Kate's Turkeys

Paper plate turkey

T is for turkey

Shape turkey

Handprint sun catcher glittery turkey

 Pumpkin pie play dough turkeys

 Handprint turkeys

Kate helped me make these pretzel rod turkey treats.

Phew!  I think we've made enough turkeys for Thanksgiving already!

Hearts by Kate

 Kate made a sun catcher collage heart decoration for Valentine's Day.  I placed the contact paper heart shape on the sliding glass door, and gave her pieces of tissue paper and foam beads to stick on the heart.

 Kate loves glue sticks!  Since we had plenty of tissue paper left over from the sun catcher, I cut hearts out of cereal box cardboard and left this tray for her to discover.

Cosmic Sun Catchers

I saw the idea for "cosmic sun catchers" in a link posted on Facebook and knew it would be the perfect activity for Reagan and Ellie.  Ellie lives next door, and her dad leaves for work very early every morning, so she comes here before school each day.  Reagan and Ellie like to do crafts in the morning.  This was easy enough for a before school activity.

I often keep plastic lids for activities, so I let the girls each use three lids to make their own sun catchers.  First, they each filled a lid with Elmer's school glue.

Then they added a few drops of food coloring (less is more with this craft; I found that one drop of each color for a total of four drops is just right), and used toothpicks to swirl the food coloring without over-mixing.

Here is one that Reagan made.  Isn't it gorgeous?  I think the end result is great, but I really love the way it looks at this stage of the process.

We left them to dry for three whole days!  Once they were dry, they peeled right off of the lids.

I had to cut off the edges to make them look prettier, and then I punched a hole in each of them and hung them in front of our sliding glass door.

Pretty and easy = the best kind of crafts!

Melted Bead Sun Catchers

We followed the directions at The Artful Parent to make melted bead sun catchers.

The top row was designed by Reagan and the bottom row was designed by Collin.

First, Collin and Reagan arranged translucent pony beads in a muffin pan.  When they were happy with their designs, I put the pan in a 400 degrees oven for approximately twenty minutes.

All of them popped out easily after cooling for just a few minutes.

The original directions called for drilling a hole in the sun catchers to hang them, but I just put a dab of hot glue and stuck a string in the glue on one side of the sun catcher.

Collin doubted me on this project, but both kids love the finished product and want to do this again!

Watercolor and Glue Leaves

C and R made more leaves to decorate our kitchen.

While they were in school, I cut leaf shapes out of coffee filters (I love using coffee filters for art projects!).

I created "veins" on each "leaf" with my glue gun.

When C and R came home, they painted the "leaves" with Faber-Castell watercolors.

R painted very colorful leaves.

These were painted by C, the traditionalist.

We followed this with the book, Count Down to Fall by Fran Hawk.  Count down from ten to one with facts about different trees.  We own this book, and it is a must read every fall.

I just have to show you 0ur sliding glass door; it is full of great projects right now!

*The idea for this art project came from Having Fun at Home.

Autumn Leaves - Sun Catchers

After C made the sun catcher planets, I told R that I would help her make autumn leaves using the same technique.

She used the sharpener over wax paper to get a lot of tiny red and yellow crayon pieces.  I helped when she got tired of sharpening.

Then, we placed another piece of wax paper over the crayon pieces, covered that with an old towel, and used a warm iron to melt the pieces together by just ironing over the towel.

We both cut leaf shapes out of the melted crayon/ wax paper "sandwich" and taped them to the door.

They look great when the sun shines through them!

At bedtime, we read Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf by Lois Ehlert.  The book tells the story of a sugar maple tree and the child who planted it.  We love the textual collages created by Ehlert.