Penguin Game

Big sis LOVES LOVES LOVES penguins, so since my creativity seems to have disappeared, I searched various blogs for penguin related crafts and activities. Today, we tried one that I stumbled upon via makinglearningfun.com. I made all the materials ahead of time using the printables on the site (printed all the game pieces on cardstock and laminated using packing tape as it was all I had on hand at the time!).
To play the game, we each started out with 15 fish cards. We took turns drawing from the card pile - the cards either showed 1, 2 or 3 fish (both the numeral and a fish representation). Whoever feeds all of their fish to the penguin first is the winner! Big sis loved the game...we didn't play it for terribly long, but I know it will be one she'll go back to for a while!

Minnie Mouse Birthday Cake

Little sis turns 2 this month and I always like to try making a fun cake/cupcake. After searching for some I thought she might like, she narrowed it down to this Minnie Mouse cake:
http://www.coolest-birthday-cakes.com/coolest-minnie-mouse-birthday-cake-61.html

I decided to just make one tier, as my girls really prefer cupcakes, so I made a two-tier 6-inch cake with 11 cupcakes. It's nowhere near professional and there are multiple things that I wish I would've tackled differently, but boy did little sis' eyes light up when she saw it! She just kept saying, "Minnie!" and "Ears!" and "Bow!"

Here are some pics through the whole process...

A day before making the cake, I pulled out some really old fondant (we are not planning to eat this) and made the bow (along with some small ones in case I decided to put Minnie heads on the sides of the cake). This was just my second time working with fondant.

I also found some clip art and made the Minnie Mouse cupcake picks..leaving some blank and adding little sis' new age as well as a Happy Birthday greeting on some (using Word's Waltography font...so perfect!)

That same day, I tried my hand at gumpaste for the first time and made the ears. Learned LOTS on that experiment. After kneading in the color pink in the fondant and black in the ears, I was quite tired of kneading. The black in the gumpaste was very challenging for me...there has to be an easier way. The color turned out more black-gray, but it works. I also rolled the ears a little too thin, which made it a challenge to stick in the craft sticks that would help support it once stuck in the cake. Finally, I later discovered that I made the ears a little too big. I think I initially cut them out at the right size, but they grew bigger as I tried to insert the craft sticks.
The next day, made the cake. Decided to do one from scratch and used Wilton's Golden Yellow Cake.

Next came time to ice the cake and add the bow and ears. I wish I would have set the ears back just a little bit further, but oh well. I was pleased that the tinted fondant and tinted icing (used Wilton's Buttercream Recipe) turned out to match very closely.


Finally, added the decorating details and iced the cupcakes. First, I wish I had fresh fondant on hand...fondant circles would've looked much better. (I ended up using a tub frosting that I had on hand...didn't have much buttercream left plus I had tinted the whole batch pink.) Second, I had intended to frost my cupcakes following Wilton's swirl instructions, however I didn't realize that I did not have the needed icing tip until it was too late. I improvised and came up with the not-too-whippy look below.So that's it! Not exactly as I had envisioned, but likely perfect in little sis' eyes!

Colored Water Droppers

Okay, so I couldn't think up a better name for it. Thanks to Tired, Need Sleep who pointed me toward the site that has these available for download (makinglearningfun.com).

I went to the site, printed out a few of big sis' favorite letters/animals, and placed them in a plastic sheet protector. Then, I emptied out some almost empty food coloring droppers (I had two sets and just combined them) then added water to what little remained. (I actually kept squirting it back out and adding new water to further dilute it...tried to minimize the staining/damage potential!)

Big sis had a blast squeezing little drops of colored water on each circle!
We also discovered some other fun things about this...how the water blobs slid so easily on the sheet protectors and combined to make one bigger blob, and how sometimes the letters/designs maintained their shapes when you placed a paper cloth on top. (This killed the slowly-budding environmentalist in me as I try to never use paper towels, but it was just too neat to pass up!)

It was a fun activity!

Snow Ice Cream

So a fellow Mommy friend passed along a recipe for snow ice cream that she found somewhere on the web, and after waiting for a new snowfall...we finally got to make some! I can't eat ice cream but had to steal a taste...it was really good! (Although I think I used a dash too much vanilla...)

