Hugs and Hisses!-- Snake Pencil Valentines

I admit, I did look for boxed valentines at Target this year. But either I was very late getting to rummage through their valentine stock (It was already February 2nd, gasp!) or it just wasn't very impressive this year (due to the many dumpings of snow maybe?). At any rate, I had two options for the boys' school valentines. I actually think my nature-crazed eldest would have loved the googly-eyed animal ones, but that left superheroes for Fumble, and sadly my boys were in and over them in about two minutes. I can't remember the last time we DIDN'T do box valentines, (maybe back in 2012?), but these options were disappointing. Target could do better than this! We could do better than this! And then I thought, wait, why can't we make our own valentines? Ones we will actually LOVE to hand out!? Also, the idea of not traipsing in and out of drug store after drug store with a crabby toddler in the throes of TWO in favor of creativity was very appealing. I admit it.

My 7 year-old, Spiff, ranks snakes at the height (and beyond) of coolness right now. He talks about them all day long. And he has immense stamina when it comes to coloring and crafting, especially when it's something he's excited about. So I thought, let's do snake valentines. And of course you can't just give paper valentines any more. They have to come WITH something. So what would look like something a snake would hang off of. Tree. Branch. Stick. PENCIL.

Pinterest had this awesome pipecleaner pencil-slitherer to offer. Pretty awesome. Even though I didn't have enough pipecleaners, this one had me so pysched I was ready to go buy some. But wait. These would mean a lot of work for ME. And these aren't MY valentines. I'm a firm believer that kids should do more of their own gifting. I wanted Spiff to make his own mark. And so this cardstock creeper was born. I printed up a template and he colored them in. All 22 of them. He was so excited about it, I couldn't come down to make a pot of coffee in the morning without having to get some art supply out first.  So since he was so excited to do them, I'm so excited to share this craft. And if you have a snake-happy crafter like I do, I hope you enjoy making them as much as we did!

What You Need:

• the printable printed up on card stock
• hole punch
• scissors
• crayons, markers, etc.
• brand-new pencils for gifting

What You Do:

1. Color printed snakes. 
2. Cut out snakes. 
3. Hole punch gray circles.
4. On back, write your message. We chose "Hugs and Hisses" since it's Valentine's Day and we like a good pun. ;-)
5. Slide snake onto pencil tip first through the front, colored, side of the tail. gently bunch and slide snake up the snake towards the eraser until the snake looks like it's slithering up the pencil. 
6. Gently fold, head down to lie flat-ish along pencil. 
7. Gift!

 The Printable:

 Other awesome Snakey Sayings we came up with:

• "Your Sssssuper!"
• "Just Slithering by to say "Happy Valentine's Day!"
• "Give me a squeeze, Valentine!"
• "You'll make Hisssstory, Valentine!"

Peek-a-boo Card: Haunted House

It's OCTOBER! That means we really get to dive into Halloween! One of my favorite holidays for sure! Candy, costumes, COLOR! All good things start with C. Cookie Monster and I are of the same mind.

And CARDS! We love making and mailing cards. They are a great, fun craft and a fantastic way to show your love. Who doesn't like getting a card in the mail? Nobody, that's who.

This is a neat lift-the-flap card that my octopi and I designed together especially for our favorite people last Halloween. (And I had to wait a WHOLE year to post it, do you know how hard that was for me!? Do you!?)

It was a fun project the kids really got into and allowed them to put as much craziness into it as they wanted while making a really cool finished product they felt pretty proud of. (So did I, I admit it.) The materials are basic, the result awesome. Just how we like our projects around here.

What You Need:

• Card stock. We cut ours to fit a business envelope when it was folded, so 8.5"x8" or you can use the pre-drawn printable at the bottom if your octopi just want to color.
• Gluestick
• Exact-o knife or craft knife
• crayons, markers, etc.

