Letter A

A is for Ant!

I am happy to say not real ants. We do have several real ladybugs and boxelder bugs around the house but I rather not think about that right now. Here is our army of ants.

I wanted to make an ant stamp so Demi could stamp ants all over her A page in her alphabet book we started yesterday but my ant stamp didn't turn out. I will try again to cut one out later tonight after all the children go to bed. If it turns out OK she can do that tomorrow. I think if I make an ant with no legs it will look more like an ant print than trying to cut tiny legs. Anyway, I had to come up with a quick replacement craft for her to do. Egg carton ants was the first thing I could think of. The all black ant is one I made. The 2 partial black ones Demi made. The red ant Travis made. Travis didn't want to make a black carpenter ant he thought a red fire ant would be more fun to make. I am happy he joined us for craft time. Travis often chooses to go outside to play or in his room to build when we are doing crafts.

Picture of Demi painting one of her ants.

I took a picture of Travis working on his. I know the day will come when he decides not to do crafts anymore (he isn't a craft loving child) so I will try to keep snapping pictures and treasure the times he does decide to join in with us.

Oh! I almost forgot! Are some of you wondering the story behind this ant?
You might be saying I have seen black ants and red ants but NEVER a pink ant! Perhaps some of you have already figured out the story behind this ant. Travis and I both had a hard time trying to figure it out. Demi insisted on making this pink ant. She painted this one after she finished her two black ants. She spent about an hour painting this one pink. She was careful to paint it all over. She kept saying it was a special princess ant. Travis and I had never heard of a princess ant. Demi explained it was the mommy ant. Travis and I thought needing a pink mommy ant was funny. She told us like the one on the Magic School bus show, a mommy princess ant. It took me about an hour after that to figure out she painted the princess's mother. I wasn't thinking about how a mom of a princess is what some people call the QUEEN! LOL! Isn't she a pretty queen ant? I guess only two year old princess crazy girls see that a queen ant needs to be pink. After all, she is the queen! LOL! Demi looked so relived when I finally guessed it was a queen ant. She was getting a bit frustrated with us not understanding who the pink princess mommy ant was. Looking back I now I wonder why did it take me so long to figure that out?

Letter A

What do we say when we see two BIG SCARY "A" MONSTERS???


AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! Ahhhh! AHHHHHHHHHH! Run away from the two, big, and scary "A" monsters!

Working on the letter A I came up with the idea to make a letter A monster mask. I thought Demi would have fun remembering the A sound by scarring me into saying "ah" (a sound) with her "A" monster mask.

I took an empty cereal box and I cut it into a square (Demi wanted her monster to have a square face). I like to find fun ways to reuse our food boxes once we empty them.


I cut out eyes and put a letter a in the center for a nose (an A monster needed to have an A on it). I gave her some triangles (wallpaper scraps), yarn pieces, cap of glue, and a paintbrush. I let her decorate her A monster however she wanted.



Travis didn't like the idea of making a silly mask or a letter A. After all, an eight year old boy would never want to join in with that kind of baby stuff. Once he heard Demi and I talking about making a scary furry monster Travis came running and said he might want to make his own monster. He didn't think Demi was making hers look scary enough. At first he said he might need to make one to show her how to make a real scary mask. He said 2 year olds don't know how to make things scary like 8 year olds do. He then pointed out how he HAD to make one but it was ONLY so his sister could see that a monster with a big A nose makes the same sound as one with a little a nose (my children are so cute).
This is a close up of Demi's before she got it finished. Look at the sharp triangle teeth!

Here is a close up of Travis's before he finished. LOOK at all the scary fur on this monster!
Travis put a big A nose on his mask. Then we put jumbo pop sticks on the bottom to finish them.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! They scared me again!! Aren't they very scary?

More paper crafts

We made a bunch of birds for out Christmas tree. They are VERY simple to make my son has no problem making them. Even a toddler can glue on the head and tail if you cut it and glue the head together first.

The same site has some tubbies.



You can find the cute little critter below here.


Science/history
If you are learning about Dino's you can build some paper ones.

