Archive for December 2011
Has the thought of your kids home from school overwhelmed you? Or are you excited to have a break from school or homeschooling? More than a few friends have already told me they would be stalking my site this weekend and jotting down ideas. If you have an activity to share, great craft to do , or anything else that might help out another parent to keep their little ( or older ) ones having fun and maybe even learning while on break please add the link!
Link & Learn is the web’s best early learning link up filled with kids’ crafts, lessons and my favorite games and play that are fun and educational. Feel free to link up great posts that you think fit with our mission or you think our readers will love.
Have a fantastic week!
The Miracle of Hanukkah
Latkes, Latkes, Good to Eat: A Chanukah Story
A Confused Hanukkah: An Original Story of Chelm
Hanukkah Lights 
Hanukkah Lights
The Only One Club
Hanukkah Haiku
Do you remember paint by numbers? I used to love doing them but mixing the numbers up ( yeah I was that kid) my son however is all about numbers and this was a fun way to make something festive but also let his interest in math be spotlighted. You could do this with shapes, or letters too. I didn’t tell him that the final result was a Christmas tree so it was fun to have him “decode” the craft as we went.
- Gather your materials. You will need some pom-poms in different colors, cups to sort them in, construction paper, glue and a marker.
- Start by sorting your pom-poms by color into different cups, write different numbers on each cup. I wrote 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 on mine since we’d just been chatting about counting by 10s. To have your child help sort the pom poms just put on of each color in one cup to use as a guide.
- Write out the numbers on the paper in a design. I did green outline, with random colors and green in the middle.
- Start gluing the pom poms on using the code.
- hmmmm what could it be?
- All done! Let dry.
Great Christmas Book!
a creature was stirring
Last week I announced I was taking part in a creative photobook contest with 9 other bloggers sponsored by Snapfish. Immediately you all responded with great ideas. I of course turned this into a lesson with my son and the end result ( the book) will be a gift for my daughter. So many of you agreed that we should make an alphabet book. I seriously considered an Alphabet Crafts book but I already wrote one. Also I wanted my son to participate in making it and if I did alphabet crafts I would have just used already made things. So I decided on …. Toy Box abc . GretchenP suggested an alphabet of holiday items and I started looking at our house and things were too obscure, and X Y and Z were seriously problematic! Then I thought of Marcie’s suggestion of a book of first words and that quickly evolved into toys, which was perfect because it let my son participate in creating it .
An Alphabet of Toys
We scoured our house for toys that start with all different letters of the alphabet , my son got a great week long early literacy lesson and I got a reminder we have too many toys. Our motivation was to create something fun and useful for my daughter and we will wrap it up and give it to her for Christmas. It’s perfect because it used items she sees daily to help her learn her letters. Gathering and photographing the items took all week, thank goodness actually making the book was a cinch ( although it would have been easier if my daughter didn’t keep waking up- teething is killing me! ) . 
My week was packed with pagent rehersals, meetings and preschool but we had fun squeezing in photo sessions in the playroom and even bathroom ( hey the light was great). You can see my son arranging the toys and my daughter playing in the sink to keep her from grabbing the toys as we shot pictures.
When it was time to actually make the book it was so easy my son was even able to help me. He took this picture as we worked on it together. We chose lay out colors, and my favorite feature was being able to completely customize the page layouts and shuffle the photos. I’d shuffle the pictures on the page and my son would say keep or keep going! He’ll be my design assitant for our family photobook this year for sure, the kid is awesome.
The other feature that helped was Snapfish’s easy uploads. I realized that I was missing letters K and L when I was already halfway through the book creation ( and it was well past my bedtime.. did I mention she’s teehting?) No problem! The photobook was auto saved and it was super easy to find the pictures on my computer, upload and add them in.
So are you ready to see the whole book? Here’s the link!
As soon as I find out if we won ( cross your fingers! ) I will let you know. Thank you so much to everyone who helped me brainstorm and remember if you were one of the first 100 people to comment on the first post about Snapfish ( here) and my book is chosen as the winner you will win $100 photo book credit from Snapfish. Like I said , cross those fingers!
I was compensated by Snapfish for participating in this campaign, but as always I only choose companies I would recommend personally to work with professionally.
I love it when I can do one craft with both my kids. With a 5 year old son and a 18 month old daughter it’s not as often as I wish. This super easy but completely festive Christmas craft fit the bill, they both happily painted and now my kitchen is merry and bright with one on the pantry and the other on the closet door. Holiday crafts are my kids’ favorite and unlike many of our other creations these are kept, stored and brought out year after year.
- Gather your materials. You will need a paper plate per child, corks ( do you know how long it took us to save up these corks? Since 2006 I have been almost always pregnant or nursing. It took a long time… ), paint, a plate or two for the paint, some ribbon , scissors and hot glue.
- Start by cutting the middle out of the plate. If we were painting with brushes or something that offered more coverage I’d do the cutting after the paint dried but with corks you want to make sure they hit the wreath and not all in the middle of the plate.
- Add paint to a plate.
I put a different cork in each color to encourage my kids to try each color. Also the corks I used for my daughter who is presently trying to put all things not bolted down into her mouth , are the solid plastic? ones. I did a bite test and they were solid. Still PLEASE watch vigilantly and make sure your children are ready and able to do the craft safely, you can always opt for finger painting . - Paint!
- She was more interested in the feeling of the paint than banging the corks on her wreath. This is normal for toddlers, they are exploring and it doesn’t mean the craft failed.
- My son quite liked the marks the corks left and had a ball.
- After they were dried I made bows and hot glued them on, then put them on my doors with painter’s tape.
Easy Peasy Wreath Cookies
Check out these cheater cookies we made when we needed something fast for a holiday pot luck, they were tasty and super easy for my son to help me make.
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