Tic-Tac-Toe with an Egg Carton and Plastic Easter Eggs

My girls love playing Tic-Tac-Toe!!  It is definitely a stand by waiting game for restaurants, waiting in Dr. Offices or in the car or just for fun at home.  We usually play with paper and pencil or as on a board that came with a set of princess games.  The other day though as I used the last egg in a carton of 18 eggs I realized that if I cut it up it would make the perfect Tic-Tac-Toe board.   

So after a little cutting I gathered up some of our plastic colored Easter Eggs and showed our new Tic-Tac-Toe board to the girls.

I played a couple of rounds with each of the girls.  It was different to have to place the egg into the container than to draw and X or an O, which made it a fun twist.

The girls also had a great time playing against each other!

This was a fun new way to play and a great way to recycle our old egg carton!

For more fun with Plastic Easter Eggs Check out our Plastic Easter Egg Chicks and Bunnies

 

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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!!

stART ~ Not A Box

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. 

I love the book Not a Box, by Antoinette Portis!  I love how it inspires children be able to use their imaginations and creativity to do or be anything that they want.  The simple line drawings are perfect for the suspense of the story.  We love guessing what his box is and what he will do next.  One thing is for sure, this is NOT a box!

To go along with Not a Box we got creative with two large boxes that I had.  Pushed the table out of the way and put down a table cloth.  Then I gave them paint, stamps , foam rollers and paint brushes and let them create to their hearts content.

This was one of the best projects we have ever done, I think they would have painted all day if we had more boxes. 

Clean up was CRAZY but totally worth it, here are a few pictures to give you an idea of what the house looked like afterwards :)

stART ~ The Fussy Princess

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 is a work in progress so if you have participated at least 3 times and would like to be added to the list, leave me a comment and let me know :0)

 

Emily has been very into the Little Critter books by Mercer Mayer.  I loved these books when I was little and was so excited to pass my collection onto Emily and Juliette.  While at Grandma and Grandpa’s house we found Little Critter's The Fussy Princess, by Mercer Mayer and Emily has been enjoying it ever since. 

In this book Little Critter tells his fussy sister a story about a very fussy princess that is never happy.  A dragon hears about the fussy princess and how everyone does everything for her and decides that he likes the sound of that and kicks the princess out of the castle and moves right in.  The Princess is forced to sleep outside without her favorite stuffed animals and comfy bed.  In the very cute and funny ending she learns that it is not so nice to be so fussy. 

After reading this book Emily decided she wanted to make a castle of her own.      We used a cardboard cereal box and toilet paper tubes to make the castle.  Emily painted the outside pink.

She used stickers to decorate the inside and outside.  We rolled up construction paper for the turrets and used straws and triangle pieces of paper for the flags.

She even added their pictures to the inside.  These were photo stickers from Snapfish.  She thought they looked like picture frames for the castle wall.

 Emily’s Cardboard and Paper Towel Tube  Castle

stART ~ Beetle Bop

 

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.

This week we found Beetle Bop, by Denise Fleming at our Library.  This is a cute book with a fun descriptive text about all different types of beetle bugs.  It was perfect since Emily has been learning about bugs at school.  Although the book does not go into much detail it is a great way to share all different descriptive words that can be used to talk about beetles.  It was a lot of fun to read and Emily and I were able to talk about what we saw on each page.

After reading the book we decided to make some of our one bugs.  I still have cardboard egg cartons in my supply stash so I gave one to Emily for the body of her beetle.      Emily decided she wanted to make a lady bug so I gave her a marker and some red paint.  Then she asked for wiggly eyes and pipe cleaners for legs.

Emily’s Finished Lady Bug

While Emily was working on her project Juliette took one of the egg carton cups to decorate her own.  Although she did not add any extra details to it she had a great time working on this project “with” Emily! 

stART ~The Very Hungry Caterpillar

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.

This week Emily found a little Caterpillar on our steps so we have been talking about Caterpillars and Butterflies.  Of course that means we have been enjoying reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar , by Eric Carle.  This is one of Emily’s favorite books and it is about a cute little caterpillar that eats and eats and eats until he is a very big caterpillar.  He makes a cocoon (which should be a chrysalis) and becomes a beautiful butterfly.

