Letter A-make your own colored sand

A was for art-make your own colored sand. Maybe it should have been a is for Are you ready to make a huge mess? Poor Heather! I feel that must be what she is thinking right now!


I feel bad because Heather's boys did the colored sand craft and they colored themselves. I think when Demi adds water to her sensory box of colored sand she might turn herself rainbow colors. I spent a little time thinking about this and how to solve this problem after the children went to bed tonight. I started thinking how children's paints will run when they get wet. I know this because I use that method to make my children paint dots to paint pictures. I started thinking that maybe my craft acrylic paints would work. I got out a small yogurt cup of sand and added a small squirt of paint and mixed with a plastic spoon (one I use for crafts). I ended up with wet purple paint. It felt sticky wet and did get on my fingers. I let it dry and it ended up clumpy (you can see a lot of clumps in the picture). The clumps broke up very easy in my hand and when I put some purple painted sand in water the color did not run, come off, or make any type of mess on my hands. I did have some mess in the cup I mixed it in and I had to set it out to dry the paint but if I did this outside in the sun on a warm day I wouldn't have any worries with large messes. Using acrylic craft paints gives a lot more choices of colors but I wouldn't do this if I had children who like to eat sand. My two older children don't eat sand (anymore) and my baby isn't old enough to get into our sensory table. Using food color I think would work wonderful if you have dry sand, dry hands, and want to do sand art in jars, bottles or sprinkle on spots of glue on a paper. I think it would work well if you layer sand in a small glass jar and add a small candle in the center (for gift giving). Using paint I think will work well if you like to use wet sand to play in and have children that don't eat sand. If you try this please share with me how it works for you! I would love to know how it works for others! When I do this with my 2 year old I will have her put the sand in an old plastic bottle and I will add the squirt of paint. I will help her put the lid on and let her shake it up to mix the color. I will pour it out of the bottle and put on a tray to dry. I will make sure the tray is out of her reach because the painted sand could make a large mess if a 2 year old plays in it when it is wet! Heather, I feel so bad knowing I got your children all messy with food dye! I should warn everyone I hardly ever look up directions on how to do crafts. Most of the time I try out things to see what happens. I don't spend much time thinking about what I need or what might go wrong. I do have lots of crafts that flop or make large messes! Did you all notice the large mess on my table with the dyed rice and flour glue? I am still finding some rice on my floor and I have cleaned it up several times already! I don't rent and we live in a very old farm house so it is OK when messes happen in our house. I save all of Travis's old worn out/stained play shirts for painting/crafting tops for Demi so she doesn't ruin all of her clothes with all the crafting we do. My house has no carpet so crafts are easy to clean up. I hope I didn't cause a ton of parents and children to cover themselves in food colors!

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?

Letter A

Unplug-books

We are happy we (Demi and I) got to do the unplug project this week!
This weeks project is Books. I noticed last week that Demi forgot the sound of the letter A. She was making an eh sound instead of an ah sound for the letter a. I decided to spend some time with her reviewing letter sounds. My idea to use the unplug book project and review letter sounds was to make her a giant letter book. We used an old wallpaper book to create a special letter book.

I tore out all of the small sheets to get to the first large page. I used the small pages to cut out some letters. She decorated the letters with markers. Then I gave her a cap of glue and a paintbrush to glue the letters to the book
Here is her A page. We will add more to it all week. I will try to share a picture at the end of the week.

Mitten madness part 1

I had to come back and edit this one because I just noticed I forgot to put the title on it.

I was in a rush to make up a bunch more craft kits to keep Demi busy for the next few weeks. My thinking went something like this...

