Creative Family Fun

Your one-stop shop for kids activities and family fun

Terri Thompson

Making Masks

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Lizzie loves to find a project waiting for her when she wakes up in the morning.This morning, to go along with our art week, I put out several elements the girls could use to make masks.

I cut out simple mask shapes from paper plates, added crayons, a small basket of star stickers, glue sticks and the paper plate scraps I had cut off the masks.

It didn’t take her long this morning to get to work. AJ soon joined the fun.

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They glued, stuck stickers and largely ignored the crayons (oh well).Lizzie opted for a more formal arrangement of the stickers, while AJ was all about the glue sticks. She added quite a few of the paper plate scraps.

I left them free to do as they pleased and only helped when asked. I love to see what they come up with on their own. Here are the finished products:

What are you and your kids up to this week?

Coffee Filter Butterflies

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This week is going to be all about art! I have tons of projects for us to do and we’re going to create, create, create.

Our first project was coffee filter butterflies. I was inspired by all the fun versions of this craft that I’ve seen.

We started out with stretched-out coffee filters (ours were the unbleached kind) and our watercolors.

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Then the girls painted, blobbed on paint, and painted some more. Finally, they were done. And…. we had to wait.

After the filters dried, which did take awhile since they got their filters quite wet, we gathered the filter in the middle and fanned out the two ends. We twisted the pipe cleaner around the middle, twisted some more, then formed the antennae.

Ta-da… coffee filter butterflies!

Japanese Garden Trip

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I was very delighted to find a small Japanese garden close to home. It was the perfect field trip for our Japan theme week.We talked a bit about the garden before we got there. I wanted the girls to understand that it was not a place to go running and yelling through.

They understood quite well and seemed to enjoy the peaceful atmosphere of the garden.

It was a small garden, with a few hidden delights scattered throughout. The garden was hidden away and we were the only people there that afternoon. It was a lovely, peaceful time.

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I encouraged Lizzie to bring her camera along. She loved taking pictures of the hidden treasures along the way. She was especially delighted with this fountain.

The girls enjoyed seeing the garden and were very respectful of the space. (They also greatly enjoyed the playground trip afterwards so they could run, be loud and get all their energy out!) All in all it was a wonderful field trip!

Story Time: Books About Japan

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When I first came up with my “Around the World” scheme, I did worry about finding all the resources I would need.

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Luckily, I found a wealth of information for our first stop, Japan. Most of my ideas for the projects and information we’re learning about this week, came from these three books: Japan: Things to Make, Activities, and Facts by Richard Tames, Welcome to Japan by Elma Schemenauer and Japan ABCs: A Book About the People and Places of Japan (Country ABCs) by Sarah Heiman.

I had my ideas, then I hit the fiction section. Oh my goodness, I found some beauties! We’ve been enjoying the incredible artwork and learning a bit about Japanese folklore and culture. Yay for public libraries!

Here are the rest of the books we found:

Wabi Sabi by Mark Reibstein
Yoshi’s Feast by Kimiko Kajikawa
A Carp for Kimiko by Virginia Kroll
Yoko’s Paper Cranes by Rosemary Wells
One Leaf Rides the Wind by Celeste Mannis
The Boy in the Garden by Allen Say

Recycled Kokeshi Dolls

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We’re taking a trip to Japan this week.

My plan is to introduce my girls to some of the different countries of the world this year. Lizzie is already starting to show a fascination for different cultures, so I thought it would be fun to take this “trip around the world” with my girls.

This week, we’ve jetted off to Japan. I found a pile of great books from our library which gave me tons of ideas for activities. One such activity were these kokeshi dolls made from recycled materials.

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The prep was really easy. I took a toilet paper roll and cut two small slits at the top.I then cut circles out of an empty cereal box. I used one of our drinking glasses as a guide for the circle.

I then inserted the circle into the slits, set out paint, glue, tissue paper scraps and crayons. After reading about the dolls and looking at a few pictures, the girls got to work.

I’ve never seen Lizzie quite so careful and deliberate while she painted! Her creative juices were flowing and off she went working on making her doll beautiful.

AJ, well, she’s two. After slapping a bit of paint on her dolls, she discovered the joy of gluing tissue paper. Piece after piece after piece!

Here are the finished dolls. Don’t they look just like the picture?All in all, this was a fun project. They both had fun and the variety of materials suited both of their abilities. Needless to say, they are both quite proud of their dolls… and I am too!

The book we used as a reference was Japan ABCs: A Book About the People and Places of Japan (Country ABCs) by Sarah Heiman and Todd Ouren. It’s been a great starting point for all of our activities.