Boy dolls?
Need some football player paper dolls?How about a dancing monkey?And if you still need something (like I often do) to keep the children busy so you can wrap gifts, feed the baby, make dinner, or just a moment of peace. This site has everything from Santa to the Great Pyramid to build. School age children can build them but I doubt a preschooler could. An adult can build then have a toddler or preschooler paint and play with them. I have my school age son builds them. My toddler and him paint, color, and decorate. Then my toddler can play with them as toys.

If you click on the Santa it should take you right to the printable Santa page.

Printable Nativity, giving ideas, and update on future plans

LOOK! I found this printable cone doll Nativity set! I am so excited!! It reminds me of my childhood. We are coloring our set up and I can't wait to play with it. I am letting Demi color the animals. Travis and I are coloring the people.

The same site has this Christmas village. If you didn't want a Christmas village you could use this as a winter town or tiny doll houses. I can think of many ways to make this a learning set for a preschooler. I am thinking making tiny paper dolls and using them to teach jobs and people in the community. Teaching words like in, out, on, off, cold, warm, and so many other things. Even manners by having people greet each other and welcome them to come visit in each others houses. All of that might have to wait until Jan when I have more free time.


The same site has small printable gift boxes.

Giving ideas for children
I like to keep my personal giving a secret but I have to say I have had a hard time finding giving ideas for little children so I feel that sharing children giving ideas is something I should do in case someone else also has a hard time finding ways teaching little ones to give to others. This year I am printing up a bunch of tiny gift boxes. Travis is putting them together. Demi and Travis together will be filling them with candy (Hershey kisses). Travis picks out what he wants them to say and I print out a page full of the sayings for him to cut out and stick inside the boxes. Sayings we like are Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, or even a Bible verse. I let Travis choose because it is his project. We will take a bag with many boxes in it with us every trip out we make and Travis can hand them out to whomever he wants (strangers in the parking lot and such). Most of the time he picks cashiers. He hands them out and says this is for you have a nice day, Merry Christmas, or something else. I wish I could remember some of the things he said when he was little and gave out beaded ornaments I should have wrote it down because I remember laughing as some of the words he chose to say to people.

One year we went door to door with plates of Christmas cookies. I was new to the area and I didn't know anyone on my road. Travis made a Christmas cards (with hand prints he was a baby) and I stuck the card in the plastic wrap with the plate of cookies. We made up small coco gift packs one year with a mug from the dollar store a plastic spoon covered with chocolate and a pack of coco all tucked in the cup and wrapped with plastic and a red bow at the top. A very young child can stick a pack of coco in a mug and dip the spoons in the chocolate. The melted chocolate stays melted even after it cools some so he couldn't burn himself. He was little and I did have to wrap the spoons he couldn't wrap them in plastic wrap or tie a ribbon on the spoon. One year Travis made candy canes with pony beads (red and white) on a pipe cleaner. We punched holes with a paper punch on the message strips that year and stuck the tag with the saying right on the ornament between the beads. They all are inexpensive child friendly gifts that went over well. I don't know that people LOVED the gifts. LOL! I don't know if they all even celebrate Christmas. I do know that they all seemed to enjoy having a little child hand them a small gift they didn't expect. I am thinking that Travis is now 7 so in the next few years some people might not think it is cute if he handed them a pony bead ornament with a bible verse on it. BUT I think for many more years most people with think him giving a tiny box of chocolates a nice thing even if they don't celebrate Christmas. Demi is very young and cute (like all 2 year olds are) I think she is able to pass out her beaded ornaments she makes to people and nobody will be offended. People find it cute. They could always say to her no thank you if they wanted but I doubt anyone will.

