Hopping Clothespin Bunny Puppet Craft For Easter

I just have to say I think this Hopping Clothespin Bunny Puppet  is one of my favorite bunny craft projects ever and is the perfect project to get ready for Easter!! I host a toddler/preschool art group at my house once a week and I was browsing Pinterest looking for some ideas.  I was planning on doing some Easter  Bunny themed projects and then I found this adorable Hatching Egg Craft and the inspiration for this project.  I thought if I attached the bunny on to the clothes pin it would move up and down like it was hopping.  I made a quick sample and it worked perfectly, both Emily and Juliette thought it was the cutest thing ever and I couldn’t wait for the girls to make their own!

To make this project we used a Clothespin , 4 Jumbo Craft Sticks , card stock, wiggly eyes, pom poms, markers, craft foam, green construction paper, glue and a hot glue gun.

First I cut out a bunny shape for each of the girls to decorate.  Juliette decided to color the ears and draw the face with markers.  She also used various other craft supplies to decorate it.  She used a cotton ball for the tail, wiggly eyes and craft foam for the teeth and nose.  She also cut out a carrot from scraps of construction paper.  I loved just watching to see what she created.

Once they were finished with the bunnies, they cut fringe on a strip of green construction paper to use as the grass.

Finally I used hot glue to put everything together.  I glued two of the jumbo craft sticks together to make one longer craft stick.   I did this 2 times so that I had one for the top and one for the bottom.  Then I hot glued these onto the clothespin as you can see in the picture above.  Next, I glued the grass onto the bottom craft stick being careful not to let it stick to the top one.  Then I glued the bunny onto the top craft stick making sure that it didn’t touch the grass.  Finally I trimmed the top craft stick with a scissor so that it ended with the bunny.    We found that the hot glue holds everything together much better and I like that it dries so quickly. They were able to play with their bunny crafts right away!

Juliette was so excited to test out her hopping bunny puppet and she was able to entertain Clara with it for quiet a while!!

Also check out our cute Hand Print Bunny Napkin Rings

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Creative Challenge: Plastic Easter Egg Chicks and Bunnies

When I read about  the Creative Challenge from Tinkerlab I knew it was for us and something we would want to join in.  Emily and Juliette love to work on projects and I loved the idea that it was open ended and up to them to figure out what to do, which fosters their creativity and problem solving skills

This month’s challenge is EGGS, so we could do anything we want with any type of egg.

I explained to the girls that we had to come up with a project that has to do with eggs.  We conveniently decided to decorate our house for Easter which meant we had a huge bag of Plastic Easter Eggs (I’m talking like easily 75-100 eggs) just sitting waiting to be used in some fun and creative way.

Emily suggested the idea of turning a plastic yellow egg into a chick, she thought our bin of pipe cleaners would be perfect for his feet and Juliette totally agreed and added that we needed to make a bunny too.  They picked out yellow eggs for the chicks and pink eggs for the bunnies. Then I helped them gather whichever art supplies they thought they needed to create their projects.

Our supplies included plastic eggs, pipe cleaners, beads, craft foam, sharpie markers,feathers, construction paper, pom poms, wiggly eyes and our hot Glue Gun .

The girls noticed that there were holes in the top and bottom of each part of the egg which was perfect for adding the feet. 

After they added the feet they figured out worked on adding all the other details.  Daddy got in the fun to and decided to create a party egg :)      Emily’s Princess Chick!

 

Check out our cute Handprint Bunny Craft and Hatching Chick Craft for some more Bunny and Chick Fun!!

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How to Catch a Leprechaun ~ Leprechaun Trap Attempt #3

We are at it again…this year we were sure that we were going to catch that tricky leprechaun. He was able escape from the first cake Leprechaun Trap and our Pulley Leprechaun Trap.  This year our trap had all the makings of a great trap with no way for that leprechaun to escape!!!

We have been talking about different ideas for the leprechaun trap for awhile now.  We finally agreed that we would trick him into a large pot and then grease the sides so it would be to slippery for  him to climb out.

To accomplish this we needed:

• Popsicle sticks
• Tissue paper and streamers in rainbow colors
• A large pot
• Oil
• Toothpicks
• Paper
• Markers
• Play Dough

  I used the hot glue gun to make the ladder so he could easily climb up to the top of the pot.  Next we set up popsicle sticks around the edge of the top of the pot hooping that they would make the rainbow tissue paper that we put on top of the pot slide in easier.  Finally, the girls put the strips of tissue paper and streamers over the top.