I need to make up more things to keep her busy during the time I teach Travis.
I would like stuff that she will have fun with.
Of course it needs to be something educational.
Maybe a theme craft.
I could do a fall, Thanks giving, Christmas, or a New Years theme.
I love using themes but I never seem to have the time to post them on my blog. By the time I get some free time to take pictures of the final projects and find a bit more free time to sit at the computer to upload them the holiday is long over.
Maybe a theme that can last a long time and work for all my children.
Hmm... A theme that can work for anyone with children.
Lots of ideas start rolling around in my head but they all will take more time than I think I have.
I like to keep things simple and fast.
I don't want to spend a ton of time making things that my daughter will only use for a few minutes. I want things I can make up faster than she can do them.
Simple....
Maybe a winter theme. Hmmm... What goes with winter??? OH I KNOW! Mittens!!!! They are very simple! Hey I can draw mittens (or something that will resemble mittens) without searching for a pattern. Yes, I will start with mittens tonight.


That folks is the beginning of my mitten madness. I already have enough mitten kits made up to keep my children busy for the next month or two and enough more ideas to keep them busy until spring. I have pictures of most of them so now I need to do is post pictures here to share them with you.

I gave myself 3 rules before starting this.

Rule 1.
All my kits have to be mittens. LOL! I have a habit of getting off track with things like this. Often I start simple projects like this and it quickly goes from something like simple paper mittens into other things like dress up costumes or some other crazy thing. When I started this last night I thought I was only going to make up 2 or 3 mitten kits. Once I got started I couldn't seem to stop so what started as 2 or 3 kits is now 40 or 50. LOL! I guess things do go much better when I keep focused.


Rule 2.
I have to keep all my mitten kits simple and FAST to make up. I can not spend a lot of time on them. I will need keep focused on how short Demi's attention span is. It is silly for me to spend 1 hour making something she will only use for 5 minutes. That is the one thing that I always seem to forget when I make her things.


Rule 3. I will NOT buy anything to make my kits. I am going to use ONLY the things I have at home already to do this project. I do always have craft supplies around but now is the perfect time for this challenge because I am out of many of my normal craft supplies that I like to keep on hand so I will be in the perfect situation to show others how I make due with what I have on hand.

I am sure most of you are familiar with most of the projects they are the well known cut, paste, paint, count, match, lace, and such the normal craft learning projects for young children. I am just going to do them all with just mittens. In under an hour last night I made up a ton of simple kits. I seem to work best at 1 am. LOL!

I started by making up several paint sets for the kits. Below you can see I used a frozen waffle box to put my paints drops on. It is tempera paint just like I posted in my last post.



After my spots dried I cut the paints into strips. I then glued on bottle tops to use as water cups.

Mitten Kit #1

I drew free hand a simple mitten shape. I then used that mitten to trace others on a page so they would be close in size to each other. My printer is out of ink and I said I would NOT buy anything for this project so drawing all of my mittens is what I needed to do. I drew them very fast keeping in mind that my girl is 2 years old and will not care if my mittens are a little off. LOL!

I then cut off the bottom 2 mittens on the page. I cut all the way around them. I did draw a line for a cuff just because I thought they would look a bit more like mittens with the line. LOL!
I then added Q-tips for paint brushes and a glue stick for kit and it is done.

I put it all in a brown lunch bag to store until we plan on using it. I put a number 1. on the outside of the bag because I only have 4 glue sticks. When kit one is done I will move the glue stick from this kit to another bag. I will know that only the first 4 have glue in them. Doing that I hope will save me from having to look for glue when I am in a rush. In my house whenever the baby needs to be fed or when Travis needs help with school that is the same time Demi yells to glue and I can't find the glue sticks. I hope this system fixes this problem.

Directions.

I will add water to the bottle top on the paint strip and I will tell Demi to paint the cut mittens then match them up to the ones on the paper and glue them in place.

Mitten kit #2

Same kind of kit as kit one. It has 2 mittens on a half sheet of paper, 2 mittens cut out, and a paint set but this one I added in some tiny polka dots. Rule #2 was to make them up fast. I couldn't find my paper punch so I cut them out by hand. YES they are not perfect circles but I cut out a ton at a time and if my children say anything I will just point out how hand knit items are never perfect circles. LOL!


To put the dots neatly in the lunch bag I made up a simple envelope. I didn't waste time taping it shut. I figured just folding it would keep them from going all over inside the bag.


