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!

DIY No Sew Superhero Capes

For my daughter's 7th birthday party she asked for a Superhero theme party.  Well, you can't have a superhero party without capes, right!?  There was one problem though, I do not sew!  I searched Pinterest and I found an easy no sew cape.  If you are anything like me and need easy, check out the post from Serving Pink Lemonade, where they share a printable to help cut out the capes.  However, the cutting part is so super simple that if I can do it free hand, so can you!  There is also a great tutorial on making no sew capes over at Make and Takes. 

I started off buying my fabric from Hobby Lobby.  I purchased felt because it seemed the most 'user friendly'  material.  My measurements were approximately 26" long and approximately 20" wide.  You can go longer if you are looking for a floor length cape but for my 7 year old and her friends, this size is what worked for us.  Once you tell the person at the store the measurements of the cape and how many capes you'll need, they will cut you the appropriate amount of material.

Once you get your capes home, fold the felt in half and cut the neck part out.  Once your capes are cut, you can get creative as you'd like.  For me, I found some iron on's from Hobby Lobby that were on clearance.  The best part is the iron on's were all superhero in nature and worked perfectly AND they had exactly 15 of them!!

After all your creating is complete, you will need some velcro to add to the cape.  Sticky back velcro works well but some of the velcro I used came off.  That being said, a little bit of hot glue to reinforce couldn't hurt.

So, if you are looking for a no sew, easy cape, all you need to do is:
1. know your measurements and how many capes
2. choose your material
3. have your material cut to size
4. use the printable listed in this post or freehand cut the cape
5. add any embellishments
6. velcro

In addition to the capes, I picked up masks, also from Hobby Lobby.  If you don't want the pre-made masks, you could buy craft foam, stickers, elastic and have the kids make their own as a craft at the party.

As for the goody bags, we had a pinata and they added all the goodies from the pinata into their goody bags.  Of course the kids got to keep their cape and mask too!

In hindsight, I wish I had snapped more photos, but here are a couple of random ones.

Basketball Snack and Gift Ideas

My 11 year old recently finished up a fun basketball season, making it all the way to the final four!
With all the hard work from the team and the coaches, I put together a little goody bag of snacks for the boys and a few gifts for the coaches.

These snacks could also be used at the end of a game but also worked well as an end of season treat.

Here's what you'll need to make some of your own:

Large clear bags (got ours from Micahel's)
Clementines
Orange Gatorade
Cheese and Peanut Butter crackers
Reeses Peanut Butter cups
Orange ribbon
Orange paper

Simply add all your goodies into the bag, punch a hole in the label, loop the ribbon through, tie off and viola!  Basketball goody bags that the kids will enjoy!  Also, for the label you can simply type the saying in Word or Google Docs and print.....

Next it was the coaches turn.  Each coach was given a gift card but to spruce it up a bit, I added a printable and candy bar to the gift bags.  I got the idea and printable for the label at Eighteen 25.

In addition to the gift cards, we also presented the coaches with a jar full of starburst candy, orange ones, of course, along with another printable.  There are so many fun ways to use starburst candy for coaches, teachers and friends.

Last, I picked up a basketball for each coach and had the boys from the team sign them.  Just a nice piece of memorabilia for the coaches!  Forgot to snap a picture of the signed balls but pretty straight forward and just another coach idea.

Finally, if you are looking for another treat, try these super simple basketball cupcakes.  I made this for the past 2 seasons and they always go over great.  Look good and taste yummy too!!

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!

5 Reindeer Crafts

There are so many fun ways to craft with reindeer.  I've put together a few of our favorites!

Recycled Rudolph

Our Girl Scout Daisy troop was looking to earn their Use Resources Wisely petal.  Since we are right around the holiday season, I browsed Pinterest and found this adorable Rudolph craft using toilet paper rolls and cardboard from cereal boxes.  Using recycled items like these and talking about recycling would be perfect to help the girls earn their Daisy petal.

Crafty Morning has some really fun crafts and that's where I found this Reindeer/Rudolph craft.

The other thing I loved about this was that it's personalized by using your child's hands as Rudolph's antlers.

You can get the list of items needed and step by step instructions by clicking on the link above.

My daughter had to miss the troop meeting where the girls made this craft but we worked on it at home and here's our version.

Items needed:
Cereal box cardboard
Red tissue paper
Black Sharpie marker
Toilet paper roll
Ribbon

We started off tracing my daughters hands onto the cardboard, then cut out.  The hands will be the reindeer's antlers.  Next, my daughter drew a face on the toilet paper roll and then bunched up a bit of tissue paper for the nose.  She's on a kick with drawing hearts so she added to hearts to each antler.  For the 'scarf' we wrapped some ribbon at the bottom of the toilet paper roll.  To hold the antlers in place simply make 2 slits on each side of the toilet paper roll.

Voila!  Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer!  So simple and so cute!

There are all kinds of ways you could make this reindeer craft.  Our other Daisy leader used pipe cleaners for the antlers and a red gem for the nose instead of tissue paper.  With this craft you and your child or classroom can be as creative as you'd like...........have fun!!

Next up.....

Popsicle Stick Reindeer

This reindeer craft also uses your child's hands as the antlers.  

Items needed:

Popsicle sticks

Red pom pom

Googly eyes

Brown construction paper or brown paper bag

Ribbon (optional)

This craft is SUPER DUPER simple.  Just glue 3 popsicle sticks together to form a triangle.  Add some googly eyes, red pom pom for the nose and finally attach the antlers!  

We decided to glue on ribbon and hang this craft on our Christmas tree!

Reindeer Fingerprint Labels

You can find more about these labels at my blog post here

M&M Reindeer's

This is such an easy craft and a fun gift to share with family, friends or neighbors.  We made a bunch up and delivered to some of my daughter's friends.  

Items needed:

Brown pipe cleaners

Red pom pom's

Bell

Googly eyes

We used a hot glue gun to adhere the accessories to our reindeer.  This part should be done by an adult and/or with adult supervision.  They really turn out cute!

Our last fun reindeer idea is not a craft but a cookie.......

Reindeer Peanut Peanut Butter Cookies

These are fun to bake with the kids and you can use different kinds of foods for the eyes, antlers and nose.  We made these Christmas Eve last year so I don't remember exactly where I got the recipe but here are some links where you can find recipes to make your very own reindeer cookies!

Betty Crocker Reindeer Cookies

Reindeer Cookies from 365 Days of Baking and More

Peanut Butter Reindeer Cookies from Bakergirl

I hope you have as much fun with these reindeer crafts (and cookies!) as we did!

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!