The girls made some signs to show the leprechaun that there was a rainbow and gold up the ladder.  We hot glued them to toothpicks and poked them into green play dough.

The gold coins on top, waiting for the leprechaun!

The girls are so excited to see if they catch the leprechaun this time!!

  That tricky leprechaun escaped again!!  This time he built his own ladder to climb out with the  popsicle sticks that fell into the pot.  At least he left us some fun treats for trying.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!!!

Did you build a leprechaun trap this year? If you did add it to the linky so we can check it out.

Valentine’s Day Cards

 

Love is in the air and we had so much fun making these cards for the girls to pass out to their friends at school!

When I saw these “I Love You to Pieces” valentines  I immediately thought of Juliette.  She loves cutting and is always creating a little scrap pile of cut pieces for no apparent reason.  This was perfect to put those cuttings to use for a real project.  I gave her pieces of pink, purple and red construction paper and had her make confetti out of it.  Then she glued the pieces on to the hearts like they were sparkles.  She had a blast!! 

  I picked up these cute pencils for Emily to hand out, but wanted something else to go with them.  These printable mazes were so cute and the perfect way for her to include a sweet massage and her name. 

Our Elf on the Shelf Ginger Week 2

Ginger has been pretty busy this week!!!  Here is a peek at what she has been up to...

 Just relaxing on the window

Since we didn't decorate our tree yet Ginger thought she would help out

 Lifting a weights made out of a candy cane and two large marshmallows.  You need to work out when your main diet is sugar based!!

 The girls got a treat of some homemade mini doughnuts to start off their morning.

 The coffee was all set up for us on this chilly morning

 Ginger reminded us of the true meaning for the season and decided to join our Nativity Set

Ginger was just zip lining through our kitchen.  She even left the girls some candy canes and Clara a candy cane made out of a Baby Mum-Mum cracker.  Ginger is the best!!!

Our Elf on the Shelf is BACK!!!!

Ginger, our The Elf on the Shelf made her first appearance right after Thanksgiving and the girls couldn't have been more excited.  She was waiting for them on top of the front door where Juliette spotted her the second we went downstairs for breakfast.

Throughout the day Juliette kept telling us that she cant wait to see where Ginger is tomorrow and I wonder what she is going to do tomorrow.  I love their excitement over her and the anticipation of what she will do next.

Do you have an Elf on the Shelf?  Where have you found your elf playing?

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Mixed Media Family Turkey Project

For school Emily had to create a turkey with her family.  We all worked together to decorate this turkey.  It was so much fun to get out our collection of collage materials and decide what would make a really cool looking turkey. 

A few weeks ago we had made some spin art in fall colors which worked perfectly for the turkey's feathers.  Then we used different dried beans and feathers as well as crayons, a band-aid, some felt, glitter glue and of course a googly eye!

Soda Bottle Easter Basket

Juliette made this adorable Easter Basket at school and I had to share it I thought it was so cute!

To make it they cut the top off of a soda bottle then covered the cut edge with duct tape so no little fingers would get cut.  The kids decorated the feet and head with crayons, a pom pom for the nose and foam stickers for the pink of the ears.  There are also pipe cleaners for the whiskers.  The arms are attached with a brad across the top on either side to make the handle, which can move back and forth.  Finally there is a white pom pom glued on the back for the cotton tail.

I don't have a template for the pieces but they are pretty simple you can use white construction paper and free hand the shape of the arms and feet.  The head is a simple circle with a little extra at the bottom so that it sticks up from the bottle.  Then you can get creative and make the ears any shape you want.

**If you try this I would love t hear about it send me a link to any pictures so I can see how they came out!!

How to Catch a Leprechaun ~ Leprechaun Trap Attempt #2

Last year we made our first Leprechaun Trap and the girls are even more determined to catch him this year.  Since he was able to eat his way out of the trap last year, the girls decided we needed something a bit sturdier and decided to use some boxes that we were going to recycle, string and some Plastic Gold Coins.

Emily and Juliette painted the boxes using rainbow colors in hopes of attracting the Leprechaun.  Then Daddy helped them rig up a pulley system over the chandelier with some string that was attached to gold coins.  When The Leprechaun picked up the gold coins we hoped the box would fall on top of him and trap him. 

The girls were all ready for bed and so excited  to see if the trap worked.

