Things to Make and Do, Crafts and Activities for Kids

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June 2011

4th of July Paper Lanterns

Visit The Crafting Chicks for directions to make
these festive 4th of July paper lanterns!
via Craft Gossip

06/30/2011 in 12+ years old, 3 - 5 years old, 6 - 12 years old, Crafts, Family, Fourth of July Crafts, Free & Fun Crafts, Group, Paper Crafts, Party Ideas | Permalink | Comments (0)

4th of July Windsock

The Mother Huddle shares a simple way to
make a patriotic windsock from crepe paper!

06/30/2011 in 12+ years old, 3 - 5 years old, 6 - 12 years old, Building/3 Dimensional, Crafts, Family, Fourth of July Crafts, Group, Mobiles, Garland, Bunting & Wreaths, Outside, Paper Crafts, Party Ideas | Permalink | Comments (0)

Fourth of July Crafts!

All of these great 4th of July crafts, treats,
printables and so much more in the archives!

06/30/2011 in Fourth of July Crafts | Permalink | Comments (0)

Summer Crafts For Kids

tin can lanterns
:: Mama Scout ::

chalk paint
:: Let The Children Play ::

rock necklaces
:: Little Birdie Secrets ::

friendship bracelets
:: Honestly WTF ::

bubble wands
:: Kleas ::

bow and arrows
:: Imagine Childhood ::

no-sew ribbon twirlers
:: Curly Birds ::

plastic lacing boondoggle
:: Roots And Wings Co. ::

fairy windchimes
:: Beneath The Rowan Tree ::

06/29/2011 in 12+ years old, 18 mos to 2 years old, 3 - 5 years old, 6 - 12 years old, Activities, All Ages, Art, Building/3 Dimensional, Candles & Lanterns, Crafts, Doughs, Paints, Mixes, and Concoctions, Family, Free & Fun Crafts, Gifts to Make, Group, Homeschooling, Mobiles, Garland, Bunting & Wreaths, Outside, Pretend Play, Recycled Crafts, Summer Crafts, Themes, Wearables, Yarn Crafts | Permalink | Comments (4)

A Book & A Craft: "The Saggy Baggy Elephant" and an Accordion Book with Five Artsy Elephants

Please welcome today's Book & Craft contributor,
Rashmie, who blogs at Mommy Labs! She is sharing
The Saggy Baggy Elephant and an accordion book
that uses five different art techniques!

We're so delighted and honoured to contribute to "A Book
and a Craft" initiative. We love books and we love crafts,
so when I saw this initiative, I knew my daughter would
be thrilled to be a part of such a project.

I left it to my 5.5 year old daughter - Pari - to decide the
book that she would base her craft on. And, I wasn't at
all surprised that she chose "The Saggy Baggy
Elephant" - a heartwarming story of a baby elephant -
by Kathryn and Byron Jackson. The illustrations by Gustaf
Tenggren are particularly endearing. Though, one may
think this book is a little wordy for a preschooler; for Pari
it really works because she's now at that stage where she
reads voraciously and in fact likes it if the book offers lots
to read besides having exclusive illustrations. We all love
Elephants and have had many a trysts with this gentle
giant of a creature. During some of our trips around
South India, we have watched the Elephants in the
wild, bathed them, fed them and played for hours. So,
our love for Elephants is innate and deep-rooted. The
Saggy Baggy Elephant narrates the story of a baby
Elephant named Sooky who goes around the forest
dancing and playing without a care in the world. He is not
aware of his looks; does not even know he is an elephant.
Until, he is mocked at by a tactless parrot for the oddities
in his looks - his way too big ears, a rather long nose,
and a skin that's all "bags and sags and
creases and wrinkles.

The Parrot declares that Sooky should be called a 'Saggy
Baggy Elephant'. Along the way, he is made fun of and
even threatened by many other animals too, which
makes Sooky feel lonely and demoralized and hurts his
self-esteem. So much so that he hides in a dark cave shedding copious amount of tears. This is when he meets
a herd of giant and beautiful elephants and discovers his
own identity. And, Sooky regains his confidence, spirits
and zest and even teaches his "one-two-three-kick"

dance to this herd.

In my opinion, this story conveys a
meaningful message to kids (as well as to adults) in
that we are all different and hence unique in our own
ways and we should be proud of who we are. We are born
with different looks, skin colour and talent and that's
what makes this world a diverse and interesting place.
For me, as a parent, the takeaway was to respect my
child as an individual and not compare her with any other
kid. The message apart, the story and the illustrations
are bound to delight a child's heart.

Our craft, too, is based on the main character
and the message and celebrates the spirit
of "being different and unique".