What You Do:

1. Take your cardstock and fold in half so it's 8.5"x 4".
2. On the front of the card, draw your haunted house with nice good-sized windows that will be easy to cut, big enough to draw a cute picture inside but small enough to fit a few peek-a-boo windows. We found 6-8 1"-1.5" windows to be a good size but it doesn't really matter so long as there's enough room around the windows to glue and seal up the card.
3. Unfold your card and putting your card window-up on a cutting surface, cut out the windows on 3 sides (top, bottom, right) so to make flaps that open and shut.
4. Open up all the flaps and refold the card so you see the underside. Trace out the window openings. 
5. Open up the card and have your octopus color monsters in each of the traced out boxes. It helped my younger octopus if I colored around the windows so he knew what NOT to color. Those areas won't be seen once you seal up the card.
6. On the inside, glue all around the windows and along all the edges of the card.
7. Fold the front over the glued inside and seal it up.
8. Now have your octopus color the outside of the haunted house.
9. Peek-a-boo!

The printable:

Printable: Pop-up Birdie

We have a robin's nest in our yard and the babies have just fledged. This is what inspired this pop-up chick in a nest.


The Printable:

Print it up on heavy card stock. Color and cut out all the pieces. Don't forget to cut along the dotted line in the nest for the bird to pop up through! Assemble by slipping the bird through the slit from under and behind the nest. Glue the little tab on the back on either side of the pop-up bird's pull tab so that it holds the tab straight but also so that the bird can still move up and down. Do not glue the bird piece at all, just the short tab to the back of the nest. You might also want to reinforce the bird's pull tab with a popsicle stick. Now pull and push the bottom of the stick to make your chick move!

Games: Crazy Shapes

While Spiff and I were playing Crazy Eights the other night it occurred to me that it would be great to play it with shapes and colors as a fun way to commit those shapes to memory (and colors for Squidgee). I can't let an idea like that go, so of course I got to work. I made this printable deck of cards which he colored and we've already played about a dozen times. Most times I've lost, but who's counting? Oh yeah, Spiff.


The Printables:

red.

orange.

yellow.
green.
blue.
purple.

Here's how you play. Pretty much it's Crazy Eights, but here's the longer version:

The Set-Up:

• Shuffle the cards.
• Deal out 5 cards to each player, face down.
• Place the remainder of the cards face down in a pile between the players. This will be the Draw pile.
• Flip one card over from the Draw pile and set it up face up next to the pile. This will be the Discard pile.

The Play:

• Youngest player goes first, and play continues to each player clock-wise.
• On each turn the player plays a card from his hand on top of the Discard pile that matches the top card in either Shape or Color.
• If a player doesn't have a matching card, then the player draws from the Draw pile without playing a card and play continues to the next person.
• If a player has a Wild Card, he can play it any turn regardless of what's on top of the Discard pile. He gets to choose which color- Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue or Purple (yeah, I know, I left out Indigo, I wonder when Spiff will notice.)- is to be played by the next player.

The Winner:

• Whoever plays all of the cards in their hand first is the winner. Hooray!

Did I miss anything? Let me know. It's apt to happen!

Valentines: Bugs!

Here are some buggy valentines to give to your love bugs. Just print these up on some paper or card stock, color and cut. These fit in standard invitation envelopes. Happy Valentine's Day!

Chinese New Year Lion Puppet

Every year we go into Chinatown to celebrate Chinese New Year with our good friend N. And every year Spiff comes back impressed and with an urgent need to be a lion. We make paper lions. Spiff gets out some plastic oranges from the play food bin and makes me drum away on our coffee table while he dances away. I must say, even with a four year old dictator, I mean, director, it's a pretty good show.


Here's how you make our New Year's Lion:


What You Need:

• crayons, markers etc.
• scissors
• glue or tape
• two popsicle sticks
• piece of construction paper, any color
  
• this printable printed up on cardstock:

The Printable:


What You Do:
The directions are on the printable but here goes anyway. Color the pieces on the cardstock. Cut them out.

Valley fold the inside of the mouth and glue the back of the head to the back of the fold so the pieces line up to complete the front.

Glue a popsicle stick on the back of each set of legs so there's a handle hanging down for each hand to grab.

Next cut out two 3" (ish) strips of construction paper and glue one end of one to one end of the either to make a long 17" strip. Accordion fold every inch or so the entire length.

