Chinese Wood Block Printing

As we have worked our way through another chapter in our Story of the World book, we discussed some contributions the Chinese have made to civilization. After reading about wood block printing we went ahead and did a mock printing craft that they had a lot of fun with.

First we drew simple pictures on cardboard and then layed glue soaked yarn on the pictures.

After letting it dry overnight, we coated a paper plate with paint. I used a paintbrush to try to get an even surface for them to press their yarn pictures into. When you press your yarn down on the paint, you have to make sure the yarn was covered with the paint. Seems obvious but the kids didn't really get it until they saw the negative space on their cardboard with paint and then it sort of ruins their design.

After talking about monks, monasteries, scriptoriums and letter illumination, they got the fact that wood block printing was much more efficient to mass produce written text.

Fun Pancakes

Recently I was reading through a Martha Stewart magazine and saw an adorable idea. They used a regular pancake batter and a squirt bottle to make spider web pancakes. I had a squirt bottle sitting unused in our cupboard and thought it would be easy enough to do. The catch is your batter can't have any lumps and you have to snip off the end tip of the squirt bottle to create a bit of a bigger opening.

I made my batter and then poured it into the squirt bottle.

Really easy to make shapes and letters. The kids got a kick out of the first letter of their names as pancakes!

 Ta da!

We had a little batter left over. I put it in the squirt bottle and in the fridge. I just cooked up the remaining batter 4 days later and it was just fine. We will be doing this again.

Homemade Teacher Present

We gave this present to Big Sister's Kindergarten Intern teacher who just finished up her internship. I thought it would be really cute in her future classroom. I found it in my Family Fun magazine, you can see it here.

This is what we did. First I found an inexpensive frame at Target. I meant to get out to IKEA, but didn't have time. Take out the glass and fit a background paper in the frame.

We used old crayons, but now that we've done it I would use new crayons. Peel the paper off and break them until their the sizes you need. Make sure to use a variety of crayons (or maybe different shade of one hue).

Draw the first letter of your teacher's last name lightly with a pencil on your paper. Lay out the crayons before you glue them down. We used Elmer's School glue and it worked great. Leave a little space below your letter so you can write their name. I was a little worried about my handwriting, so I had Big Sister write it.



I left her name off, obviously, but then I also wrote a really cute card talking about how each child is very different, just like each of these crayons. The little nicks, rough edges and rounded ones need special care.

Now if you go to the link above from the Family Fun website, you'll see theirs is so much cuter. That's why I think if you start with new crayons it would work better.

File this one away for the end of year if you don't use it now!

Christmas Candy Cane Craft

In our effort to maximize Christ in Christmas, we did a Candy Cane craft and talked about how that Cane reminds us of a Shepherd's Crook. We read Luke 2 together. We talked about how the shepherds were in their field watching over their flock when an angel of the Lord appeared before them.

Here is our craft:
I got red and white pipe cleaners.

Each girl got one of each and then wrapped their choice of color around the other. Really easy, but Little Sister needed help. Big Sister had no problem.

After a little tweaking, we had our candy canes to put on our tree, packages, cookie plates, etc. We love those sugar free treats.



Paper Snowflakes

Ok, so we try and do a Christmas activity each day. Today we needed to make paper snowflakes. Here is my attempt...

1. Take a piece of construction paper.
2. Fold it in half, and then half again.
3. Cut some sort of jagged edge.
4. Open.

Big sister's remark, "That looks like a bowtie." Yep, it looked like a bowtie. We tried 4 times before I looked it up online. My trusty friend, Martha Stewart knows how to do it like a pro. Probably because she is a pro.

Here's her link that I used. Paper Snowflakes

Here are the ones we made after following directions.

Thanks Martha!

Thankful Chain Part 2

Here is our finished product!

After taking time most evenings, and some mornings, talking about what we were thankful for that day, we finally assembled our chain. It's interesting to see daily what God provides and it's especially interesting to see what to be thankful for through the eyes of my children.

Most commonly we saw the girls thankful for things they did that day, but the best is when they are thankful for their relationship with other people. I love watching them say they are thankful for their family. I love these daily reminders of thankfulness.

Big Sister working hard.

Little Sister working really hard.

Thanks for letting us show you our Thankful Strips turned into our Christmas Garland. We hang it in the girls' room to remind us of how thankful we throughout Christmas.

Thanksgiving Placemats

Here's a fun little thing to keep the kids in the thanksgiving spirit while you're getting the food on the table. I made my own Thanksgiving place mats to help keep them busy while I'm busy too.

