Colouring the 'snow'

All our freshly fallen snow 'melted' over night.  By melted I mean it rained all night and now we have no snow again. :)  Little Monkey has been very excited about the snow and wants to play in it every time it makes its short appearance.  I figured if there was no snow outside we could make our own inside.  I was trying to think of something that both kids could do, and my baking soda happened to be out on my counter!  Baking soda looks enough like snow and vinegar always makes the best bubbles!  I decided to spice it up a bit and add food colouring the vinegar! *** After we were done I remembered that we dye Easter Eggs with vinegar and food colouring.....next time I will only put one drop of food colouring into the vinegar. :) ***  Little Monkey thought this was the greatest thing!  He was making a rainbow of colours and decided to stick his spoon into all the colours and "look mommy, I made BROWN!'  With the remaining vinegar he requested more baking soda and enjoyed it when the cups over flowed.  Little Princess thought the bubbles were neat and she kept trying to get closer to listen to them!  I think her favourite part was drinking the vinegar when I turned my back.  She thought it was very tasty.  What a silly little girl :)

Materials:
*Baking soda
*Vinegar
*Tray or plate to put the baking soda on
*Container for the vinegar
*Spoon(s) ( I used measuring spoons)
*Food colouring (optional)

 Look Mommy BROWN!

The messier the better!

Getting back at it.

I haven't blogged in a while.  I need to get back at it.  We are still being crafty, I just haven't been taking pictures along the way.  For January we are focusing on SNOW!  We got quite a bit over Christmas and it has snowed a few times since.  I grew up surrounded by snow and I love it!  Some of the things we are going to do are,
*Snowflake Pictures (using tape and paint)
*Snowman sequencing
*Winter themed activity cards
*Snowflake picture frames
*Colour matching snowmen
*Snowmen counting
*Shaving cream snowmen
*Felt board Snowmen

I am excited to be back at it.  Don't forget Valentine's Day is right around the corner!  Once February begins I am going to do a craft a day until Valentine's Day.  I have so many fun idea's!
I hope everyone had a great Christmas and a happy New Year!

Christmas craft idea's

I have been busy with craft fairs lately!  I thought I would share some of the Christmas crafts we do around here!  We have lots of fun and I usually think of something new after the holiday's are over.  I will have to keep an open list of everything I want to do!

Craft idea’s for toddlers & preschoolers

1 - Fork painting.  We make Christmas Trees by painting with forks.  It gives the illusion of needles.....well it is supposed to.  I cut out a shape of a tree before hand and gave the kids green paint and a fork.  After it dried we decorated the tree with stickers and pom poms.  I glued it to a toilet paper roll and they went on our hutch :)

2 - Felt Christmas tree and ornaments.  I got a large piece of green felt and cut it into a tree shape and cut out ornaments out of other felt.  This was the tree the kids could decorate over and over again.  I just used painter’s tape to attach it to the wall.  

3 - Snowman.  I drew a snowman shape on a piece of cardstock and got the kids to fill it in with cotton balls.  I cut out pieces for the face and got the kids to put them on.  This one is a free for all when it comes to the little ones.  If you are looking for a snowman with its face all in the right place, this might now be a toddler activity :)  Oh and it is messy with the glue and cotton balls....but the kids had so much fun!

4 - Stars.  I hot glued popsicle sticks in a star shape.  I let the preschoolers spread the glue on themselves and for the toddlers I put it on prior to giving it to them.  Then I let them go to town with glitter!  I have trays that they do their crafts on so most of the glitter stays contained to the tray.  After they are dry I mod podge them so there isn’t glitter everywhere once they are on the tree.

5 - Felt boards.  There are so many different things you can do with felt boards.  We have a snowman right now.  This is more geared towards preschoolers but Little Princess likes to take it all apart and put it all back on the board.  

6 - Hand and foot print reindeer. Trace hands for antlers and a foot for the face.  Add eye’s and a nose.

7 - Foot print angels. Paint the bottom of a foot white and stamp onto black paper.  Once dry cut out and attach a cut doily as wings.  Add a face and halo if you would like :)

8 - Salt dough prints - This one can be done in so many ways.  Hands and feet on their own, or made into something else.  Such a great way to see how much your kids have grown over the years!

