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?

Mitten madness part 5

Mitten kit #41
In/out sight word activity.


I plan not to point at the words or even say anything about the words. Travis learned to read the words in and out without me having to "teach". I think he must have seen the words so often with games like this he just picked it up. I will say lets see what is IN this mitten. Then ask Demi to take them OUT and set them on the paper near the word out. We will talk about the surprises we found IN the mitten. We will chat about IN and OUT. I will try to sound very excited as we take turns finding new stuff in the mitten. I will let you all know if it works as well as it did with Travis.

Mitten kit #42
Right and left mittens.

If the mittens go on the wrong hands the fingers show and they will get cold (I will shiver until we get it right).


Mitten kit #43
Mitten left right games.
I cut out about 20 mittens and wrote left and right on them. If you flip the left hand mitten over it says right on the other side.

First game I came up with is mitten stomp. I call it mitten stomp so it sounds fun enough for my 7 year old to join in on something he might not want to. LOL! I set all the cards out on the table and as I said right or left they would slap hands down on the correct mittens as fast as they could. Travis felt like he was playing on a game show and the hands are like a button to hit hard and fast. We laughed when we made a mistake. Each round they did correctly they would hand me that mitten so we had one less on the table. It isn't really a game because you have no winner but my children didn't seem to notice. LOL! They are having fun with it so I know they will want to do it again. I noticed Demi quickly learned her right hand from playing the game tonight but she doesn't seem to understand the other hand is her left. LOL! Second game I came up with was right and left hand mitten "twister". Demi tried to join in but she didn't understand that she should keep her hands and feet on the cards until I called out a new move to make. We all had fun and laughed. I know she will quickly get the idea if she watches her brother play another time or two.

Game three is a "treasure hunt". We lay the cards out and turn right and left following the pattern on the floor to find a treasure tonight was a small pack of m&m's hid at the end of the mitten trail.
Game 4 for right and left mittens looks like the treasure hunt but we march and call out the hands we find. Like left left to the left, right right lets go right, right right right again, left left it say left. Children like it when I do silly chants and lead the march.



Mitten kit #43
Sight word mittens.
Once Demi gets good with in and out I will add Up, down, on, and off. I will read the cards and then ask Demi to help me find a place to put them. I remember having so much fun with Travis playing games like this. With him I didn't use paper mittens I used plastic Easter eggs for the first game, but it is the same idea. Below is an example of how I will introduce them with a toy house. If the first mitten is up I will tell her it says up and let her put it someplace up. If/when we mess up we will giggle. I will be sure to make mistakes and show them to her when we play. Then she can fix my mitten that is in the wrong place.
If you are thinking you might like to do this but don't have a toy house or castle to play you can make one with a box. If you don't like that idea below is the same game only using cars.

Car on the mitten and mitten on a car.
Car off the mitten and mitten off the car.

Mitten in a car (this car opens up).
Car goes up and down a block ramp.

With Travis I also remember I used a lot of trains for doing things like this because he loved Trains. I used cars for the pictures above only because it was the first toy I saw. They are small so I can toss cars and cards all in a small bag and add them to our box of kits to play whenever we want.

A sight word game Travis LOVED playing with me was taking a sight word card set like the ones above and using our bodies and the furniture to go with it. He would call out a noun like the couch and then I would pick a card to use with it. If the card said IN I would have to try and climb IN the couch. Seeing mommy getting under the cushions on the sofa cracked him up. I would get UNDER or ON the table, pretend to climb UP the rug, and other silly things like that. He never did know he was learning he always thought it was just silly play. I will play this with Demi soon. I am getting excited about it now that I am remembering all the fun we had with this. Children don't need to read to play this game this is a game you can play with a baby to learn the words in and on. When I do this I will read the cards and maybe Demi will like it so much she might learn the words on the cards when we play together just from playing so much and I won't have to "teach" her. I will let you know how it goes.


Mitten kit #45
Mitten bowling.
Toss a snowball at the mittens.


I took a large soda pop box and cut out 10 rectangles
I used children's scissors to make a score line one inch from the bottom.

I made a fold on the line so they would stand up.
For me the way above is very quick so I picked that one but if you don't like making folds for the stands you could cut little strips and add a slit to stand them up (like the old paper dolls stands).Adding a strip with a staple and a bend also works (picture frame style).

I stapled mittens on the front and added a ball we had. You can make them with normal looking pins or any other thing you can think of. I put numbers on my pins for us to put back in number order but you could put words, letters, shapes, or other things on it them. For an older child you can put the hard to learn multiplication facts on the pins and only have him answer the ones he doesn't knock down. Put the answers on the back for him to check. I find with Travis games like this can make memory work fun and he doesn't notice that school can be hard.

Guess I am not the best bowler. I left 3 pins standing. At least I know it works. LOL!
Later tonight Travis took a roll of newsprint paper (it's like a roll of wrapping paper) and rolled it out to make a lane for his game. LOL! He drew a square at the end for all the pins to set inside of. I should have taken a picture but I didn't notice what he was doing. Before I noticed what was going on Demi drew on his paper and tore it some. After that Travis didn't want to play anymore.

