Toddler Project: Spring Tissue Paper Duck

I've been scrounging Pinterest for toddler-appropriate Easter and Spring crafts. Have I mentioned my apprehension with glue and my 2-year-old? I think she's not quite ready for that responsibility yet. But I still want her to get in on the crafting fun as much as she can. She has already had enough experience that she is quick to eagerly ask me, "Are you making me a project?" every time I go near my craft shelves. Yep, no question she is my kid.

Incidentally, here was some dialog during our project:
Me: "What does a duck say?"
Bugga: "Quack! What does a duckie say?"
Me: "I don't know, what does a duckie say?"
Bugga: "SQUEAK!"
Can't argue with that.

Tissue Paper Duck for Spring

Our first easy project required the following items:

• thick craft paper
• scissors
• yellow, orange and black tissue paper
• contact paper

1. Draw a duck shape on the craft paper. You can find images online, but I just eye-balled it. Cut out the duck. 
   
2. Cut your tissue paper into small pieces. Ask your toddler to help crumple each piece into a teeny, tiny ball.
   
3. Add contact paper behind your duck cut-out, sticky side up.
4. Start sticking the tissue paper to the contact paper.
   
5. Show off your finished product!
   
   

Project: Homemade Valentine Picture Frame

I've been chomping at the bit waiting for Bugga to be old enough to do arts and crafts. Yes, I know, even babies can start pretty much from the womb with the art projects. We even tackled finger (body!) painting last year when Bugga was 10 months old; I'm sure many moms jump on it far earlier than that.

Another point to note: I am not a huge fan of messiness on purpose. Let's be honest, kids are a lot of work and mess without TRYING to make a mess. So painting with a toddler kind of scared me.

With Bella still so small at 7 weeks, she still hasn't had her vaccinations yet so we aren't leaving the house for much more than Bugga's once-a-week gymnastics class. And a bored kid is hard on everyone (all you parents on the East Coast know exactly what I'm talking about right now since you've all been stuck inside for days due to the snow with school cancelled). So I bit the bullet and pulled out the paint.

Grandma had gifted Bugga some fingerpaints and a smock for Christmas, so this was as good a time as any to try them out. Plus with Valentine's Day fast approaching Bugga could make a homemade gift for Daddy on behalf of her and her sister. I even managed to stretch this into a TWO DAY PROJECT which is always good.

So I dressed Bugga in clothes I don't like (we all get those gifts) and her new smock, and taped down some newspaper to our kitchen counter. She climbed up into her learning tower (best invention ever) and we proceeded to go to work. 

I squirted some of the paint into paper cups left over from her 1st birthday (we are slowly and finally getting through those) in Valentine colors. Since the Crayola Fingerpaints only come in red, blue, yellow, and green I had to incorporate some white from my collection to make pink. Oh, and trying to make purple with the red and the blue was a bust so nevermind that. 

I used several sponge brushes (yep, still not in the mood to handle more painting with our hands) I had left over from another project of mine, and we went to work.

I purchased a simple wood heart frame from Michael's for barely $1.00 and Bugga had a blast painting it with the various colors. 

She also seemed to love the different effects she could make with the brushes, taking advantage of the sponginess (huh, that's actually a word). 

Once she was done we let it dry overnight. in the meantime, the other colors had grabbed her attention so I found some paper and let her create another masterpiece. 

She had a blast and it wasn't too difficult to clean up. 

Oh, and meanwhile, the baby hung out in the bouncer next to us and watched.

The next day I pulled out a bag of foam heart stickers and the frame so we could decorate. Bugga quickly figured out how to use her fingernails to peel of the backings, and we were in business. I had a giant flat foam heart she could also decorate as well.

Seriously, she decorated this all by herself with no guidance from me whatsoever. Such style.

And here is the final result, all ready for Daddy!

Activity: Winter Playdough Development Fun! (With Printables!)

I have been swamped lately with all the crafts I am doing for both Bugga's Big Girl Room and the nursery for #2 (posts to come, I promise!), but in the midst of it all (and while currently 35 weeks pregnant), I am hosting a playdate this coming week for our little group of kiddos. I racked my brain to come up with something easy, and landed on PLAYDOUGH!!!! Who doesn't love playdough? Even the little ones can have fun squishing it in their hands!