I just took some of our spangles and tossed them about, so she could count them later. I also had her make the thumb print turkey. I have a few plastic templates so I just traced one out for her. I laminated the entire thing and that way she can use a dry erase marker to dress the girl.

To make my work last longer I did a separate page for Christmas.

I put a simple word list on one side and counting by 10's on the other. Because we live so far from our cousins I put a little snowman for each cousin with their name. I just used my scrapbook circle cutter to make them. Also, Big Sister can make word families with the endings just under her name.

I put the pages back to back and laminated them for all season long fun!

Sticker Fun

Here is one of our favorite paper creative activities. I found some of these Melissa and Doug stickers.

And some of these.

They have them in boy blue also.

I let the girls pick out a 'scene' from the pink sticker collection. They have zoo animals, pets, unicorns, fairies, tea parties, etc. They create their scene with the stickers and then add some little girl stickers from the fashion set of stickers. They get to dress up the little girls and we love all the options. There are fancy dresses, fairy costumes, beach attire, pajamas and more.

They finish their papers with their colored pencils to fill in any other details. Here are a few examples.

Here's Big Sister's Ballet picture.

Here is Munchkin's tea party with a fairy godmother on the top.

A great gift idea and lots of fun to play with!

Thankful Strips

So, Halloween is over and the season of Thanks abounds. Well, at least it's supposed to. To help us remember this each day I've come up with a little craft we work on. Our family has been writing on Thankful Strips for several years now. We start the day after Halloween and finish on Thanksgiving. Sounds like too much work, but it's really just a five minute discussion each night at the dinner table.

First of all I prepare the paper so that we only have to write on them each night. Just take construction paper, cut them into strips and presto- you have your Thankful Strips. We keep them in an empty Oatmeal container.

In the years past I'll cover the Oatmeal container with paper and let the kids decorate it. We haven't gotten that far yet this year.

Each night at dinner (maybe breakfast if time didn't allow for it) we'll ask the kids what they were thankful for that day. We be sure to record exactly what they say and the date. Try to get them to be specific. The older they are the more adjectives you should encourage them to use.

On Thanksgiving we pick a few completed Thankful strips and read them during the course of dinner. It helps us remember the blessings God has given us throughout the month.

The day after Thanksgiving we help the kids create a paper chain with all the strips and put the chain up in their room as the first Christmas decoration. That's why we use green and red paper. When we look at it throughout the month we remember all of God's goodness to our family. We now call it our Thankful Chain.

In years past when we only had one kid, or only one kid who talked, we mailed out strips to family and friends and asked them to complete some. Have them mail it back to you before Thanksgiving so you can add it to your special dinner!

Hair Bow Holder

With two little girls hair bows and clips are plentiful around my house. They always seem to pop up out of nowhere though and need a permanent home. I found this great idea and just tweaked it a bit for my smaller space. I picked up a pack of three 4x6 wooden frames at IKEA, some coordinating fabric and ribbon, mod podge, foam brushes and I already had the glue gun.

I ditched the plastic thing that usually covers the picture (maybe it'll come in handy for another project). The blog I got the idea from used a large picture frame and made this project into a large wall hanging. I needed something that can work in multiple areas, like setting it upright like a picture on the bathroom counter, the girls' dressers or even hanging all three vertically or horizontally on the wall. I then cut out the fabric for the frame, leaving enough around the inside and outside edges to fold the fabric to the back so that you can't see any edges. It's a little tricky, but err on the side of too much fabric, you can always trim it up later.

Then cut out a square on the outside edge of the frame on the corners and a slit on the inside frame edge corners. This will make things neat and tidy when mod podging it down. Go ahead and apply the mod podge (for those of you who are newbies, it's kinda like super strength Elmer's Glue) with your foam brush to the frame. Just start with the easiest, the front and then put the fabric over and smooth. Pick the outside or inside edges to glue down and make sure to smooth out all the fabric. Next, cut out fabric for your inside mat, mod podge it down and let it all dry. Hot glue your ribbon attaching it to the back of the cardboard mat. And, here you go with the final product. Very Cute!

Fancy Flip Flops

Here's our latest craft, Fancy Flip Flops. I got the idea from the Family Fun website. All you do is take a pair of cheap flip flops that fit your kid's foot (or grown up too I guess) and find some fabric that matches. Cut out strips 1inch by about 4 or 5 inches long (depending on your kid's foot size) with a pair of pinking shears. This will help them not to fray so quickly. Tie the pieces on one at a time and push them close together to give it the full look. It doesn't take much fabric and Kaitlyn gets a kick out of wearing them. They make a fun gift for friends and are quick and easy to put together. Let me know how it goes!