Kids

Projects and Crafts I've done with my kids.

The Solar System Project

Shiny Planets

Bought a solar system kit, but the planets were all solid colors. So I painted them with iridescent and metallic nail polishes. They turned out great! The picture doesn't really do them justice. Add a few glow in the dark stars and you get a great effect. I attached the sun to the back of a black plastic container with velcro. It had a remote control that made it light up. It was a hit!

Christmas Elf Craft Project

Christmas Elf

This was a little craft project I did with my daughter's class at school. I found a template on the net for the elf. The body is a paperplate, the legs are scrapbook paper. The collar is cut from wrapping paper, which made it very festive. I provided several different colors of plate bodies, scrapbook paper, and pom-poms.

The finished product of the class elves. 

They looked great hanging in the hall for all to see!

Handprint Christmas Ornament

Memories

Bought this handprint ornament kit at Walgreens at Christmas time. Made my baby's handprint in the clay and painted with metallic gold acrylic paint. Added his name, date, and holly leaves with sharpie pens. Turned out so cute! And the metallic paint gave the hand a 3-D effect. We'll enjoy this one for years to come!

Dolphin Diorama 

Dolphin Habitat

My daughter had to make a wildlife diorama for a class project in 2nd grade. She chose dolphins (her favorite animal). Here's what we came up with.

Dolphin Jumping Out of the Water

Scrapbook paper and embellishments, dolphin pics printed from the internet. The transparent plastic on top is from a blue garbage bag.

Details

She had to include items from their natural habitat, their predators, and their prey.

A Little Illumination

We added some battery operated tea-lights to give an extra glow to the underwater scene. She has actually saved this project to display in her new bedroom, which will be a dolphin theme. :o)

Rock Candy Valentine

Here's a cute little Valentine project.  These are IHeart Valentines I made for my daughter's class.  The idea comes from the Disney Family Fun website.  Click on the link below and it will take you straight to the instructions.

http://familyfun.go.com/crafts/rock-candy-675037/

These were fun to make...and different.  My daughter absolutely LOVES them!  But they do take a good amount of time if you have to make a lot of them.  I made 30.  I just did a step everyday for a few days because I had the time with a broken ankle.  :o)

Instead of using a box of conversation hearts like the instructions say, we found some boxes of Red Hots hearts.  My daughter and I agreed that the conversation hearts, while cute, just don't taste as good as the red hots!!!  I did my cords a little differently from the instructions as well (which is why it took more time to put these together; the string I used was slippery, and I didn't want any knots slipping out).

The instructions call for 2-14" strands of string.  I taped the end of one of them to the side of the candy box with black duct tape.  I used black because, honestly, it's just what I had on hand.

I then wrapped a small piece of tape around the other end of the string, creating an aglet, so that the string wouldn't come unraveled.

I did the same thing to the 2nd piece of string...put aglets on the ends to prevent fraying and to make attachment to the "earphone" easier.

The string that had an aglet on both ends was then folded in half.  At the "fold", I attached it to the free end of the string already attached to the box using the duct tape.  Again, I wrapped the tape around the string creating another "aglet".

Now for the fun part.  Tape pieces of scrapbook paper around the box measured to fit around front to back.  I used double-sided tape to adhere to the boxes.  My daughter chose colorful paper rather than the traditional Valentine colors.  Print out the screen and dial template from the Disney Family Fun web site.  I printed out a few of them, cut out around them and attached them all to one sheet of paper so that I had 8 templates on one sheet.  I then made copies of that sheet so I wouldn't waste so much paper.  Then I cut those out and applied with a glue stick.  Cut out 4" circles of aluminum foil.  You will use these to wrap around the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup ear pieces.  But first, tape the aglets to the bottom of the Reese's cup....then wrap your foil around it to cover the aglet and create the silver ear pieces.  You're done!  And they are so, so cute!