Here's the recipe and some pictures of our fun!

Ingredients:
16 c. snow
1 c. sugar
1 TBS. vanilla extract

2 c. milk

Big Sis just couldn't wait...she had to dig into that snow!

Mix together in the mixer.

For us, it made a lot so I put the leftovers in the freezer...we'll see later how well it stored!

Snow Day Inside!

Over at Tired, Need Sleep, I found what I thought to be a great idea! When it is too cold outside, she brought a tub filled with snow inside for some play time! We decided to try this with our girls today, although we didn't pick the best time. Big sis loved it and had lots of fun. Little sis misunderstood...she thought we were going outside and was quite disappointed to learn that we were not! We'll try again soon! Here's an early pic of big sis playing. Later, we brought in some measuring cups and made "snow castles".

Alphabet Notebook

Big sis is really interested in the alphabet right now. I'm trying to avoid the temptation to do a "letter of the week" for multiple reasons, so here is what we are trying instead...

I made big sis an alphabet notebook. I took 26 sheets of computer paper and put an upper and lower case letter in the top left corner. Then I placed them in sheet protectors and placed them in a 3-ring notebook. There are two ways we will use this notebook:

1. If we make crafts and focus on a particular theme, we'll place a picture/sticker or something to represent that theme on the appropriate letter page. For example, this week we did some snow projects so we could put a snowflake or snowman on the s page. As big sis sticks/glues it on, we talk about the letter and what sound it makes in that particular word. As we get more pictures on the page, we'll likely review the starting sound of each word and compare. We'll see!

2. This is how we started the notebook - I gave big sis a few magazines (Pottery Barn Kids, MOPS Mom magazine, and Scholastic's Parent and Child) and had her search for things she liked. We tore out the page and she used her scissors to cut out the object. We talked about what letter and sound the words started with, found the letter page, and pasted it on. This was a great activity as she loved getting to practice with her scissors and look at the pictures!Don't know that this will do anything to help with letter/sound recognition, but we're having fun with it so it works for me!

Color/Movement Game

Supplies needed: small wooden cubes, paint or marker, colored construction paper, maybe pictures/stickers

I made a game the other day...despite what you see in the pictures, we actually have yet to play it as the dice mysteriously ran off (later to be found in a play measuring cup and baby food plate!).

A while ago, I had purchased some wooden cubes at a local craft store. I also had some laminated construction paper on hand, so I picked six different colors, then colored each face of the cube one of each color. On the other cube, I wrote several actions, such as crawl, walk like a penguin, hop, etc. I am in the process of adding stickers/pictures to each side so that my 3 year old can look at the die and know what to do.Next, I placed the 6 pieces of paper around the room. (This is as far as we got...the girls had more fun just running and dancing around to the pieces of paper while I hunted for the dice!)

On your turn, you roll each die and do the action shown. For example, if you roll red and crawl...you must crawl to the red square! My oldest knows her colors well, so this will just be a fun action game. I'm hoping it will help the little one as we work a little more on color recognition with her. I think it will also elicit a number of giggles...especially if we all end up on the same color!

Get Well Cards (Band Aids and Potato Stamps!)

Okay...nothing too creative here. The girls had a relative break a limb and another have surgery, so we spent some time making get well cards.

For one set, big sis got to decorate a band-aid (yes, I actually trusted her with a permanent Sharpie marker...must've been out of my mind that day! This is a child who just recently colored her entire face with washable marker while I had my back turned!) and then stick the band aid to the card. She didn't quite understand the whole idea and just simply colored part of the band-aid...but oh well. I had her peel and try to stick the band-aid herself to help work on motor skills. Since it was a bigger band-aid, the hardest part was keeping it from folding and sticking together. She added one of her great smiley faces and some stickers and her name and voila! Homemade card!

