Craftivity Corner

Allison McDonald
Creative crafts, book suggestions, and tips to make time for learning in your busy day.

archives

March 30, 2011
Robin Egg Nest Cupcakes
I love cupcakes. So does my son. I hope my husband's office does too because they are usually the recipients of our creations. Here is what we made for them to celebrate Spring! Gather your materials. Your favorite cupcake ( mine is whatever flavor is on sale), brown icing, a ziplock , and some robin eggs candies. There are chocolate covered caramels ( sinful!) but malt balls or jelly beans would work too. Pop your icing in a ziplock and snip off one corner. Ice. The great thing about the bag method is not much comes out so it's great for beginners like my son. I can not tell you...
Rainy Day Activities for kids, Spring
March 28, 2011
Quick Easter Necklace
This was a spur of the moment craft my son wanted to make for his swim teacher. He was so proud to give it to her! Gather your materials. You will need some drinking straws, scissors, easter eggs with holes in them and 3-4 pipe cleaners. Start cut your straws into smaller beads. Next thread the straw beads and eggs on. secure the pipe cleaners together by twisting. Voila!
Easter Crafts
March 26, 2011
Rainy Day Science
We live outside of Seattle so we know a lot about 2 things; coffee and rain. This is a fun experiment to test different materials to find out if they are water proof or not. Gather your materials. You will need several plastic containers or cups, duct tape and materials to test. Suggested materials could be clothes, plastic lids, aluminium foil, wax paper, construction paper, grocery bag. Tape the material so it's covering the opening of the cup. to weigh down the cup you can pop a rock inside . Leave one topless. Put it out in the rain or by your sprinkler if you have only blue skies....
Early Learning
March 24, 2011
Spring Cleaning with Preschoolers
  Next week is Spring Break for my son and I am putting him to work. Preschoolers are natural sorters, want to act like grown ups and gain confidence from being helpful. Here is my list of Spring Cleaning activities we are going to tackle. Purging Books and Toys. We are going to sit down with 3 bins "Keep" "Broken" "Donate"  and sort! Do not forget to take your child with you when you donate the toys to GoodWill, local shelter or other charity. If your child can write have them list the items for donation for your records. Dusting You can get a pack of...
Activities for kids, Spring cleaning
March 24, 2011
Mushroom Math
We love math and mixing it with art for extra fun! Gather your materials. You will need a large piece of brown paper, red, green and white paper as well. You will also need a marker, a circle paper punch , scissors and glue stick. Start by cutting stems out of the white paper leaving enough to also punch out the dots. Write numbers on the stems with the marker. Glue to the brown paper. Cut out mushroom tops from the red and green paper.Glue on. Now comes the math ! You have to punch out the correct number of dots to correspond with the numbers on the stem and glue them on.
Early Learning
March 21, 2011
Georaphy Toss!
My kids are growing up in a multi- national family so we have always focused on flags, geography, and travel. This game takes flags outside to use gross motor skills as well as teaching about flags and opening up your kids to learning more about other countries. Gather your materials. You will need some boxes, paper, tape, markers and a ball. We used a globe ball to keep the theme consistent.  Do a google search for countries flags. Let your kids choose which to do. Make flags with your markers using the images as a guide. Tape them to your boxes. Go outside Set a start line ( we used...
Early Learning, Geography
March 21, 2011
Garden Learning!
It was beautiful today so we spent most of the day outside and as my son and husband planted some new plants and flowers in our yard it struck me how much you can teach by simply gardening with your children. Print Awareness Reading the little tags that each plant has teaches children that reading is not only for stories but print instructs the reader as well. We use reading to find out how to do something, like if a plant needs to be plkanted in shade or sun. Measurement As you decide where to plant the flowers by grabbing a yard stick or measuring tape you can throw in a fun and relevant...
Early Learning, Gardening
March 20, 2011
Spring Crafts From The Archive!
I love spring theme crafts and while I was brainstorming new ideas I took a look back at some of my older spring theme crafts and knew that some of these needed to be dusted off and spotlighted once again! Flower Painting (above) Butterfly Paper Plate Snail   Flower Garland Apple Print Flowers
Spring Crafts
March 17, 2011
