Crafting corner Part II

Believe it or not, me, the self-proclaimed uncrafty one, has been reading a handful of crafting blogs on a semi-regular basis.

Now, before you start being all impressed with my new-found abilities, let me rephrase that these crafty blogs are mainly kids crafting blogs. In other words, I read them solely to get ideas of crafts to do with the kids.

And, I'm learning that it doesn't take much crafting ability to make my three-year-old happy. It just takes a little creativity. So, over the last few months, we've made snowmen, fire trucks, garbage trucks, dinosaurs and boats out of contruction paper, paint, glitter glue and more. And we've made sock puppets and painted shamrocks using potatoes. And I'm also learning how to get Alex involved in the making of crafts as well -- because anything her brother's doing, she wants to do too.

So, at least three times a week, the three of us will sit at the little craft table and 'make something'. I'm pretty proud of this -- because let's face it, it's me making something out of, well nothing but my imagination and some dollar store supplies.

So, without further ado, I'd like to share a few of those projects:

Let's make some music

This one took weeks of preparation because I needed to save enough material to make two drums, two shakers and two guitars.

The drums are made out of an empty formula container and an empty coffee canister. We wrapped them in paper and then coloured them with markers and crayons.

The shakers were made out of empty vitamin bottles with childproof caps so that the tops didn't need to be glued shut. One shaker was filled with rice and the other was filled with beer caps. Again, they were wrapped in paper and then decorated with glitter glue (although Alex didn't hang around for the decorating, so I got into this one).

Finally, the guitars were made out of empty Kleenex boxes, paper towel rolls and elastic bands. We changed up the type of decoration again, this time using stickers.

Hiding behind a mask

These paper plate masks were an all-day project. First, we cut out the eyes. Then each kid decorated their mask. Austin asked to make an elephant, so I got out some blue paint for him and he painted away. I decided Alex should make a tiger (or a cat) and gave her some crayons to colour with.

Once Austin finished painting, we found something else to do while the paint dried, returning a few hours later to glue the trunk on (a toilet paper roll). A few hours after that, we returned to glue the ears on (that we had cut out and glued together earlier). Finally, the next morning, I attached the string and Austin ran around the basement looking like an elephant.

Alex, on the other hand, coloured her mask with crayons and then found something else to do while Austin worked on his. And Austin was only too happy to finish hers by sticking on the ears for her.
her.

Monsters stay out! This is my room!

Austin's been having nightmares again lately -- screaming out in the middle of the night that there are spiders/crocodiles/snakes/sharks/monsters in his room and that they're going to get him. Every time this happened, Ryan or I would put a post-it note on his door for him that told the unwanted creature to stay out.

So, one day, we painted more permanent signs for his bedroom door. Really, this was just a painting project -- although I threw in some letter practice by having him write his name on one of them (top right) so that the monsters would know not to enter his room. So far, the signs have had the desired effect -- the unwanted creatures have stopped visiting him.
And of course, Austin insisted that Alex needed to paint signs so that the monsters didn't visit her when they discovered that they couldn't go in his room.