Pari thoroughly enjoyed making this craft because the
result is another book - an accordion book - with a story
woven into it with the help of six different
art techniques!

And, here is a step-by-step tutorial with pictures.
I'll try to keep this as succinct as possible.

We discussed the concept and approach before we set out
to make this. The concept was to make five elephants
using different art techniques:

*Eric Carle style colouring on tissues
*Mosaic elephant using styrofoam cuttings
*Crayon rubbings with rays effect
*Printing an elephant with leaves
*Using the rolling tube with yarn technique

Her idea was to write a short story describing each
elephant and his talent. But, the talent of the elephant
would be decided and narrated only after all five
elephant artworks were ready.

Step 1:
I cut out a long strip of paper from a sheet of Ivory
paper. The length was long enough to make four folds.
The size of each fold will depend upon the size of the
artwork you want to make on it. I made the elephant
sketch for each artwork.

Step 2:
The first elephant was made by cutting small pieces
from the Styrofoam plate, colouring them and pasting
them in the elephant body. Before that, she did the
outline with 3D glitter glue.

Step 3:
For the second elephant, she cut out the sketch that I
drew on a paper; coloured the outline of the cutout
with soft pastels and after placing the cutout on one
of the folds of the accordion paper she rubbed the
colour in a outward direction onto the paper
underneath. This resulted in beautiful rays-like
effect emerging from the elephant's outline. Then,
she went on to decorate the inside with sketch pens.

Step 4:
For the third elephant, we used the Eric Carle method
of artwork. I had her paint a tissue paper with many
layers of diluted tempera paint. We made sure that she
did not move the brush too vigorously or the tissue
would tear apart. It was also important that the
next layer of colour was painted before the previous
layer had dried. Finally, once the painted tissue was
completely dry and stiff, I sketched an Elephant figure
with a black marker pen and cut it out. Pari pasted the
cut-out onto the first fold of the accordion book.

Step 5:
She made the fourth elephant by applying paint on the
back of the leaves and stamping them. We used three
different leaves to make the elephant's head, body
and trunk and painted the legs separately.

    Step 6:
Finally, she moved onto design the accordion book
cover. For this, I first cut out an elephant from a
Styrofoam plate and stuck it down in the centre of
the book cover using glue sticker. The idea was to
make an elephant surrounded by tall grass all
around. To make the grass, we glued yarn around a
hollow cardboard tube. Then, painted the strings
with green tempera paint. While it was wet enough,
Pari rolled the tube all over the paper, including on
the Styrofoam elephant. When we removed the
Styrofoam cutout, we had a white space in the
shape of an elephant surrounded by green grass.

    Step 7:
Besides all those arty and fun techniques, we used a
spin-art technique to make the rainbow coloured flowers.
On a dart (part of Pari's toy bow and arrow), Pari
placed some drops of thick colours. She then pressed
the dart down and gave it a slight spin to reveal
beautiful impressions with branched effect.

    Step 8:
Once the artwork was over, Pari sat down to decide
names for her elephants who were all so unique and
so different from each other, despite the fact that they
were all the same creature. The Eric Carle style tissue
elephant gave her an impression of night sky. So,
she named it "Singing Elephant under the
moon-lit sky". Among the rest of the elephants,
one was a dancer, another was a designer and
the fourth was a nature lover! She named her book
with a fitting title - "It's Fun to Be Different"!

Rashmie is from New Delhi, India. She is passionate
about creating a holistic learning environment for her
daughter by means of art, nature, free play, books, music
and traveling. She writes about her artful parenting
journey at Mommy Labs. A former advertising and
marketing professional, Rashmie, now, is a published
photographer and a writer. She writes about health,
travel, eco-friendly living, pursuing dreams and purpose in life
etc. You can follow Mommy Labs here on facebook.

Thank you, Rashmie! To see the rest of the books and
crafts in this series click the button below!

06/24/2011 in 12+ years old, 3 - 5 years old, 6 - 12 years old, A Book & A Craft Series, Animals & Bugs, Bookmaking, Crafts, Family, Free & Fun Crafts, Group, Literature Based Projects, Paint, Paper Crafts, Printmaking, Tutorials | Permalink | Comments (3)

A Book & A Craft: "The Paper Bag Princess" and a Paper Bag Dress

My guest today is Miri of Here We Are Together sharing
one of their favorite books, The Paper Bag Princess, and
how to make your own paper bag dress! It's fun, easy,
and you probably already have everything
you need to make it!

Hi everyone!