Last Minute Lucky St.Paddy's Day Craft!
Want to make something fun for St.Patrick's Day but don't have too much time for a million steps? This is a perfect activity for you! Gather your materials .You need some paper, glue, green glitter, a clover cookie cutter and a plate for glue. Start by pouring glue onto the plate and dipping your cookie cutter in. Print on your paper. Add sparkles! Shake off and let dry.
Fun with Kids, St.Patrick's Day Crafts
March 16, 2011
Secondary Colors - Search and Find
  This is a lesson that evolved in our house. The board we made with plain construction paper helped guide my son as he tried to remember what primary colors combine to make secondary ones. After he figured out that the board can be used as a guide it was a cinch! Gather your materials. You will need pompoms in primary colors, tongs, and construction paper in all the colors of the rainbow, with an extra blue or red . After doing this I realized we should have had them in rainbow order... not sure why we didn't, if you do you will need 2 strips of red. Start by adding pompoms to the...
Early Learning
March 15, 2011
St. Patrick's Day Links!
I love this all green muffin tin meal from Muffin Tin Mom , it's a great way to get a little green into your kids! I love this leprechaun from GummyLump! These pot of gold mini cupcakes from I Can Teach My Child are perfect St.Patrick's Day treats for little ones !  Another great cupcake idea comes from Our Best Bites!   I love this Sparkling Rainbow craft from Ramblings of A Crazy Woman. Her crafts are always so awesome!
Craft Ideas, Holidays, St.Patrick's Day
March 14, 2011
Easy Foam Bracelet Craft
What can I say I like colors, my brainstorms this month were centered around St.Patrick's Day but seemed to all end up being about rainbows. This craft is easy to adapt to any color palet though so if you aren't as into rainbows as we are maybe turn it into a patterning lesson. Gather your materials.  You will need some craft foam, some thick ribbon, some clear tape, scissors and a hole punch. I used scrap foam , remember how I told you we are preparing to move soon and I need to get rid of my surplus craft supplies? Yeah this is a "Spring cleaning " use what I have...
Bracelet, Craft, Rainbow
March 13, 2011
Rainbow Pom Pom Wreath
Rainbows are so cheery, help celebrate St.Patrick's Day but can be created year round to add color to any decor! This is a simple wreath that will brighten any room it's in. Gather your materials. You will need pompoms in every color of the rainbow. We used about 10 per color. Glue, a paper plate, scissors and rainbow ribbon. Start by cutting the middle out of your paper plate. Add glue. Add your pompoms. Make a slit with your scissors wherever you want the ribbon. Make a bow, let dry and hang up! I hope you like rainbows because we are loving them right now and have a few more...
St.Patrick's Day Crafts
March 8, 2011
Fill and Spill - Infant Activity
With all the baby videos, claims that you can teach your infant to read and other outlandish " infant education"  we forget what babies really need : things to grab, touch and manipulate.  This activity is so easy I didn't think it warranted a post until I shared my 8 month old's love of it and got many request for further explanation. Gather your materials. Use a container that can hold enough toys to sustain your child's interest but that is too small for them to topple into. Also light enough not to hurt if it falls on them as they pull at it.  Lots of...
Early Education
March 6, 2011
Sous Chef - Pretend Play and Math
  You don't have to be a homeschooling parent to teach your child lessons about school subjects. Every day activities offer endless opportunity to enrich your child's learning away from school.  My son loves to pretend and if we pretend to be someone else I can get him to do most anything. One of my favorite lessons are math lessons done while he pretends to be my sous chef as I prep dinner. Here are some of the math skills he can learn : 1. Sorting. In the picture above he was sorting the spinach by size.  Another time I handed up mixed veggies ( you know the frozen...
Early Learning
March 5, 2011
Paper Collage Planet Craft
This craft is so simple but the amazing thing about it isn't how beautiful it is , it's how many great fine motor and pre writing skills it has packed into one craft. We chose ot make Mars because we had lots of red paper on hand and you might remember we are working on cleaning out my art closet and using everything we have up! Gather your materials. You will need some tissue paper, 1 sheet of construction paper and scrap construiction paper in any color. You will also need glue and a marker. Start by cutting your sheet of paper into a circle. We worked on this together. My son isn...
Arts & Crafts, Fine Motor Activities