(Little sis just colored with marker and used stickers.)For the second set of cards, I decided to try out potato stamps. We had some potatoes that were too old to eat, but not rotten. I did the first part of the craft - cutting part of the potato into a shape. (I made a flower and a heart...it's not easy to cut, so I tried to pick simple designs). I poured some washable paint on a plate, had the girls dip the stamps in paint and get as much excess paint off as possible, then stamp on their card. Big sis caught on pretty well and filled the inside of her card with red hearts. Little sis didn't quite figure out how to get rid of the extra paint, so she had big green blobs on her card. She quickly wanted to switch over to a paint brush, so the inside of her card is just a random streak of paint.I used the hair dryer and a paper towel to speed dry them. They decided to use markers and stickers and some random Lion King stamps I stumbled upon the other day on the outside (really have NO CLUE where those came from...but the girls loved them! Guess I need to buy some stamps and a stamp pad or two!). Below is a picture of big sis trying to help little sis stamp. (I can just hear little sis now..."I do! I do!")I added some short messages to both. While they weren't our best pieces of art, hopefully the recipients know they were mailed with much love!

Counting Bears

Counting bears have been a big hit at our house. I bought some on my own back in my teaching days and broke them out a couple of years ago to work with big sis on colors and sorting. Little sis is just about ready to start working on sorting too, her attention span just isn't quite there yet. However, she loves to play with them. She actually initially started sorting them by color when we first got them out on this day - she put yellow bears in the yellow cup, etc. without being told. Later, she just decided it was more fun to randomly place them, then pour one cup into the other.

Here's a picture of big sis trying to get little sis to sort by color!
I think it's time for us to expand our "counting bears" activities...can't wait to come up with a more creative use for them! They're just so cute and hard to resist! Even I want to play with them...ha!

Game of Life

We are starting to be stuck indoors a little more and as today was feeling a little long, I was grasping for something new for Big Sis to do after she had her "rest time." She stated she wanted to play one of "Daddy's games", meaning a board game. (Daddy had played a couple with his family over Christmas while I was still in the kitchen or recovering from my time in the kitchen...ha!)

I raided our game cupboard for a "daddy game" and emerged with "The Game of Life." Just as I thought, she loved the little cars, people, play money, and game board with buildings.

The first thing she did was fill every card with people...what a great fine motor activity! She did ask me to help with a car or two, but she filled most of them on her own. (Those people are so tiny, sometimes I even struggle with them...ha!) Then she had them drive around on the roads and had the people get out at different buildings. She used the pictures on the job and house cards as well. It turned out to be a fun little activity...not one she'd want to do every day, but in a pinch on a rainy or snowy day, I think I'll be pulling this one out again!

Marshmallow Snowmen Fun

Supplies: at least marshmallows, can also use construction paper, glue, markers and any other art items to embellish

While cleaning out the kitchen cupboard, I discovered two kind of old bags of marshmallows and thought they'd be perfect for crafts! I've seen several different ways to use marshmallows for snowmen crafts, so we set off to experiment.First we tried making marshmallow snowman sculptures. They mushed together pretty well and had potential, especially if we would've used a little glue too. However, after some fun times squishing, the girls were ready to try something else with the marshmallows. (Little sis loved the smushing/squeezng part...she kept saying "mush mush mush".)
Next, we got out some blue paper and glue so we could glue them in a design n the paper. Big sis started out trying to do it on her own and had something that looked like it might be a "snow storm".Little sis never even got to the gluing of marshmallows (although much to my dismay, she kept slipping some in her mouth when I wasn't looking...wonder if old marshmallows are harmful?? She gave up just before I was about to remove her from the project, so they must not have tasted that great!). Instead, she just kept transferring the glue from one container to the next and "painting" with the glue.
Big sis saw me starting my snowman and instantly wanted to start over. I drew the snowman outline on her paper, then she used a paint brush and mod podge to trace over my outline and stick down her marshmallows.After finishing the snowman, we added details. We made the ground with a line of marshmallows, arms with little twigs from an indoor houseplant, and then big sis drew in several other details (buttons, eyes/nose/mouth, a hat (we talked about waiting until little sis was napping and then making our hats out of glitter, but evidently she couldn't wait), a flag (not sure why she decided he needed a flag and I'm not entirely sure it is still a flag...it looks like the start to one of her reindeer!)

She had a blast doing this project!

