Tuesday Tot Craft Time: Frogs

The materials that we were given at the library for this craft were: construction paper, green paper frog finger puppets, pom poms, tissue paper, eye stickers, crayons, glue sticks, and scissors.  There were no instructions given for this craft at the library.  It reminded me of my preschool teaching days.  You just provided the materials and let the children use their imagination and creativity to come up something.

This is what my son made with those materials.  It has been on our mantel with the Spring decorations.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Here is the picture that my youngest son made this week at the library.

They gave us some coloring pages, a large blank paper, some clovers, tissue paper, glue, and markers.

I drew and colored a leprechaun for him.

Here is the 2nd picture that he made, because his friend said that rainbows start with red and not purple.  She was right, but its not that big of a deal.

Tuesday Tot Craft Time: Puppets

This is a fun and easy craft for the kids, making paper bag puppets.  The library provided us with white paper bags, construction paper, scissors, glue, crayons, feathers, pom poms, and contact paper cut into different shapes.  Right away my son said that he wanted to make a turkey.

We cut out a large brown heart out of the construction paper, and then cut it in half for the wings.  The hand print contact paper was perfect for the under the beak red thing (whatever it is called).  I also used the contact paper to cut out a smile.  My son used pom poms for the eyes, and he colored the wings.

For the tail we used a hand and flower cut out of the contact paper, and just layered them.  He put the feathers under the finger tips instead of using glue.

Then he colored both sides of the bag / puppet.

He had a lot of fun playing with his new turkey puppet.

Tuesday Tot Craft Time: Weaving

My 4 year old checked out a book all about Textiles for kids today.  Unfortunately he is to young to make most of the crafts in it.  However I thought that he was old enough to learn how to weave.  He recently got new shoes, so I used the shoe box for the loom.  I cut 6 notches on each side, then I strung up some yarn.  Then I made a shuttle (out of a food box) and wrapped yarn around it, and then showed him how to weave with it.  It was to hard for him.  My husband recently weeded out his magazines, so I cut up some pages from one of the magazines.  This was a lot easier for him to learn how to weave with. He really enjoyed it.

Then I made some paper looms and showed him how to weave with them.  A paper loom is just paper with slits cut out from the center but not at the edges.  Now he can go to town with weaving.

Tuesday Tot Craft Time: Picture Frames

This is a super easy craft, and it makes a nice gift.

The library provided the pre-cut frames, tissue paper, and glue.

Tuesday Tot Craft Time: Valentine's Cards

It is easy enough to have a Valentine's card making kit for kids.  Mine is made from die cut hearts from recycled cardboard and colored card stock, toilet paper tubes that have been painted, cut, and folded to look like hearts, and chenille stems.  Then I provide the blank cards, envelopes, some other papers that they can cut and glue, glue sticks, scissors, and markers.  

Here are some cards that some sweet girls made for me from this kit.

Here is the card that my youngest son made for my husband for Valentine's Day.

Also using supplies from the kit, this girl made this origami heart for her mom.

Have a Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Tuesday Tot Craft Time: Chalk Drawings

Tuesday Tot Craft Time: Sticker Pictures

This is a pretty straight forward and a simple one, make pictures using stickers.

The supplies are stickers and paper.  However crayons and markers should have been included in this so that kids could use their imagination more when making their pictures.

This would also be good for making bookmarks.

Tuesday Tot Craft Time: Miscellaneous Paper Crafts

Every once in awhile the library has a "recycle" craft day where they bring out all of their leftovers from past crafts.  This was one of those days.  The kids colored a page full of flowers and circles.

Then we cut them out.

You can either glue the circles on top of the flowers, making the center of the flower.

Or you can just let them glue them anywhere that they want to.

The next project was a brown paper bag fish.

After coloring his fish, my son glued a popsicle to the back of it turning it into a puppet.

The next paper we got had a moon, a star, and a sun on it.  Some were pre-cut for the kids.

After coloring them, we glued popsicle sticks to them.  Now we have night and day puppets.

Tuesday Tot Craft Time: People

This is an easy enough craft.  Just find a stencil of a person or a gingerbread man, trace onto some card stock or recycled cardboard, and cut it out.  Then let you child decorate their person.  You can give them more than just markers and crayons.  If you have scrap fabric, yarn, buttons, beads, or other things, let them use those supplies to make their people come to life.  You can also take popsicle sticks or paint stirrers and glue them on the back of the people to turn them into puppets.

Tuesday Tot Craft Time: Making Butter

What you do is put some heavy whipping cream in a jar, and shake it until there is a lump of solid (butter) in the liquid.  You separate the lump from the liquid, and now you have butter.

Tuesday Tot Craft Time: Gingerbread Men

Today is the last drop in craft day at our library for a few weeks.  We made gingerbread men, which are super easy but very festive.

They provided the kids with foam pieces, glue sticks, crayons, and pipe cleaners to decorate their gingerbread men with.

My son's gingerbread man is on the right and one of his friend's is on the left.  I cut out the background because it had to many kids' faces in it.  I'm ok with showing my son's face, but I don't feel right showing his friends' faces without permission.  Anyway, the kids had a great time making this craft, and now we have something else to decorate our walls with for the holiday.