Cardboard Crab Scenes

What says summer more than a beach? So we decided to make beach scenes, complete with crabs and sand!

We used sections of an egg carton for the crabs. Painted them red and after they dried, we added pipe cleaners for the legs and drew little faces on them.

Next we cut up an empty cereal box and painted the inner part of the squares blue

Once the paint was starting to dry, we brushed on a mixture of glue and water (keeps the glue from being to thick and helps it spread easier) and sprinkled sand on them. They were supposed to only put sand on one half, but they sort of covered most of the squares(it did wipe off easily though) , and it was not until AFTER we started that i realized I didn't have any regular sand- so- we used some of the cloud dough mix we made a fw months ago. What a mess- but they had fun! OK, Mew had fun, Jocie didn't enjoy touching the sand stuff much and couldn't wait to get that part finished!

Finally we glues the crabs to the backgrounds. We had fun making them, but really had trouble finding somewhere to put them afterwards as the sand/dough stuff was just not sticking as well as I wanted it to. Next time we use real sand hahaha

Mew's finished scene

Jocie's finished scene

crafty fun

Short and sweet!

We made animals using Pom-poms, glue, pipe cleaners and google eyes.

Mew made a caterpillar 

Jocie made a teddy bear

We definitely have plans to make more soon

We also experimented with footprint art. We had some left over canvas 'boards' so we used those.

Jocie made a unicorn.

Mew made a monkey

We have plans to make handprint pictures soon!

Calming sensory bottles

I have seen this idea all over the internet over the last year or so. Always meant to make them, but kept forgetting to get supplies. Finally we got to them! they are Jocie's Favorite things!! She even takes hers to bed with her! (I take them out after she is asleep just incase they decide to leak!) She calls them her 'sush bottles'- I just call them neat :) Mew, he liked them for a few minutes and then didn't care too much.

The first ones I made in soda bottles we cleaned out. I poured in a little bit of HOT water and added about half a bottle of clear elmer's glue. Then I added some fine glitter- liked it so much we used the whole container! Mew's was blue, Jocie's was Pink. I topped them off with more hot water, letting it run slowly at the top to get rid of bubbles and air and make the top as full and smooth as possible. After drying the top and the lids, I put super glue on the caps and twisted them on. Once I let them dry for a few minutes I checked for leaks and made sure the caps were not coming off (at least not easily)

Although Jocie LOVED her bottle, I really wanted it to be easier for her to carry around and take longer for the glitter to settle. We found a thinner bottle at the store (from like a flavored water drink) and it really was a great fit for her hands so I picked it up. This time we added more glue (about 3/4 of the bottle - we were also putting it in a slightly smaller bottle so it was a much larger percentage of glue) .  I also added some glitter glue to thicken it even more (I had seen this on a few sites- I got the only glitter glue I found at the craft store and thought it was too thick, but tried it anyway- um, yep- too thick- it left sort of globs in there- some of it melted in with the hot water, but not all of it- OH well- sort of looks cool with little multi-colored blobs popping up once in a while hahaha) 

This time the glitter makes more distinct swirls when we shake it up and it takes a lot longer to settle back to the bottom. Jocie LOVES this one more than the first. She especially loves the multi-colored glitter. It really gives it a great sparkle!

Dragonflies

Dragonflies were fun- a bit messy, and not quite how we planned them- but they worked and the kiddos like them so- it's all good!

First we started with laminating sheets (you could use contact paper but it would not be as clear) - I separated the top and bottom and drew the dragon fly wings right on the sheet (MISTAKE #1- separating the sheets- tried the same idea with stained glass hearts with Jocie and left them intact, just opened and used the bottom and put them back together. When I separated them first and just sat them back together, they got stuck in the laminator and folded all up, which would have been great if we had been making accordion style wings hahaha- we learn from out mistakes)

Then, we took chunky pieces of tissue paper and placed them on the sheet covering the entire area where the wings were drawn

Then we put the top sheet on and ran them through the laminator.

While I was laminating, the kiddos used markers to color craft sticks and put google eyes on them (which fell off as soon as they tried to play with them later)

After cooling a bit, we covered the area with watered down glue (helps it spread better and then it's not as thick) and sprinkled them with glitter

(Mistake #2- turning my head for 2 seconds to help Jocie while Mew had the glitter bottle- um, yeah, he had it ALL OVER and the wings were almost a solid sheet of glitter- fun haha)

Once dry, we cut the wings out and glued them onto the craft sticks-

Dragonflies!

Our come back?

It has been a while- I really want to keep up, but things have been busy lately. I miss posting- officially trying to kick myself so I start posting more often!
We have not stopped the FUN activities- I have just stopped posting! Will try to do a little better this summer and keep it flowing !

So, tonight- I catch up -will try to make it quick and painless ;)

Since Orbeez were such a hit with the kiddos, I tried to change it up a little bit by adding shaving cream to the mix. Mew was OK with it- Jocie wanted NOTHING to do with it! the funniest part- after playing fora while Mew asked me to take the shaving cream out- so I did- and he cried! He did not want to play with the orbeez- he wanted the shaving cream and here I had just rinsed it all out down the drain :( Bad Mom!! So I set him up a little more so he could run his cars through it- his fav thing to do with Shaving cream!

With Orbeez

Just plain shaving cream....

The Princess, Plain orbeez (and her crown of course!)