I'm Miri of HereWeAreTogether. I am a homeschooling
Mama to three little ones and live on the south coast of
England. We love reading together and today I want to
share one of our favourite stories with you:

The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Munch

(Our book is the German version of the story.)

Here We Are Together paper bag princess dress 1

The book is about a beautiful princess who lives in a
wonderful castle with lots of pretty dresses, until one
fateful day a fierce dragon simply scorches all her clothes
and takes her prince away. Not wanting to wait for
someone to help her she gets dressed in the one thing
the dragon did not burn: A paper bag. She sets off to
rescue her prince and defeat the dragon in a smart
and non-violent way and in the end she comes to
realise that you can't judge people by
the clothes they wear.

Here We Are Together paper bag princess dress 2

Our craft is quick and easy, a decorated paper bag dress.

Here We Are Together paper bag princess dress 3

You will need:

a large paper gardening bag (those you use to collect leaves)

a pen

scissors

crayons

glue

buttons

ribbons

Everything else you might need to decorate your dress.

Here We Are Together paper bag princess dress 4

First let your prince or princess lay down on the bag,
their head on the part of the bag that is closed.

Mark the arms and the head so you can cut the holes
into the right place.We also cut a fancy edge around
the other side of the bag.

Here We Are Together paper bag princess dress 5

Now it's already time to decorate your dress,

we first coloured in the whole bag with crayons,

Here We Are Together paper bag princess dress 6

then added a few buttons and ribbons, too.

Now all you need to do is put on your dress, maybe
make a matching crown to go with it, and find
some fierce dragons to play with!

Here We Are Together paper bag princess dress

I hope you enjoy this fun little craft.

Some other books that we like are:

The Trip to Panama by Janosch

The Barefoot Book Of Princesses

Matilda by Roald Dahl

Thank you so much, Cassi, for sharing this space
here with us today! Wishing you all a wonderful day!
Miri of Here We Are Together

Thank you, Miri! To see the rest of the books and
crafts in this series click the button below!

06/23/2011 in 3 - 5 years old, 6 - 12 years old, A Book & A Craft Series, Crafts, Family, Free & Fun Crafts, Group, Inside, Literature Based Projects, Paper Crafts, Pretend Play, Recycled Crafts, Tutorials | Permalink | Comments (4)

A Book & A Craft: "Journey On A Cloud" and a Cloud Board Game

Today Zoe of Playing By The Book introduces
a new-to-me book that looks gorgeous! It is called
Journey on a Cloud and is inspired by the art of
Marc Chagall. Zoe created a board game to go along
with the story that she is sharing with you today!

With my choice of book today I wanted to find something
to say a very special thank you to Cassi. I know I don't
need to tell anyone reading this what a wonderful job she
does with The Crafty Crow, but I really wanted to find a
beautiful, breathtaking, unusual book that offered a
myriad of creative possibilities as my own way of showing
how thankful I am for her and her blog.

Journey on a Cloud by Veronique Massenot and
Elise Mansot is a stunning large format picture book
which hits the nail on the head. Inspired by the work
of Marc Chagall this book has it all - a story to tug at
heart strings, with humour and delicious language
that will delight both child and adult readers, illustrations
you'll want to put on your wall, and that special
something that, I promise, will spark any reader's
imagination into creativity, whether that be
to explore art, geography or science.

Zephyr is a mailman who loves to daydream and to watch
clouds. One day a breathless cloud offers Zephyr the
chance to fulfill his dream of travelling the world to look
for beauty. Zephyr leaves his little blue town, with its
addresses on Flax Street, Cornflower Lane, Lapis Lazuli
Avenue and Indigo Arcade and takes to the sky.

What he sees on his journey around the world is more
delightful than anything in his dreams; a village of bright
and glowing yellows, a land rich with reds. Everywhere he
goes he is welcomed, even if smiles are the only
language Zephyr can share with people he meets. But all
of a sudden a storm brews up; "A giant lightening blot
struck the cloud, who roared in thunderous anger... and
then wept tears of rain". Zephyr looses his grip and falls
to earth landing in a dark and frightening rainforest.
There, surrounded by doubt and fear, something happens
to Zephyr which is so wonderful, powerful and profound
that his heart is given flight enabling his journey to both
come full circle and start anew.

Inspired by Chagall's love of including flying figures in his
paintings, his passion for his wife Bella, Chagall's own
childhood full of daydreaming and his lifetime travelling
across the world this book packs so much into its 32
pages. The intense colours are gorgeous, the
confirmation that warmth, kindness and beauty can be
found right here on earth are reassuring, whilst the
message about having faith in your dreams is a great one
for kids of any age.

