We love reading any story by Jan Brett. Our family favorite is of course The Mitten. Our copy has literally had to be stapled and put back together several times. Not because the kids don’t take care of it but because we’ve handle the book so, so, so many times! I found this really simple and fun activity to go along with the story.  I had these printed and kept on hand for a snowy day, and lucky for me and the kids it SNOWED! Lots and lots of snow. It was fun to read the book and do the activity after hours of playing in the snow! You can find a pdf format Here. I’ve found lots of great resources and activities at www.janbrett.com.

 

    You know your kids are getting big when you can all sit and decorate eggs without it becoming a complete stress fest! I think this is the first year I actually 100 percent enjoyed egg coloring season! In the past I enjoyed it about 75 percent, maybe? Having three kids so close in age there was always one, even two children who were too little to do it by themselves and too impatient to wait for help. But this year, it was just lovely and the girls were able to take their time and share the colors and I was even able to color a few myself! I’m not sure why but I didn’t take any pictures of what the girls did to their eggs! They added eyes and tails and glitter, they came out so cute! I could swear that I took a picture before we turned them into egg salad. Oh well! And Isabel, what happened to the picture of her!? Well, she was there! and her eggs were awesome!

This year I did a lot of my holiday shopping online and because of that we have so many boxes in our garage! I always like creating stuff from our empty boxes. We’ve made tons of treasure boxes, spaceships, beds for dolls and puppy dogs but I have never made a house! I guess since we have a huge doll house I never thought of making one until I stumbled upon one here. I thought it was so cute and thought it would be so fun to make one with my little Lia. Ruby from mycakies has specific instructions you can follow. I kinda winged it with mine so it’s not as fancy as hers but we definitely had so much fun creating it and theres still more decorating we’d like to do.  I’m proud to say that I let Lia do a lot of the decorating herself without trying to take over the entire project! This was a great way for the two of us to spend time together.

As the kids are growing I realize there are more and more things they can help me with. This time it was wrapping birthday presents. They were so excited when I asked them and honestly I wasn’t expecting a perfect job. But they wrapped these presents more beautifully than I ever could. I don’t know why but my kids turn everything into a project (I’m sure my constant project prompting has something to do with it). After they were done with wrapping the gifts they asked me if they could decorate over the wrapping paper and I said sure why not. I actually have a bin where I put all of the trinkets they collect from parties, Easter baskets, Halloween, and school prizes such as, stickers, tattoos, balloons, play necklaces, bracelets and many other little things. I gave them the bin and told them they could put whatever they were willing to get rid of onto the presents. My kids have a hard time giving anything away, but they found such joy in adding these trinkets onto their little cousins presents. After they were done they wanted more presents to wrap. They are officially my present wrappers and I love how they got rid of some stuff at the same time.

 

 

No matter where we go, my daughters are always finding treasures. They love looking for someones lost trinkets at the park, or cool rocks and bottle caps. My daughter Isabel is my biggest treasure hunter! She loves her cool finds and is never willing to part with them. One day we went to a near by working farm (Yaphank Farm) and they found marbles, pine cones, shells and rocks and several little trinkets. I couldn’t bare the thought of where all of these little things would end up so as soon as we came home I looked to see if we had shoe boxes and to my surprise we had three! I got out my craft bin, some colorful duct tape (I love duct tape and make sure I always have some in stock) and helped the girls to create a Treasure Box. I covered the boxes with colorful duct tape and I had them do the rest. The Boxes are stored in their closet and every time they find something they add it to their collection.

 

Can We Paint? I hear this question at least 10 times a week if not more! My kids love to paint, they are natural born creators and I make sure to keep them equipped with the tools to quench their desires. Sometimes I’m just not in the mood for the mess (like I mentioned in my previous post), but when we have the time I remind myself that once they are done the mess gets cleaned up and I am left with such beautiful art work. My home is their gallery, their pieces hang throughout it. It brings me such joy when I see them. For this painting session I gave the girls large drawing paper from the dollar store. I use whatever I have available. You can use a paper bag, even news paper or card board. The kids don’t care as long as they are painting. I brought out our bin filled with paint. I have all different types of paint, Finger paint, Acrylic and Tempera paint. I keep all of our paints and brushes in a large bin so it makes it easy to have everything ready when the kids ask to paint. It also makes it easy to bring the paints outside when weather permits.  We have these fun foam cube stamps the kids love to use them with paint. You can find them at any craft store or online. They had fun experimenting with each shape and mixing them to create their own personal piece. They are so easy for little hands to use! Oh and I always make sure to play classical music. It’s relaxing and the girls enjoy it!

Its been a long rainy week! Instead of feeling gloomy I decided to embrace it!  I had the girls create and design their own rain gear, boots and an umbrella! I took out our handy art bin (filled with stickers, pom poms, glitter, googly eyes, etc) and we got right to work. For a print out of the boots I went to http://www.thebestkidsbooksite.com. Go to Craft, Coloring Sheets and search for rain boots.  For the umbrella I outlined the shape onto a large piece of white paper ( you can use colored paper if you like) and let the kids decorate however they pleased. Then I outlined the shape of the handle onto scrap paper, cut it out and had the kids tape it to their umbrellas. The girls really enjoyed making their personalized rain gear and we almost forgot about our rainy day!

For this simple project I went to http://www.firstpalette.com/tool_box/printables/seaanimals.html and printed out the sea animals. I had the girls color the sea animals of their choice. They used markers, crayons and glitter glue. This took a few days to complete, as they colored a few at a time. Once we had all of our sea animals completed, the girls and I cut them out and put them aside. I bought a large piece of poster board at the Dollar Store and we used colored tissue paper to lay down as our Ocean water. Once we had our Ocean Water the girls each took their time and placed the little sea animals into the ocean.