Crafts

Katherine has really gotten into crafts lately. She requests it pretty much every day so at the least we will get out the markers or paints. If I get my act together I will try to have something a little more creative.

I love the Internet because there are so many websites and blogs with cute ideas of activities and crafts to do with kids. Awhile I saw this cute activity on flipflops and applesauce blog. You take a used dryer sheet (good chance to reuse and be "green") and cut it in half. You then paint it. The only paints we have are washable finger paints and it worked fine. I am sure you could use any kind of paint.

Then you cut some antennae and clip it all together with a clothespin. They are cute little butterflies. Ours are hanging by our light in the breakfast room and Katherine talks about them all the time.
You can see behind the butterflies how we display a lot of her artwork. We have a ribbon across the window with clothespins. We never put curtains over this window so it works perfectly. I had great intentions of doing a weekly lesson with Katherine from the letter of the week. I even went so far as to find an unused lesson plan book. I made the learning poster with a section for the theme, vocabulary word, letter, nursery rhyme, number, shape, color, memory verse and bible story of the week. I was gung ho and filled out "lesson plans", really just ideas for the week. I was amazed at how hard it was to fit in simple activities and am ashamed to say that the learning poster still pretty much looks like this with week one on display for the last 12 weeks. We love to paint and every time Katherine paints she decides that she needs to not only use the brushes but finger paint as well. I like seeing her concentration. Sometimes we color using coloring book pages and sometimes I give her a blank sheet. I think both methods allow for creativity and working on certain skills. When she has a coloring page she intentionally colors different sections different colors. It is funny to see what colors she picks sometimes. She has no desire to make them realistic and that is OK.

Katherine loves it when our craft involves scissors and "blue" (her version of glue). She is pretty good at cutting as long as it does not matter the shape that she cuts. So, if we are trying to find animals or something in her magazine I have to help her with the cutting.
I try as best I can to follow up with the lessons at church so we spent a lot of time on the Creation story. You can see her working on the plants. She loves using glue and sand to make a picture.
In fact, every time we go outside she requests that we bring the "blue" so we can make a picture. Luckily we have a sandbox right there on the patio and it is an easy craft.
Over Thanksgiving Grammy had a turkey sticker craft for the kids.