9 - Cookies.  This is one of my favourites and the kids love doing it.  We bake sugar cookies and then decorate them!  We do it after supper on a night that daddy can participate.  

10 - I See.... pages.  I make these up often.  I just type up I See _________ looking at me, 4 or 5 times on a page.  I print it out put stickers into the blank spots and photocopy it and we match.  

11 - Christmas activity cards.  We have a lot of different themed ones.  They are a great way to let off steam on those days you are stuck inside.  They are also a good reminder to get on the floor with little ones and have fun :)

12 - Books.  We read a lot of books.  I keep the Christmas ones put away until Christmas so they are new and exciting.  We have about 25 just Christmas themed ones so I love when they come out and I have something different to read.  We usually get the kids a new one every year ( or a grandparent does).  We have a few snowman ones and I use those with our felt board.  We build a snowman along with the book.

13 - Songs!  We sing songs about everything!  We finally got some new Christmas music cd’s for the kids so I am excited to bring those out.   

14 - Snowflake.  I used painters tape to make a snowflake shape on a piece of cardstock and then let the kids go to town with paint.  Once it dried I took the tape off. 

Have you ever seen a pumpkin....

We have been having fun with pumpkins!  We haven't got our own yet, it is on our to do list.  In fact we are going to the pumpkin patch on the weekend!  I had never been to a pumpkin patch until we moved out here.  I love it!  It is one of my most favourite fall things to do.  Little Monkey also loves it.  Little Princess was only 2 months old when we went last year, so she might enjoy it more now :)  She has also really taken off walking this past week so I am sure she will be walking all over the place.  We usually come out of the patch with 2-5 pumpkins.  I am sure this year we will have at least 4.  They also have goats and chickens that the kids can feed, as well as a spooky barn.  So much fun!
Ok back what I am actually posting about.  Little Monkey did his I See.... page and really liked it.  The patterning at the bottom was a bit tough for him, but he was getting it by the end.  I also attempted my first preschool fun pack.  Little Monkey LOVED it.  He had lots of fun with it.  We did it during Little Princess's nap time.  It was our time together so I didn't even bring the camera out, sorry.  I did take pictures of some of the finished pages :)
I also made Little Monkey a felt pumpkin to go along with a song I used to do when I taught preschool.   It was a great way to make silly faces on his pumpkin.  He loves the song and asks for us to sing it often.  I put it at the end of the Preschool Fun Pack.

Counting leaves

I have decided to work on counting a little more with Little Monkey.  He can count great up to 14 but still does not recognize all numbers 1-10.  I figured why not continue with our leaf theme and make up some sheets with numbers on them!
Leaf counting
Little Monkey had a Little Friend over the other day so it was a great opportunity to bring this one out.  They did great with it!  They had so much fun counting out the leaves.  The higher the number the harder it was, but they stuck with it until it was done.  I got the leave stickers from the dollar store, but you could use real leaves or draw them yourselves.

Apple stamping

It seems fall has decided to settle down and stay for a while.  I was not fully prepared.  Today was full of a mix of things.  We did some apple painting and coloured with apple shaped crayons (we made them the other day and I forgot to get pictures), and lastly we played handy man.
It was a fun way to spend the day indoors.  Plus we got to have apples for a snack as well....not the ones we painted with though :)
Little Monkey sure loved painting with the apples.  He really liked that we finally got to use the 'farkly' (sparkly, he is still having trouble with his 'sp' sounds). Little Princess couldn't really grab the apples so she got to colour with the apple crayons, which she tried to eat.  So next time, snack FIRST and then craft time.

Little Monkey has been very interested in hammering and 'fixing' things lately.  When he was visiting his grampy's this summer they let him use real power tools.  He had so much fun, but I don't really want to use power tools in the house with him.  We had a big piece of styrofoam in the recycling from something we had bought, so I thought why not make it a work bench.  We raided Daddy's golf tee's and borrowed a hammer from another toy and get to work.  We even had a hard hat.  Little Princess got in on this one as well.  It would have worked better with two hammers and two pieces of styrofoam...oh well, next time!  I think maybe some tools might be a good idea for Little Monkey for Christmas!  

Up next, fall leaf counting!