Archive for the ‘Ooops’ Category
Messy Monster Craft
This craft did not start well. Easter grass is messy on good days but answering an email, after I got the grass out ( oops) I found my son trying to clean it up in the family room. The grass was everywhere and all I could do was laugh. Here’s a pic of the carnage. 
That said, we had so much fun doing this monster craft which was inspired by the books below and my son’s newest pjs – which will debut once the weather cools.
- Gather your materials. If you are brave( and crazy like me ) use Easter grass you have laying around. If you are smart, grab some green tissue paper. You will also need some colored scrap paper , green construction paper and another full piece of construction paper in a contrasting color, scissors and glue.
- Start by cutting the green paper into a monster body and 4 limbs.
- Next hand your child the glue and have them glue the body onto the plain full size piece of construction paper.
- Add the limbs, I made 4 but my son only wanted his monster to have 2. That’s cool.
- Time to add a lot of glue – if you are using tissue paper add a few layers, adding glue as you need it.
- Add the grass. A cool trick is to make balls with the grass and glue those on. This minimizes the mess and random stray pieces falling all over your floor. After he added a ball of grass I would squish it hard to the glue to make sure it stuck.
- While they are adding grass cut out your features. I made horns, a big happy mouth, some claws and one eye with an iris.
- Glue the iris to the eye.
- Add glue for the facial features to the grass.
- Add on your mouth and your eye.
- Add the horns.
- Add the claws/toenails, or in our case, knee pads.
- Let dry!
Books
“When A Monster is Born” by Sean Taylor is funny, my son didn’t find it as funny as I did but he still laughed and didn’t seem scared any of it. The story is about a monster and all the life changing choices he faces every day like whether to eat a principal or run through a wall of a school. This book feels like a choose your own adventure book, it’s fun , repetitive and silly. There is quite a bit of talk about monsters eating people , though nothing too gory.
“Go To Bed Monster” by Natasha Wing is a book anyone who’s ever struggled with bedtime will instantly relate to. The little girl in the book Lucy isn’t sleepy so she draws a monster but soon his refusal to go to bed even after she is sleepy backfires. I like this book, and despite his refusal to believe the monster was a monster not a dinosaur my son really likes this book and it got read 5 times today! * ( See comments for one from the author, I am so sorry I referred to Lucy as Sarah- you’d think the many times we read it itwould have stuck- no more late night blogging for me! )
Posted in 
Scary …and not in a good way.
( in case you can’t tell what they are )
- Gather your materials. You will need some sugar cookie dough, candy corn ( although black jelly bellys would have been way better) , parchment paper, white sprinkles.
- Shape your cookie dough into ghost shapes. This was my first mistake, I should have used a cookie cutter, but live and learn. If you are going to shape them remember they will spread when they cook ( oops forgot that too!).
- Add white or clear sparkly sprinkles.
- Add some candy corn for eyes- so here was my next mistake, I should have waited until the cookies were done baking , although the melted candy looks sorta spooky, so a black candy would be cool all melted.
- Bake. I had to take the blob like half baked cookies out and shape them with a spatula and although I thought they were ruined at first, they actually looked spooky all wrinkly.
So if you are going for cute- don’t use my directions , however I think I achieved a spooky ghost cookie. Wasn’t exactly my intention but they taste great!