   We didn’t catch the Leprechaun, but he did leave us some chocolate coins and in his haste to escape he left his hat behind, which made the girls really happy.  The trickster also turned our milk green and the water in the potty green too.

Hopefully we have better luck catching that tricky leprechaun next year!!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!!!!!

Recycle Every Day ~ stART

 

Welcome to stART! I hope that you will enjoy our story and art project and maybe even share your own too. All I ask is that you link back to A Mommy’s Adventures somewhere in your post by either adding my button or a text link, so that others can see all the other great projects that everyone shares too!

This week we have been talking about Earth Day and ways that we can help do good things for the Earth.  Emily and Juliette  really enjoyed Recycle Every Day!, by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace.  This is a great story about a little bunny, Minna who needs to make aposter about recycling for school.  She wants her poster to be picked to be in the Community Recycling Calendar.  Her family helps her learn about the different things that they do to recycle each day of the week.  Finally, she is inspired to create her poster. 

I loved the theme of this book, because all of the different ways that Minna and her family recycled are things we can and in many cases already to in our home.  Emily liked seeing the bottle returns since we just recently took a huge bag to our recycling center.  We also use our tote bags when we go food shopping.  

I also love the illustrations in this book the last page has a list of the different recycled papers and materials that are used throughout the book.  We are working on collecting them so that we can use them to make our own pictures.

For today’s project we made a Puffy Paint Earth Day craft.  I got the idea for this project on Pinterest from Itsy Bitsy Learners.  

Emily’s Puffy Paint Earth

These were fun and easy to make, first I cute out the hearts for the girls, then the girls traced and cut out their handprints.  Emily traced hers and Juliette cut out one while I cut out the real ones (she likes to just cute everything into really small pieces, but it was still good practice in using the scissors!)

  Juliette’s Puffy Paint Earth

Next I gave them each a paper plate and some green and blue homemade puff paint.  First they painted the green on to look like the land and I microwaved it to make it puff up.  Then they painted the blue for the water and I microwaved it to make it dry and puff up.

Finally they glued on the hands and heart to show that they love the Earth.  This was a fun project and looks so cute hanging up for Earth Day!

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The linky will be open all week.  Be sure to stop by and visit the different links…every week there are so many different and fun book and craft ideas!

Also, be sure to check out the  stART tab in my navigation bar where you can find our past stART projects.  All the books that we have read and did a stART project for are listed in alphabetical order.  I have also included a list of all the blogs that participate in stART. 

Paper Plate Easter Basket

 

Emily’s Basket ~ I love the Empty Tomb that she decided to draw all on her own!

We made these cute paper plate Easter Baskets with Emily and Juliette’s Sunday School Class for their Easter Party.  We wanted something that was easy to make and that would hold the treats that they found inside their Easter Eggs after the Easter Egg Hunt.

Juliette’s Basket ~ She loved the stickers and Emily was very proud of how she blended the colors at the bottom to make a great design :)

To make them I cut out all of the paper plates ahead of time.  You will need 2 paper plates per child.  Cut one paper plate in half.  Then cut a half circle out of the inside of the second paper plate, this will be the handle.

We gave the kids crayons, markers and stickers for them to decorate the paper plates with.   Make sure they decorate the back(side that would normally touch the table) of the half paper plate because you are going to staple it to the second paper plate so that they are facing each other.  We had a few kids decorate the front (side that the food goes on) so we couldn’t see their design.    Then staple the half paper plate onto the bottom of the other paper plate to make a pouch.  This was a perfect little Easter Basket for the kids to hold all the candy they found after our Easter Egg Hunt!

stART ~ What is Easter?

Welcome to stART!  I hope that you will enjoy our story and art project and maybe even share your own too. All I ask is that you link back to A Mommy’s Adventures somewhere in your post by either adding my button or a text link, so that others can see all the other great projects that everyone shares too! The linky will be open all week.  Be sure to stop by and visit the different links…every week there are so many different and fun book and craft ideas!

Check out the  stART tab in my navigation bar where you can find our past stART projects.  All the books that we have read and did a stART project for are listed in alphabetical order.  I have also included a list of all the blogs that participate in stART. 

We read What Is Easter?, by Michelle Medlock Adams last year and really enjoyed it again this year.  I love how it talks about all the fun things that kids enjoy doing for Easter, like going on Easter Egg Hunts, getting Easter candy, but then  explains what Easter is really about! 

