Invitation to Create-Valentine's

We often consider creativity child's play or the work of genius. However, creativity is natural part of each of us that we must nurture. So here is a little child's play to nurture us all.

We started with a jello play dough recipe.This Jello Play Dough worked just as directed. We did have to kneed quiet a bit of flour into the dough to remove the stickiness. We used strawberry. The color and scent matched our Valentine's theme perfectly. We will make jello play dough in the future for it's ease in color and scent. We used generic jello, it worked great.

I feel the creation bin with scraps from previous crafts we had done. The compartments of the tray helped organize and limit what materials I chose. I think this helped the children create.

Tray Contents
heart shaped buttons
artificial flower seperated into layers
ribbon cut into strips
chenille stems
pom poms
red rhine stones
cookie cutters
strawberry scented playdough-see Jello Play Dough Recipe

Here are some of our creations. We hope this inspires you to be creative.

Fall Fun

We began this adventure by reading Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert. This is a fun fall read as you search for all the animals made by leaves. This inspired to go on a nature walk and collect our own leaves. It was like a treasure hunt trying to find the perfect shape and color. We returned home to make our own leaf creations. Fabulous Fall Fun!

Spider Rings, Bats, and Things

Oh the Halloween trinkets! The cheap thrill that quickly turns into clutter or trash. Why not up cycle them? Use them to decorate a grape vine wreath and the thrill will live on. Dress it up with some ribbon and you have a great decoration. I original had the idea to use the multiple number of rubber snakes I was constantly picking out of the floor, but what do you know I couldn't find them when I needed them. So I used some glow in the dark and glitter spiders. The bell spider in the center was a Hobby Lobby find. This is a great double duty item. Have fun creating and decorating!

Talking Bubble

We were outside the other day playing with bubbles, good timeless fun. As we are experimenting with all the different wands. I am thinking this would be a great science inquiry activity (stay tuned to Second Grade Made in the Shade to see how that turns out in the classroom) but in the mean time my daughter came up with a fun game to play with the bubbles that included two of my favorite things affirmation and imagination. You sit across from each other and blow bubbles. But before you blow the bubble you whisper a compliment into the bubble, then blow. The person catches the bubble and hears the compliment. Then they blow another bubble back with a compliment inside. We had so much fun doing this.

Christmas in July? Well, cookies at least

At Christmas we always have lots of fun making sugar cookies. Well I thought we could have a little sugar cookie fun this summer. I wanted to try an idea I saw about using sweetened condensed milk and food coloring to make paint. The idea used the paint on paper, but I thought since both ingredients were edible why not paint on sugar cookies. So we gathered the ingredients.

sugar cookie mix, any sugar cookies would probably work, I just wanted to try this.

frosting

one can sweetened condensed milk

food coloring

I poured the content of the pouch and added the other ingredients the package called for into the KitchenAid mixer and let them mix until combined. I tried to mix by hand at first but it was way too hard to combine the butter and the mix. We then spooned the cookies onto a cookie sheet and baked as directed. While they were baking, we poured the sweetened condensed milk into cups and added a few drops of food coloring.

Wow, magic! I guess the right thing to do would bake the cookies ahead of time and let them cool, but we skipped that step. Next we frosted some of the cookies. 

 Then we painted or drizzled the colored sweetened condensed milk onto the cookies, and let them dry (or let some dry).

Here is the end result. The cool thing about the sweetened condensed milk is it dries shiny. You might get better results if you let the cookies cool and use a paint brush to paint instead of the plastic knifes we used, but ours were lots of fun to make and yummy to eat.

The settling bottle

 

At our house we love to craft. This is a "time out bottle" I saw on Pinterest. I thought this would be something my six year old would enjoy and I could also use it in my classroom. We gathered the supplies.

bottle (smart water was large enough and had a smooth bottom so it would stand easily)

Goo Gone-to remove the label (peanut butter or any other trick for removing adhesive could also be used)

bottle of glitter glue

tube of extra fine glitter

clear tacky glue

warm water

super glue secure the lid

First, I peeled the label off the bottle and used goo gone, a scrub brush, and a little dish detergent to remove the sticky left by the label.

Nest, my six year old joined in the fun, so this is a craft the kids can do, we filled the bottle about 1/4 full with warm water. A funnel would be another handy tool for this.

 Then, we squeezed in the glitter glue, poured in the tube of glitter, and squirted about 1/2 the bottle of clear tacky glue in each of our bottles. We put the lid on and shook the bottles every time we added something just to be sure the glue was dissolving. Finally we took the bottles to the faucet filled it to the top with warm water, made sure it mixed well, and super glued the lid on.

Here is what they look like all shook up.

Here is what they look like as they start to settle. They really are cool to watch, the picture does not do them justice. The pin I saw said add more glue to make them settle slower, this is important if you want to use it as a timer for time out. Some suggest using these for meditation. It is relaxing to watch. My daughter had fun playing with it all day, shaking it and turning it in different ways. She was really proud of it because she made it herself.

Somethings I might try if I did this again
The glitter seems to over power the glitter glue, so I might just use more glitter and clear tacky glue and just omit the glitter glue.
The two tone sliver and gold glitter was much more interesting to watch than just the blue, so I think I would use different colors of glitter.