The schools in Pennsylvania will be closed for at least 2 weeks due to the coronavirus, so I am home with my family. I hope to do a lot of crafts and activities with my toddler to keep her busy & happy! You can look at previous posts and check back for more frequent posts during this time on things to do with your child! Today’s craft/activity will help your child learn letters and the spelling of their name (it will also be fun for them to play with)!
All you need is a box, marker, cars, and some paper and glue or tape.
You can use any box you have, I just happened to have one with a folding cover so added a ramp to it.
Next, I wrote the letters of her name on construction paper and cut them out. Remember to space each letter out so you can cut them into rectangles or squares.
Next, I wrote start and made a line. I also made lanes for the cars to go to their parking spots. I figured Madison can then have them go on the ramp and race down to the letters at the bottom. Just a fun, quick, and easy activity if your kiddo likes cars!
A craft using fine motor skills, creativity, and your child’s senses is making a Christmas Pomander Ball! There are several ways to make them and we will go through some examples!
Pomander Balls were originally used to ward away illness with the strong scents of cloves and other spices. Today, we make pomander balls with citrus fruits and cloves as a decoration, gift, centerpiece, or for scenting the room.
What you need:
Citrus fruit: clementine or oranges work best (make sure they are on the harder side)
Whole cloves (you can get a large bag that will last for years at the food store)
Ribbon for decoration
To make holes you can use a fork, pushpin, or toothpick (optional): my kids like to use a small fork to poke several holes at once
Pour some whole cloves into a small bowl for the kids to chose from
Next, have your child use a fork to poke holes
Take the whole cloves and poke them through the holes
Make a design as you chose, and hang with ribbon
Dry out in a dark place, preferably in a brown bag for a week or two until dry then hang them or decorate with them! If you chose not to dry them, then they usually last a week before they brown and get moldy. You can also place them in the fridge at night if you want them to last a little longer.
If you fill the whole fruit with cloves completely, it will dehydrate the fruit and you wont need to place it in a bag at all (my kids don’t usually have the patience for this yet)
My kids wanted to law shapes on their clementines with the cloves!
I don’t know about you, but my daughter LOVES to paint! She also loves to paint with her fingers! A turkey handprint is the perfect craft for Thanksgiving!
Materials:
paper
glue
finger paint
googly eyes
paint in assorted colors
paintbrush
First, get a blank piece of paper and tape it to the table so that it doesn’t move. Choose the paint colors (Madison did this). I squirted them out onto disposable coffee tops since I had a lot left from a party.
Next, paint your child’s palm and thumb and press them down on the paper. I made 2 on one paper so I could give one as a gift!
We chose a different color for each finger and painted each one and then pressed it down. These made colorful turkey feathers!
After letting it dry we added a beak, turkey gobbler and feet by drawing them on. However, you could also paint them.
Finally, we added the googly eye and our turkey was complete. A family keepsake to hang up each Thanksgiving!
It’s finally fall and pumpkin time! Toddlers LOVE holidays and what a great way to get ready for trick-or-treating by decorating pumpkins! Obviously, toddlers shouldn’t be holding knives to make jack-o-lanterns so there are many fun alternatives!
You can have your toddler paint a pumpkin, add stickers, pom-poms, and many other accessories instead of the normal jack-o-lantern.
Or….you can have them make sparkle pumpkins! My daughter LOVES glitter, I mean who doesn’t? Okay, maybe we don’t, especially when you have to clean it. However, this is a perfect activity for outside in the cool, crisp fall weather.
What do you need for this activity?
A pumpkin of course! Other materials you need are paint, glitter, glue, and brushes. You may want a paper plate or something you are using to put the paint on to mix it with glue. Glitter is a very important part of this activity! We used various colors.
First ask your child what color they want to start with! Add HALF glue and HALF paint concoction together. Mix them with the brush. The glue helps the paint stay on the pumpkin and not flake off. It also helps the glitter stay on. Your child can have fun painting their pumpkin!
Let them paint to their heart’s content, then have them pick a glitter color or two.
Madison spread the paint pretty thin, so I went ahead and put some liquid glue on the plate and had her brush the glue over the paint. This allowed the glitter to stick better. She just shook the glitter over the pumpkin (and all over the sidewalk).
A felt weather board is a great way for a toddler/preschooler to learn the days of the week and the weather! I ended up having a few pieces of felt, some thread, and ribbon left over from other projects so I thought, why not? Weather board time!
The first thing I did was fold a piece of felt in half, horizontally. I decided to make 2 pockets to hold the weather icons. Sew the two sides together, going through both layers of felt, then do the same in the middle.
