[kid focus] snowman

I had two sizes of styrofoam balls sitting on my table, and Elle instantly thought they were snowmen. She loved the idea of actually turning them into real snowmen, so I got out my glue gun, some yarn, black eyelets, twigs, mini clothespins and orange paint. The great thing was that I actually had all of those supplies just sitting in my craft room.

To create the snowmen, we glued the two styrofoam balls together (1 large and 1 small for the mom and dad snowmen and 2 small for Elle and Liv's snowmen).  We took apart the mini clothespins and painted each piece orange. We pressed the painted clothespin piece into the styrofoam for a nose; stuck twigs in each side of the snowman for arms and pressed black eyelets into the styrofoam for eyes.  I filled in the eyes with black Stickles, but you could fill it in with black paint, marketer etc. We then hand crocheted scarves and hats for each of the snowman.  It ended up being a fast, impromptu activity which Elle couldn't wait to show off to her dad.

handprint turkey pie

I love this idea from Family Fun....such a fun way to let your kids help out in the kitchen for Thanksgiving.

[kids focus] thanksgiving coloring pages

While searching for some Thanksgiving images for Elle to color, I came across a great site -Artists Helping Children.  The site has a ton of arts and crafts project ideas.  I loved these coloring sheets for a few reasons - the actual artwork wasn't cheesy and they required some thought and interaction.  Elle had a great time coloring and thinking about what features and color crayons to use on each face.

[kid focus] pasta necklaces

For our Indian theme week, Elle and I made pasta necklaces.  I naively thought it would be a great activity to entertain two 2 year olds while their moms had a meeting...not so much. It worked much better as an activity with just Elle and I.

She probably had the most fun helping to make the colored pasta.  We put the pasta in a ziploc bag, added a few drops of alcohol ink (we used Tim Holtz inks by Ranger) and then shook the bags until the pasta was evenly coated.  The alcohol inks dry quickly so it was fast and easy. We then used clear elastic thread to make the necklaces.  Elle is really into matching and colors so she had a great time mixing up the pasta and then separating it back into color groups. I think this would also be a fun activity to use for teaching patterns.

[kids focus] indian headbands

Last week, Elle and I focused on an Indian theme...in celebration of the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. She became my Little Talks-a-Lot and Liv was renamed Little Smiles-a-Lot.


For one of the activities, we made headbands using cardstock, QuicKutz dies (dots and bracket ) and scissors. We die cut the dots border twice and glued the strips together to create the headband. We then die cut the bracket shape to create two feathers. We just cut off the ends and center of the bracket and rounded the ends to make a feather shape. You could of course just hand cut strips of paper and feathers, but I love the finished look of using a die cut. Plus it's fun to see what alternative uses you can come up with for products you already have in your collection. Elle loves to use scissors so we tried to make the feathers look more realistic by cutting small snips all around the edge of the feather. Finally, just glue the feathers to the headband, place on head and spend the rest of the day pretending to be a little Indian girl.

Blurry pic of Little Smiles-a-Lot to show Grandma her 2 new teeth.

[kids focus] leaf rub

For one of the days during our leaf week, we took the leaves we had collected outside and made leaf rubs. Elle loves to color so it was a nice change from just coloring on blank pieces of paper or in her coloring books. She also loved to trace around the leaves. Just put the leaf under the piece of paper and use a crayon to rub over the leaf until the leaf images begins to show through.

[kids focus] leaf walk

For one week, Elle and I focused on leaves. The first day we went on a leaf walk in our backyard and gathered all types of leaves from our trees. After we had gathered a sack of leaves, we took them inside and organized and sorted them by color.

Fortunately (or unfortunately if you are my husband and hate having to rake so many leaves every year - so far we've taken over 22 leaf trash bags to the dump), our backyard is full of leaves. Our "leaf week" fell at the perfect time where there were plenty of leaves on the ground and still in the trees.

If you don't have access to a lot of leaves, you can also make your own. Simply cut leaves (we made leaf die cuts with the Epic Die-Cutting Tool and QuicKutz die REV-0249-S) in several colors and let your child sort those into color piles.

With both options, she had a great time and loved practicing her colors on both the real and paper leaves. On another day, we used the paper leaves to make up "falling leaf" songs. As we sang the songs, we threw the leaves into the air to let them fall to the ground. Baby Liv found this quite entertaining.

a theme for the week

For the past few weeks, I've been trying "themed" weeks in an effort to try and be more organized and interactive with my kids. I've found that if I take the time to plan out activities for the week, it's easier for me to make sure I'm taking time during the day to devote just to my kids. Working from home full-time makes my schedule pretty crazy, and if I don't preplan, my day can easily get overtaken with the demands of work and just the basics of childcare. I'm not the best at just sitting down to play. I totally admire moms who are great at that. For me, having preplanned activities helps give me a focus and ensures that I'm prepared and scheduled to "just play". Even if it is only for 10 or 15 minutes, these activities have given Elle and I something new to do together each day, and I hope it helps her feel and understand how important she and Liv are to me. To record these ideas for my own personal reference, I'm going to post these projects/ideas under a kids focus theme. Do any of you have any ideas for fun, fast, creative things to do with your kids?