Ripped Paper Rainbows

As happy as I have been to have a real winter this year, it's that time of year where I start to crave color. Not just because the world is white - but because I know that pretty soon we'll enter New England's fifth season - Mud Season- and everything will turn brown.

So while putting together our post on Paper Plate Wreaths I got inspired to try creating a paper plate rainbow with the boys and that lead to these Ripped Paper Rainbows.

This was a great project to try on a "stay home day" that didn't require a lot of prep, materials, or project time. Yet, the result was pretty and it could easily be done by several different age groups.

Fast and Easy Fire Truck Play

The other week we had a friend over to play. With three little boys in the house, the play quickly turned to our extensive collection of vehicles. All three boys especially became focused on using our well loved fire trucks. (We have two fire trucks which were one of our favorite yard sale finds last year, two for $2!)

They kept trying to find things "to put out" which led to this fast and easy fire truck play set up. 

Groundhog Paper Bag Puppet

This post is going up a little late for the day, but this morning I felt so bad for the poor groundhog. Between the Superbowl and the large snow storm hitting the East Coast, he barely got a mention on the morning news.

And of course we hate to let a holiday pass us by, so why not honor the groundhog on this snowy Groundhog Day at home?

We've enjoyed making paper bag animal puppets before, they're quick and easy to assemble and take very little prep time. (Check out our dragon and owl puppets here.)

Love Bug Cards & 20+ Love Bug Crafts & Activities

Last year we discovered the fun of creating "Love Bugs" for Valentine's Day. Our egg carton love bugs were simple and fun to create. This year we decided to extend our love bug fun into an easy to create card idea.

While creating we discovered lots of other great Love Bug ideas, make sure you check out the list of awesome ideas for incorporating love bugs into all elements of Valentine's Day at the end of this post.

Owl Paper Bag Puppets

Over the last year we've been excited to hear owls close to our house in the woods behind us. So with the days now shorter it seemed like the perfect time to start learning about our owl neighbors. We've been reading several books, both fiction and nonfiction, as well as talking about owls and their sounds.

Our first owl craft was a quick and easy one, Owl Paper Bag Puppets. 

Owl Paper Bag Puppets

We've made paper bag puppets before when we created our "Puff Dragon" paper bag puppets. It's such a fun and fast way to create a puppet, and can be made as a variety of animals. 

Fourth of July Windsock

For a few years before teaching elementary school I taught preschool and I always loved making this craft with kiddos. We hadn't made them here at home yet, but it was a perfect time to make them with the Fourth of July quickly approaching.

 

The materials are simple but the result is very festive!

For our wind socks we used 12 inch by 18 inch white construction paper, red and blue washable poster paint, white glue, blue ribbon, white glitter, and red and white crepe paper streamers. We also needed scissors and a hole punch to finish the project. 

Quick Pick & Project of the Week: "Puff Dragon" Paper Bag Puppet

Who doesn't love and remember the beautiful song "Puff the Magic Dragon" from when we were kids? Even though there is a sad element to this song, I've always enjoyed singing along. Big Brother, who loves to sing, has also been really enjoying the song these days.

A few years ago we bought a beautifully illustrated version of the song as a book which also came with a CD.  The words are the original lyrics as written by the song's creators, Peter Yarrow and Lenny Lipton, which mean that often we sing it aloud as we read. What we love best is at the end a little girl returns to find Puff, and there seems to be a grown-up watching from the distance, who although may be now an adult, resembles Jackie Paper as a child.

For this week's Quick Pick and Project of the Week we decided to create a Puff paper bag puppet.

Earth Day Collage and Brainstorm

We've continued to explore Earth Day this week and the idea of taking care of our Earth. 

We enjoyed creating this Earth Day collage and then brainstorming ideas for how to care for Earth. We used paper from our scrap paper collection to create a torn paper collage and silver permanent marker to write our ideas around the world. 

Five Simple Crafts for Celebrating Chinese New Year

Yesterday we wound up with an unexpected day home, which gave us a whole afternoon to learn about and decorate for Chinese New Year.

Several years ago I was one of a handful of teachers from across our state who traveled in a grant funded program to China. For two weeks we traveled across the country; participating in home stays, sampling local foods, and seeing a variety of sights. As I traveled I collected many different resources for teaching children about China, and added to that collection to develop a unit I taught for several years. This week, as Big Brother's preschool class learned about Chinese New Year we pulled the unit box out at home and explored many of the items inside. As we looked for something fun to do on Friday afternoon we decided to decorate and celebrate for Chinese New Year.

All of our crafts were quick and simple, and extended from either the materials we'd been looking at or a great young-child friendly book, My First Chinese New Year by Karen Katz.