Sock Snowmen

This craft is perfect for cold winter months and so easy to put together.

Here are the supplies needed:

Socks (large for actual snowman and baby sock or small sock for snowman's hat)
Rice (16 ounce bag)
Buttons
Hot Glue Gun
Pom-poms
Ribbon
String
Scissors
Large bowl

How to:

Start by cutting off the top part of the sock and then turn the sock inside out.

Tie off the one end of the sock with a piece of string and then turn the sock right side out again.

Next, fill a large bowl with rice and begin filling your sock.  I had my daughter fill the snowman over a large bowl as to avoid spilled rice.  Once your snowman is nice and stuffed, tie off the open end with another piece of string.

Take another piece of string and tie it around the middle of your snowman.  Pull nice and tight to make that clear separation between the snowman's head and body.

Now you can start decorating your sock snowman.  Adult supervision needed as this is where the hot glue gun comes in.

Pom-pom's can be used for the eyes and nose.  You could also use pom-pom's in place of buttons or stick to buttons, like we did.

Attach your ribbon as the scarf

The extra baby sock (or smaller sock) is used as your snowman's hat.

My daughter and I both made our own and we think they are adorable and add a fun winter touch to the house!

Letters W, X, Y and Z

Are you learning letters of the alphabet with your preschooler?  We did letter of the week when Tiffany was a preschooler and I found that letters W, X, Y and Z were a bit of challenge.

We started at the beginning of the alphabet and went to the end.  As we approached our last 4 letters, I found myself running out of ideas especially for letter X.  If you are having a similar experience, check out our activities for W, X, Y and Z

Letter W:
W is for Watermelon.

Materials used:
Paper plate
Green marker
Pink marker
Black marker
Black beans
Double sided tape
Scissors

Simply cut a paper plate in half and let your child begin coloring it with the colors of a watermelon!

After our craft I decided to put our black beans to use for some simple preschool math.  The beans acted as the 'watermelon seeds!'

I used double sided tape which made it super easy for the beans to stick.

"W" ended up being a craft and math lesson!

Letter X:
X is for X-ray

Materials used:
Black construction paper
Q-tips
White crayon
Glue

This can be a tricky letter but have to say it produced the most fun and laughs! After searching I found quite a few x-ray crafts and decided on these two.

Our first letter "X" activity was using Q-tips to show the 'bones' in our hands.  We traced our hands and up part of our arm and then glued on some q-tips.  Both of us made one so that we could compare the size difference.

Next, we printed a full size paper skeleton, mixed it up and had my preschooler arrange the skeleton pieces in order.  It was a hit!  As you can see her giggling in the 2nd photo!

Letter Y:
Y is for yellow:

Materials used:
Painters tape
Red, Blue and Yellow construction paper
Black marker

I decided we would do some graphing with colors, while focusing on the letter "Y." Once I set up the floor graph my preschooler went around the house finding things matching the colors on our graph.  Once finished, we counted how many items for each color to determine which color had the most items.  Before we started we both guessed blue would have the most but believe it or not "Y" won!!


Letter Z: 
Z is for Zebra:

Materials used:
Paper plate
Black construction paper or black foam
White construction paper
Paper for zebra's nose
Black marker

Paper plate crafts are so easy and a go to when unsure of an activity to do with a letter.  For "Z" we chose a paper plate Zebra craft.

I hope these ideas can help you along, especially once you hit the the last few letters of the alphabet!

DIY Birdseed Bagel

It is the end of February and the birds are beginning to sing once again!  They know that spring is just around the corner, 3 cheers for spring!!!!

During the winter months it is much harder for birds to find food.  We do keep a bird feeder out to help our feathery friends but we also like to take things one step further by creating our own bird feeder.

A few years ago we made recycled bird feeders.  It was a two-fold, we got to help the birds while being kind to the earth by recycling.

This time around we decided to use bagels instead of cardboard rolls.  We got the idea from a Sesame Street book that we have called, Love the Earth Crafts.  My son is now 11 and we have had this book since he was a preschooler!  My daughter has since taken a liking to it and has many pages dog eared of the crafts she wants to try.

This is a super easy activity that doesn't require many materials.  Here's what you will need:

Bagel (the book instructions call for a round loaf of bread but we couldn't find that and substituted with a bagel!)

Peanut Butter

Birdseed

Large plate or baking sheet

Spoon or butter knife

String or ribbon

Start off by spreading the peanut butter onto the bagel.

My daughter loved this part the best, smearing the bagel into the birdseed.

Voila!  Birdseed Bagel!

Add a piece of string or ribbon, find a tree and wait for the birds to enjoy!

Waiting for the birds to visit!

Emoji Balloon and Popsicle Stick Craft/Feelings Activity

My daughter had a friend over one afternoon and I came up with the idea of having the girls make emoji faces on balloons.  Looking through my stash of balloons, I found a bunch of yellow ones...........perfect!

(note: we did this activity late summer when it was just too hot to be outside.  With colder weather beginning to settle in around the country, this could also be a great indoor winter activity.