Emily wanted to make her own Very Hungry Caterpillar to go with the story and I had a lot of egg cartons in my supply stash so I thought this would be a good way to use one of them.   I cut the egg carton into a caterpillar shape and then Emily went to work painting it.  I gave her light green, dark green and red paint and she did all the painting herself. 

Emily added foam eyes and nose and pipe cleaner feet and antennae (I helped with the pipe cleaner parts).

Emily was very happy with how her caterpillar came out!!

stART ~ St. Patrick’s Day in the Morning

 

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.

This week we read St. Patrick's Day in the Morning, by Eve Bunting.  This is a sweet story about a little boy who was told that he was to little to participate in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade.  He sets out to prove that he is able to and it very proud of himself when he does succeed.  To go along with this book we made some egg carton shamrocks to decorate our house for St. Patrick’s Day.

First I cut up an egg carton so that I had 3 parts together in the shape of a shamrock.  Then Emily and Juliette painted both sides of the egg carton with light and dark green paint.  Once they were finished I gave them gold and green glitter glue to add some sparkle!  Both Emily and Juliette worked on this project, but I didn’t get any pictures of Juliette painting.

After the shamrocks dried we added pipe cleaner stems and a gold pipe cleaner at the top to hang them.

Juliette’s Egg Carton Shamrock

  Emily’s Egg Carton Shamrock

Toilet Paper Tube Apple Tree

Emily’s Apple Tree

With back to school just around the corner and the weather getting a little cooler and back to school time I can’t help but think about fall and everything APPLES!! 

This was a fun project that used up some of the toilet paper tubes and paper towel rolls that I have been hoarding for a while.  I did this with our Art Group and all of the girls seemed to enjoy working on this project.

Before we got started, I cut slits on both sides of the top of the toilet paper tube and cut out a cloud shape from a piece of poster board.

First, Emily used brown paint to sponge paint the toilet paper tube brown for the truck of the tree.

Next, she sponge painted both sides of the cloud shape poster board green for the leaves of the tree.

Finally, after all the paint was dry she scrunched up pieces of red streamers into little balls and glued them onto the green leaves for the apples on the tree.

   I helped her slide the top of the tree into the slits in the toilet paper tube to make the Apple Tree.

stART ~ One Bean

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 so that everyone can see all the other great projects that everyone shares too! The linky will be open all week.

I added a stART tab in my navigation bar to make it easier to search for past stART projects.  Be sure to check it out!!  All the books that we have read and did a stART project for are listed in alphabetical order. 

This week we read One Bean, by Anne Rockwell.  I have to admit that when I saw this book at the library I was drawn in by the cute cover and the excitement of planting our own bean seeds.  When I opened the book I was not sure if it would hold Emily’s attention since there were a lot of words on each page, however I figured it was worth a try.  I am SO glad that I did.  Emily really enjoyed this book.  It is a simple, yet informative book about planting for preschoolers.  The illustrations are bright and simple, yet very accurate.  This is a great book to go along with any planting unit especially planting beans!!

Emily and I planted beans in a egg carton container that Emily painted.  We both agreed that this was the perfect project to go along with this book.

The book started with the description of a bean so I gave Emily one of our beans (I dried and saved them from last years bean plant).  Emily enjoyed actually getting to touch and describe our bean too.

 

Emily sprayed a paper towel with water to get the beans ready to be planted just like in the book.  This step helps the beans to sprout quicker, plus it was fun for Emily she loved using the spray bottle!  All we did was wet the paper towel and then place the beans on it.  Cover them and let them soak a bit.

Now we were ready for our art project.  To make the container for the beans we used an egg carton.  I have seen this done many times before, but have never actually tried it myself.  So I can’t wait to see what happens!  First I cut the top off of the egg carton.  We are going to use this as our holder, I figured it would collect any water that may seep through the egg carton.  I gave Emily different colors of paint and let her cover the whole thing!

We put the top part that Emily painted under the egg carton and then she filled up the egg cup part with soil.  

Emily added one bean seed to each cup.

Then she covered them with some more soil.

Finally she used the dropper to water each section.  I think this was actually her favorite part!

Emily’s finished planter!!

***It seemed like most people liked the thumbnail linky, I was able to make the title a bit longer so I am going to give this a try.  Let me know if this is better.  I can’t wait to see all your great projects!!!