Next, decide on a background color. Lay the felt pockets on the bottom overlapping the background color. I overlapped 2 inches then hand sewed the sides 2 inches down (only on the inner layer which you can’t see) and along the top.
Next, I used a sharpie and wrote “Today is” at the top. I didn’t intend to do the days of the week as my girl is only 2, so she won’t really grasp that, but I had more felt and space! This weather chart can grow with her. Not only will I add more weather icons such as hail, sleet, moon phases, but I will also add the days of the week as she gets older. For now I will store them to the side to focus on weather!
Time for the fun part, making the weather symbols! There are countless ways to create them, I decided on these.
I also added a partly sunny symbol which you will see in later pictures. I did all of these by hand, sometimes outlining the pattern I wanted on the felt first, then cutting them out. I used the glue gun to add some different colors such as the white on the snowflake, the mittens, wind, lightning and rain.
I bought some velcro from Michaels. You can use the scratchy side on the back of the weather symbols. This scratchy side will stick to the felt that is the background, you don’t need the soft side of the velcro at all.
I also added a partly sunny symbol you can see at the top of the picture. I did not use the hot glue for the velcro, it just happens to be in the picture. The velcro has a sticky side that will adhere to the felt.
I had extra felt so I made days of the week!
My daughter won’t really grasp the days of the week but we can practice anyway. I can also store them until she’s ready. I might have to do that! She loves the felt weather board so much she puts them all up and takes them all down. Her favorite symbols are the sun and partly sunny. She had to take them to my sister’s house. Luckily I convinced her to leave them in the car so we didn’t lose them and I returned them to her board!
I ended up adding ribbon by making a stitch at the top. To make it extra sturdy I decided to hot glue the bottom of the ribbon to the felt too! You can use string, small ribbon, or anything you choose for this! I hung it above her work table using the clear command hooks that will easily come off of the wall if I want to remove them.
You can make the weather board a daily routine! Do it in the morning, or change it throughout the day based on the weather. Enjoy!!!
If you have a special occasion coming up and are looking for a gift from your baby, toddler, or child, I have an easy peasy present idea!
Paint…UGH PAINT! The word can invoke fear in any parent, except this is mess free! Okay, almost mess free.
My mom’s birthday was coming up and I wanted to give her something from her granddaughter. I searched online and found this simple craft. I will admit I improvised because I was missing some of the items and I will mention what worked & what didn’t as I go through the steps.
First, gather your materials. You will need:
-Paint in various colors (I used finger paint)
-cardstock (I used regular paper but it didn’t work so well)
-gallon ziplock bag
-picture frame (if you choose to use it as a gift)
-Heart stencil (or you could just draw it yourself)
-scissor
Next, put your choice of colors on your cardstock paper. Note: I didn’t use cardstock and it ripped easily and you could see through some of it. SO USE CARDSTOCK paper or thicker paper. If you are in a pinch you can use regular paper but you will have to be very gentle with it.
YES, I USED WAYYYYY TOO MUCH PAINT!!! My paint came jumping out of the bottle super fast, I’m really not sure how that happened (haha). It takes longer to dry with all that paint. It took days for it to dry when it should’ve taken overnight.
Take your cardstock paper and put it in a gallon sized ziplock. This insures your project will be mostly mess free! If you need to cut down the paper a little, go for it.
Now it’s time for fun!!! Let your child smear the paint!
Your child will love smearing the paint and you will love that it’s mess free!
When you like the smeared look your child has made, carefully take it out of the bag and leave it in a safe place to dry.
Look at all of that paint!!! TOOO MUCH! If you put way too much on like me, you can either dab it off with a paper towel or give it days to dry.
Here’s where you can vary the project. I drew a heart on a new piece of paper (use cardstock) and cut it out. You can pick any shape you like! If you are super crafty you could even cut out a name or shape of an animal. Cut down the paper to whatever size you would like it to fit. I cut it down to fit a frame. However, you could also make this into wall art, a card, or anything you can imagine!
Place the cut out on top of your painted paper. I moved mine around to find which colors I wanted to show. Cut the back painted piece to fit the frame. If you would like to write a message on the paper, go for it! Put in it a frame or glue and fold for a card!
Easy Peasy Paint Present! Note: I used regular paper and you can see that there are places you can see through the top paper. I highly recommend cardstock or thicker paper.
This project is perfect for any occasion!!! This could be done for birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays.
I’m thinking green colors with a Christmas tree or wreath cutout for Christmas! You could also use the paint bag trick for ornaments. Instead of using a top layer, just let the painted paper dry, cut out a tree shape, hole punch and use a ribbon and wallah!
