Curtain Call

Near the end of the school year, I found a sweet little wooden puppet theatre at a garage sale for just $2! I had never seen one at a garage sale before. Ever. So, I scooped it up. Then, after getting it home, I discovered that all of our puppets have gone AWOL. Perhaps because they have never had a proper theatre in which to perform? So, it has sat in a corner of the living room most of the time, occasionally getting opened up for brief puppet shows sadly consisting of about 2 finger puppets, all we could find after searching the WHOLE house!

Now, fast forward to this insanely hot week, when I have thought (more than once) that I somehow ended up in the Sahara instead of good old Michigan, by some weird turn of events. Yeah, it's crazy hot here, and the kids and I have slowly been going batty from being cooped up. This means that the Activity Director (a.k.a. "Mom") has been coming up with lots of projects to try to maintain our sanity.

One such project was making spoon puppets with Mia while Logan (miraculously!!) took a two-hour nap in the afternoon. Our spoons were all left over from my sister-in-law's kitchen themed bridal shower that I threw for her a couple years ago. (Yes, I know, I'm a bit of a pack rat... Honestly, I had been planning for these to become puppets all along, and it's taken me this long to find the motivation. Desperate times, you know?) We ended up with ten spoon puppets altogether, although I am mystified as to where the other two wooden spoons went. I know they came in 4-packs from Dollar Tree, so it seems like we should have twelve, but that's okay. This was more than enough to create a well-stocked puppet theatre.

{Wooden Spoon Puppets by Mia, Age 6}

Materials:

• wooden spoons
• permanent markers
• acrylic paint
• foam paint brushes
• tacky glue
• googly eyes
• felt
• craft foam
• scissors
• buttons
• sequins
• fabric scraps
• plastic gems
• pipe cleaners
• paint tray (old Styrofoam tray or a plate or bowl) 
• hot glue gun (for adult use only)
• something to protect work surface (cereal box liner or wax paper)

Directions:

1. We used acrylic paint for the faces of the puppets. (Well, all of them except for the one she says is "sun burned" which she colored with an orange marker). I didn't have any "flesh" colors on hand, so I mixed up an assortment of skin tones using pinks, yellow, orange, some blue, and white. Apply a thin coat to the front side of the spoon, going down the "neck" somewhat. Then, flip it over, and apply a thin coat to the back as well. You don't need to paint the entire spoon, unless you want to. Lay flat on your cereal box liner (or wax paper) to dry completely, which takes just a few minutes. Tip: Acrylic paints will stain fabric, so old clothes/paint shirts are recommended. Also, you will want to protect your work surface. We used a cereal box liner, which works very nicely for this.
2. Add clothing to your puppets. Mia used Sharpie markers to draw shirts and pants on some that she decided would be men. For the women, I helped her drape fabric scraps of her choosing to make dresses and then I used my hot glue gun to secure the material. 
3. Add faces and hair. Mia drew hair on the men. She came up with assorted hair-dos for the women, which were made out of pipe cleaners, and adhered using hot glue. (Yarn would also work, but she wasn't interested in using any.) For faces, she drew noses and mouths using Sharpie markers. She added googly eyes with tacky glue.
4. Don't forget the accessories and other details! All of the men have mustaches, which is funny to me since we don't know any men with mustaches. She also gave two of the three men glasses, drawn with black Sharpie before adding the eyes. A couple of the men are wearing craft foam bow ties, which I applied with hot glue and one has little buttons on his shirt, which again were hot glued. One of the girls, which Mia called "Rapunzel," has similar bows in her hair and another has a purple butterfly gem. Lastly, the "Old Lady," has two earring (miss-matched) and a necklace.
5. Make sure all glue is dry before putting on your first wooden spoon puppet performance. Enjoy!

{Some of my favorite people put on a puppet show.}

Note: Not all puppets need to be people. They could be animals (like Mia made), robots, monsters, or whatever you can come up with! Mia chose to make two dogs and two cats, too. One of the "skin tones" came out on the yellow-ish side, but she declared it to be the perfect color for a Golden Retriever. His body and ears are yellow felt. His collar is red felt and his "license" is a gold sequins. (This is probably my favorite one, too. He's awfully cute with his lopsided kid-applied eyes, making it look like he is considering something mischievous.) Both of the cats have striped bodies of alternating orange and brown Sharpie marker, and they have their own collars and tags, too. The last dog looks a bit cat-like sense he has short pointy ears and whiskers, however Mia insists that dogs have whiskers, too! For whatever reason, we had no "children" that she created. When I pictured this project, I figured some of the puppets would naturally look like the members of our family, but clearly it's good to let kids do their own thing!