This year I read this book to my Sunday School class, and it captured their attention the whole time I was reading it.  Each page asks a question like,“Is Easter all about Jelly Beans and Chocolate bunnies?” and they would shout “NO!!!”  It was so much fun to read to them.

The last page is my favorite part of this book:

Okay, now I get it.
The Easter Bunny is okay,
And Easter eggs are fun.
But Easter's not about that stuff.
It's all about God's son.

I read the last line slowly and by the time I got to “It’s all about…” they finished the last line for me.  Even though this is a board book a group of 2 year olds to 10 year olds loved it!

(Juliette’s Cross)

To go with this book Emily and Juliette made marbled crosses.  When I think of Easter my favorite tradition is the Living Cross that my church creates on Easter Sunday.  Every person in the congregation gets a fresh flower to stick into a huge cross that is covered in chicken wire.  Once we are finished, a dull wooden cross is blooming with new life!  Our marbled crosses reminded me of  the beautiful colors of the Living Cross we make on Easter Sunday!

(Emily’s Cross)

Unfortunately, I was not able to get pictures of the girls working on this project.  My nephew work up from his nap early and did not want to be put down.  So I had him in one arm and was helping them with the other.  No extra hands to take pictures :(

It was still very easy to do.  We sprayed some shaving cream into a layer onto a baking sheet.  Then the girls used droppers to add drops of liquid watercolors on top of the shaving cream. Next they used a craft stick to mix the colors into the shaving cream.  But, just a little bit, so that you can still see the individual colors.  Then they took the paper that I cut out in the shape of a cross and gently pressed it onto the shaving cream after a few seconds they pulled it up and used the craft stick to wipe off the extra shaving cream, this is the best part because it looks all white and plain and as you pull the craft stick down and the shaving cream comes of of the paper the vibrant swirls off color are revealed. 

Thing we learned while doing this:

Make sure you do not saturate the shaving cream.  The more shaving cream you use, the more paint you can use.  If you add to much paint the colors blend together and the liquid dissolves the shaving cream.

Do not mix to much, you just want to use the craft stick to swirl the colors around not mix them all together.

Have fun, and be sure to have an extra can of shaving cream the girls were really disappointed when we ran out!!!

stART ~ Minerva Louise and the Colorful Eggs

Welcome to stART!  I hope that you will enjoy our story and art project and maybe even share your own too. All I ask is that you link back to A Mommy’s Adventures somewhere in your post by either adding my button or a text link, so that others can see all the other great projects that everyone shares too! The linky will be open all week.  Be sure to stop by and visit the different links…every week there are so many different and fun book and craft ideas!

Check out the  stART tab in my navigation bar where you can find our past stART projects.  All the books that we have read and did a stART project for are listed in alphabetical order.  I have also included a list of all the blogs that participate in stART. 

 

This week we enjoyed reading Minerva Louise and the Colorful Eggs, by Janet Morgan Stoeke.  In this story, Minerva  finds an Easter Basket that she thinks is a hat for her to wear.  When she puts it on she notices an egg inside of it.  Minerva Louise does not want the egg to be cold so she sits on it to warm it with her fluffy feathers.  As she is looking for the egg’s mother she notices another egg and then another egg.  Soon she decided to tell her friends what is going on, when they come out all the eggs are gone.  They look for answers however the Chocolate Easter Bunny and Marshmallow Chicks are no help!  Finally they find one last colorful egg that is quickly snatched up by a little hand.  The other hens felt better that the “farmers” were doing a good job taking care of the eggs and left, but Minerva Louise, found a nice full Easer Basket for her nest.

The girls loved this book and especially how silly Minerva Louise is!  To go along with this book we made some of our own colorful eggs. When I saw the idea to use jell-o powder with glue like on Pinterest I knew that we had to try it and that it would work perfectly with this book.

I cut out egg shapes for each of the girls and placed them on a cookie sheet.  I also poured the powdered jell-o mix into  egg coloring cups, that I saved from last year, in corresponding colors.   The girls made designs with their glue and then spooned the jell-o over the glue like using glitter.  It was a lot of fun to watch the pale jell-o mix turn a vibrant color as it hit the glue. (The jell-o was a pale color, I picked up one great value one from Walmart and it was a dark red color to start so the effect was not as dramatic)  It also smelled amazing as they were working!

 

This project was fun for all of the kids!

 Emily’s Egg

Juliette’s Egg