Snowy Day Art

I've always loved the artwork on the inside cover of Ezra Jack Keat's The Snowy Day.

The colors are so beautiful. And the other day after we made our snow cone snowmen, I was cleaning off the snowflake stamps by rubbing them on a piece of paper. I loved what was left behind. It reminded me of The Snowy Day. So I used some foam blocks from our building center, dabbed them on the ink pad and then rubbed them across my paper. Then I used the snowflake stamps on top.

Not quite the same, but I liked it! So I called the kids over to try it.

I love when I accidentally discover a new way to create art!

Snow Cone Snowmen

The inspiration for this craft came from Oriental Trading. They have a snow cone snowman ornament craft that is flat and made out of craft foam. I thought it would be fun to make a 3D version. I was planning on using some snow cone cups that I had, but they were huge and I would have needed really big styrofoam balls to fill them. I didn't want to spend that much. So instead I opened up one of my cups to use as my template. Then I just rolled them smaller. While they were still flat, I had the kids decorate them with snowflake stamps and ink.

To make the snowmen, they took two styrofoam balls, one big and one little, and attached them together using a toothpick. Then each child picked a hat for their snowman. I brought in some of my daughter's old baby socks and cut them in two. The toe part would be a regular hat. For the ankle part, I cut strips for fringe on one end and used a rubber band to make a little poof.

They were adorable! I had cut strips of felt to make scarves, and I cut up some pipe cleaners for the noses and arms. We also used wiggle eyes and buttons and attached them with glue dots.

I set out a bunch of permanent markers for the kids to make smiles. They pushed the tip of the marker into the styrofoam a bunch of times to make little dots.

Ta-da! So cute!

Then I rolled up their snow cone wrapper to the perfect size, taped them closed, added some glue to the rim and set the snowman in it. I pushed down along the rim to make sure it would adhere to the ball. You want to make sure the ball fits snug inside, not just rest on top. I had to open up and re-roll a few because there wasn't enough of the ball for which the paper could attach. After doing that, I had to find spots around my classroom for the glue to dry while the snowmen were in an upright position. It was kind of fun seeing these guys all over.

I decided to add a drop of glue between the big and small balls, just in case. I was planning on hanging them from the ceiling so I wanted them to be secure. The scarves and hats clung to the styrofoam easily, so there was no need to glue them on. When they were dry, I hung them from the lights by sticking a paperclip right through the hat.

 Here are some close-ups of these cuties:

And of course we had to have snow cones (in little dixie cups) with our snack!

The snowflake stamps inspired me to make something else. I'll share that soon!

Icicles and Snowflakes

We are discussing the season of Winter this week. Yesterday we made icicles with glue and salt. I got the idea from Inner Child Fun. The kids made a line of glue at the top of their paper, tipped it up to watch the glue drip, and then added salt.

We used coarse Kosher salt. I thought the bigger salt looked better than regular table salt. And the more salt, the better. Here is one with a little salt:

After encouraging the child to add lots more salt, this is how it looked:

I like the chunky look better.

I will warn you, though, when I was hanging these up on the wall, chunks were falling off. You probably wouldn't have that problem with regular salt. But if you're not handling them much, it's not a big deal. I hung them up with a poem: I drip drip drip, From my tip tip tip, Like a tooth tooth tooth, From the roof roof roof.

The kids love that poem!
We also made snowflakes by cutting up folded coffee filters. I saw this wonderful door display at The Butterfly Jungle of a polar bear blowing snowflakes instead of bubbles. I knew I would never be able to make a polar bear sitting like that, so I decided to make a snowman instead. And since my class is crazy for the movie Frozen, I made Olaf.

I cut everything free-hand. It was nice that it didn't have to be perfect. And the kids were so excited when they saw it!
We are also doing our styrofoam snowman activity from last year.

Check it out here!

Waving Snowman Craft

Schools are closed today because of extremely low and dangerous temperatures. I decided to use this "bonus" day at home to make a craft with my daughter.

She takes after her mom when it comes to crafting. She loves it! First I had to walk around my house and find things to use. I don't have a lot of craft supplies here, but I did find a few things that would work. The snowman is made from coffee filters. I cut the top one a little smaller. I folded it into fourths (you can still see the crease lines) to make it easier to cut a near-perfect circle. I also doubled-up my coffee filters because one was too transparent and I didn't want the black paper showing through. I attached the coffee filters with double stick tape.

Here is what I had in mind for the snowman. Nothing was glued down. I was just getting an idea.

First I let my daughter play with all the supplies. She enjoyed spreading everything out. I may have let this go on a little too long!

But after cleaning it all up, we got to work. I helped her out with the face of the snowman. I put drops of glue on and told her to put the eyes on it. I did the same for the nose, which was cut from craft foam.

I ended up turning the nose to make room for the mouth. I had a bunch of craft foam hearts, so we used those for the smile. As for the body of the snowman, I let my daughter do whatever she wanted. She loved being in charge of the glue!

I decided to change things a bit for the arms of her snowman. I traced her hand on brown paper (which was not an easy task to say the least!) and cut out two. I taped them to brown pipe cleaners and shoved the other end of the pipe cleaner under the coffee filter. I was glad I had used double stick tape because I could easily pick up the coffee filter, stick in the pipe cleaner, and put the filter back in place. (I'm lacking pictures because it's really hard to do while helping a toddler!) I had cut a hat from red card stock and she glued that to the head, then we found a neat button and she glued that to the hat. We found some craft foam snowflake stickers and added them around the snowman. And for snow, we tore apart white tissue paper, scrunched it up and glued it to the bottom of the paper.

(Gotta love the wiggle eye on the belly!)
Once it was dry, we hung him up!

Because the arms are pipe cleaners, when you touch the hands they jiggle. It looks like the snowman is waving!

My daughter kept giving him high fives :0) Isn't he cute? Now it's time for some hot cocoa!

New Year's Eve Crafts

I have some quick crafts you can make with the kids to get ready for the New Year! The first one is the big ball drop. I got this idea from Free Kids Crafts, but instead of using white paint, we used glue. I started by making a line down black paper and the kids wrote the numbers 1-5 down the side, starting with 5 at the top. Then they wrote 2015 at the bottom. They were excited to use my metallic Sharpie!

Then it was time to make the ball. I cut a circle out of bubble wrap and squirted some white glue on it. The kids spread the glue around with a big paint brush.

I made sure they painted all the way to the edge so it would look like a circle when they made their print. Then I flipped it over onto the line on the black paper, towards the bottom, and the kids pressed it down gently. Make sure not to let it slide all around! Then I peeled the bubble wrap off, put the black paper in a box, and the kids sprinkled silver glitter on it.

After shaking off the extra glitter, we had a sparkly New Year's Eve ball!

None of my kids knew what the ball was, but that's probably a good thing, right? We also made party hats! I again got this idea from Free Kids Crafts. I cut out some headbands from large construction paper. I set out sparkly pipe cleaners and whimsical stars cut from construction paper. The kids decorated one side of the headband and then flipped it over to add the pipe cleaners. They used tape to attach everything so I didn't have to help much at all.

They loved them! We walked around the whole center saying Happy New Year to the other classes and showing off our party hats!

Have a happy and safe New Year's!