My daughter loves to assert her independence, even at meal time! So I thought, why not make a placemat that she can set her own place setting at? There are many ways to make placemats.
One way is simply laminating a printed out version of a placemat setting such as this…
However, my laminator is only big enough for a regular printer sized paper. You can take it to your local staples or office store to get laminated. You can even make your own placemat out of fabric and have it laminated.
I decided to go with the fabric version and just use the washer to clean it.
So you want to prewash the fabric to make sure it does not shrink.
As always there is a video youtube tutorial and a written one below.
What you need for this placemat place setting is…
1) fabric: it will end up being 12×16 inches.
1 batting or felt for the middle or back side 12×16
1 center front piece 12×12
2 outside front pieces 4×12
1 back side
felt or non fraying material to cut out fork, spoon, cup, and plate
2) Next, take your front center piece and your side front pieces and pin them fabric facing fabric on the sides and sew. Then iron the seems.
3) Following that, you want to use your felt or nonfraying material to outline a plate, cup, fork, spoon, and any other utensils that you want on your placemat. Then cut them out and sew them directly on the front piece. You can also use fabric glue if you like.
4) ***You want to put the piece of fabric you want as the backing down first facing the front fabric and then the basting or felt behind that (as you can see I did it opposite and ended up with my black fabric as the back outside as you will see). However, if you are using felt, it ends up rather nice as a backing since it prevents sliding.
5) Sew all the way around leaving a 3-4 inch opening so you can pull it out the right way. Don’t forget to backstitch. Once this is done, pull the inside out and make sure all the sides and corners are all the way out. Iron it all out and sew the remaining opening with either a hand stitch, or if you want to use your machine then sew around the whole placemat to give it that look.
You can add any other embellishments, I used my daughter’s name on the side. Enjoy and check out the other videos and tutorials! Let me know if you have any questions!
My daughter loves painting! However, she was growing tired of painting paper. So this year, we made cookie cutter Easter shapes! Actually, we had a duck and used a half of a plastic egg as a cutout. I also used a knife to create bunny faces and baskets.
First things first, you have to make the salt dough! This is super simple. all you need is salt, flour, and warm water. You can knead the dough by hand, or use a mixer with the kneading attachment like I did.
So here is the recipe I used:
*this made a lot more than I expected! So you may want to make only half!
•4 cups all purpose flour
•1 cup salt
•1 3/4 cup warm water (add more of its too dry)
Combine the ingredients and knead for about 6 minutes. If it’s not forming into a nice soft ball add more water (or if it’s too sticky add more flour).
Then it’s time to roll out the dough! Just like you would for sugar cookies! Beware, your child may think you are making cookies! My 19 month old just kept pointing yelling cook-ies!
This is a great activity for your toddler to help you with. Next, get out your cookie cutters or Easter shapes and start making those eggs! I used a half of an Easter egg that opened sideways, a duck mold, and then made a couple baskets and bunny heads using a knife. **one thing I forgot to do was to use a straw to make a hole on the top of the eggs for the string to go through. So I ended up hot glue gunning ribbon.
Put your oven on 200 degrees. Place your salt doughs on a cookie sheet and place them in the oven for 2 hours (depending on the thickness you may need a little less or a little more). Once they are done they should be rock hard.
Then the fun, painting time! We used a combination of acrylic paint (which is best but hardest to come off and not non toxic) and water proof fingerprint. My son attempted to paint and did decent for his age, but when he kept trying to eat the painted cookies we had to end the painting time.
my daughter likes to squirt the paint in an old egg carton that way the colors stay separated.
Once we finished painting she sprinkled on some glitter. Unfortunately we don’t have any mod podge or clear finish to put on top right now, but we still love them!
If you have any clear finish or modge podge this is the time to coat it in that for a nice shiny finish!
Since we forgot to make the holes for the ribbon, I used the hot glue gun to attach the ribbons. Then we hung them around the house (high enough that my son couldn’t reach these “cookies.”
Hello! Guest writer here! I am the blog founder’s twin sister, Jessie, and I’m here to share my decorations and ideas from my little girl Madison’s first birthday party. You can use these decoration ideas for anything from baby showers, birthday parties, to graduation parties depending on what your theme is. If your theme involves stars, pink, or gold then you are in luck!
The dessert table before the desserts!
Let’s first start with the pink and gold theme. All of the tablecloths, plates, napkins, and containers are from Walmart. I wanted a good deal, but also wanted it to look good and found the best deals there. Michaels was another store I frequented for ideas and supplies. All of the numbers, letters, and banner supplies were purchased there.
Okay, before we dive too deep into how each decoration was made, let’s check out some pictures!
