Creative Family Fun

Your one-stop shop for kids activities and family fun

Terri Thompson

Antarctica Fun

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We just got back from an exhausting, but very fun trip to Antarctica.

We even captured some incredible penguin pictures. Don’t you like that little guy above?

Well… we didn’t actually go to Antarctica, but we did recreate it in our kitchen!

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We had a pile of penguin books we’ve been reading and thought it would be fun to add in a little sensory play.

After seeing all the fun that Mama Smiles had by bringing the snow indoors, I knew we had to try it sometime! This was the perfect opportunity.

I took a couple of bowls and froze some water in them, then went outside and gathered some of the (quickly melting) snow we had outside.

I grabbed some toys from our water table and a cookie sheet and set up this cute little snowy scene.

Yes, I do realize that polar bears and penguins don’t actually live on the same continent… but we did need a few more animals to play with than that one lonely penguin!

The girls had a blast.

They played, made snowballs, tasted the snow, and played some more.

All the while, I read a couple of our books from the penguin pile.

One of the books we read was The Emperor’s Egg by Martin Jenkins, which I highly recommend. It is a nonfiction choice, which tells the story about how the male penguins guard the eggs until they hatch. The author did an amazing job relaying the facts in a storytelling mode that had my girls hooked from the first page.

We had a lot of fun playing with our little Antarctica play scene. While it’s a whole lot of fun to play outside in the snow, it was also a lot of fun to bring it indoors!

Have you ever brought snow inside?

Snowballs Book and Craft

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We found a lot of inspiration in the book Snowballs by Lois Ehlert.

Lois Ehlert is one of my favorite children’s book illustrators and I’ve been wanting to do a craft based on her illustrations. Snowballs was the perfect choice of book.

The book tells the story of a snowfall and the children who decide to make a family of snow people decorated with found objects. It is full of collage illustrations that inspired us to make our own snowman faces.

Supplies Needed:

Paper plates
Pictures of food
Glue
Cotton swabs for spreading the glue (if desired)

I had a few old cooking magazines that were destined for the recycling bin, so we went through them and cut out pictures of food.

We found fruits, vegetables, grains, and even a few cookies.

If you don’t have any old magazines, check the sales ads in your newspaper or print out some clip art to find your pictures of food.

We propped the book up for inspiration and I let the girls work.

Lizzie was very deliberate in placing her food pictures, since she was trying to make a face. She wanted to make sure she had the perfect eyes, nose, and even cheeks.

AJ, on the other hand, was just having fun gluing. She ended up making a pretty nice food collage. They turned out great!

If you would like more inspiration, check out these Lois Ehlert style snowmen from Teach Preschool.

Kindness Challenge: The Bookmark Project

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When Toddler Approved issued their 100 Acts of Kindness Challenge, we jumped right in.

The challenge is to do 100 Acts of Kindness between January 16 and February 14.

We talked about the challenge and brainstormed different ways to be kind.

We plan on helping pick up toys, saying please and thank you, waving at our neighbors, feeding the birds, sending cards to people we love, hugging each other, and many more acts of kindness.

We talked about places we go to often and how we could be kind there.

One such place is our local library. And this is where we got a little bit sneaky and had a lot of fun!

Bookmarks, we thought, what kid doesn’t like a new bookmark? And wouldn’t it be fun if we hid them in books at the library for kids to find and hopefully be a bit surprised!

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So, we cut strips of paper and got out our stickers and a few fun punches. We decorated and giggled and talked about the kids who might find our bookmarks.

When we were done, I turned them over and wrote “If you found this, please keep and enjoy. Happy Reading!”

When it was time for our weekly library trip, we hid the bookmarks in my purse. If you’re going to do this, you have to be sneaky, right?

We whispered and giggled and talked about the books we were going to put them in. We decided on chapter books, because you need a bookmark to read chapter books.

When we got to the library, we made a bee-line for the chapter books. We pulled them off the shelf one by one and stuck a bookmark in the middle. Will it make someone’s day? I certainly hope so!

What did we learn (other than the fine art of sneakiness) during this process?

We learned it was fun to be kind and it was fun to plan little surprises.

We learned that there are many, many ways to show kindness.

And hopefully, we learned a little bit about loving our fellow human beings.

Have you and your kids performed any acts of kindness lately?

Love Banners

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We had a lot of fun marble painting, then turned it into a beautiful Valentine’s garland.

I will confess that this craft took us a couple of days. One day we did the marble painting and another day we did the cutting, sewing, and letter writing.

But the results… they were worth it!

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I’ve read about marble painting ideas on several of my favorite blogs and have been wanting to let the girls try it.

I found a cardboard box and a few large beads, since we didn’t have any marbles. I squirted a bit of red and pink paint on the paper and showed the girls how to move the box around and watch the marbles “paint.”

They had a lot of fun and loved working together. We ended up with four different paintings!

The paintings are so pretty and there are so many things you can do with them.

Use them as wrapping paper, note cards, or even a background for scrapbooking.

But, we were wanting to make a Valentine’s Day decoration with them.

What were we going to do? A garland, of course!

I found a heart-shaped cookie cutter and started tracing.

I used the cookie cutter so that the hearts would all be a uniform size. Then the cutting began.

While I cut, Lizzie practiced her writing. I had her write the word “love” a few times until she felt comfortable, then handed her a Sharpie.

She worked hard to write the letters on all of our cut-out hearts.

For the final step, we took a large, sharp needle and some thick thread. I sewed through both sides of each heart to string together each of the letters in the word “love”.

I did the sewing myself on these garlands, but a child could definitely do this part. Lizzie just chose not to. Use your discretion with your child’s abilities.

Now we have about a dozen love banners that are the perfect size to slide into an envelope and surprise some of our family and friends!

Heart-Stamped Valentines

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Yes, you can make a pretty Valentines using an empty toilet paper roll!We turned ours into stamps to make these pretty heart note cards.

We’ve explored cardboard roll stamping before and had a lot of fun, so I knew the girls would love making these Valentines.

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Supplies Needed

Empty cardboard tubes
Card stock
Red and pink paint

In order to prep for this projects, I squished and folded my cardboard tubes until they looked like a heart. To keep the point at the bottom, I found it helpful to staple the point near the middle of the tube.

Once our stamps were ready, I gave each girl a piece of white card stock and poured a bit of paint onto a couple of plastic lids.The girls got to work stamping. They took their work very seriously!

When we were done, we had a couple of very pretty heart pictures.But, as pretty as they were, they were destined to be note cards. I cut each piece of card stock in half and then folded each in half.

Now we’ve got four pretty Valentines ready to go!

This is a simple art project that is easy enough for a toddler and fun enough that your older kids will enjoy it. It’s a fun one for a multi-aged group.

Are you looking for more preschool art projects?  Check out Three to Five: Playful Preschool. Get over 25 activities, 10 printables, and links to even more play-based preschool activities in this new e-book. Purchase it here.

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