I was contacted last week through my blog about a really fantastic store opening up this weekend in Indianapolis. Unfortunately, I can't make it down there this weekend, but I am just itching to get down there and explore! If you are around the Indy area, you should head in there today! There will be free crafts, product demonstrations, contests, giveaways, and 50% off some products! How fun is that! Did you know that during the summer break from school, students loose up to 2 months of the skills they just learned? Why not pick up a few things to help your kids retain that info over the summer, and have it be a really fun thing to do! Don't live near Indy? You can always check them out online at www.lakeshorelearning.com. As a special treat to my readers, they have offered you guys a great Buy 1 Get 1 50% off coupon!!! Just go to www.lakeshorelearning.com/bogo to use!
Here are some great pictures of the new store, provided from the company. Just looking at all the pictures, I am getting so excited to visit the store. Look at all that fun learning stuff!!
I don't know about your kids, but mine would be in heaven right here!
I see some of my favorite companies here.
Please check out the new store in Indy! 1300 E. 86th Street
Indianapolis, IN 46240
This post was sponsored by Lakeshore Learning Company. The pictures were provided by the company.
I have been teaching my kids a variation of preschool now for a few years, and even though D is just now getting ready to go off to school, she has all the same abilities of her older brother. So she has been getting bored with the usual learning, and I must say, that I am too. So one night an idea hit me, we have spare empty spiral notebooks and I have been noticing all these fun animal crafts, why not but them all together and make a zoo book. At first I thought we should make it with all the zoo animals at our local small zoo, and even do them in order that you come to when you walk through it. But once I told D the idea, she wanted to make animals that our zoo did not have. Sure, why not! We made a list of animals that we are going to attempt. Some I have found on the web. I will try to link all the projects as they come up.
First up was our "K" kangaroo. We have done this one before, but D wanted to do it again. We do all the crafts on paper, then cut them out and glue them into the notebook. This one was brought to us by Totally Tots.
D really wanted to make a sheep, but wanted it to have a peach body. She was very disappointed that we didn't have peach paper. So she decided that it would be fine to make the feet black and the face tan. She started by tracing her hand with a white crayon on the black paper. We then cut the thumb off of the black paper, and traced it on the tan paper.
We glued those then to the paper, and cut out the "fluffy" part. She really thought they turned out better then she expected. Inspired by Kerbrary.
We ended with making hand print zebras, but made them on white paper with white paint. Yep, that didn't work. We went through with it anyway. They still didn't turn out the greatest, but D was happy with them. Inspired by Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas.
I know this happened about a month ago, but it was way too fun to share. Every year on the first day of Spring I host a Garden party. We get the kids together to paint flower pots, and then plant seeds. Normally I do this in my backyard, but this we had so many in attendance that I moved it to a local park. I always use acrylic paints because they will hold up better out in the elements better than washable. In the past I let each child pick out their own colors, but with 24 kids, I just gave them a plate with spring colors already on it. There were no two alike, and they were all fantastic. We finished the day with some playground playing, and a potluck picnic. Not a bad day at all!!
We have been celebrating Earth day all week this week. We were lucky to have nice weather at the park earlier in the week. The group had a nice picnic lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, grilled cheese, mini bagels and cream cheese, and then I made "earth" cupcakes. Of course I forgot to take a picture of those, but I was inspired by Rockabye Butterfly. We did this really fun and easy crafts with the kids. Pinned from Teach Preschool.
Supplies needed:
white paper
paper plate
blue and green paint
How easy is that! Just 4 things!!!! Because we were outside on a slightly windy day I went ahead and taped the paper to the table. I showed the kids how they got to drizzle the paint on the back of the paper plate, flip it over on the paper, and give it a little spin. They all loved it! And they turned out fantastic.
The next craft I did was with both kids on Saturday. Now we have done the coffee filter and marker thing before, but was inspired by this post on I can teach my child. Both of my kids had a blast, and they always love to use water to spray their projects.
Supplies needed:
green and blue washable markers
coffee filters
spray bottle filled with water
Have the kids totally color in the filter with the markers, then spray down with water. I did lay down a flattened brown paper bag under our projects before coloring. After dry, I taped them to the inside of the front door. Nice and cheerful!
And lastly, I had picked up some bleeding tissue paper a few months back, but was unsure of what project to use it on. Inner child fun has used it multiple times, and it always looks so fun. So we decided to make an Earth with it!
Supplies needed:
blue and green bleeding tissue (yes, different then regular tissue paper)
white paper
spray bottle full of water
black construction paper
white paint
large bristle paint brush
I started out prepping the tissue paper but cutting it into squares. I also found a plate that worked with the size I wanted our Earth to be. I first traced it in pencil, then with black marker. I then showed the kids how to layer the tissue on the white paper. I sprayed my picture down with way too much water, after it dried most of my blue ink had bled to the outer ring of the whole paper. L just barely sprayed his down, just so everything was damp, and his turned out perfect. (D was too tired to participate with this one) While those were drying, I took the kids outside to splatter paint their outer space. I set a piece of black construction paper on the ground, and poured a bit of white paint in a cup. I told the kids they had to dip their brush in the paint and then flick it on the paper. We did discover that flicking the paint with your finger on the bristles worked better. We let everything dry over night, and then L cut it out and put it all together. I forgot to take a picture of the finished product, I'll make sure to do that tomorrow.