Glue one end of that to the back of the front legs and the other end to the front of the back legs to complete your lion's body. (The first one I did I had the paper going vertical but Spiff didn't like it since it couldn't fit "over" his head. So on his we put the paper horizontally. I don't think it matters. They both looked great if you ask me, but kids are picky.)

Beat some pots and pans and make your lion dance.

Tangram Game

Here are two smaller sets you can share with a friend and a puzzle worksheet too. Challenge each other to see who can solve pattern worksheets first. Or play solitaire to see how quickly you can solve them on your own!

Game Sets:

Printable Puzzle Sheet:

Make Your Own Tangrams

When I was in elementary school we had two math classes. One was your typical (boring, if you asked me) adding, subtracting, short division then onto long division class. Boring, right? The other was a sort of applied math. I don't know if it was the teacher who made it fun or the math which did but we played a couple games to help build our daily math skills that I remember well. One of these was a dice game where, in your head, you had to add or multiply the numbers on the faces of 5 dice to get the answer. If you were right you got to collect that many unit cubes. Whichever team had the most cubes at the end of the class won. That was a great learning game I highly recommend! (and all you need is some dice- and cubes I guess, but pennies would do too!)

The other task I remember well is completing tangram puzzles. Tangrams are a set of shapes all related to each other in size that form a square when a whole. Separate they are a set of two large triangles, 1 medium triangle, 2 small, a square and a parallelogram. When you put them together you can form endless amounts of shapes and pictures. They really are a lot of fun. In my math class we had silhouettes printed on paper that we had to replicate using the tangram shapes. All of them. It's a mental work-out but it's fun and great for the brain.

My kid's been a sickie. It's winter. We're stuck in the house. I remembered: TANGRAMS! I dug around until I found the set my grandfather had gotten me. They were missing a piece. Then I realized, well, duh, I can make my own. So I did. And so can you!

Really, all you need to do is make a grid divided evenly into 16 units on some cardboard. Probably the easiest is the inch. Then divide and cut your square using the following pattern. Or you could just print up the one I made above on to some good old cardstock. That's really the easiest way. And they make a nice big set for little hands. The best thing about tangrams is they will travel neatly. Just stick them in a ziplock bag and throw it in your purse for restaurant waits. And if you lose one? So what, make some more.

Tangrams for everybody!



(and at some point I'll make some pattern sheets, but really if you google tangrams, I'm sure loads of pictures will show up for you to use.)

Print and Cut: Paper Trees

These are super easy and fun to make and decorate. If we had time and space, we would make a whole forest of paper trees. They're also nicely collapsible so stick some in some Christmas cards! Or glue one onto a card to make one into a Christmas card:



You can make all sorts of sizes for your forest, but here are some templates for a starting place. For a larger 10" tree print up these two pages onto card stock.

page 1:

page 2:

Cut out, decorate and put together. It's easier to stand them up if you fold each half of the tree down the middle length-wise before fitting the slits together. And taping them on the resulting seams is not a bad idea either.

For a smaller 7" tree, print this up on card stock:

Coloring Pages: Dinosaur Christmas

Cut and Paste: Cornucopia

Since Thanksgiving is upon us (How did THAT happen!?), I was on a mission to find what I thought would be a simple cut and paste cornucopia. I wanted my kids to be able to cut out the fruits and vegetables and paste them onto the horn of plenty. After looking, and looking, I gave up and made my own. Ever my test-subject, my 4 year old colored, cut and glued this all by himself. I was pretty impressed. You don't have to be, but I was. ;-)

Spiff's Cornucopia:

The Printable:

Printable: Five Little Pumpkins

So, we all know that poem. It's my favorite Halloween poem. Okay, I don't know a lot of Halloween poems, but even if I did, I feel confident saying that the one with five little pumpkins would still be a favorite. First of all, "pumpkin" is just a fun word. You know what else is fun that you can do with pumpkins? You can make jack o'lanterns. Whoever invented them is right up there with Thomas Edison in my book. That's right, I said it. So, pumpkins are great. That poem is great. And because I said so, I made this printable. Your octopus can cut and paste those pumpkins right on the gate (or fence, fine, I made a fence) and then, because just pumpkins is never good enough, they can put little faces on them too and make some Jack O'Lanterns. And maybe even some Jill O'Lanterns.


