Early Learning. Happy Teaching.
It’s time for another edition of Family Fun Friday! On behalf of my co-hosts, I want to say thanks for visiting and linking up last week! We had a blast featuring our favorite homeschool curriculum options from the linky, and this week we’re sharing some great educational crafts for kids!
Keep reading to learn about our wonderful co-hosts, see my favorite features from last week, and share your own posts!
I’m originally from the coast and I miss the beach so much. In fact, I think it actually intensifies as I get older.
So when summer time approaches, my mind lightly turns to thoughts of warm sand, salt air, and waves.
Unfortunately, we live several hours inland now, so a trip to the beach is not always feasible.
But we can always head to the shore with a beach shoebox diorama activity!
This was such a fun summer activity and it only took a few minutes. Plus, it was a great tie-in for a beautiful beachy read-aloud!
If you enjoy this project with the kids, be sure to try our simple Coffee Filter Beach Ball Craft!
To make this beach shoebox diorama, you’ll need the following: (This post contains affiliate links. For details, see our Disclosure Policy.)
We decided to read the book Hello Ocean
by Pam Munoz Ryan to introduce our beach theme.
I love this book. It’s very simple for young readers and the pictures are absolutely beautiful.
The poetry does an excellent job of capturing the feel of a day at the beach, right down to the taste of the salt water.
After we read the book, we decided to put together a shoebox diorama featuring a beach scene.
This was another of our super simple activities.
We only needed a shoebox, some crayons, scissors, glue, and our printable Day at the Beach Diorama Pack!
The kids colored the bottom and sides of the shoebox using the colors mentioned in the story: grey, blue, and green.
We cut out the background scenes…
and pasted them to the bottom of the shoebox.
Our background is all done, so it’s time to add a few props!
We cut out each upright scene image, including the bottom square, as one piece.
Then we folded the bottom square under to make the image stand up.
After we used a stretched cotton ball as a cloud, we poured a little play sand in the bottom and added our upright images to get a feel for the beach in our dining room! 🙂
Don’t miss these other posts!
To see even more fun summer crafts, follow my Summer Activities for Kids board on Pinterest!
If you’d like to complete this activity with your littles, grab our free Day at the Beach Diorama Pack by clicking the image or the link below to download it!
This post is part of the “A Book and a Big Idea: Summer” linkup at iHomeschool Network! Click on over to read the great book activities of our fellow bloggers!
Do you have a bunch of old candle jars just sitting around the house? Turns out – you can actually get some use out of them after your candles melt!
We had several candle jars that we’d already used, but the jars were so well made that I hated to throw them out. Pinterest to the rescue again! I found a great tutorial on how to reuse old candle jars from A Homemakers Journey and got to work.
I was pretty skeptical that the method described would work. I mean, look at these things. They look like they’ll never be any good again.
But I followed the instructions carefully, which included heating them to melt the wax.
After I got the wax out, I washed them thoroughly.
Gasp! They look like actual glasses!
And that’s what I got! I ended up with three glasses. In fact, those two larger glasses are basically tumblers.
The largest candle jar became a manicure in a jar gift for Tigger. 🙂
And the teeny jar got repurposed into a paper clip holder. By the way, this whole process took me about 30 minutes. Not bad at all!
So if you like buying candles, now you’ve got another reason to go get some more! 🙂
This post is part of the Spring Pinterest Flips and Flops linkup from iHomeschoolNetwork! Click on over to see some of the Pinterest fails and successes our fellow bloggers are sharing!
Good morning! Hope you’re all having a great week so far! Today, I thought I’d share a really simple DIY fleece blanket that’s perfect for sewing newbies!
To make these, you really only need two pieces of fleece and some thread. That’s it. You can make your blankets as large as you want, just be sure to include at least an inch all around for seam allowance.
Hey everyone! Today, we’re linking up with the Kids Get Arty linky at Red Ted Art! Each month, families focus on an artist and then do a project inspired by that person’s work. We decided to focus on the art of Romare Bearden. In fact, some good homeschooling friends of ours went to see an exhibit of his, but since we couldn’t make it, we got to work on a project of our own at home.
Image c/o: Carl van Vechten
Romare Bearden was an African-American artist, who became famous for his mixed media collages. He did a lot of paintings, but his collages were most notable, because he often used pictures, paint, and fabric together. On a visit to the High Museum of Art, Jay and I got to look at some of his works in person and they were very fascinating. It seemed like the longer we stared at the work, the more we saw in it.
We decided to help the kids make a collage of their own. We based it on God’s promise of a paradise and we chose pictures that reflected that hope – beautiful scenery, happy families, and animals.
Along the way, we gave Tigger some help in gluing things without making a mess. She got the hang of it, which means (hopefully) less messy projects. 🙂
On one side of the collage, we focused on land. We used the other side for the beach and sea life.