When we first read Journey on a Cloud at home our
heads were buzzing with ideas. The girls wanted to make
their own clouds, start painting, pretend they were
travelling the world, lie on the grass in the garden and
just watch the sky all at once! In the end we decided to
make our own board game to incorporate at least
some of their ideas.

First the girls coloured in a rough map of the world using
different shades of groups of colours, inspired by the
village of yellows, the town of blue and the land of
red visited by Zephyr.

We stuck our map onto a large cardboard lid,
cutting holes into each continent.

Inspired by looking in an encyclopedia at the various
clouds and their intriguing names, the girls brainstormed
ideas for what we could use for different clouds; We
ended up with popcorn, tissue paper, cotton wool, quilt
padding, silver crepe paper and regular
paper, scrunched up into balls.

To play the game we took turns to blew our clouds
around the world - the destination and type of cloud we
used was determined by picking tokens
we made to match.

A simple game we could all play together as we chatted
about where in the world we would visit if we had a
friendly cloud to float on! And if boardgames aren't what
your family is into right now dont' let that put you off.
This stunning, inspirational book is really worth seeking
out - I'm sure it will encourage all sorts of flights of
imagination in you and your kids.

Prestel, the publishers of Journey on a Cloud, have
another great art inspired picture book for children -
The Great Wave. This is also a super mix of story and
fact, offering lots of opportunity to play and learn as
well as being a book that is simply lovely to read.

Zoe writes at Playing By The Book all about kids' books
and the crazy, fun stuff they inspire her and her kids to
get up to. "A book and a craft" could be said to sum up
the raison d'etre of her blog! Sometimes her family crafts
or plays and they want a good book that continues the
game, that captures some of the magic they’ve enjoyed.
Sometimes it’s the other way round and they read a great
book which inspires them to get the glue and glitter out.
Either way, they’ve always got plenty of books around the
house, boxes of “crafty stuff” and a desire to have fun.

Thank you, Zoe! To see the rest of the books and
crafts in this series click the button below!

06/22/2011 in 12+ years old, 3 - 5 years old, 6 - 12 years old, A Book & A Craft Series, Art, Art History, Crafts, Family, Games, Homeschooling, Literature Based Projects, Nature Crafts, Tutorials | Permalink | Comments (4)

A Book & A Craft: "The Gruffalo" and a Moving Story Book

Please welcome Khali of little.lovely. as my guest
contributor today! She is sharing a wonderful book called
The Gruffalo and a craft that I have fond memories
of - a moving story book!

“A mouse took a stroll
through the deep dark wood,
A fox saw the mouse
and the mouse looked good.”

The Gruffalo follows a resourceful mouse on his walk
through a deep, dark wood. The mouse encounters
animals along the way and cleverly comes up
with a plan to avoid being eaten.

This book is a favourite in our house for my husband,
children and I. Beautifully written and illustrated, we read
it over and over again. We have read it so many times
now that our children can recite it by heart.

Now that my children don’t need the book read to them,
I created a moving story book so they can
retell the story to each other.

Moving Gruffalo Story Book

You’ll need:
*Cereal Box
*2 x Cardboard tubes (toilet rolls or paper towel tubes)
*Paper
*Pen
*Items to decorate box
*Glue
*2 x plastic milk bottle lids (optional)

Directions:

Step one: Draw characters from your book onto a piece
of paper. If you’re not good at drawing, you can
photocopy pictures from your book.

Step two: Take your cereal box and cut a window in the
front of the box and an opening in the side, as shown.

Step three: Place cardboard tubes inside box. About 3cm
of tube should be able to be seen over the top of the box.
If your tubes aren’t long enough, consider pushing two
tubes together as shown.

Step four: Create a long strip of paper that is high
enough to easily sit inside the inside of your box window
without slipping through. The strip of paper will also need
to be long enough to create a loop around the two tubes
inserted into your box. The paper loop must be snug
enough to grip onto the tubes.

Step five: Cut out your characters and stick them along
the loop in chronological order.

Step six: Place loop over cardboard tubes inside your
box. If you find that your cardboard tubes keep slipping,
attach plastic milk bottle lids to the base of your box and
slip the tubes over them. This will keep your
tubes in place.

Step seven: Decorate the outside of your box.

Step eight: Now turn the tops of the paper tubes and
watch as your book characters move across
the front of your window!

We’re big readers in our house, so our list of
favourite books is very long. Some of our
current favourites include:

Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
Time for Bed by Mem Fox
Man Gave Names to All the Animals by Bob Dylan
Two Frogs by Chris Wormell
Where's My Teddy? By Jez Alborough

A former advertising director, Khali is now the mother
of two and the author of little.lovely, an up-and-coming
children's design blog.

