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!"

Hole Punch Confetti

      We make confetti out of colored scraps of cardboard. It's great for crafts and inside cards and won't haunt your carpet, waiting to attack you like glitter. Also, it's always handy. We just raid our recycling bin with a hole punch.

       Our favorite use for our confetti is as "sprinkles" on this cupcake birthday card. We first made a cupcake birthday card for the 30th birthday of our legally blind cousin 2.5 years ago, so that she could FEEL her birthday card if not see it. Since, if I ask Spiff to make a birthday card, this is what he requests we make. A scrunched up piece of tinfoil, a cupcake top of foam or felt, and a candle and flames also out of scrap cardboard all glued onto a card. And a touch of glitter glue. (Glitter trapped in glue is alright.) Then we go to town making "sprinkles". It's fun seeing cardboard packaging in a new light and getting individual vivid colors out of them.

Pumpkin Collage Card

For this craft we cut a pumpkin shape out of a folded piece of card stock, not cutting around the top fold so it was a card that opened up. Then my octopus glued on orange paper squares on the front and then made a face with cut black shapes. He finished it up by coloring the stem with marker. On the inside he wrote to his friend. Easy peasy.

Leaf Rubbings

The other day my kindergartener wanted to collect leaves and send them to relatives. Since I am pretty sure everyone in our family has plenty of their own leaves falling in copious amounts on their lawns at the moment, I suggested we do something more artistic with the leaves we found. We settled on the easy to do and totally satisfying leaf rubbing. It takes no time at all and not much in the way of materials and they're ones I'm sure you have.

What You Need:
broken, unwrapped lengths of crayon (we love a craft that uses these- I hate to toss them, but who needs broken crayons!?)
white paper
flat fall leaves (We made ourselves a little adventure just collecting these.)
masking tape, optional.

What You do:

1. On one piece of white paper lay out your leaves in whatever pattern you chose.
2. Lay the paper you're going to color on flat on top of your leaves Secure it in the corners with tape. This helps to keep it from moving when your octopus is rubbing.
3. Take a broken bit of crayon and rub it along the paper, over the leaves, on its side (not the ends!)
4. Watch your leaves come out!

My kid really loved doing this a lot more than I expected. It was kind of like digging for treasure (or fossils!). He never knew which leaf was going to pop up and the more colors he used the better it came out.

A neat thing to do with an older kid would be to collect one of several varieties and label the rubbings with the tree species.

Campfire Craft

 I'm not sure how it happened really. One minute we got the tent out from its hiding place under the couch. (If you don't stow stuff under there you should!) and then we were making a lake out of blue blankets and crafting a campfire out of paper for roasting cotton ball marshmallows. In the end, "camping" became quite the creative production. And it's even better because in a couple weeks I won't feel that badly about throwing it out- provided I can sneak it past the bosses.

The boy scouts are good campfire builders. We are good pretend fire builders. Smokey would be proud. And this is how we did it.



What You Need:

for your fire:

• red and orange construction paper
• scissors
• glue and maybe scotch tape

Here's What You Do:

1. 1. To make your fire: Cut out flames the long way out of your construction paper, leaving the bottom edge nice and straight and untouched. I drew out an easy zigzag flame shape and handed it over to my 4 year old to cut- good practice! 
2. Out of leftover scrap, cut more flame shapes and paste them onto the bigger pieces here and there and wherever.
3. glue the edge of one side onto the edge of the other side so you have a ring of fire.
4. Cut out little u-shaped mouse holes along the bottom edge for your "firewood" to go through so the fire stands nice and straight on top instead of falling over.

for your kindling and fire wood:

• brown paper
• glue and some scotch tape
• scissors

What You Do:

1. Cut your brown paper into varying widths by 9" or so. Honestly, it's not a science and I have no idea what length we cut. 
2. Roll each strip nice into a stick and glue it closed or tape it shut. We did both. It did not want to stay.
3. Stick your sticks through the mouse holes you cut in your fire to make it look like they're on, well, fire.

for your marshmallows on a stick:

• brown pipe cleaners
• cotton balls
• white electrical tape to keep the balls neat
• scissors.

What You Do:

1. Snip your cotton balls from top to bottom but only half-way through so that you can "unroll" them a little. 
2. Wrap the snipped cotton balls around your pipe cleaner. 
3. Wrap a length of white electrical tape around the marshmallow to help it keep its marshmallowy form. (We experimented and did some on the top and bottom of the marshmallows too but really it just looked better when we wrapped the sides of the cylinder in one go and it was way easier to do too.) Now you'll be able to pull on and off your untoasted and roasted marhsmallows to eat right up.
4. Roast those puppies over your fire.

 

Who knows, maybe you can even con your kids into taking a nap "under the stars" when they're done. I wish I had!

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!