I have a great recipe for homemade playdough that Bugga and I have used ALL THE TIME and lasts forever. I will post that soon too.

This post is about activities you can do WITH the playdough!

Now obviously, the kiddos are free to build whatever they want with the dough. For the playdate specifically, I am not about to run out and buy (like I have the time anyway) all the play-do accessories they have in stores that "help" kids play. Instead, I plan on using playdough mats!

These are a GREAT idea! 

The problem I found is that I didn't like the ones I was finding on the web, so I just made my own! And I included the links below so you don't have to do the fruitless searching either! Now, so you are aware, these are winter-themed, since we are in Canada and it is currently dumping snow on us every weekend. I will likely have posts in the future with other themes.

All you need to do is print out the PDF files, laminate the pages, and tape them down to a table - let the fun begin!

Download the Snowflake Playdough Worksheet here.

Download the Snowman Playdough Worksheet here.

Download the Snowy Hill Playdough Worksheet here.

Download the Tree Playdough Worksheet here.

Project: Chevron Canvas

I recently posted what I am using as inspiration for Bugga's toddler room. Since then, I have been busy with various projects, which I will start sharing with the internet world. To start things off, I am working on a set of painted canvas pieces for Bugga's wall. The first one is a Flower on a Chevron Canvas, and I love how it turned out:

Below I will share how I created the Chevron Canvas, and in a separate post I will detail how to create the flower.

Chevron Canvas

There are several ways to get a chevron pattern onto a canvas. If you can find a piece of fabric that already has the pattern on it, you can simply staple that around your canvas and be done with it. If you go the painting route (which I did), you also have to choose to use painter's tape, or freehand it. Personally, I knew I would get frustrated with the tape, so instead I used a flat-edged foam brush to make the lines straight.

Materials Needed:

• Blank white canvas
• Acrylic Paint in desired colors
• Pencil with white eraser
• Ruler

Instructions:

1. Determine how wide you want your stripes to be, and balance that with the dimensions of your canvas. For example, I wanted 1" wide stripes. My canvas was 12"x12" so it was pretty straightforward.
2. Measure along each side of the canvas, making marks for the width of your stripes. Make your pencil marks lightly so that they can be erased as needed later. Then connect your marks across to the opposite side of the canvas, resulting in a checkerboard pattern.
3. Connect the corners of the checkerboard squares to create your chevron pattern. Erase the pencil marks within the chevron stripes as well as possible.
4. Paint your stripes. The foam brush with the flat edge will make it easier to create a sharp line. If you are using more than one color, I recommend painting with one at a time, letting the paint dry between colors. **There is a chance you might run into the same problem I did: I wasn't planning on painting the white stripes, but my pencil marks were stubborn, so I had to do some white paint touch-ups.**

Now add a gorgeous flower to your canvas!

Also, see the full set of DIY canvas art I made for my toddler's new room!

Project: Felt Flower on Canvas

If you have seen my inspiration page for my daughter's toddler room, you can see I am very much into the chevron pattern right now. I've seen some beautiful felt flowers on chevron canvas on Pinterest and Etsy, and I thought it looked like something I could make myself. So I did, and it turned out great!

What I had to do though is come up with the how-to part myself, as I could not find anyone else's instructions ANYWHERE. So...here are very detailed instructions on how to create a felt flower to be displayed on canvas.

Felt Flower on Canvas

Materials:

• Canvas for mounting (see instructions here for a Chevron Canvas, Striped Canvas, and a Polka Dot Canvas)
• Felt in color of choice
• Hot glue gun
• Scissors
• Paper
• Pencil

Instructions:

1. Create a template for the flower petals using a sheet of paper and pencil. For my design, I used a template shaped like a house, in three different sizes. (Click here for the template .pdf.)

2. Cut the templates out, and trace the templates onto your felt using a pencil. The mark of the pencil is likely to not be so dark on this type of material, but the scrape will leave a mark on the felt that will be easily noticeable as you are cutting out the petals. I cut out 10 petals of the largest size, 19 of the next size down, and 9 petals of the smallest size.