There was very little instruction needed.  After using the compressor to blow up the balloons and giving the girls a handful of colored permanent markers, they got right to work!

My daughter and her friend are 1st and 2 grade so we didn't talk alot about feelings as for them it was more about imagination and drawing.  However, this could be a fun learning activity for preschoolers who are learning about feelings and emotion.  After drawing different faces you could ask what feelings the balloons have by looking at the faces.  Continue the conversation by asking what makes them feel happy or sad.

The girls wanted to do more but I ran out of yellow balloons.  Fear not!  Enter, popsicle sticks and yellow construction paper.  This was a great fine motor skill too for cutting out the yellow emoji faces.  They had just as much fun with these as they did with the balloons.

A good book to pair with these activities is, The Way I Feel by Janan Cain.  

Most importantly, have fun, be creative and leave lots of time for conversation!

Book Theme Cupcakes

For the past two summers my daughter and I have challenged ourselves to see if  together we can read 100 books.  My little reader just turned six so this was something we worked on together. I first learned of the 100 book challenge from Angela at Teaching Mama.  She created a fun chart to go along with the challenge and we have really had alot of fun with it!

This was our second summer seeing if we could get to the goal of reading 100 books and we did!  Last year my daughter's prize/reward was going to Chuck E Cheese.  This year she asked if she could have a play date with some of her friends.  So, we invited a bunch of her friends and spent the afternoon at the park.

Since this was a celebration I knew we needed something yummy to enjoy. So I decided on cupcakes but wanted to somehow turn a regular cupcake into something book related.  After searching the internet I came across this adorable idea from A Turtle's Life For Me.   I knew this would be perfect!

A Turtle's Life For Me shares a tutorial on how to make these cupcakes, which is very simple.  However, I switched it up a bit and didn't use PicMonkey.  Instead, I googled my daughter's favorite books, saved the image, copied into a word document and printed.  It worked perfectly!

Once I printed the book covers, I cut them out so that they look like a book, rubbed a glue stick on the inside of the 'book', inserted a toothpick, pressed together and voila, book cupcakes!

These book cupcakes were super easy and it was a fun way to celebrate this special accomplishment for my little aspiring reader!

Recycled Crafts

If you're like me you keep containers, toilet paper rolls, boxes, etc for crafts to do with the kids.  Here are a few recycled materials that we crafted with.

Turtle Craft:
We used a plastic container for the turtle's shell.  You could also cut off the bottom part of a soda bottle and use that too!

Fireworks Painting:
Their are so many ways to craft with toilet paper rolls.  When I saw this post from Happiness is Homemade I knew we could use a bunch of our toilet paper rolls in one pop.  I found the post right in time to do  for the 4th of July.  I also realized that painting with the rolls not only turn out looking like fireworks but like flowers, too!  Just add a stem and maybe a center and voila...a flower!

  

pressing lighter with the toilet paper roll gives more of the 'fireworks' look.....

Patriotic Cup:
This is another craft that was perfect for 4th of July but you could also turn this cup into a snowman or maybe paint it orange and turn it into a pumpkin, depending on what the season is.

Paper Plate Frog:
Another favorite of ours is using paper plates to get creative with.  After reading some National Geographic kids books on animals we tried making this paper plate frog.

Shoe Boxes:
Saving the best for last.  We LOVE making diorama's.  Their is no limit to what you can create when it comes to shoebox diorama's.  Check out our winter diorama post and our post on diorama fun for more fun ideas.

And finally, here are a few other ways we've used recycled materials to craft with:

Bottle Flower Stamp

Recycled Bookmark 

Cardboard Rocketship

Math Frame learning 

Think before you throw on how you can recycle/re-purpose those recycled materials!

Roly-Poly Egg Book and Craft

My daughter and I really enjoy our library visits and then reading all the books we find.  Some are real treasures like this one by Kali Stileman called, Roly-Poly Egg.  This is a cute book about a bird named Splotch who lays an egg, an absolutely perfect and beautiful egg of course.  But the egg rolls away and begins an adventure rolling, somersaulting and flying all while meeting some new animal friends along the way.

Besides reading books we also enjoy pairing them with crafts.  We both thought it would be fun to paint our very own Splotch and egg.  Here's what we used and how it turned out:

You will need:
Paper
Paint
Paint brushes
Googly eyes
Craft foam

We happened to have red paint just like the color of Splotch in the book.  But, if you do not have red paint,  you can make your very own unique Splotch with any colors you have on hand.  What's great about this painting is that Splotch is just that a 'splotch' or a 'glob' so really easy for even the littlest of kiddos to paint!

Start off by painting Splotch

Add some googly eyes

Next add the tree by painting the tree branch and some leaves.

My daughter also wanted to paint Splotch's egg AND the baby bird after it hatched.  We kept a page in the book open so that she could have something to work from.

The egg was fun to paint, especially sticking on the colored dots.  I cut out small circles from craft foam to use as the dots for the egg.

I wanted in on the fun too so I also painted a version of Splotch and his egg.

Mom's finished painting.....

Tiffany's finished painting.....