Mitten kit #3
This kit is a lacing set. I used a cracker box to make this. I traced around the outside wider than the mitten. I could have just made a larger mitten with holes on it and skipped the drawing on the inside but I plan on letting Demaris decorate the mitten and I thought the holes might get in the way with the decorating. In the past Demi has filled in lacing or brad holes (with glue, paint, paper, and such) on craft projects. Doing it this way I can tell her to decorate the mitten and leave the holes for the pretty ribbon. I used thin ribbon with a piece of tape on the end for the laces. Yarn, shoelaces, or string would work just as well. The ribbon was right next to me so it was quicker using this than going to get the laces or string that was in another room. I was able to stick with rule 2 and do it fast. I tied the ribbon to one of the holes so it wouldn't get lost.

I made up 2 of them. One has less holes than the other. Demi often looses interest with lots of holes.
Mitten Kit #4
Pattern mittens.
I cut out a bunch of mittens out of 2 colors of construction paper. I then cut strips of card stock and glued squares of the same colors in a pattern on them. Demi will copy the pattern on the cards with the mittens. I will add more colors and patterns if she still has an interest after doing this set. This thinking keeps me on track. I am keeping in mind that my toddler often looses interest fast with stuff like this.

Mitten Kit #5
story book mittens. This book I will just give her to use however she wants. A book shaped like a mitten will make her smile and even with nothing special to do with it but use a set of crayons on it will keep her busy for some time.

Mitten Kit #6
More storybook mittens.
This one is just like the other one (I made up a large stack of them). I will have her decorate the cover and then have her tell me a story about the mittens on the front and back cover. I will write the story on the pages on the right side and we will together make pictures to go with the story on the left sided pages.
Mitten Kit #7
ABC letter match mittens

I know I promised not to buy any supplies so for this so I had to shrink down my mittens. I did start this mitten project with almost a full pack of construction paper but I know with projects like this I run out of paper fast. I have many more things to make up with colored construction paper so I need to find ways to use less.

The picture below shows how much smaller my ABC mittens are than the other mittens I have made.
I am sure you can guess the object is to match the upper case letter to the lower case letter.


Mitten Kit #8
furry mittens
I cut out some red mittens sorry this set doesn't look the same shape as my other mittens. I told you I am not using a pattern. My daughter will not care I thing they still resemble mittens. Anyway, I am adding cotton balls to this kit. I plan on showing her how to pull apart a cotton ball to make fur for the cuff. She can then glue it into place. BTW the fur laying on the bottom of the right mitten is just one cotton ball pulled apart some.
Mitten Kit#9
sparkle mittens

I don't see any gems, sequences , or others sparkles in my craft box so I am using glitter paint, glitter glue, and shiny ribbons for this kit. Other things that would work is aluminum foil, foil wrapping paper, tubes of glitter, or shiny buttons.

Mitten Kit#10
peekaboo mittens
This one is my favorite so far! I must think better and be more creative when I am tired. I made this one up VERY late at night! I was so tired I could hardly keep my eyes open when I got the idea and made this one.
I cut mittens out of a cracker box so they would be stiff. I drew and cut out a simple set of eyes, nose and mouth for Demi to glue on (Travis can draw a face right on the plate if he makes one). I cut some yarn for hair. I am not wasting time digging out other colors of yarn so if Travis does one and wants brown hair he can paint the yarn or color it with markers. I will be teaching him to use what we have. LOL! I added in a set of paper mittens to cover the brown cardboard. I don't care if my children choose to cover up the brown but I thought I should stick a set in in case they said the brown was ugly. I didn't add a paint set in this bag. I did add some stickers and things to decorate the mittens and a small set of colored pencils. I added brads to make the hands play peekaboo. I have to thank Kate for inspiring me to use brads for children's crafts. She had a bunch of brad crafts on her blog a long time ago. I LOVED seeing her crafts with movable parts and I quickly became obsessed with making movable crafts with my children. My family has been big brad crafters from the day she shared hers. LOL! When I started my mitten theme I knew I needed to make a pair movable with brads my first thought was just hands waving hello and goodby. When I was trying to think of something to attach the moving hands to I thought of paper plates. I started thinking the plate was a bit small for hands unless I made them smaller. That is when I got the thought to use the plate upside down for a face and add mittens to play peekaboo. I was so excited when a paper plate face popped into my head! I hope my children like this craft as much as I think they will. Below is a picture of the stuff laying on the plate so you can get an idea of what it will look like.


