Kids Crafting

This Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent. This is a very special time for our family as we prepare for Christmas. I have put together Advent Activities to do with the wee ones and happily will be sharing our activities with you. In case you would like to join us with all or part of our activities, I'm giving a quick overview here, so you can collect books and materials in advance. I don't have all the details hammered out, but in general, there will be a book each week, an applique block, a kid craft, a recipe and possibly an extended craft. I've also included a rudimentary supply list to get you started. Whether you join us for all the activities or just some, we hope your family has a joyous and meaningful Advent!

WEEK 1 - Gift Giving From the Heart
The book: The Littlest Angel
The craft: Wool roving angels (natural wool roving)
The recipe: Angel wings
The applique: An angel

WEEK 2 - Symbols of Christmas  
The book: The Legend of the Poinsettia
The craft: Weaving a small blanket (scrap yarns for a 3" x 5" blanket)
The recipe: Sopapillas
The applique: A poinsettia

WEEK 3 - Celebrating With Family
The book: Christmas in the Big Woods
The craft: A Gingerbread House
The recipe: Pancake men
The applique: a log cabin

WEEK 4 - Birth of Jesus
The book: Room for A Little One
The craft: Nativity with Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus (using 2 large people bodies and 1 boy peg with assorted fabric scraps)
The recipe: Coffee cake birthday cake for Baby Jesus
The applique: not sure yet!

Lot's more detail and lot's more fun as we help the wee ones prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus.

Materials Needed:
Water Color Paper
Oil Pastels or Crayons
Water Color Paints

Last week we completed a little mini-unit on weather.This is a topic we covered in much more detail last year... this year it was more of a review BUT the kids were interested in specifically learning about lightning. We checked out a couple books on lightning and How Ben Franklin Stole the Lightning plus a couple DVDs. Besides running around in our socks trying to shock each other ;) we also tied our lightning studies into our art project for the week.

First we used oil pastels to create a landscape scene on a sheet of watercolor paper. You could use crayons if you don't have oil pastels.

With the white oil pastel, press hard to make jagged lightning bolts in the sky. You want nice clean lines for the best effect.

Use very watered down watercolor paints in blues and grays to cover the sky. As you paint, your lightning images should pop out since the watercolor paints will not stick to the oil pastel or crayon images.

You can cover the entire image with the paints to give an overall night time effect or very stormy atmosphere to your painting. Let them dry flat.

We have been working on a Geology Unit for the past 8 weeks or so. I let the kids take turns choosing science projects, this was Bug's request. Science is the subject that I feel comfortable letting the kids call most of the shots but I have used Evan-Moore's Geology Guide as a reference point for myself and kids enjoyed most of the listed activities, including the making the mini-books. We also added in lots of books and dvds from the library. As kind of our grand finale to the unit, and the main reason I think Bug wanted to do a geology unit, we made a kitchen volcano... a science fair classic. Now, I'm not totally sure how much the homemade volcano really ties in scientifically with a true volcano... but it does look cool.

First we whipped up a batch of our basic salt dough. I added some food coloring to give it a gray/brown rocky color. Bug and Fairy built the volcano up around the sides of a small Dixie cup on a piece of tin foil. Once the form was complete, we dried the volcano in a 250 degree oven for several hours and then let it sit over night.

The following day we were ready for the eruption. I tried following the book's recommended baking soda/cream of tater wrapped in tissue paper directions... but it didn't work. The vinegar just wasn't getting through the tissue paper. So I ended up just adding a couple Tablespoons of baking soda directly into the cup. Then each kiddo took turns pour the vinegar/food coloring mixture into the volcano.

Each kiddo got a chance to make the volcano erupt. We used a different color each time just for fun. In the end this was really a quick project and not nearly as messy as it seems. Everything was contained on one tray.

This is a project this kids and I did last fall. It was orginally post on Wee Folk Activities Oct 12, 2009. We used yarn but scraps of tissue paper or construction paper would work as well.

For this week's Unplugged Challenge theme Wheel, we made fuzzy yarn color wheels. We started by reading one of our favorite books, Mouse Paint.

We've done a Mouse Paint project in the past, so I wanted to do something different this time around. Since my kiddos are part hamster (they love to shred, cut, rip little bits) we took scraps of yarn and cut them up into little bits to make our color wheel.

After we cut up the yarn into little bits, we sorted them into the color piles.

I then took paper plates (regular card stock with a circle template would work too) and cut out the center circle.

I found the center of the circle and then used a ruler to divide the plate into 6 equal pieces.

The kids covered the plate with a liberal amount of glue and started with placing the primary colors in every other piece. They then went back and filled in the secondary colors.

Here is a fun, quick project that can add to your spooky Halloween decor. We are going to be revisiting this project today. It was originally published Sep 18, 2008 on Nature's Way Learning/WeeFolkAcitivies.

This week's Unplugged Challenge theme was Sand. We made sand candles using the kids hand/foot prints. They were really easy and we used recycled materials... so it was a free craft too.

First I collected up a bunch of random votive candles. I seem to have them in mass, but seldom actually use them. I pulled the stickers off the bottom, then pulled out the wicks and set those aside. I put 2 votives at a time into my potpourri crock pot to melt.

Then the kids and I filled a Pyrex baking dish with sand from the sand box (I would recommend using clean craft sand, but this is what we had on hand). We dampened the sand and each kid got a turn to make an impression. The older kiddos used their hands (I had to help push them down far enough) and for B we did her footprint. I poured the melted wax into the impression (each candle took about 2 votives worth of wax) and set in one of the wicks in the deepest part. Once the candle cooled to the touch, we removed it from the sand, rinsed off the excess sand with cool water and set up the sand for the next impression.

I think we ended up with some really cool Halloween candles.