Mitten madness part 3

Mitten kit #21
Paint and sticker mittens.
I made up a large bunch of kits just like this one because my daughter LOVES stickers and we have lots of stickers around. They are so quick to put together and keep her busy for a long time. I did have to add a page of construction paper to each of the kits because she wanted to glue her mittens on something after she painted and put stickers on them. The stickers came in a large box that had many strips of stickers inside. Bought it several months ago in the dollar section at the grocery store.

I am running a bit low on paper lunch bags. I am reusing them but I have so many kits made up that need to go in bags I know I will run out with just bagging up what I have done already. Remember I promised not to buy anything so I needed to find a new idea to store them. This was I have started doing. It's just 2 sheets of paper folded a small amount around 3 sides and then added a few staples. The top is left open. The paint strip had to be folded for it to fit inside. The next set of paints I will make on shorter strips. Paint dots that run in 2 rows will fit better inside the envelopes.
Mitten kit #22
cutting practice mitten (2 year old level).
I found a mitten stamp in my son's craft box. I had to find a way to use it!
Stamped out a page of mitten rows.

Cut them into strips so my 2 year old can use her little scissors to cut them apart.
She is still using the spring loaded scissors most of the time. They open back up so she only has to squeeze to cut with them. I did see her using regular scissors to cut play dough last week so she might be able to use regular kid scissors soon. I like giving her small cuts because then she doesn't have to struggle with it.

Below is the kit. It is a paper with the lines on it, the mitten strips, scissors, and glue. I put one on the glue page so you can see the mittens hanging.

I will give her the strip of mittens and her scissors and have her cut them on the purple lines. The strips are about 1 inch across so she will only have to make 2 maybe 3 snips to cut out the mitten. A simple clothes line is on another page for her to glue her mittens on.


Mitten kit #23

I stamped out a bunch of mittens in several colors and cut some small pieces of string. Demi will match the pairs of mittens and glue them on strings

Mitten kit #24
Because I had the stamper right in front of me I put it with some 1/2 sheets of paper and a plate. All it needs is a little paint on the plate and she can stamp mittens on the papers. I like using 1/2 sheets of paper for crafts because they take up less room and work well for little ones.
Mitten kit #25
Remember how I made kit16? When I was making the circles for the snowball outline I was thinking how the cap worked well for pincher grip/fine motor skills. I had to find a way to add it into a kit for Demi. After a little thinking, I came up with a snowball stamper. I glued a cotton ball to the bottom of the cap then put it with a 1/2 sheet of blue construction paper and a paper plate. All I will need to do is give her some white paint on the plate and she can paint snowballs with it.
Mitten kit #26

I was making a bit of a large mess on the table. I needed to pick stuff up so I could keep going. when picking up I came up with this kit. He is just cotton balls, 2 tiny mittens, a Q-tip, and paper punch dots. It is all stuff that was on the table in my way.
Here is another way I made due with what I had, the stapler was not on the table but I had a roll of masking tape within reach. I used a little tape to make little envelopes for the paper dots (I tossed the little mittens in with the dots).
Mitten kit #27
Cutting practice mittens.
Another cutting exercise. Cut out mittens and strips of paper the same width of the mittens. Demi will make fringe for the mittens by cutting simple slits and using glue to attach them. I will show her how to roll them but last time I showed her that she wasn't ready to do it. Travis likes this kind of craft. If he does this on he most likely will cover all the mitten with curly cut tabs.
Mitten kit #28
You are going to know I am crazy when you look at this one. LOL! I often do crafts of this sort but I don't often share them because I feel silly. I tell people how I grab odd things from the kitchen to use for crafts so I guess this one is not all that odd. I was tossing out some of our fall stuff to make room for more winter things (school stuff). I had a set of counting cards shaped like pumpkins and a bag of pumpkin seeds for Demi to put on the cards. I don't think that is odd but I do think not being able to toss them out is! I couldn't toss them because I knew Demi loved using them. That is why I had to come up with a winter craft to use our pumpkin seeds. After a bit of thinking I came up with a pumpkin seed snowflake. You can use buttons, beads, rice, beans,or even paper punch dots.
For my 2 year old I drew 3 lines to mark the 6 points. I will have her glue the seeds on the lines. My older child he can draw his own lines or do it without lines. I had to use the ugly brown paper for this kit because I am very low on blue and I don't want to run out.



Mitten kit #29
Q-tip snowflake. OK, not very exciting but it will keep my toddler busy for a bit. I will give her 3 Q-tips and show her how to break them by bending them a few times. I then will show her this one and ask her to glue her Q-tips on a sheet of paper to make a snowflake. I doubt hers will not be even but it will keep her busy for a bit.




Mitten kit #30
Musical mittens.
I am sure you have all made the paper plate shakers before. The only thing different I did was add a string for a handle on the back and I cut out a mitten for my daughter to glue on the front. I still have pumpkin seeds in a bag so we will be putting some of them on the inside.

This is the front.
The inside.
The back side sorry it is a little dark I guess I didn't have the flash on.

We will staple all around the outside when it is done. I will tell her to put her hand palm side on the plate with string over the back of her hand and we will wave and dance to make music.