I wouldn’t mind sitting in one of the rocking chairs on that deck right now.
And we’re finished! That looks like the kind of world I want to live in! 🙂
Today, we’re linking up with Red Ted Art’s Kids Get Arty linky! Be sure to stop by and get a look at the kids’ art projects shared by other bloggers!
I love fall. I just love it. It’s such a rich season – full of colors and textures and scents. It’s a perfect time of year to go into full-on crafting mode.
Since we had a lot of leaves left from our Fall Leaf Garland, I thought we could make a fall “snow” globe with them. And since I love easy kids’ crafts, it seemed like a quick and fun project to make. See how you can make this easy fall snow globe craft for kids!
If your kids love making this craft, check out some of our other fall learning ideas, including our Leaf Painting Activity, our Coffee Filter Owl Craft, or our Fall Leaves Unit Study!
This is a super dee duper craft to make with your kids. Just so you know – I’m all about the super easy here. 🙂
To get started, we just scrunched up a lot of our leaves.
If I ever want my kids to have fun instantly, all I have to do is give them the chance to destroy something. Look at that face! That is pure glee.
All ready!
Did I mention that this is really, really easy?
Paint a few barren trees on the outside of the jar.
If you want, go back and add a few white clouds.
Turn the jar right side up and add the crushed leaf pieces.
Pour in the baby oil.
Screw the lid on top. If you want to add extra hold, you might hot glue the lid on.
Turn the jar upside down and give it a shake!
Ooooohhhh….purty.
This entire activity takes about 20 minutes from start to finish, so it’s a great craft to put together in a hurry.
If you want to add a bit more decoration, you could hot glue a scarecrow figurine to the lid so that the scarecrow would be “caught” in the leaves when you shake the jar. You could also add a bit of glitter for extra sparkle!
Oh – one quick note: If you paint the jar first, give it time to dry before you go on to the other steps. I had to use the very tips of my fingers to finish the rest of the project…lol.
Want to make fall learning fun for your kids? Try these ideas!
If you’d like to check out even more fall crafts and activities, be sure to follow my Fall Activities for Kids board on Pinterest!
And if you want to get awesome educational ideas and resources in your inbox, use the widget below to sign up for our email newsletter!
Winter’s fast approaching and it’s a great time to break out some winter crafts for the kids! I’m not in love with winter, but I do love to make cute crafts and that’s usually enough to perk me up out of the winter blues. 🙂 Now that we have a very active preschooler, she always wants to make things with scissors and glue, so crafting is a perfect way to spend some time with her.
I’ve rounded up some of our favorite kid crafts for winter from around the web and I’m sharing them here today! We’ll be trying out a few of these this month and through the season, but I’d love to hear which ones catch your eye as well!
By the way, if you want more winter craft ideas, don’t miss our lists of penguin crafts for kids and snowman crafts for kids!
1. Printable Snowflake Math Factors Craft – Look! We’re Learning!
2. Winter Snowflake Slime – Little Bins for Little Hands
3. Glittery Snowflake Suncatchers – Happiness is Homemade
4. Sensory Blizzard in a Bottle – No Time for Flashcards
5. Snowman Factory – Buggy and Buddy
6. Foam Ball Winter Snowman – Crafty Morning
7. Cardboard Snowflake Printing – The Jenny Evolution
8. Paper Snow Globe Craft – Housing a Forest
9. Snow Puffy Paint – The Imagination Tree
10. Salt Truck Shape Craft – Sugar Aunts
11. Snowy Paper Collage – A Little Pinch of Perfect
12. Paper Polar Bear Craft – Crafty Morning
13. Fine Motor Ice Skates Lacing Craft – I Heart Arts and Crafts
14. Ice Wreath Bird Feeder Craft – Hands On As We Grow
15. Melted Snowman Shape Collage – Mom Inspired Life
16. Winter Necklace Craft – Domestic Mommyhood
17. Q-Tip Painted Snowman Craft
18. Ice Sun Catcher – Kid World Citizen
19. Children Catching Snowflakes Winter Craft – Crafty Morning
20. Winter Playdough Creation Station – No Time for Flashcards
And if you love these, try some of these other fun ideas for kids!
Plus, see more winter learning ideas on my Winter Activities for Kids board on Pinterest!
Happy Friday everyone! It’s time for another Bee Crafty Kids Link Up! Every Friday, I get to co-host this roundup with Dusty from To The Moon and Back and Melanie from Our Crafts N Things! You can find out more about all of us here.
This week, I’m sharing a couple of DIY knitting needle holders that are super easy to sew.
If you have circular knitting needles in your house, then I don’t have to tell you that it’s a pain keeping them organized. They roll up in funny ways and get tangled in your straight needles and it can quickly become a mess. The solution: A hanging knitting needle organizer!
