Kids Activities Blog» craft

Playtime Clay Craft

Rachel — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 11:04:49 +0000

Today’s featured activity from It’s Playtime is so simple! I love how Liberty, and her girls over at Our Creative Day, used air drying clay and nature items found around their home to create stunning ornaments.

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Many thanks to my co-hosts, for making this weekly link-up a lot of fun! If you are ever looking for more ideas of ways to play with your kids, check out their blogs:

Let the Children Play
Hands On: As We Grow
Messy Kids
The Imagination Tree
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Note: Only family-friendly, kid-based posts are accepted. By linking up you give us permission to use a picture and feature you Links back are loved and cherished!
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Painting with melted crayons: My Preschooler’s Self-Portrait

Rachel — Thu, 26 May 2011 20:04:06 +0000

Our kids love to draw and have literally hundreds and hundreds of crayons over here, many of them mere shards. We’ve melted the crayons to create “new” crayons, but today I had a new “plan” for our leftovers. Several months ago I saw a post by Suzy’s Sitcom where she melted crayons and then painted the wax onto fabric, then painted over that to create a crayon resist work of art – that she said she could sew into projects.

What you need to create your own portrait with melted crayons:

Obviously, lots of crayon bits

Candle Warmer – we liked this as while it got warm, even hot, it kept the wax cool enough that it didn’t burn us if we accidentally got a little finger in it.

Little Glass Jars

Cheap Paintbrushes

Dark Colored Acrylic Paint – we used brown, for our “garden”.

We heated up the little jars, then painted our wax. As we used a candle warmer to heat the wax we could only warm three small jars at a time, and it took a long time. This meant that our painting project took most of the day. But it was worth it to be “safe”. After the crayon was painted we went over the work with the acrylic paint to make the crayon “pop” out more. I loved the effect!

Unlike Suzy, our crayon painted fabric is not sewable, the crayon/wax flakes off when the artwork bends, but I don’t care! This is going on the wall! My daughter painted us together picking flowers! My son painted himself… as a firetruck?? I don’t know, but he had fun drawing his “fire”. Even my youngest preschooler had fun contributing!

Want to see more self-portraits? My blogging pal, Maggy of RedTedArt has a collection of portraits over on her blog in support of the “No Child Born to Die” vaccination campaign.

Want another melting crayon activity? Having Fun at Home, decorated garden rocks with melting crayons. That’s next on our to-do list with the leftover crayon bits.

Hairy Hotdogs: Cheap Kids Meal

Rachel — Wed, 04 May 2011 11:28:16 +0000

Want the perfect babysitter meal for the kiddos? I mentioned that I recently found a deal on restaurant meals (Thanks Ebates). Now add the perfect meal for the babysitter to make with the kids and we have a terrific “date night” plan. All you need is pasta and hot-dogs.
We broke the spaghetti in half. The kids had fun stuffing them into the hot-dog chunks. Then we boiled the hairy hot-dogs and served them with BBQ sauce to dip them in. It was a hit and easy enough for a sitter to replicate.Where did I get my inspiration? From one of my favorite blogs, Tribal Times! They made hotdog octopuses months ago, alas my two year old couldn’t “thread” the hotdogs, so we made ours “hairy” but just as much fun!

Do you have a favorite, cheap kids meal? Stop by and tell me about it in the SavvyLiving community!