Making carrots

I decided that it'd be fun for the kids to make a small Easter basket for my parents since we won't be here to celebrate Easter with them.  So the kids helped make these super cute and super easy carrots!  I saw these online somewhere, but don't recall where. 

Here's what we used:

plastic sandwich baggies
green yarn
scissors
Goldfish crackers (num num!)

We started off by putting some Goldfish into the baggies.... not much.  Get them into the corner of the bag.

Next, twist the extra part of the bag and shape the Goldfish into a carrot shape as best you can.  It's not perfect, but everyone will get the idea. Tie a piece of yarn around the top of the carrot to keep it closed.


Then I trimmed most of the extra plastic off the top (the zipper wasn't too pretty). 

Next, I cut pieces of yarn.  Ours were about 6 inches long, but you can make them however you want.  I would guess I used about 20 pieces on each carrot.

I tied the bundle of yarn pieces around the top of the carrot and voila!  We have carrots!

I plan to make some of these for the kids Easter baskets.  They don't REALLY need any more candy.  There will be some in the baskets... don't worry, but anything I can put in there that is not sweet is a bonus!

Theme days

I  LOVE things with a theme.  Parties with a theme, activities with a theme, rooms with a theme.

I like to come up with different activities for the youngsters that all tie in together... so we basically do lots of stuff around the same subject.  Here are a few of the theme days that we've had and the shenanigans that went with them. lol!  I had to throw that word in there.

Owl theme day

• Talked about owls and the sounds that they make.  My son went through a phase where he liked to pretend that he could hear an owl outside so that's what started this theme for us.  We got out a book about owls and looked through it. 
• This day occurred shortly before Valentine's day so we made Valentine's day cards for the grandparents using the heart owl craft found here.  We adapted it a little by letting the kids finger paint some card stock, used that as the "card" and then glued our owls onto that.  I thought it gave it a cool artsy look :-)

• While I prepared the pieces for the heart owl craft, the kids colored this page The Letter O is for Owl
• They ate "owls" for lunch.  I just used whatever I could find to make the body parts and cut the sandwiches free hand.  Beautiful, I know!  lol

•  We finished off the day by watching The Fox and the Hound.  Only because there is an owl in the movie.  I was grasping a little on that one, but its the first movie I could find that had an owl in it.  ;-)

Fish/ocean theme

•  We started the day off by making an ocean sensory bin!  I read about the idea on this awesome blog Inner Child Fun.  I have to admit theirs looks a heck of a lot cooler than mine, but I wasn't going out and buying anything special for this.  It was fun... and that's all that matters!  My son actually played with this thing lots of other times.  My daughter ate the "rocks"  so she didn't get to play with it much after the first time. lol.  We used assorted pony beads for the rocks, and threw in anything else that reminded us of the ocean!  Filled it with water and we were good to go!

We even had seaweed!!!

Hard at work!  I think finding stuff to put in was his favorite part!

• We read The Rainbow Fish

• Decorated a "Rainbow" fish.  I drew a fish on card stock, cut it out, the kiddos decorated it and we glued them onto craft sticks (the wide Popsicle sticks... I am not sure the technical term for them). :-)

• After nap time/lunch, the fish were dry enough to play with while we watched Finding Nemo. Finding Nemo is the perfect end to any day.  Love that movie!  :-)

 We'll leave it at that for now.  We have a few others that we've done, but I don't wanna give you an overload!  Plus the itty bit is up from her nap now!  Have a great day... make the most of what's left!

I Spy with a Twist

Got a child and need some entertainment for said child???  Here's an idea!  I'll call it I Spy with a Twist.  It's super easy, doesn't cost anything, and will provide entertainment for hours.  Literally.  My son wanted to play it over, and over, and over....I'll stop there, but I could keep going.  :-)

How it works:  The little one gets a color card, then they run to the other side of the room and pick an object that matches the color on the card.  They run back to you, give you their item & card.  They get a new color card.... and repeat.  Simple!  


How I prepared: I cut small "cards" out of different colored card stock and wrote the name of the color on the card.   I then gathered all kinds of items that were the colors we would need.  I tried to mix it up and get objects of different sizes and materials.  I just chucked all of these into a big pile on one side of the room and we were ready!  Easy, easy, easy!

I handed the cards to my son (his lil sis played too, but he had to help her) and then cheered him on as he ran to the other side of the room and picked out his object.  Then I cheered him back over to me.  This was good because it also allowed him to get some energy out before naptime!  I made sure that there were multiple items to choose from for each color.  He actually did awesome with this game.

As I write I imagine you can you do variations with this game depending on where your child is developmentally.  My son is working on his colors so this was perfect for us.  For older children you could put letters on your cards and make them pick objects that start with the letter. Or use numbers and let the child get that number of objects.

Happy Playing!