I didn't bend the brads but I am sure you get the idea. The hands nose and mouth are all drawn quick free hand. I cut them out for Demi to glue on. The face might not look like this when finished because Demi puts mouths on upside down most of the time. LOL!
This kit I have stored in a brown lunch bag like the others only I had to bend the plate a bit for it to fit inside.



That is all for now. I have a lot more mittens to share when I get back to the computer.

How our baby learned to say her ABC's

I often wonder when people say my child is able to do this or that HOW did they teach that? I do understand that all children learn at different times and I am not big on comparing children. I do love to see and hear how other moms teach little children. I am going to try to post some of the how I do it on this blog. PLEASE understand I am NOT a person with a teaching degree. I am just a mom of 2 who tries to educate my children and every so often something works well for us. This might not work for you. I have noticed in my 2 children they both love to learn but in very different ways. This story most likely will make you laugh.

This HOW story is saying ABC's. This kind of happened naturally with very little work on my part. My daughter started yelling HEY at around 10 months. I thought it was hey anyway. Whenever someone would come into the room she was in she would shout HEY! Baby talk is funny sometimes. A Mom KNOWS what her child is saying..... WELL, I like to think I know what my baby is saying this story shows I might not ALWAYS know. LOL! I thought she was saying HEY! I would always reply hello! This went on for a month or so. Then one day she was shouting HEY, Hey, HEY! at my husband. He responded with B. I thought B????? What is he talking about. She shouted again hey. and then once again my husband said "B!" It then clicked! He thought she was saying A. I was sure my husband didn't know our daughter was saying hello by shouting hey. I giggled to myself thinking silly guy he doesn't know what our baby is saying. I have with both my children tried to use baby chatter to get words. Like if a child is saying bu bu bu I will pick up a book and say book? I know that isn't what they are saying but I If I can find something close to the word I will try to get them to use it. Later in the day when my husband was at work my baby started with the hey again. I started to think...... Hmmm.... ABC's are higher on my list than having her shout hey at people...... Maybe my hubby is on to something..... Then I did it! I replied to my my daughter with a loud excited B! She yelled A and I would nod smile and yell B. Later in the day we did A, B, C!!!! In just a few days we could do over half the alphabet. THIS WAS FUN!!! About 2 weeks after my daughters first birthday we took a long trip to visit my husbands family. Demi started with her A! I said "B" and on we went.... By this time she wouldn't repeat the ones she knew she would just say the next one so it went like this....


Baby "A"
Mommy "B"
Baby "C"
Mommy "D"
Baby "E"
Mommy "F" She didn't know what came next so she repeated me.
Baby "F" (sounded more like ehehfffsshh)
Mommy "G"
Baby "G"
Mommy "H"
Baby "H"
Mommy "I"
Baby "I" (pointing to her eye)
Mommy "J"
Baby "J"
Mommy "K"
Baby "K"
It went on like that for L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S (Baby said essssssssssss), T, U, V then my favorite W (baby duba duba you)X, Y, Z! We all had fun with it. We said them just like that a few times.

A few hours later (still riding in the car) my husband tried to get her to do it again...... Daddy said A and baby looked confused! She wouldn't play along. LOL!!!

My husband turned to me and said "How do you get her to do that?" I laughed because it started out as something he taught her but he didn't even know it. Once I told him to shout A like he was yelling Hey. He did and then she was happy to play along. I guess you can say the way we taught my little girl to say her ABC's is to shout them when she was learning to talk. We still play this game sometimes.

I want to tell you at that time she didn't know what any letters looked like or what they sounded like. She didn't even know any of the song. She just repeated me and we used that as a starting point to build on.

That is the peak into a fun learning moment in our house. We have TONS of not so fun moments and as new ones come up or I remember some of the old ones I will share them also.