3. First I hot glued the 10 largest petals. I put some glue at the bottom center of each piece and folded it in half.

4. Once dry (doesn't take long - by the time you finish #10, #1 will be dry), pinch the spot where you put the glue, and fold back the outside edges of the petal. Hot glue the two edges of the other side of the petal to glue the petal to the canvas.

5. Glue 5 of the largest size petals onto your canvas in the pattern shown below.

6. Glue the other 5 of the remaining largest petals onto the canvas in between each of the first five petals.

7. Glue the 19 petals of the middle size the same way as in step #3, and then also pinch the glued spot, peel back the folded petal, and turn over, gluing the two outside edges of the petal.

8. Glue 7 of the middle size petals onto your flower, placing them closer into the center of the canvas as shown.

9. Glue another 7 between each of the first 7 middle size petals as shown below.

10. For the remaining 5 middle size petals, glue them down the same way, but upside down, and slightly closer into the center of the canvas. This will create a bit of a three-dimensional look that will help support the center of the flower.

11. For the smallest size petals, glue 5 of them like you did the larger sizes. Then place them even further in than the previous rows upside down, in between the lower petals where possible.

12. You will use the 4 remaining petals for the center of the flower. Fold two of the four petals and glue like the larger sizes. Snip a lower corner off of one of these two petals as shown in the picture.

13. Wrap the non-snipped glued petal around the snipped glued petal. Glue at the bottom.

14. Wrap the third petal around the two glued petals. Glue at the bottom.

15. Wrap the fourth petal around the three other petals. Glue at the bottom. Then glue the petal bunch into the center of the flower and you are done!

Let me know how yours turned out!

Can't get enough canvas art? Here are some others I just finished.

Project: Canvas Wall Display

I am making some pretty decent progress on Bugga's Toddler Room! (Check out where I started for her room inspiration.) I am very excited with each component I have completed so far. Today, I'm going to give a sneak-peek on the Canvas Art I will be displaying on one of her walls.

Here it is!

I painted four 12"x12" canvases in the room's main colors, and then decorated accordingly:

1.) A rhinestone monogram on white & purple stripes

2.) A pink felt flower on white & purple chevron stripes

3.) A pink felt Minnie Mouse (Bugga's a TAD obsessed with Minnie Mouse) head on purple with white polka dots

4.) A rhinestone star (after all, Bugga loves stars AND was born in Texas!) on white & purple stripes

I'm hoping to hang them this weekend, and then I can figure out where I want to hang the flower balls I made to match!

Activity: Coloring Eggs

"Hey Mom, I think this might
actually be fun."

My husband is currently out of the country on business, so I've been busy planning activities and trips around town to keep Bugga and I busy while he's gone. He left early Easter weekend, so we were unable to officially celebrate. Sad face. Perhaps she wasn't old enough for that egg hunt anyway...

However, I still thought we should color some eggs, because I was curious to see what my toddler would think about it all. Well, it was pretty hilarious for starters.

She had a lot of fun piling as many eggs as possible into one bowl at a time, and then only using the next bowl when she ran out of space. And then she'd start again, piling the eggs into the next container, including the ones that were already bathing in a different color. Amazingly, the eggs still came out beautiful (and delicious, as I am in the process of consuming them).


She had a lot of fun with the spoons, but used them more as musical instruments against each other, versus to scoop out any of the eggs. Why would you use a spoon for scooping when you can just reach right in there? And hey look! Your hand is purple! And your legs are multicolored! How cool! Ha.

I think she made an attempt at tasting some of the colored water (apparently the yellow looked tasty?) but didn't do that twice. (Thank you, vinegar taste.)

All in all, this was a ton of fun, and I can't wait to do this each year and see how her creativity evolves.

Want to try it with your toddler? Here are my recommendations:

1. Prepare everything ahead of time before your toddler comes on the scene. I set everything up on the back patio and she watched me from just inside the windows.
2. Oh yeah - you're going to need to do this outside. I supposed you could do it inside, but at this age (~16 months) - don't say I didn't warn you!

