes!  
What a great day!
We are going to try and make some Canada Day crafts in the next few days.  I haven't fully decided what we are going to do....but I am sure I will come up with something :)


Fish....crayons

I picked up some ice cube tray's from IKEA a long time ago and they were collecting dust in my basement.  I found them the other day and one was in the shape of fish!  Perfect for our underwater theme!!!  I have made crayons a few times and figured I could get the boys to help me make fish crayons with the ice cube tray.  Making shaped crayon's is one of the easiest things out there.  All you need is old crayons (or new ones) and a mold of some sort, and an oven.  I have heard you can do them in your car on a really hot day....today it isn't that hot out! :)

I didn't have any crayon pieces laying around so we just opened up a box and took all the paper off.  I let the boys break the crayons into pieces.  They sure liked this part.  I helped make sure the pieces were small enough to fit into the molds. During this part I pre-heated the oven to 225 (f). 




We filled them up (don't worry about having the crayon pieces sticking out, they melt down nicely).  We put the ice cube tray onto a baking sheet and put it in the oven (well I put it into the oven) for ~20 minutes.  We checked on then 10 minutes in to see if they were melting nicely....yep they were.  Little Monkey was a little confused on how they were going to turn into fish crayons, but seeing them half melted seemed to satisfy him. Phew!

After 20 minutes they were all melted down so I took them out and let them sit for about 5 minutes.  I then took the ice cube tray (with an oven mitt) to the garage to set.  That way no little hands were trying to touch the hot melted crayons, and it was cooler in the garage.  I let them sit for just over an hour....because that is how long it took us to have lunch and get down for naps.  I then popped them out of the molds....*TIP* do it slowly or (in my case) some of the fish will loose their tails!

All melted


I love the colours!

These were the fish that lost their tails....I tried to make it seem like they were still attached :)

'Just keep swimming...' :)


I really like how they turned out!  So much fun.  I think I might have some starfish ones down in the basement as well....I will dig around there later!
Up next is painting with combs!  So much fun and nice and messy!




Friday, June 22, 2012

Under the sea

I have been trying to pick a theme and go with it for a while and I finally settled on one!  Under The Sea.  I have so many craft ideas running through my head.  I found a lot of things at the dollar store and used things we already had to make up a theme 'basket'.  Here are a few things that I included in it:  Under the sea counting puzzles (dollar store), themed grow capsles (dollar store), foam bath fish (dollar store), Stella Star of The Sea (a book we already own and LOVE), fishing rods (we already own), ocean themed snacks (pretty much gold fish just more shapes).


Today I decided to make hand print crabs.  I have seen this craft in a few places....I just can't remember them.  I forgot to pin it, silly me!  
We had lots of fun with this one.  It is really simple.  All you need is paint, paper, googly eyes, and some little hands! :)  I painted the kids hands and we put them on the paper and I let them put the glue and eyes on.  They turned out super cute!







It turns out Little Princess wasn't the most cooperative with spreading her hands out :)

We also did the number puzzles from the dollar store.  They were super easy for Little Monkey but he enjoyed 'teaching' Little Cousin how to put puzzles together and helped count all the objects on each set.  I mixed them up for Little Monkey (once they were assembled) and got him to put them in order 1-5.  He got it pretty quick but did try to put 4 before 5.  We talked about what comes after 3.... '4 not 5 mommy, that was silly!'.  He is quite the character.


After the puzzle's we read Stella - Star of The Sea by Marie - Louise Gay.  I love this series of books and we have 5 of them.  There is also a Stella and Sam show on Disney Jr. which is really good as well.  I enjoy this series because Stella is always eager to answer Sam's questions and he is always included in everything they do.  Little Monkey knows all the words to this particular story (well actually he knows the words to pretty much all the books we own), so he helped me 'read' it!  On the very last page, Stella, Sam, and their dog Fred are in the water being starfish, so we decided to lay on the floor and try and be starfish!  Little Monkey and Little Cousin thought this was so funny.  They each took turns laying down and being a starfish and then it was my turn.  They would just giggle when it was their turn and shout 'look at me I'm a starfish!'.  
Tomorrow we are going to try out those themed grow capsules and foam shapes in the water table.  There are no pictures on the capsules so I will be just as surprised as they are! :)  
We are also going to try painting with combs.  It will be another exciting day!



Thursday, June 21, 2012

Busy morning

We have had an eventful and busy morning so far today!  I have enrolled little Monkey into preschool for the fall and I figured we should work on things like taking turns and sharing.  :)  What every 2 (almost 3) year old wants to do, right?!  I dug around for a little while until I found so of my activity cards I used when I taught reading to children with special needs.  I forgot how much fun they were.

I put them upside down and we took turns picking a card and telling everyone what it said.  I love the pictures because it was really easy for Little Monkey to figure out what all the actions were!  I remember making a bunch of themed ones, so I will have to go on a hunt for them.  
Next on our agenda this morning was working on our letters.  Little Monkey has been stubborn with working on his letters so I was trying to think of something new and exciting that we haven't done before.  I dug out his personalized alphabet cards that I made him and decided to make a matching game with all the magnetic letters we have on our front door.


I put all the alphabet cards upside down and Little Monkey picked one and had to find that letter on the door and bring it back to put it on the card.  He did great and didn't seem to realize I was making him work on his letters :)
It turns out driving his semi-truck to the door was the best way to find the letters!



Little Cousin is also here this morning, so I wanted to do something geared more towards his as well.  They had most of the hot wheels cars out so I figured why not do some matching based on colour.  We have some coloured rings from a ring toss game that worked perfectly.  It turns out we have way more red cars than any other colour!  They had lots of fun driving the cars to their matching colour.  
Do you think we have enough cars???



What a great morning!  We had so much fun. I am now working on a quiet book for Little Monkey.  We are heading for vacation at the end of August, which involves a 2 day car trip, so I figured we might need something to occupy some time!  I think I might make one for Little Princess as well so she doesn't feel left out.








Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Felt Board

Well it has been raining again!  I was trying to think of fun indoor activities to do because Little Monkey has a bit of a cold, and I finally got around to making my felt board!  This has been on my to-do list since about September!  It is finally done and I am so so so excited about it.
My first fun activity with it was Mr. Potato head.  I think Little Monkey will love it.  I can't wait until he wakes up to play with it.  Ok I can wait until he wakes up, but he is going to have so much fun.
The felt board was super easy to make.  I had 2 pieces of light weight cardboard that I glued together to make it a little more sturdy.  I then took black felt and covered it and glued.  I cut out the shapes from different coloured felt (3 sheets/$1.25 at the dollar store)!
I am also setting up a busy bag exchange with all my mommy friends in town!  I am very excited about it.  We are going to all get together (maybe there will be wine and appies) and exchange one fun activity to do with a 3-4 year old.  There will be about 10 of us, so 9 new things to do with Little Monkey.....why did it take me so long to think about this!
I will get some pictures of Little Monkey playing with the felt board later today.


Friday, June 8, 2012

Been a while...

Wow, time is flying!  I haven't posted in a while.  I will get back at it right away :)
With Father's Day coming up, I thought I would post an easy craft to do for daddy!  I did it with Little Monkey last year and we are going to do it again this year!  All you need is some paint, paper, and shoes.



I am planning some fun summer crafts next!