Thank you, Khali! To see the rest of the books and
crafts in this series click the button below!

06/21/2011 in 12+ years old, 18 mos to 2 years old, 3 - 5 years old, 6 - 12 years old, A Book & A Craft Series, All Ages, Animals & Bugs, Building/3 Dimensional, Crafts, Drawing & Illustration, Family, Free & Fun Crafts, Group, Homeschooling, Inside, Literature Based Projects, Paper Crafts, Recycled Crafts, Tutorials | Permalink | Comments (3)

A Book & A Craft: "The Eagle" and a Simple Compass

You'll find out just how easy it is to make a simple
compass with my guest contributor today! Annie from
Bird and Little Bird shares a compass tutorial to go along
with one of her favorite children's books, The Eagle!

Every so often I come across a piece of children’s
literature that so endears itself to me, that I can’t
imagine letting my daughter grow up without
experiencing the magic of it herself. This is certainly the
case with The Lighthouse Family series by the singularly
talented Cynthia Rylant. My daughter and I have loved
Cynthia Rylant through a number of her other series,
including the Poppleton books, Henry and Mudge, and of
course, Mr. Putter and Tabby. But the Lighthouse Family
books have a quality about them that is incomparable;
they have become a family favorite that I know will
be read again and again.

The Lighthouse Family books feature an unlikely family,
brought together by circumstance, rather than biology. A
lonely cat, living alone as a lighthouse keeper, finds an
injured dog shipwrecked on her shore after a terrible
storm. The dog plans to stay on at the lighthouse,
healing his wounds and repairing his ship, but the
unexpected arrival of a trio of orphaned young mice
changes his plans, and suddenly a family is made.
Rylant’s beautiful treatment of the subject of family has
made the Lighthouse Family books particularly popular
with families formed through adoption; the books
represent a family that was destined to belong to one
another, even if the circumstances of their coming
together were unusual. I myself am adopted, and have
found the books to be a great way to help my daughter
think about how I came to be raised by her grandparents.

The Lighthouse Family series is made up of five books,
the first chronicling the coming together of the family,
and the other four sharing the family’s adventures as
they meet various other animals who pass by their
home. Rylant’s writing has a soft, flowing quality to it,
and the stories themselves are sweet without being
sappy. The narratives are full of a sense of wonder,
and children who are sensitive to the stress of dramatic
tension in stories will find that these stories contain
adventure, but with a feeling of comfortable certainty
that a happy ending is on the way.

Now, a little something for you to make in the spirit of
these wonderful reads! In The Eagle, the third book in the
series, two of the mice children set off on an exploration
of the woods near the lighthouse. They are given their
first compass as a means of finding their way home, and
this piece of the story got my daughter and I thinking
about compasses and how very cool it is that, well,
they actually work!

We set out to make a basic compass ourselves,
and this is how we did it:

Materials:

magnet

needle

straight pin

two small pieces of sponge or cork

bowl

water

marker or small stickers

Step One:

Take the needle and rub it along the magnet, moving
from the eye of the needle to the point. Do this thirty
times or so, always moving in the same direction.

Step Two:

Hold the needle up to the straight pin. If the needle has
been magnetized, it should pick up the straight pin. If it
doesn’t, return to step one and try again.

Step Three:

Put a small piece of cork or sponge at
each end of the needle.

Step Four:

Float the needle with corked ends in a small bowl of
water. Make sure that it stays towards the middle of the
bowl so that the needle can turn freely. After a short
time, the needle should turn so that one end points
north. If you move the needle, it should turn again so
that the same piece of cork points in the same direction.
We then marked this piece of cork with a couple of small
stickers to symbolize “North!” A waterproof marker or
pen would also work well for this.

And really, that’s it. A fun companion activity to
The Eagle, as well as a very easy and satisfying project
that can quickly become a jumping off point for
further scientific explorations. Enjoy!

Annie Riechmann is a full-time multi-tasker, part-time
teacher and librarian in training who blogs about
creativity, parenting, cupcakes and inclement weather
conditions at Bird and Little Bird.

She is also the creator of Alphabet Glue, a quarterly downloadable magazine for families who love books! Filled with activities, printables, projects and plenty of inspiration, Alphabet Glue was created in hopes of helping more families to incorporate creativity, imagination and all things literary into their everyday routines.

Five lucky Crafty Crow readers will win a free copy of the
latest version of Alphabet Glue! Click here for more
details and to enter.

Thank you, Annie! To see the rest of the books and
crafts in this series click the button below!