Awesome Chinese New Year Dragon Kite Puppet

Happy belated Chinese New Year!  This past week I visited my son's classroom and did some Chinese New Year themed crafts with his friends.  I'd love to claim today's craft as my own because it's so awesome.  But, I can't take any credit.  My son actually made it in his class.  (The teacher found the idea in  The MailBox and graciously allowed me to share it here.)  Isn't it super neat?

Awesome New Year's Dragon Kite Puppets!

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DIY Giant Ice Cream Cone Gift Wrapping (A fun Alternative to Christmas Stockings!)

Over the years I've done a lot of fun gift wrapping ideas on the blog.  (Remember my Fox Gift Box and my Unicorn Gift Box?)  Well, today I'm sharing a fun alternative to Christmas stockings... what about a Giant Christmas Ice Cream Cone instead?

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Cute Bouquet of Toilet Roll Flowers

Today we have another cute and easy toilet roll craft to make with the kiddos.  Yup! We're turning boring old toilet rolls into cute and fun flowers!

Cute Bouquet of Cardboard Roll Flowers

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Paper Blossoms for Chinese New Year

The quest for easy Chinese New Year Crafts continues!  I've been reading up a bit on the holiday to help me explain it to my older son.  Recently I learned that we often see plum blossom flowers decorating homes around this time of year.  Apparently they represent perseverance, courage, and reliability.  (Beautiful, right?)  Well, we don't have any plum blossom flowers around here.... but we do have pink tissue paper and twigs.  So we grabbed our crafting materials and then set to making ourselves some really easy and beautiful flower decorations for the New Year!

Tissue Paper Flower Kids Craft

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Two ways to Make Confetti (And Celebrate Fiesta!)

Have you ever made confetti before?  I've seen bags of it in the stores, but never made my own.  Recently my son and I walked with our church in our town's parade.  It was a really fun Children's parade celebrating our town's Mexican, Spanish, American Indian, and early history.

I really wanted Chuck to have something to throw in the parade.  (Because let's face it, allowing a preschooler to throw colorful things at people = SUPER kid fun.)  So the night before the parade, my husband and I made two HUMONGOUS BAGS of confetti for kids to throw.  And guess what?  We made it in less than half an hour.  That's right.  We became confetti-making machines!  Here's how we did it!

Let's Make Confetti!

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Let's Make Some Confetti Bookmarks!

Ready for the start of the school year?  Today I'm over at DIY Candy sharing how I made these super fun confetti bookmarks to help kids celebrate their love of reading and the new school year!

How to Make Tissue Paper flowers

Are you looking to create gorgeous, realistic tissue paper flowers with the kids?  Then this is the tutorial for you!  These flowers are beautiful and super easy to make.  Just grab a bunch of tissue paper, pipe cleaners, and scissors and you're all set to make a colorful bouquet for someone special!

How to Make Tissue Paper Flowers

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Shiny Foil Process Art

While I love making crafts with my preschooler, sometimes it's just nice doing process art activities with him.  We don't worry about the results.  We just dig in, throw everything into the pot, and see what comes up.  It's kind of freeing really to not worry about the product.

Awhile back we made some rainy day process art,  tissue paper canvas art and Matisse murals together.   Since we really enjoyed those activities, this time I pulled out our aluminum foil and we tried our hand at making some shiny foil process art.

SHINY FOIL PROCESS ART

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5 Flower + Plant Activities for Preschoolers!

Spring is here! Spring is here!  In honor of this lovely season, here are 5 flower and plant activities that are just perfect for preschoolers!

5 Preschool Flower + Plant Activities

How to make Colorful Swing Streamers

Have you ever wanted to find the end of a rainbow?  As a child, I believed in fairies and magic and would always try to find the pot of gold.  While I know now that such a dream is impossible, I still wanted to bring some colorful St. Patrick's day magic to Chuck.  So I created these lovely colorful swing streamers for him to use at the park!

Colorful Swing Streamers

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This craft is perfect for using up any extra tissue paper you might have lying around.  (And if you like tissue paper crafts, check out these easy tissue paper art and cherry blossom tissue paper flower crafts!)

Easy Tissue Paper Art

Ah tissue paper.  It's colorful, cheap, and I've recently discovered, also great for making art!  Recently Chuck and I both used it to create some new tissue paper artwork for his room.

Easy Tissue Paper Art

Can yon tell which one Chuck made?

Easy Kid made Valentine Chocolate Gift

Handmade gifts rock.  This week's Creative Preschool Collaborator theme is Valentine's Day!   Since hubby REALLY loves chocolate, Chuck and I made him a special chocolate Valentine's gift.  Shhh. Don't tell him about it.  It's a surprise!