Paper Butterfly

With two sheets of construction paper and a pipe cleaner you can make a pretty butterfly to hang in your window or from your ceiling.

 

Things You Need:

• 2 pieces of construction paper (or two magazine pages)
• 1 pipe cleaner
• 1 piece of string cut to about 30"
• scotch tape (optional)

What You Do:

1. Accordion fold one piece of paper every 1/2" or so lengthwise. (This means, fold and crease from one end half an inch, flip it over, fold it again a half an inch and so forth and so on until you get to the end of the page so that the paper is never closed in on itself and looks like an accordion.)
2. Accordion fold the other piece every 1/2" or so width wise. 
3. While still folded, fold each paper in half (as in fold the stack of folds you have to make like a "V" -so the two ends meet up and it kind of looks like a fan.)
4. Now you have two pairs of wings, each set a different length.
5. Fold the pipe cleaner in half and twist up two inches from the bent closed end, leaving the two ends free. (These will be the antennae.)
6. Now place the wings in the pipe cleaner so the two loose ends of pipe cleaner sandwich the wings and the wings rest on the top of the twist, or butterfly body. (If you want, tape the wings together first around the middle bends.)
7. Place the middle of the string here too. That will be your hanger.
8. Twist the rest of the pipe cleaner up so the wings are set in place, making the top of the butterfly body.
9. Separate the two "antennae" and twirl the ends.
10. Tie the two ends of string together to make your loop from which to hang your butterfly.

         Trust me, this is all easier done than said.

Game: Color Hop

This is a very simple game my 4 year old and 2 year old like to play. I started playing it to help my 2 year old with his colors in a fun way and get a little exercise but my 4 year old also thinks it's fun. (I must admit, as an adult, I get bored of it a lot quicker!)

What You Need:
9 different colors of construction paper. (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, white and black is what we have.)
A piece of white paper.


The Set Up:
Set up the nine sheets of paper in a 3x3 grid on the floor.
Cut the white paper into 9 equal squares and draw on each one of the 9 colors.

What You Do:
Whoever is "It" has the stack of cards face down. "It" flips over the top card and calls out the color. The first player runs or jumps to stand on that color. Then just go it rounds so everybody playing gets a turn several times. No winners, it's just fun way to learn colors! We take turns being "It", switching whenever we get through the 9 colors once.

Q-Tip Dino

Often I come across a craft that is so cute and easy and clever I just have to go home and do it with the kids even if it means buying white q-tips for a whole dollar at the store (pardon us, our q-tips had pink sticks.). We went to our local children's museum one day and all around the art room these guys were hanging:


Of course, having a couple dino-kids as I do, I was so excited to go home and try it. And then we did it again, and again. I think Spiff made about a dozen of these in one week alone. By the end of that week, I had moved onto Euplocephalus fossils just to do something different. Just cut out a dinosaur skull from white paper and make the appropriate black holes for eyes and nose. On a another piece of paper draw some lines for guides then go to town with glue and q-tips. Bend some for the feet, cut 3 into halves for ribs. Easy peasy and pretty darn cute. If we're calling dinosaur bones cute.

Magazine Cut-Out Ornaments

This is a really simple ornament that's great for preschoolers (and something I made myself when I was in preschool- and my mom still has it!). It is simply two pieces of paper glued together with a string for hanging sandwiched between. We found a couple wintery images in some of our old children's magazines and traced around them with a tupperware container and pencil to make a nice circle. Then we cut out the circles. We brushed glue on the back side of one paper then positioned a length of looped yarn on it so that the ends would be sandwiched between the two discs or paper with a loop to hang hanging out. Then we slapped on the other paper so the winter image faced out. Just make sure your the string is coming out the top and your pictures aren't upside down. That's it. Easy peasy.

Gingerbread Man Paper Chain

Remember making paper doll chains? Well, for the holiday season I made some "Gingerbread Man" chains out of brown paper to decorate our front door. Here's how you do it.

What You Need:

• brown paper, about a 5" wide strip cut off from a roll of brown packaging paper.
• scissors
• red and silver glitter glue
• black marker

What You Do:

• Accordion fold the strip of brown paper all the way from one end to the other making a fold every 2.75 inches or so.*
• On the front of your "book" draw your ginerbread man, making sure the arms reach all the way to the left and right edges.

• Cut him out, through all the layers. making sure NOT to cut out around the hands. Every other body part should be cut around.
• Open up your book. You should have a continuous chain of a dozen (or so) of gingerbread men.
• Decorate with glitter glue buttons and "icing" and black marker faces.
  
• Hang 'em up!

*Hint: If you cut your paper from a roll, you might want to weight and flatten your folded paper strip in a heavy book overnight before you cut your men so that they lie flat. Otherwise you can always tape them to your wall.

Printable Cut and Paste: Ice Cream Cone