Now you can buy these already made, but where’s the fun in that? All it takes to make your own is a couple fat quarters of fabric and some thread. To make this one, I followed the tutorial from Pin and Paper. You only need to sew straight lines to stitch it together, so it’s a perfect beginner’s sewing project. In fact, I plan to help Tigger sew one for her budding knitting needle collection.
For straight needles, you can make a simple DIY knitting needle roll. This is pretty much the same design as the hanging organizer but without the loop at the top. WikiHow has a great picture tutorial on how to make this one. It just requires two pieces of fabric and a string of ribbon.
To make room for my shorter double pointed knitting needles, I just used pinking shears to cut the pockets down so that I could reach them.
All tied up! These make great gifts for the crafters in your life, so you might want to encourage your kids to make them for homemade gift giving.
We’d love to see the crafts you and your family cooked up this week! To share the button for this linkup, grab the code below!
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Link up your kid-approved craft activities below! And be sure to visit the other posts in the link up this week!
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Good morning everyone! Hope your week is going well! We’re having a blast over here! (Because we just studied volcanoes – get it?)
Last month we decided to set aside a day to learn about Mount Vesuvius, which erupted in August of 79 C.E. We figured that was a great time to talk about volcanoes in general, which Roo has been wanted to learn about for the longest.
First, we did some research about volcanoes themselves – what they are, how they work. There is a great basic post about volcanoes (complete with facts at animations) at Weather Wiz Kids. We read through that together and talked about the types of volcanoes and the basic idea behind plate tectonics. The kids thought it was cool that enormous pieces of land are constantly moving around the earth.
We picked up the Knowledge Box Central Volcano Lapbook from Currclick and reviewed basic volcano vocabulary and the types of volcanic eruptions, including Strombolian and Plinian. Which brings us back to Mount Vesuvius, because we learned that Vesuvius was a Plinian eruption (the most explosive) and that it got its name from the eyewitness account recorded by Pliny the Younger. Very neat.
To show the children just how large the Vesuvius eruption was, we looked at some images taken of the area.
Image c/o: Italy Cruise Shore Tours
What’s really fascinating about this image is that the top of the volcano is missing because it was COMPLETELY BLOWN OFF during the eruption. Wow. Geology.com has a great in-depth article about the Vesuvius eruption, with maps, pictures, and a history of both the 79 C.E. eruption that destroyed Pompeii and the smaller one in 1944.
After that, we wanted to get a better look at these types of eruptions, so we used the HLN Volcanoes Unit Study (also from Currclick) to look at images of eruptions. In this Unit Study, we learned about a couple of other types of eruptions, including fissure eruptions and hydrovolcanic eruptions. The kids thought that the hydrovolcanic eruptions were especially cool, since they the explosion creates steam from the release of lava mixing with water vapor in the air near the water.
(By the way, if you want to see some truly stunning, unforgettable images of volcanic eruptions, you have to check out this photoessay at the Daily Mail. Yes, it’s the Daily Mail, so be careful of the sidebars. But the images are worth a look.)
To get a real-time look at volcanoes, we watched a short video from National Geographic called “Volcano 101”.
Prior to watching this, I had no idea that volcanoes had any beneficial effects outside of forming land. Huh.
Of course, we couldn’t let this unit go by without making our own volcano. (I never got to make one of these in science class, so there was a little of living vicariously through the kids here. I can admit that.) We used the volcano recipe from Science Bob and a play dough recipe originally developed by Mister Rogers to form our volcano.
We mixed the flour and water together for the play dough and then made a hole in the center. We placed an empty prescription medicine bottle in the middle to hold our ingredients. To give it a slightly more authentic look, we added some of our play beach sand around the outside of the play dough.
Time for the ingredients! It’s just baking soda, liquid dish detergent, food coloring, and vinegar. Save the vinegar for last, because as soon as you pour it in….
You get an explosion!
We had so much fun learning about volcanoes together! Have you gotten to discuss volcanoes yet with your kids? How did you go about covering this topic? Let us know in the comments!
If your kids are anything like mine, they’re always asking for the necklaces in the 25-cent machine at the grocery store. You know those fake gold necklaces that turn your neck green? Yeah, those.
I got tired of saying “no” over and over again, so I thought we’d come up with a simple jewelry craft that the kids could make and then wear on their own. That’s when we found this simple straw bead necklace craft and it was a perfect alternative! Plus, it didn’t turn their neck green, which was a plus. 🙂
Read on to see how to make these with your kids! And don’t miss my list of super easy preschool crafts you can make in just 10 minutes!