update on some things.
I want to let you all know I didn't forget to post my last 5 mitten ideas. I just took a little break. I will try to post them in the next few days. I will post a new theme in Jan to teach and keep little ones busy. I also wanted to say that I am going to try to post some simple science kits and experiments once a week also starting in Jan. I would start it now but I don't have the time. I have had it on my list of things to do for all of this school year but I haven't got around to doing it yet. I have been doing a lot of thinking back to when Travis was little and I remember having a lot of fun in the little co-op/playgroup I had at my house. I would like to give that same thing to Demi. I am thinking if I post a weekly learning/craft idea for toddlers and a Science kit/experiment for children (my son age but add in how to do it with toddlers) maybe by spring I will be able to have a preschool or toddler group and do a Science co-op once a week a week at my home. I have done preschool and toddler groups several times before at my house and I had lots of luck with that (but that was back when Travis was little). I did kind of try to set up a Science Co-op this year with my son but that did not work out at all. I think if I set it up and present it as a co-op to join I might not have problems with getting it going. I have met several mom's in my county, whenever I go into the library I run into several homeschool moms each time. I love our library. They do special projects for homeschoolers, they have homeschool services (part of that lets you keep books for 1 month at a time), and other wonderful things that are all set up to help homeschool students. I think if I post a note in the library I will get a lot of calls from people who are interested because a few have told me they are looking for something like this. We do have a co-0p in our area but the last time I checked into it the lady who runs it is from NY and nobody had any info on it to give me. I should look around again and see if I can find more out about it. I can't start a co-0p now because things are so busy at my house and I will need to wait until my hubby finishes our bathroom and puts up our ceiling blocks in the living room. He will have all of that (and I hope even more) done by spring so if I start trying out projects and putting them on this blog starting in Jan. I should have enough stuff prepared to start doing things with a group of children by spring. That is what I am going to try for anyway. We will have to see how it goes.

Paper fun

A few weeks ago I printed out some things off of print-n-play toys for some things to keep the children busy. I printed out this fish tank and stickers. Only I printed it all on regular paper and cut the circles out. Then Demi glued on the fish how she wanted them. She decided to glue on the fish and then play with the starfish circles. I later in the day found starfish circles hid all over the house.

I printed out Travis this little soccer game the same day. We have had lots of fun with this. Travis has spent hours playing this with Daddy and I. He has had hours of fun trying to flick balls in the goal alone (trying to get better to beat Daddy). A small triangle folded paper is the ball (like what boys flicked as footballs in middle school). My finger gets tired from flicking this ball for long periods of time. I am very surprised that this game has held up to all the playing time we have had with it. It is only a couple sheets of card stock paper. Our field now has some water spots on it. My guess is Travis washed his hands and didn't dry them before playing. LOL! The water spots hasn't affected the use of the board at all. I guess you can see that I was in a rush to put the game together and I only cut out the one page. That is why half the field has a white frame around it. I put this together. I don't think Travis (age 7) could put the goals together evenly. It isn't hard but if they are not lined up I think one goal would be easier to make a goal on than another. It only takes a couple minutes to glue the goals on and the 2 sides together so I think it was well worth the time.




This reindeer paper toy is one that my 7 year old can do by himself. It is very simple to make. We did not make take this picture I copied this picture from the site but ours looks like it.



Santa's holiday hand car is one I am making. I love the cute paper ornaments on this site!

Paper fun.

We have been printing off a lot of online paper projects lately. Below is a car Travis colored and put together. Demi colored one and we put it together for her but I can't find the picture of it.


We had a LOT of fun with this project. We all took turns creating our own paper critters. The one on the left I made . The one on the right is Travis's. The middle one Demi picked out from the colony she didn't want to create her own the first time we did them.Then we made a family critter. In my family we all seem to want to do things our own way and sometimes (often) tell each other how to do things. I don't like this so I thought if we made a family critter together we would all have to adjust to the way others want things. We all took turns picking things out to put on the critter. I even let Demi pick something each time (she picked flowers most of her turns). I don't think Rob liked that our critter was purple. Travis didn't like that I made the ears 2 different colors and uneven. I didn't like that Rob made our critter look like he messed his pants!!! We all had to encourage each other and I am sure it was hard for Rob and Travis not to complain about what others chose. I myself had a hard time choosing not to say anything about the poo pants (I know he thought I would say something)! We all laughed and built each other up. I guess this critter is NOT how any of my family members wanted it to look but that is the part that makes this little critter so special! BTW this critter looked much nicer when we first made him. I loaded our pictures into a folder and I can't find them so I had to take new ones of a critter Demi has been playing with for days now!.