2 weeks ago we had a crazy, busy, fun weekend!!! It started Friday night when we took the kids to see Riders in the Sky on Notre Dame's campus. Never heard of them, well I'm sure you have! They sang Woody's Roundup in Toy Story 2! It was a fantastic show, and the kids along with us adults really enjoyed it. I was able to get each kid a real (metal) sheriffs badge, and a red kid's cowboy hat. My favorite part was seeing their faces light up when they saw me carrying these back to the seats for them. The guys even set up a table and signed programs for everyone. D just had to have hers signed and was so excited to meet them. She looked just like Jessie the Yodeling Cowgirl that night!
The stage all ready to go
A cute cowboy and cowgirl
The Riders
Then on Saturday, L had a friend birthday party at Chick-fil-a. D was encouraged to join in. Well she must have been having an off day because she ended up having about 4 big fits over silly stuff like where she was sitting, and that someone fell on her in the play area. The best was when she ran out of the play area, threw herself on my bench seat and loudly proclaimed that this was "the worst birthday party ever". Thankfully everyone there laughed at her along with me, and hopefully no one was offended. Boy what a long day that was!
Sunday was a very exciting day! My brother-in-law got us all passes to Chicago's Field Museum and rented a mini-van for us all to go in. We have been wanting to make this trip for some time now, and L was in heaven. He has now decided that he will be a "sky-diving Palentologist" because in his words, "Even Palentologists have down time." Gee, I love that kid! We got to see just about everything the museum had to offer, including having lunch at the McDonalds in the basement. the weather was fantastic, the kids were extremely well behaved, and there were very few people there, so it made for the perfect day. We came home with tons of fun goodies. L picked out a Sue the dinosaur pencil and postcard, and then an excavation kit, D picked out a Sue the dinosaur pen, dino glider, and dino chopsticks. My brother-in-law bought us the set of dinosaur cookie cutters, which we can't wait to use, but for now have been cutting pb&j sandwiches for a little boys lunch box ever since. Adam and I also bought the book, The Field Mouse and the Dinosaur named Sue since L was talking about it on the way up. Apparently they read it at school recently!
Heading into the museum
We found Sue!
We had to stop at all the Mold-A-Ramas, only problem was that I was burned by hot wax in between my fingers. It ended up blistering before we even left.
All our goodies!
Heading back to the car. The parking garage was under Solider Field!
Have you seen the cherry blossom stamped project all over pinterest? Well we have, and I knew that D and I needed to do it. They did theirs with a 2 liter, but since we rarely drinking pop and just happened to have empty little bottles, that was what we used!
Supplies needed:
White construction paper
empty plastic pop bottle
disposable bowl
paint brush
red, white (or pink if you have it!), and brown paint
We started out by mixing a drop of red paint into some white paint in a foam bowl. This was a great way to talk about mixing colors, and I had D guess what color we were making. We then painted our tree trunks and branches on our paper. D always is very creative in her interpretation of trees. Next I pulled out our plastic bottles and showed her how to stamp a pretty flower on the page. She LOVED it!
And since we had all this out already, we decided to paint a whole garden on another sheet of paper. This time we mixed up additional colors, added white to all of them to make them more pastel and spring like. We also found an empty water bottle, a different pop bottle, and an empty fruit cup. We wanted to see if they all had different shapes when we printed them. After stamping some flowers, we used our brushes again, and painted stems, and grass. The weather was perfect, and we had a fun time!
painting trees, happy trees
stamping cherry blossoms
now onto stamping a flower garden
adding the stems and grass
D's flowers
my flowers
A fun book to read along with doing this project would be Planting a Rainbow!
Sorry this is a week late, but it has been a very busy March for us over here!!! The mom's group had their party on March 15th at the library this year. We were expecting tons of kids so I made sure everything was very simple. We read just a few stories, did only 1 craft, and had tons of yummy food! We had 25 kids age 3 and up, and then 14 kids 2 and under coming so treat bags were interesting. For the little ones I put a handful of banana puffs in a snack bag, and then added Caramel . The older kids each got a little treat bag. Inside each bag was a themed pencil, themed ring, piece of gold chocolate coin, 2 stickers, and a handmade scratch-off. This was all placed inside a cellophane bag, tied with a piece of gold yarn. I then made a small pot of gold our of black construction paper and wrote names on them with either yellow or white crayon. They turned out very cute!
For the craft we made leprechaun men. It was inspired by this craft by AllKidsNetwork!
Supplies needed:
paper plate
orange paint
paint brush
green construction paper
black construction paper
yellow construction paper
pencil
scissors
glue stick
markers
I started by painting an orange "beard" all the way around the bottom side of the plate along the outer ring. I went ahead and did this the day before since we can't have paint inside the library. I also cut a hat shape out of the green construction paper. Next up where black strips and a yellow buckle out of construction paper. That way, at the party, the kids just glued all their pieces together, and then drew on faces.
Waiting for story time, in all their green!
D making her little guy. He ended up looking evil with red teeth. Very scary!