Color Hunt Activity and Color Wheel Craft

Okay, even though I am labeling this "rainy day fun" it has not actually been raining here. Instead, it's just been so hot that it feels like the flesh is melting off of my bones whenever I set foot outdoors. No joke! Heat index of 102 degrees today! Ugh... Anyway, that means that I we have been cooped up inside (God bless whoever invented central air, am I right?) pretty much all week except for when we were running errands (and a 9:00 am park play date today -- glad we didn't start that one any later). Only problem is the cabin fever aspect of things. Fortunately, this mommy keeps all sorts of lists of possible things to do.

One activity we did yesterday afternoon was a color hunt around the house. This was nice because the kids worked together instead of, you know, trying to kill each other and driving me insane in the process. Ah, reprieve! I gave them the muffin tin that I had added colored inserts to for this color sorting activity and told them to find small toys and what-nots that would be lightweight enough to glue onto paper and that they wouldn't miss after the items were glued to the paper. (Note: This ended up being a great way to have them herd up all those things that I get sick of finding everywhere like plastic ring toppers from holiday cupcakes and little goodie bag items from birthday parties.) After they found all the little toys and other odds and ends from their bedrooms, I suggested we look at the craft bins where they found plenty of sequins, beads, buttons, pom poms, foam letters, bottle caps, and the Styrofoam tiles left over from this craft. By the time they had filled up the 6 cup muffin tin, I felt that we had enough colorful finds to create our color wheel, inspired by this blog (and found on Pinterest).

{From Color Hunt...}

{To Color Wheel}

Materials for Color Wheel:

• 1/2 piece of white poster board (with grid lines, if possible)
• pencil or pen
• black Sharpie (optional)
• large frying pan (or whatever you have that's big and round)
• ruler
• scissors
• acrylic paint (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple) OR markers
• something to hold paint (I used a Styrofoam tray.)
• foam paint brushes (1 per color)
• something to protect work surface (cereal box liner, vinyl table cloth, newspaper)
• hot glue gun

Directions for Color Wheel:

1. Using a pen or pencil, trace a large round object (I used my biggest frying pan) onto a half piece of white poster board. Tip: If your poster board has grid lines, I recommend keeping them visible.
2. Cut out the circle.
3. Find the center of the circle and make a dot. I used black Sharpie for this. (This is very easy to do if your poster board has grid lines. If not, you will probably want to use your ruler to help.)
4. Using a ruler, draw 3 lines across the circle. You should now have 6 pie wedges of approximately the same size. Tip: I first did this with a pencil, and then followed with a black Sharpie, correcting the placement as I went. It does not need to be perfect, but I was glad to have used pencil the first go round. I didn't bother erasing my stray pencil marks because I knew I would be painting on top of them anyway.
5. Once my circle was divided into 6 segments, I used acrylic paints to fill them in. I started my primary colors: first red, then I skipped a wedge, filled in the next with yellow, skipped a wedge, and then filled in the final part with blue. I had hoped that this would dry fast enough that the paint wouldn't touch the next corresponding part of my color wheel. (This would have worked better, though, if I hadn't immediately started painting the rest of the segments.) I finished up with secondary colors: orange (in between red and yellow), green (in between yellow and blue), and purple (in between blue and red). Make sure paint is dry before continuing to the next step. This shouldn't take more than 20 minutes or so. Tip: Protect clothing and work surface before using acrylic paints. I wore an old shirt and covered my table with a cereal box liner, which I use in place of wax paper for craft projects. Tip: I only used one coat of paint, and I didn't worry about streaks or uneven coverage at all. I knew it would get covered well enough to not matter, so save yourself some time by not trying to make it perfect. Tip: If you would like your child to fill in the color wheel, I suggest using washable markers in place of acrylic paints.
6. Using a pre-heated glue gun (adults only!) start adhering the colorful items to the corresponding sections of your color wheel until it is as full as you would like. You can have your child tell you where to place things, if desired. Tip: Self-adhesive craft foams shapes and letters will save you some glue, if those happen to be among the items your kids have scrounged up! Tip: Start with the largest items and work your way down to the smallest items, that way you can squeeze them in as needed. Tip: If you want to be sure things will fit, lay them out prior to gluing. Allow hot glue to dry completely before moving the color wheel.

Simple Magnet Board Idea

I don't know where I came across this idea originally. I just know that I have known about it for many years, since my undergraduate days when I was studying elementary education. (This is what my bachelor's degree is, in case you ever wondered.)

