We are seeing rainbows!

February was a rough month at our house. Lots of sickness and medical issues kept interrupting our regular routine. Everyone seems to be feeling better, the weather is warming up and spring is on its way.

Right on cue, our theme this week is rainbows. Today we made fruit loop rainbows (then ate some of the leftovers).  This project was one of our longest time-wise, but the kids seemed to enjoy it.

I helped each kid put a bunch of glue in the corner and they put the cotton balls on to look like clouds. Then I made a glue line for each color and let them know what color they should be placing. We actually started with green, and worked our way from the middle out to make sure it fit. 

I imagine these will take all day to dry since we used a lot of glue to hold everything in place. 

Circus popcorn

What do you eat at the circus? Popcorn of course! We made cotton ball popcorn today from this easy tutorial.

I printed out the templates and gave the kids glue to dip their cotton balls in. I did draw a very faint guideline so they could see how much "popcorn" to put on. 

Then, they painted them yellow to give the appearance of buttery popcorn. 

Paper plate clown

This week our theme is "circus," so we made a simple, fast paper plate clown.

I glued the yarn mouths on because I don't think any of the kids could do that part. 

I put glue where the eyes and nose should be, and they put those on. Then l, I showed them where to put the glue for the clown "hair." Finally, the hair Pom-poms. Sutton used the biggest ones I had, so she was done almost immediately. 

Hen and chicks handprint art

We did a simple hand print project today for our last day of farm week.

Each kid made a hand print and four fingerprints.

I went back and used markers to add in eyes, legs and beaks. This is a cute farm week craft or would work well for Easter too.

Muddy pigs

Today as part of farm week we made muddy pigs inspired by this post on Mrs. Karen's Preschool Ideas.

I found a pig template on Google and printed them out and had the kids color them in. My kids are not fond of coloring, but Lucian did his and Sutton did some.

Then I attempted to mix some rock salt and oatmeal into brown paint. When the kids painted with brushes though, they mostly only got paint and the chunks stayed in the muffin liners. 

Lucian and Sutton's pigs are VERY muddy, while our daycare friends looks more as I had envisioned. The kids had fun making them muddy though, so I call it a success!

Do-A-Dot Farm sheets

I let the kids each pick out two Farm Do-A-Dot sheets from the free downloadable packet at Gift of Curiosity. We ended up with 3 pigs, 1 cow and 2 follow the arrow mazes.

After they finished their sheets the kids also just did some random dots on paper since they were having so much fun.

Paper plate cows

Farm animals are our theme of the week. I've pulled out the farm books, and today's craft was a paper plate cow.

I wanted my two kids to cut out their own spots, but they each cut a few strips and demanded help. So I ended up cutting everything out as fast as I could for three kids and they glued the pieces on. Lucian hung his up before I could snap a picture of it. 

Valentine's Day Q-tip painting

I forgot tinpot this Friday! The kids enjoyed q-tip painting the last time we tried it, so we tried it again today. I found these 3 cute print outs from Totschooling and the kids had fun doing their "dots."

There were quiet a few dots for their attention span, so they each needed a little help. 

Valentine's Hearts

It's been a rough week here, so we haven't been following our schedule. We did make some Valentine's Handprint Hearts today though. I followed this template for the print outs, and then stamped lots of little hands. My kids made one each for me, one for Daddy and Grandma and Grandpa too.

These were super easy. Print the template and glue to construction paper, then get two little handprints on them. 

Lightning McQueen Foot & Palm prints

Lucian loves Lightning McQueen. When I saw a pin on Pinterest of a Lightning McQueen hand/footprint I knew we had to try it. It would've been a lot easier if I had any artistic skill!

First we did a footprint, and then placed a palm print over it.

Then I worked on adding in the face and wheels, one color at a time in between housework and doing things with the kids. The kids watched maybe 15 minutes of a video called "All About Trucks" before returning to playing. 

After the paint was dry I used a red marker to highlight around the eyes and mouth.

And ta-da - Lightning McQueen!

Paper plate cars

Yesterday we took a sick/snow day (our daycare friend even stayed home), but today we are back on track with our Vehicle theme.We made paper plate cars in the color of each kids' choosing.

I'm still not feeling the best, so I let the kids watch an Umi Zoomi Helicopter episode (vehicles, right?), and we read through one of the kids favorite books for the 429th time. It's not so much a book about reading, but it lists various types of vehicles and the kids love it. It's called My Big Truck book. Amazon sells it for a great price, so get one for your kids too.


The paper plate cars themselves were simple.I cut paper plates in half and let them put entirely too much glue on them. I gave them pre-cut tissue paper squares that I had gotten years ago from Oriental Trading Co. 

When they were done putting those on I gave them windows, wheels and a bumper to add to each car and helped put them on. Sutton isn't always into crafts, but she seemed to really enjoy this one.

Transportation week

It's transportation week! I picked this theme for this particular week because I thought Lucian would enjoy it. His birthday is Saturday and I thought it would be fun to pick something he is really into.

I let the kids pick a few worksheets each from from this fun Do-A-Dot pack. They picked the arrow maze and each picked two vehicles.

You can download your own free Do-A-Dot Transportation pack here.