Valentines: Dinosaurs

These are dinosaur (and pterosaurs!) valentines inspired by my dino-obsessed son. And because he asked and your dino-kid might too, (clock-wise from the top left) that's a brachiosaurus, a ceratosaurus, torosaurus (triceratops, whatever they decide on.) and quetzalcoatlus. (With artistic liberties of course!) Just print these up on some paper or cardstock, color and cut. They fit in standard invitation envelopes.




edited to note that Spiff says my brachiosaurus is actually seismosaurus, but he's not the one who drew it. :-p

Balloon Launch

Today's activity is not really a craft so much but it sure was fun. We launched balloons with a long book balanced on a hand weight. On one end we put the balloon and on the other we smacked down our hands, feet, weight, or whatever else we could find to launch that balloon up. To get your balloon to go up, up, up! make the end of the board longer on that side and drop a weight on the other. A great way to spend some time on a gross indoor kind of day and recall some of those high school physics classes (you know, if you missed them). Go fulcrums!

Valentines: Robots

Here's a robot valentine printable inspired by my niece. In my opinion, the punnier a valentine the better! Just print these up on some paper or cardstock, color and cut. These fit in standard invitation envelopes.

Coffee Filter Snowflakes

Here's a twist on paper snowflakes (and maybe easier).



If you drink coffee, you probably have a coffee maker, and if you have a coffee maker you probably have basket filters hanging out in your cabinet. If you have a Kuerig or Krups, well, lucky you (I'm jealous!), maybe you have a stack of old basket filters hanging around still from your old abandoned coffee maker. You can use them to cut out pretty nifty paper snowflakes.

It's a snowy day here today and so that's what we did. You fold them in half, you fold them again, then again, then again. And then you make tiny cuts n the edges and unfold and behold- SNOWFLAKES! Very fast, very easy, and very pretty. Now I have a couple of kids running around the house throwing snowflakes in the air. They'd rather play in paper than go out in the storm we're having!

I imagine you can do this with cupcake liners too!

Stegosaur Cut-and-Color Printable

Two of the biggest deals in our house currently are using scissors and dinosaurs- Life with a preschooler! I'm afraid you'll find a lot of dinosaur crafts and coloring pages on here in the future. Brace yourself.



Here's the stegosaurus my niece put together:

Polar Bear Paper Bag Puppet

Ok, we've all done them- paper lunch bag puppets. I am a huge fan of paper bags. Not only can you carry your lunch in them, you can make puppets galore when you're done with your lunch. Just flip that sucker upside-down, lick up the crumbs, and get out your art supply. Spiff, my three year-old, decided we were going to make a polar bear puppet and since it's winter, I said, sure, why not? So this is a polar bear, but really it could be any bear. Heck, you could make three different bear puppets and put on a Goldilocks and the Specimens of Three Species of Bears. Why not?

What you need:
Paper Lunch Bag
Crayons, Markers, Paint Dobbers, whatever
Glue

Here's what you do:
Print up the Printable. Cut out pieces, color. Put lunch bag flat on table with the flap facing front and up. Stick ears onto top corners, face over flap, muzzle on face. Glue paws on. Open flap and glue in teeth and tongue. Stick a hand in the top of the bag, bottom of the puppet and put on a show.



The Printable:

Chinese New Year Lion or Dragon.

The Chinese New Year is coming up, and it is a favorite celebration of my 3 year old because of the Lions (which he calls dragons.). So I designed a paper Lion (or Dragon, I admit it's ambiguous and I do not know what to call it.). It has some mobility because I used paper tabs inserted into slots of the pieces and it uses barely any materials:

2 pieces of cardstock to print on.
crayons, markers, paint etc.
2 popsicle sticks or unsharpened pencils
masking tape

Here's what you do:
Print up the two printable pages below on cardstock (do a print preview first to make sure the pieces fit!). Cut out the pieces, cutting on the gray lines, using an exact-o knife to cut the slots on each piece (It's important to not make these cuts too long so the tabs don't slip out easily.). Color them in. Then piece it together, slipping the tab of one piece through the slot (from the right side) of the piece before. Tape (we used wide masking tape) a popsicle stick on the back of the head and another on the back of the tail. Now make your dragon dance!




The Printables:

Give Your Octopus a Paintbrush.

With a three year old and a 17 month old this is what my house very often looks like:


Hence the title of this blog. But the purpose of this blog is to share the many crafts we do. We do a lot of crafts, and we have been lucky in the internet era to get to share others' ideas (and thank you for making them free!), but every once in a while I design my own crafts and worksheets for my kids and I figured why not pay it back and share them with you and yours? Mostly, they're printable crafts that you just cut and paste and if you've got some paper and scissors and maybe some crayons you're good to go. That's the kind of craft I like! Cool and easy and made from things I can easily find in one of my drawers.