   

   My original setup.
   Not recommended! (See #3)

3. Set up the activity with the bowls very close together. Nope, that's not what I did to begin with (see photo). I saw very quickly that once we started with one bowl, Bugga wasn't getting up but instead was just going to stretch as far as she could - which ended up with some cracked eggs and spilled colored water.
4. Use old dishes. This is perfect for the takeout containers that I currently have stashed in a bottom cabinet for Bugga to play with in the kitchen.
5. Don't overwhelm with too many colors. I stuck to 4 basics, and honestly she just took the eggs in and out of each dish, so after awhile, all 4 colors were strikingly similar. Go figure.
6. Premix the colors. I used a tablespoon of vinegar in each dish, along with a LOT of coloring to make the colors sharp. I used the old-school drops as well as some gels, and both worked fine.

   

   "AND I get to use a spoon? YES!"

   
7. Dress your child in clothing you aren't worried about. I stuck Bugga in a dark-colored $10 Carter's outfit, and it didn't stain at all! (Those white dots are painted on so the color didn't adhere whatsoever!)
8. Decide how you feel about spoons. I know this sounds funny. But to me, spoons + toddler = catapult. Bugga was very intrigued that I let her use spoons for this activity, and they really stole the show for awhile there until I pointed other things out. I think if we did this again (at least at this age) I would leave the spoons in the drawer. She has plenty of plastic ones to play with during meals and with her tea set.
   
9. Have fun! AKA, don't expect to have any control over how the eggs get colored, as your toddler is not interested in the LEAST about your creative opinion. Point out the colors, what happens when you mix them, etc. - they won't understand a lot of it, but they will see that it is fun.
10. Don't worry, the rainbow child isn't permanent. We went straight into the bathtub when we were finished, and it probably took two baths until the dye under her fingernails disappeared. But it was worth it!

The finished product! AMAZING!

Activity: Baby Safe Finger Painting

Finger painting is a great way for kiddos to learn about textures, colors and their creativity. We tried this when my daughter was just around 10 months, so every activity had to be baby-safe. With regards to an activity like painting, this meant that anything she could possible put in her mouth would not hurt her.

Here is an "edible" fingerpaint recipe that I found online and decided to try. The quotes are because it only uses ingredients that are safe to digest, but I avoided any sets of instructions that included sugar - the last thing I want to do is encourage Bugga to eat the paint. I can only imagine that retraining I will have to do down the road when she's older! So this is safe to eat, but certainly not tasty.

Ingredients:
2 cups of cornstarch
1 cup of cold water
4.5 cups of hot water
Food coloring

Instructions:
Mix the cornstarch and cold water together, then add the hot water, constantly stirring the mixture. Separate mixture into smaller containers. Add food coloring as desired and mix thoroughly.

Some comments: OK, I'll admit my knowledge of cornstarch is pretty limited. So stirring this mixture was kind of fun - it acted like flour, but then all of a sudden it became this wild translucent gel-like goo. The colors came out a lot brighter then I expected once mixed. As far as using this for painting...because it is a gel-like consistency, it doesn't paint like regular paint, but it still works for this activity. It's probably also good to know that it will dry pretty thick on the paper you use, and in our case at least, the painting cracked and wasn't really something to save in Bugga's brand new art archive.

The Actual Painting Part
If older children are doing this activity, you can easily incorporate brushes, but for us, it was not question that we would be using our fingers (and feet and elbows and behinds...you get the idea).

I cut open a kitchen trash bag so I could cover as much space as possible. Then I used packing tape to tape the trash bag to my floors. I don't recommend doing this over carpet - anything that somehow gets off the trash bag might be difficult to get out of carpet (but I'm sure it's possible...I just have no advice on this!).

Then I grabbed a couple pieces of paper, the paints, and my child and started experimenting! 

She was definitely hesitant at first trying to figure out what this colorful stuff was, and what she could do with it. And oh yes, a couple handfuls went into her mouth. But it was also a great teaching opportunity for me to say, "Hey, that's not food!" and teach her not to put it in her mouth and instead, put it on the paper. We had a great time!

Here's something that was somewhat important: as expected, this makes a MESS. I kept a roll of paper towels and a wet washcloth very close to this activity. I recommend either clothes that are colorful and/or old, or just a diaper-only situation. And of course, she went straight into the bathtub once we were done.