The Printable:

Super Masks!

When my older son turned four, we had a superhero birthday party. I made a bunch of masks for the kids (and adults!) out of foam sheets and some elastic string. Easy peasy. Perfect for parties, Halloween, heck, every day! Get your webslinging action on!



Printable Templates:

"Stained Glass" Leaves

It's fall! The season for beautiful colors and leaf piles for jumping, apples and pumpkins and that fresh cool air that is just perfect for sleep. This week, the kids and I made pretty nifty (if I do say so myself) "stained glass" leaves for the windows out of some construction paper and tissue paper. Tissue paper is really pretty awesome when you shine some light through it and it's cheap and easy to work with. Plus, I don't know about you, but I always seems to have some kicking around.

What You Need:

• Tissue Paper in fall colors- red, yellow, orange, etc.
• a piece of black construction paper (though it really could be whatever color, the black just looks nice!)
• scissors
• glue, in paste or stick form, whatever.

What You Do:
Print up the leaf template below and cut out the leaf shape you want. Cut strips of tissue paper in varying widths (half an inch to an inch) and in varying lengths that will span the leaf templates. (Really they don't have to be perfect and this is a great time for little hands to practice cutting). You just need enough tissue to span the leaf.

Fold the black piece of paper in half and trace the leaf template onto the paper with pencil. Then cut out the shape through BOTH layers of black . (OK, here you need precision. So you do this while your octopus cuts tissue). Now if the pencil marks bug you (as they do me!) unfold the paper and refold it so the pencil lines are on the inside. :-)

Open the paper back up. Now you have two cut out mirror-image leaves. glue around the right leaf on the black paper. Now spanning the leaf, stick on the tissue strips any which way you feel like it, layer it up, don't, whatever, it all looks great!

Glue around the other, tissue-less, left leaf, getting the edges too.

Now sandwich that piece of black paper back together so the leaves match up, and Voila! Trim any tissue that might have come out the sides and hang it up in a sunny window.

Perty!

The Printable:

Printable: Cat Hand Puppet

Printable Cut and Paste: Ice Cream Cone

Printable: Fold and Cut Butterfly

Folding and cutting activities are a great way to hone those preschool skills. My 4 year old loves seeing what comes out when he unfolds the final product after cutting. He loved this butterfly.

*Tip: When learning to cut, it's easier to cut through thicker papers that stay stiff. Start with card stock then work your way up to construction paper and then plain paper.

Printable: King for a Day Crown

Decorate this crown and be king (or queen) for a day!

Printable: Flying Geese.

This cold, wet weather we've been having here in New England puts me in mind of geese flying. Depressing as it is, that's not too far away!

Here's a printable for a pair of flying geese. Make a pair (Did you know Geese generally mate for life?) or an entire flock! Hang them on your light fixture or on your curtain rods. Or make a mobile.

The Printable:

What You need:
card stock
scissors
crayons
hole punch
string
tape for hanging (or just hang them on a curtain rod.)


What You Do:

Grown-Ups- Print up on card stock. Cut out the goose bits, punch the holes and cut the slits. Cut lengths of string and tie one to each goose.

Kids: Color the geese. Fold the wings in half on the dotted line and slip the wings through the slot your grown-up cut on the bodies. Tell your grown-up where to hang them up! Also, before hanging, if you pinch the top of the body with your finger and thumb you can make your goose flap his wings by moving your hand up and down!

It's a Party Hat!

In the summer, it seems like there are a lot of birthdays to celebrate. Mine is one of them. It was today. My older son informed me (when he woke me up early to tell me it was my birthday and to get up!) that it was not a birthday unless we made hats and a cake. So I got to make my own hats on my birthday. But at least my kids colored them.

Party hats as it turns out are very easy to make. Even easier if somebody makes up the template for you! And here's one now! A good old printable party hat. Print it up on some cardstock, cut it out, decorate it, put it together and add string. Easy as cake, which incidentally we did have. So I guess I achieved birthday success!


The printable:

Hats + Cake= Birthday Success!