being crafty

So a week or so ago, Addie and I made the caterpillars as I said we would. I was surprised how much she enjoyed the craft! She loved painting and was seriously thoughtful about it. She's usually the I-can't-sit-still-let-me-make-a-huge-mess type, but she was really careful and slow about it. It was great and now I know to look for/invent crafts that involve painting.

So here is the caterpillar activity link. The only thing I really changed was that I didn't use pipe cleaners for the antennas, only because I didn't have any and I didn't want to go out specifically to buy them. Instead I used some leftover ric-rac and hot glued some straightened paper clips to the back so they would stand up straight and be bendable. Random, but it worked great. So be creative!

For one of our cooking days, Addie helped me make/watched me make some gingerbread cookies, and then I helped her decorate the cookie like a ghost. She had fun doing that, but she had even more fun eating the cookie (as you can tell from the picture). I've learned that stripping her before giving her paint or frosting or anything else messy is a really great idea. We also like to invite friends over for our craft/cooking days. It makes it more fun for Addie, and more worth the work for me!

For the gingerbread cookies, we used this recipe and I had a cookie cutter the shape of a ghost, but if you didn't you could easily just cut the shape out of the dough with a knife (the shape was definitely more distinct before I baked the cookies, but I wasn't really looking for perfection here). We just used a basic white frosting recipe (I won't link to the one I used because it wasn't that great) and I had leftover black frosting from Addie's elmo cake from her birthday. 

Last week on our craft Friday, we did more halloween crafts. The first was found on pinterest, slightly altered since I was doing this with a 1 yr old. The link for the craft is here, toward the bottom of the post. First of all, I got the cheapest plates I could find, which were foam. I think paper plates would've been a lot better because it was hard for Addie to color on a foam plate. But I outlined the face with black puffy paint I had on hand and then just asked Addie to color inside the eyes and the mouth once it was dry--good for fine motor skills, etc. She did a pretty good job. I sort of forgot about the hands on the ghost until this moment, but I would've probably just done that myself anyway. I think this craft would be better for a 2-3 year old (or older).



Then we made mummies in a coffin. I used the Crisco box (after using the shortening for the gingerbread cookies). I just made this craft up so it wasn't great, but Addie likes her mummy and coffin and she had fun, so I think that's the point. I just took a couple jumbo craft sticks and wrapped it with some leftover white fabric and then hot glued the end so it wouldn't unravel. Then I drew a face with permanent marker. Addie mostly just watched me do this. Then I glued paper to the outside of the crisco container (you could do the inside too if you wanted and it would look cuter) and let Addie paint it. She loved it and definitely jumped into the painting faster than last time.