Hole Punch Snowflakes

Today, we tried making snowflakes using the hole puncher, as shared on No Time for Flash Cards.

First, I took some computer paper (wishing I would've thought to pull from our recycle stash...who cares what is on the other side!), folded it in half twice then into a triangular shape. I cut off the excess/did a design on that end. I got several of these ready before we began.

Initially, we tried a regular hole punch. This was our result:I tried folding it less, but Big sis just didn't have the hand strength for our pairs of hole punches. So instead, we pulled out the three-hole-punch and sure enough, she could use that! She had a lot of fun punching holes!She was so excited when she finally punched a hole on her own!

Note: I did supervise her the entire time and helped a bit with this project...I don't think she would've been able to smash her fingers, but you never know so please use caution if you choose to try this!
Little Sis wasn't too interested, so here's the fun she had.
It was a fun alternative to cutting! Thanks for sharing, Kim!

New Year's "Tambourine"/Shaker

Another craft we tried on New Year's Eve was a shaker/tambourine. Big sis made one of these when we visited a botanical garden on vacation, so I decided we'd make our own version! Little Sis got in on the action at first as we experimented with using glitter for this project.

Supplies needed: somewhat sturdy paper plate (no dividers), stickers/markers/crayons/paint/decorating supplies, beans or something else that would make a good shaking sound, streamers or ribbons, stapler

Decorate the back side of a somewhat sturdy paper plate. (We had plain orange plates left over from a Halloween party.) Initially, we tried doing glitter decorations, however I do not recommend this unless you are willing to wait a long time for it to dry! (Also do not recommend it if you have a 1 year old who loves glitter and just wants to keep dumping entire containers of glitter...note to self: no glitter projects while Little Sis is awake for a while!! Needless to say, she was no longer interested in crafting once the glitter was put away!"

After our failed glitter attempt, we simply used markers. In reflecting, I wish I would have used some fun stickers too - would've added a different "medium" plus peeling stickers is still a little tough for Big Sis but I'm guessing good for those fine motor skills!

Cut out as many streamers as you want on your "tambourine". (I think we just chose 3. More would look better. A whole bunch of curled wrapping paper ribbon would be lots of fun too!)

Fold the plate in half, design side facing out. Place beans inside the plate and fold closed, tucking the streamers just inside the edges. Staple all around the outside of the plate. (Be careful to place your staples close enough together so the beans don't fall out.)

Voila! A fun tambourine for New Year's or your family band!

(Again, sorry no step by step pics...was still consoling Little Sis after the glitter issue while trying to craft with Big Sis...sometimes I wish there were two of me!)

New Year's Kazoo

I'm behind on posting (which will likely happen often...so I apologize in advance!), so hoping to post several crafts today. My pictures are horrible...I get so busy either helping or participating that I forget to photograph. Hopefully this will change with time!

On New Year's Eve, Big Sis and I made a couple of noisemakers.

First, we made "kazoos". I was impressed that they actually do sound like kazoos if you use your voice just right! This craft was courtesy of Ramblings of a Crazy Woman, though also found it on Family Fun.

Supplies needed: Empty toilet paper or paper towel holder, wax paper, rubber band, decorating supplies (we used construction paper and markers, but could use foil, torn tissue paper glued to the roll, etc.)

First, I cut out a strip of construction paper that would wrap around an empty toilet paper roll. We each colored our paper. (Big sis chose to trace her hand and color it in.)You can tell when we are concentrating...our tongue sticks out!

Next, we glued the paper to our rolls,

Finally, I cut a piece of wax paper to cover one end of the roll and we secured it with a rubber band. We cut two slits in the wax paper and started tooting away!

Christmas Craft for the Future

Okay, I know I know...it's now January, but I can't resist. Stumbled across this while trying to figure out how to display some really neat homemade ornaments all year. Haven't looked at the details in depth, but hope to check it out! (Love this site too!)

Christmas Ornament Tree from Not Martha

I'm a bit behind on blogging...need to change this background and need to upload the New Year's crafts that we did on New Year's Eve. Hoping to do some winter crafts with the girls in the next week. But for now, here's to Christmas future!