This week, we jumped into the great book The Arts & Crafts Busy Book: 365 Art and Craft Activities to Keep Toddlers and Preschoolers Busy and found a super easy craft for kids of all ages: straw beads! And yes, it’s exactly what it sounds like.
Here’s what you need to make this craft:
We passed out tissue paper to the kids. They chose their own colors. Surprisingly, Roo picked blue as his new “favorite” color. He’s been hung up on red for years.
Then we spread glue over the paper. At first, we used glue sticks and they worked somewhat, but we ended up reinforcing them with liquid glue. So, to save yourself some time, use regular glue in the first place.
After that, you just place the straw at one end of the paper…
and roll it up tightly. We ended up adding a bit more glue to the very end of the paper just to make sure that the ends stayed closed.
Cut the straw into small pieces with a pair of scissors to make stringable beads. Have the kids string the beads onto a length of yarn, tie it around their neck, and you’re done!
Roo adored his necklace. He wore it the rest of the evening.
Pooh fiddled with his most of the day afterward, but he’s asked to wear it everyday since.
Tigger just loved her necklace! Right now, anything even remotely girly is a big hit with her.
Have you tried this straw bead necklace craft? How did it go? Share your experiences in the comments!
Don’t miss these other craft ideas!
Plus, see more crafting fun on my Simple Crafts for Kids Pinterest board!
Windy days are made for pinwheels, am I right? Remember getting a pinwheel at the county fair or the book fair at school (my favorite place ever) and running outside to watch it turn in the wind? As a child, I could stare at a pinwheel turn for hours. They were just mesmerizing.
I had never made a pinwheel myself, so I thought the kids would enjoy learning how to make one as an easy spring craft. Like a lot of our projects, this DIY pinwheel craft is very simple and only requires a couple of supplies. If you like this activity, don’t miss our easy spring toilet roll butterfly craft!
To make this pinwheel craft, you’ll need the following:
To get started, all you have to do is cut the paper into squares and then make a diagonal cut toward the center on each corner.
Actually, I didn’t even cut the paper into squares. I did the old school thing where you fold the paper in fourths and then tear it. (I know I’m not the only person who does that, am I?)
After you’ve made the diagonal cuts, take each cut and fold the right corner toward the left so that the end lands in the center of the paper.
You don’t want to actually “fold” by making a crease in the paper, because you need the paper to remain curved in order for the air to move through it. So you’re really just pulling the corners toward the middle here.
Once you have all the corners folded toward the center, just hold them down with one hand and then stick the push pin through with the other.
Make sure you catch all the corner ends and don’t stick yourself! I pushed the pin through first and then stuck the end into the pencil eraser.
And we’re done! The kids were so excited to try them out that they sat at the table trying to perfect how to blow across the sails to move them properly for about 20 minutes afterward.
I will say that these are not the most permanent pinwheels you can make, so if your kids get a little rough with them (like ours did), you’ll have to put them back together. But you just have to push the paper corners back down and re-pin. Easy peasy!
If you enjoyed this spring activity, check out our other spring learning ideas!
And get more ideas on my Spring Activities for Kids Pinterest board!
Art is one my favorite subjects to teach in our homeschool lessons. But when you’re starting with young children, I’ve found it best to keep the projects as simple as possible. After all, they’re not quite ready to study post-modernism. 🙂
So we tried this easy textured sponge painting preschool craft with our kids and they absolutely loved it! It was a simple way to study color and painting while giving them a bit of sensory input at the same time.
Read on to see how to do this simple art project with your kids! And if you love this craft, try our list of super easy preschool crafts you can make in 10 minutes!
To do this craft, you’ll need the following:
To set up this craft, we cut a large kitchen sponge into four pieces and handed them out. (This step should be done by an adult.)
Then we added a bit more texture by having the kids crumple up their paper before beginning. We found some super old fingerpaint (I mean, from when Tigger was a toddler) and added a bit of water to thin it out and then it was time to get started!
When we asked Roo if he wanted me to sketch his design for him, he said “I want to make whatever I want to make.” Got it.
Tigger wanted to paint a picture of a tree, so I sketched it for her to give her a little guide since the sponge tips are so large.
Pooh wanted to paint a train and it ended up not going as well as he would have liked. But the experience of painting was so fun that he was all smiles anyway at the end. I think that’s what art should be like for kids!
Here’s everyone’s work. Mine is at top left, Tigger’s is at top right, Pooh’s train is bottom right, and Roo’s unique individualist expression is at bottom left.
To give the pictures a bit more flair, we sprinkled glitter and colored salt on them before they dried. A simple introduction to Impressionism, perhaps?
Have you tried this textured sponge painting preschool craft with your kids? Let me know how it went in the comments!
Like this post? Try these other ideas for preschoolers!
And get more ideas for preschool learning on my Learning for Little Ones Pinterest board!