Kid Made Valentine Chocolate Gift  

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Aren't they cute?  They look so fun and colorful... almost like cupcakes!  We had a ton of fun making this plate of goodies.  Chuck even enjoyed it more than our Kiss Wrapping Paper!  So  keep reading to see how we made this lovely gift and check out 4 other great Valentine's activities and crafts from the other members of the Creative Preschool Team.

Make Coffee Filter Flowers

Today we're continuing our spring flower theme with these easy to make coffee filter flowers.  Now I'm not a coffee drinker, but I bought a pack of filters anyway because I really wanted to try making these with Chuck.  He had a lot of fun helping me to dye the coffee filters different colors with food coloring.  Then, I had a lot of fun cutting them up and turning them into a lovely and everlasting bouquet of colorful flowers.

Do you need a colorful boost today?  Or do you need a quick and fun activity to do with your kids?  Why not try your hand at making a lovely bouquet of coffee filter flowers too?

Cherry Blossom Tissue Paper Flower Craft (Tree printable included!)

I know, it's a little early for cherry blossoms crafts.  But this mama is seriously over winter.  Buh-bye!  With yet another snow storm scheduled to come tomorrow, this tissue paper cherry blossom tree craft is my attempt to kick winter in the face.  Hiyah! 

Ahh, cherry blossoms... so beautiful... so springy...

Like the tree?  You can use it for your kids' crafts too!  I turned my painting into a pdf so you can just download it and print it out....

Two Toddler approved Fall Crafts

Even though I really enjoy crafting, sometimes it takes a bit of persuasion to get Chuck to join in.  Currently he's much more into playing with toy cars than crafting with mom.  Go figure! :)  But I'm a persistent bugger, so I keep encouraging him to make stuff with me.

So far several of my craft plans flopped, but here are two crafts that Chuck actually participated in. (Hooray!) 

1.  Paper Bag Pumpkins:

Materials:

• Lunch bags
• Tissue paper squares
• Glue stick
• Marker 
• Googly eyes (optional)
• Pipe Cleaner
• Newspaper

Directions:

1. Glue your tissue paper squares onto your lunch bag.
2. Add a face
3. Crumple up newspapers and stick them into your bag.
4. Use a pipe cleaner to seal up the bag.

And here are some pumpkins made during our toddler craft time:

2.  Contact Paper Leaves
 

Materials:

•  Leaves
• Contact paper
• Scissors
• Tape
• Tissue paper (optional)

Directions:

1. Place leaves in a heavy book to flatten them.
2. Tape down contact paper, sticky side up.
3. Stick leaves and tissue paper squares onto your contact paper.
4. Place a piece of contact paper(sticky side down) on top of your first piece of contact paper.
5. Trim the edges and tape your leaves onto a window.

Have a great weekend!

Make Colorful Coffee Filter Pinata-inspired Letters

I don't know about you, but I've been feeling so inspired by all the warm weather lately.  It seems like everything around us is bursting with life, light, and color.  To bring some of that happy, airy, summer feeling inside, I made these fun pinata-inspired letters to decorate our bedroom wall.

Materials:
- coffee filters
- markers
- spray bottle
- shallow pan
- cardboard box
- tape
- double sided tape
- pencil
- exacto knife
- scissors
- white paint
- paint brush
- plastic bags

Directions:
1.  Cut out your letters from cardboard.  (I found that using an exacto knife was much easier than using scissors.)  Paint the letters white to help your colors stand out.

2.  Use markers to doodle on your coffee filters.  (Have fun with it!  It really doesn't matter what you doodle.  All your designs are going to be washed away anyway.)

3.  Spray your coffee filters to make the colors run.  Then, let the coffee filters dry.  (I placed ours on some plastic bags and waited overnight.)

Here's what the coffee filters looked like after they dried:

4.  Cut out strips from your coffee filters and tape them onto the horizontal sides of the letters to cover them.  (This way you won't see the raw cardboard edges.  The vertical edges are going to be covered by fringe.)

Oops.  I missed one edge on the "L."

5.  Cut out similar sized strips from your coffee filters and turn them into pinata fringe.  Use your double sided tape and normal tape to stick them onto the cardboard letters.  Be sure to work from the bottom upwards.  Also, wrap the strips around the letters to cover the exposed cardboard sides.

Here's what a finished letter looks like:

And here's what the fringe looks like up close:

And that's it.  Now we have a lovely set of pinata-inspired letters.  I placed them right above our bed.  I think they look nice there, don't you?

Thanks for reading!
(Psst-  If you liked this pinata-inspired craft, you can check out my number pinata or snack bag pinata.)