Coming across a huge stash of magnet letters in the basement reminded me of this idea and I pulled out the cookie sheets and let the kids entertain themselves with the magnets. It's a nice tactile way of writing, which is much quicker to pull together than my sandpaper letter rubbings, for example. Plus, if you happen to have several sets of letters, they can practice matching up letters from various fonts. Mia, of course, was able to spell her name and to practice other writing, making this is a perfect literacy activity for elementary kids. For Logan, who is just getting interested in letters and the sounds that they make, this was more of a fun way to play around with the letters and do some "writing" of his own. So, it's also a great introductory activity for preschool age kids who are in the emergent stage of literacy.

{She got a bit creative: "W" = "M" and "1" = "I"}

Teaching terms aside, this is a truly simple and smart activity for any mom to do with her kids at home using materials I am nearly positive you already have at hand. The cookie sheets work as a magnetic tray, keeping everything contained for a nice busy bag type activity, and they will work with other magnets as well. For example, my friend Julie showed me a set of circus themed animals and people that she had cut out, laminated, and affixed magnets to so that they could be used to tell a story. This is a pretty cool idea, but for now I will stick with our super simple ABC magnet boards. They're perfect for a rainy day.

Rainbow Pom Pom Chutes

Over spring break, we went to the Grand Rapids Children's Museum, which is wonderful! There were lots of great activities there, and many of them were different from other children's museums that we have been to before. This activity is somewhat inspired by this rainbow shaped ball drop at the museum, which I looked at and wondered, How can I take this idea and replicate it at home? I had seen this idea on Pinterest, and decided to take the tubes and try to make more of a rainbow shape with them.

{This was my inspiration...}

{and here is what I came up with.}

The idea is to do color matching and drop the pom poms down the corresponding colored tubes. This is not how it always turned out, in actuality, of course! This did get messy as the pom poms didn't always land in the bin. Plus, my kids got wild and pom poms ended up all over the living room. They also had to learn not to cram too many pom poms into the tubes at once or they would, of course, get stuck. However, this triggered some problem solving as well. Logan was excited when he was able to poke a marker into a tube and get the pom poms unjammed. Even though my chutes don't really look like a rainbow as I had hoped, they were simple to make with items from the recycling bin and a bag of Dollar Tree pom poms. More, importantly, it was fun for both kids. And it's held up so far...

Materials:

• 6 cardboard tubes
• paint (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple)
• paint brushes
• boxboard or cardboard
• hot glue gun
• something for tubes to dry on (I used the liner from a cereal box.)
• clear tape
• pom poms (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple; small enough to fit inside tubes)
• container to drop pom poms into
• Chopsticks for Kids (optional)

Directions: 

1. Collect 6 empty cardboard tubes. I used paper towel rolls, but toilet paper rolls would work also. Your chutes will just be shorter. This might actually be better in that it may help prevent log-jams, but it's up to you what size to use.
2. Protect your work surface before painting. I used the liner from a cereal box, which is basically free "wax" paper. You could use newspaper, but sometimes tubes stick to this while they are drying, so I prefer to save the cereal box liners for paint projects.
3. Paint each tube one color of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. I used powdered tempera paints for this. You could also use acrylic paints, but be aware that they will stain fabric. I believe I just did one coat of paint, but you could apply more coats if you want it to look better. I just wanted it to be functional. Allow paint to dry completely. Tip: Foam paint brushes work very well for painting tubes.
4. Use hot glue to affix the tubes to the boxboard or cardboard. I used the side of a cereal box. Allow glue to dry. I tried to arch mine to resemble the rainbow ball drop that we had seen at the Grand Rapids Children's Museum. I don't know how successful this was. You could glue them in a straight line if you prefer.
5. Use clear tape to adhere the the boxboard to a wall.
6. Place a container underneath the tubes and let kids drop colored pom poms into the corresponding colored tubes. They can use their hands, Chopsticks for Kids, or tongs for this. Note: This is not a mess-free activity, but it's not difficult to clean up.

{See the yellow pom pom dropping?}

{Look! The marker worked! Tube = unstuck!}

Pom Pom Color Sorting Activity

I am not sure where I originally came across this idea for a color sorting motor skills activity. Possibly this, which I pinned almost a year ago? I think there are probably several versions of it posted on Pinterest. Anyway, it's simple fun for little ones, especially on days when the weather just won't cooperate so you can make it outside to play.

Since we were running low on pom poms, I found a bag of 80 assorted colored pom poms in the craft aisle of Dollar Tree during our spring break shopping trip. This provided plenty of pom poms for doing this activity. Our muffin tin, which I have had for awhile, came from Salvation Army, and I believe it was 99 cents. I have used it when we have made bathtub paint and it would also be perfect for holding sidewalk paint. If I haven't mentioned it before, Salvation Army is a good source of craft materials, especially if you think to look in the kitchen section.

