Cardboard Shape Stamps

Another super simple craft using stuff you have in your house...I found this idea at www.theimaginationtree.com. All you need is paint and a few toilet paper or paper towel tubes. We used three toilet paper tubes and cut them in half. Bend them into the shapes you want, dip in paint, and stamp away!
When you're done, if you think your little one will want to do this again, let the cardboard stampers dry, throw them in a ziploc bag, and store them away.

Thanksgiving Banner

I'm getting excited for Christmas already but I'm trying not to completely skip over Thanksgiving quite yet. Here's a little craft to get your kiddos to think about what they're thankful for. You could make this a million different ways, but here's what I used.

I ripped pages out of an old book and had Rowin color them. Then I cut those into triangles and cut larger triangles out of construction paper so that there would be a border. Next, we glued those together.

 After the triangles were all put together, I asked Rowin what he was thankful for. After he said, "bears and pictures" (who knows what goes on in that little head), I redirected the convo a little bit. :) "I helped him come up with "Daddy and Jesus" and then of course, Elsa and Anna made it on the banner too.

We punched holes, strung it with twine, and hung it in our dining room. Just something simple to start a conversation about being thankful this holiday season. Tweak it however you like!

Laundry Basket Race Car

Oh hello. Sorry I dropped off the planet for a while. No reason, I just did. I feel like we've done several fun little things since my last post, so I'll try to add a few more in the next week or so. 

Everything over here is either race cars or Frozen right now, so a few weeks ago, we made Rowin his own laundry basket race car. I dragged out the process of MAKING the race car, which I'm glad I did, because once it was done, he only played in it for about ten minutes. Ha!

First, I had him decorate his wheels (four paper plates) however he wanted. He went with the classic brown circles. Gotta love three year old boy art. I punched holes in them and he helped me string the yarn through the holes to attach them to the basket. Good fine motor practice!

Then I had him pick which number he wanted his race car to be. I wrote his number in a dotted line and had him trace over it-once for the front and once for the back. More fine motor practice, as well as number recognition.

 After we taped those on, we grabbed a helmet from the garage and a toy steering wheel that we had. If you decide to do this, make sure to include your little one in the process-that's where most of the learning happens! Plus, the anticipation is half the fun. Rowin was giggling the whole time we were "building" our race car because he was so excited!