The birthday girl’s chair!
All of the banner pennants in this article were purchased from Michaels. The letters on all of the banners are stick on letters from Michaels too. However, they don’t stay on the thick fabric of the pennants so need to be glued on. I used a hole puncher to make 2 holes at the top of each pennant and put string through them. I purchased some glitter foam sheets from Walmart to make the stars and used a cookie cutter to trace them.
The happy birthday banner hanging above the food table.
Again, I used the materials I purchased to make this banner and it was fairly easy because everything was cut out besides the stars. This banner was definitely worth the time to put it together, it was super cute and personalized to her party. I moved the pictures that were originally above the banner and replaced them with picture frames of Madison.
Balloons were purchased at the dollar store. I used the cork board from the kitchen to put pictures of her from the first year-a simple and affordable decoration. The 12 month banner was also made from the pennants. I simply traced the star cookie cutter and cut out stars instead of using the pennant shape. If you don’t have a cookie cutter you could print out a star from a computer and trace it! I found little pink clothespins at Michaels and hot glued them to the stars so the pictures could be added below the banner. This could also be a cute idea for other types of parties. You could write someone’s name and have pictures of them beneath it or for graduation with pictures from each school year. The options are endless!
Again, I cut out stars and added the stick on letters with glue. These stars were cut from glitter foam paper.Stars, stars, everywhere!
I made the twinkle banner, the stars hanging from the chandelier and the star wands on the table that I used as party favors and a centerpiece. For the stars hanging from the light, I cut out stars from the foam paper and attached it to felt pink cloth I had. I cut the outline of the pink cloth around the gold star so it looks like an outline for the stars.
As for the wands, I purchased gold straws from Michaels and they were very sturdy made from cardboard and didn’t bend. I decided to use the foam paper to cut out two stars and stick them together around the top of the straw. I also included 2 cut pieces of ribbon on the wand. I put one on each side of the star and pushed the stars together (they have sticky backs, but you could easily glue them). They were a hit!
Yum! I made chocolate covered pretzels with pink chocolate melts and gold sprinkles. I also made the sugar cookies with star and number one cookie cutters!No, I didn’t make this beautiful cake. However, I thought the stars sticking out of the top were so cute and easy to make! They simply used some wire and cut out stars they hot glued to the wire! Pictures, pictures, everywhere! Super cheap decoration-pictures on string! I used pink string and taped the pictures. For a twinkle twinkle theme you could also use string lights around the house for decorations!A giant number one made with pictures!
There are great tutorials online about making the number one with pictures for your baby’s first birthday. Most people recommend using cardboard from a large appliance box. I didn’t have any available, so used regular printer paper. I simply cut pictures and fit them on the paper with glue, then laminated the paper. I am a teacher so I happen to have a small scotch laminator at home that worked perfectly. I lined up all the papers to make the number one and adhered it to the wall with tape!
You might be wondering about her outfit and this wonderful sign. I’m sorry to tell you that I didn’t make them. A local woman made them both for me. My sister (aka the blog writer) made her beautiful dress and headband. Hopefully there will be a post on that coming up soon! Yes, Madison wanted the cake.
If you are a very busy person with many kids, making all of these decorations might be too time consuming. However, even making a small amount of them is very rewarding. It not only adds a personal touch, but can be used as a keepsake or for future parties!
Thank you for visiting this blog and YOU can make these decorations too with a little time and effort!
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My daughter loves running around in her cat mask saying she’s Cece cat. She also wanted to be Cece dinosaur, cece giraffe, and many other cece animals. So I had a couple extra crafting materials nearby and we created these easy masks! Also, masks are great for parties or as a craft at a party!
There are many ways to make many different masks, the first way is simply with
1) popsicle sticks or tongue depressor sticks (or you can use elastic or string)
2) construction paper
3) scissors and glue
4) crayons, ribbons, stickers or any other decoration you would like to add
I absolutely love this new glue I got from crayola, it is so easy for my toddler to use herself and its washable!
I simply held the construction paper up and estimated where the eye holes needed to be and cut them out then made my own design and let her glue the pieces together and decorate! Such a simple and easy project for your little one.
Now if you are looking for a particular pattern or don’t know how to make an animal let me suggest a couple tutorials I found:
Animal masks by Hoosier
These cute masks are perfect for your little fall creature! There’s a pattern for them too!
Next are easy felt masks that are perfect for Halloween costumes!
However, my laminator is only big enough for a regular printer sized paper. You can take it to your local staples or office store to get laminated. You can even make your own placemat out of fabric and have it laminated.
my daughter likes to squirt the paint in an old egg carton that way the colors stay separated.