{Here is what you need}

Materials:

• 6 cup muffin tin (I have seen this done with ice cube trays also.)
• paper (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple)
• clear Con-tact paper (optional)
• scissors
• clear tape
• pom poms (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple)
• Chopsticks for Kids (you could also have child use tweezers, tongs, or his hands for this)
• colored pasta (optional)

Directions:

1. Cut out 6 circles of colored paper. I used my card stock scraps for this, but construction paper would work, too. Want to know my super fancy simple method for making circles? Place paper into a muffin cup. Use your finger nail to trace the inside edge. Then, use scissors to cut around indentation made by your finger nail. Do this for each color: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. Tip: I then, cut my circles a little smaller (free-hand since they don't need to be perfect) since I was planning to "laminate" them.
2. This next step is optional. For extra sturdiness, I "laminated" the colored circles with clear Con-tact paper. I used my scraps that I have saved from making sun catchers. I cut squares a bit larger than the circles, sandwiched the colored paper circles between two pieces of the Con-tact paper (sticky sides facing in), and then trimmed the excess so that they were back to circles. Tip: Leave a little outside edge of clear Con-tact paper, at least 1/8" to 1/4" inch to prevent it from coming undone.
3. Next, I rolled pieces of clear tape, stuck them to the "laminated" circles, and placed a circle into each muffin cup. Tip: For the sake of looking sort of rainbow oriented, I did it in this order: red, orange, yellow on top and green, blue, purple on bottom. That's it.
4. Let your child play, explore, and have fun sorting pom poms into the muffin cups. Logan and Mia have both enjoyed doing this using our Chopsticks for Kids. (I thought this would be something more for him since he is still working on color recognition, but she surprised me with her interest in this. So, don't discount this as a good rainy day activity for kindergarten kids, too!) Tip: As an alternative to pom poms, we also have done color sorting with dyed pasta in bow tie and corkscrew shapes. 

{Cool Whip tub = fine container for pom poms or pasta}

A-Mazing Rainy Day Fun!

One of our activities last week over spring break was to take a trip to Dollar Tree. I let the kids each spend a dollar, and of course, my personal budget was whatever I wanted! Logan chose a toy 4-wheeler, and Mia opted to get two boxes of Easter candy, which were on sale 2/$1. My only rule other than they each had just $1 to spend, was that they had to bear with me while I cruised up and down nearly every aisle of the store looking for inspiration for crafts and activities. I found several things that I am sure I will tell you about at some point, but one thing in particular is the subject of this post: a roll of blue painters tape that I acquired from the hardware. Truthfully, I was not previously aware that this store even has a hardware aisle, but I am glad I checked, because there are lots of possibilities there. Anyway, I grabbed this roll of painters tape, although at the time, I wasn't even sure what it would be used for. I just knew it would be handy, and I was right.

The night before last, I had the idea to take the roll of painters tape and make a maze on the floor. This was after the kids had gone to bed, so they were not in my way, waiting impatiently for me to finish! I figured that both kids could enjoy the maze, considering that Mia had a half day at school due to conferences, it was supposed to rain, and I was feeling cruddy with my sinus infection. I decided to use the whole roll of tape, but I don't remember how many yards of tape were on the roll. My maze does actually have openings at both ends, but I don't think it is necessary to design a maze that way for this purpose. I'm a tad bit perfectionistic, so it had to be functional, in my mind. Plus, I tried to make all of the lanes approximately the same width, which again is not really necessary, except in the mind of Meg.

The kids have had fun driving through the lanes or attempted to walk them, in Mia's case. Logan's favorite part of the maze seems to be the "E" shaped parking spots that I constructed. In the end, Logan has enjoyed this far more than his sister, but they point is that it is still being used. In fact, he has been chattering away and driving his vehicles through it for the past 45 minutes or so, which is why I am able to write this post.

{My Little Man is enjoying the painters tape maze!}

Mia was concerned that it will be a problem when it comes time to vacuum. I, however, did not worry over this. We never manage to vacuum more than once a week, excepting extreme disasters, which are out of my control, anyway. The tape is peeling up a bit in places, so it is definitely not permanent, just an amusement to last through the weekend. Maybe.

{Another view of the maze}

No painters tape on hand? I have used masking tape for different games in the past. It's not as colorful, and it takes a bit more effort to remove, but it does work. Also, a couple of weeks ago Logan came up with this awesome idea to make a maze using our wooden blocks. I believe that this is the inspiration for my painters tape maze. I was looking for a way to make it more extensive and harder to move when he is driving his cars and trucks through the maze. Painters tape definitely gets the job done. The downside is that it really is a one-time use material. Fortunately, it only cost $1, which I consider affordable rainy-day fun.

{This block maze was Little Man's brilliant idea! I was just the construction foreman.}