Holidays

Halloween Addition Game: Pick-and-Solve Sticks

October 1, 2015 By Terri Thompson

Why are flashcards always the default method for learning math facts?

I get that flashcards are easy. The problem is that they are B-O-R-I-N-G.

My daughter has been working on brushing up on her math facts and brought home some flashcards from school. After a couple of days of dragging ourselves through them, she asked for more interesting way to practice.

Well, being the good blogger that I am, I told her I’d come up with something. That’s when this Halloween addition game was born.

Practice math facts with this fun Halloween addition game, Pumpkin Pick-and-Solve Sticks. It's a fun way to add some holiday fun to your math practice.

Awhile back, I found some fun ways to practice math facts and any of these ideas would have worked.

But this time I wanted something a little different. So, I got out some paint and some craft sticks and got to work on these Halloween Math Facts Pick-and-Solve Sticks.

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Supplies needed

Large craft sticks
Orange paint
Black Sharpie
Pumpkin Stickers
Can (or any sort of container to hold the sticks)

How to make this Halloween addition game

To create the pick-and-solve sticks, I painted 16 large crafts stick with orange paint.

I only needed 16 for our set of math facts. Just make what you need for the set of math facts you’re working on.

After the paint dried, I wrote a math fact at the bottom of each stick.

Finally, I put a small jack-o-lantern sticker at the opposite end of the sticks.

I placed all the sticks, math fact side down, in a can. (You can find the instructions for our jack-o-lantern can here.) Try not to use a see-through container to keep the math problems a mystery until someone pulls one out of the can. Your Halloween addition game is ready to go!

You can use these pick-and-solve sticks in a couple of different ways:

Have your child pull a stick out one-by-one and try to solve the problem.

Let two or more kids take turns pulling out sticks to work on math facts together.

Practice with a timer. How many addition problems can you solve in 30 seconds?

Let your child come up with their own game! The possibilities are endless.

The 2nd grade blogging squad has been hard at work this week with plenty of fun pumpkin ideas. Check out the rest of the posts:

Pumpkin Patch Arrays to Learn Multiplication by School Time Snippets
Free Pumpkin Shape Matching Game by Life Over C’s
Second Grade Noun and Predicate Pumpkin Activity by Sugar Aunts
How to Carve a Pumpkin Writing Prompts by Still Playing School
How to Set Up a Pumpkin Engineering Task Your Second Graders Will Love by Thriving STEM
Pumpkin Seed Place Value – Subtraction Math Fact by Rainy Day Mum

You may also enjoy one of these fun math activities:

Spider Skip Counting Puzzles

Math Fact Sticks

Math Fact Islands

Activities for Kids Who Want to Save the Earth

June 18, 2015 By Terri Thompson

My youngest daughter recently had her birthday. After tossing about party themes for a few weeks prior, she came home from school one day and told me she wanted a “Save the Earth” birthday party.

Her kindergarten class had been doing a lot of earth-friendly activities in the days leading up to Earth Day this year. She was inspired and she wanted to do a few activities for kids who want to save the earth.

Recycle, reuse, and learn with these fun activities for kids who want to save the earth. These ideas are fun for elementary kids, tweens, and their families.

She had a few friends over for her birthday and we planted seeds, made bird feeders from recycled materials, had a recycling relay race, and tried to be very conscious of our waste (i.e. no fancy decorations or little plastic toys). The kids had a ton of fun.

Ever since then, she’s become my tiny earth warrior. She’s interested in learning all about saving the earth.

I’ve been looking for fun ideas to help her learn all she can. I’ve rounded up some fun activities for kids who want to save the earth. These ideas are perfect for Earth Day or any day.

Disclosure: There are Amazon Affiliate and other affiliate links in this article which means, at no additional cost to you, we could receive compensation for our recommendations. You can read our full disclosure policy on our Disclosure Page for more details.

Fun activities for kids who want to save the Earth

Have a day of service and clean up your neighborhood with What’s Up Fagans? It’s such a simple idea, but a very effective one. This would be a great idea for a group activity.

Create and decorate recycling sorting bins with Every Star is Different. You have to scroll down to the end of the post for instructions. While you’re there, check out all the other fun activities!

Learn about ways to conserve water with KCEdventures. Read some books, come up with ideas and put them into practice.

Speaking of water, what is water pollution and how can you prevent it? Find out with these fun activities from One Time Through.

What is a carbon footprint? Find out with this fun activity from Kitchen Counter Chronicles.

Switch from paper to cloth. Kitchen Counter Chronicles has an easy tutorial for making cloth napkins. Help your beginning sewer make a set, or let the kids be in charge of choosing the fabric.

Attract butterflies to your yard. Plant some of these plants recommended by The Garden Glove. Or, make a DIY butterfly feeder like this one from Reading Confetti.

Grow your own food. Try one of the quick-growing vegetables in this post from Rainy Day Mum.

Feed the birds. Create a bird feeder from a recycled milk carton like this one from Red Ted Art. Or you can make a simple bird feeder from pine cones like these from Juggling With Kids.

Upcycle! Use materials from the recycle bin to make crafts. Here are some of our favorite craft supplies from the recycle bin.

Make and give a gift that helps the earth. Everyone would love to get one of these recycled paper seed cards from Fireflies and Mud Pies.

Which one of these activities would your kids love to do?

Watercolor Easter Eggs Garland

March 24, 2015 By Terri Thompson

I only have a few Easter decorations and, unfortunately, I have no idea where they are.

Luckily, I’ve got two girls that are always willing to make new decorations for me.

I set up a simple art invitation for the girls one day and now I have two beautiful Watercolor Easter Eggs garlands.

Get out your watercolors and make a pretty Easter banner. This simple Watercolor Easter Eggs Garland is simple to make, is a fun art project for kids, and make a pretty homemade Easter decoration.

Disclosure: CraftProjectIdeas.com provided us with the awesome watercolors for this project. All ideas are my own. There are Amazon Affiliate and other affiliate links in this article which means, at no additional cost to you, we could receive compensation for our recommendations. You can read our full disclosure policy on our Disclosure Page for more details.

Set up your art invitation

I love surprising the girls with a fun project after school. This time, I set up a simple art invitation.

I cut Easter egg shapes from plain white paper and set them out along with watercolors and black permanent markers.

The challenge was to decorate the eggs for Easter.

Make your watercolor Easter eggs

They got to work. The girls decided to draw their designs using the permanent marker.

You will want to make sure you use a permanent marker for this project. If you use washable markers, the watercolors will smear the marker lines.

Once they had their designs drawn, the girls used our watercolors to paint their eggs. We had striped eggs, polka dots, flowers, a ladybug, geometric designs, and more.

Each one was different!

When the eggs were dry, I used clear tape to attach them to a string and make the garland.

We’ve got them hanging over a window.

Yay! We’ve got Easter decorations now!

This was such an easy art invitation to set up for the girls. They loved creating and spent a long afternoon at the table. I even had to cut out more Easter egg shapes because we ran out before they were done creating.

If you’re looking for a fun Easter project, look no further than this simple idea for a Watercolor Easter Eggs Garland.

You may also enjoy one of these fun Easter activities for kids:

Easter Egg Dye Pour Painting

Egg Carton Easter Basket

Shake Art Easter Eggs

Easter Egg Potato Stamping at How Wee Learn

Simple Valentine Card Making Station for Kids

February 4, 2015 By Terri Thompson

No matter how many creative Valentine’s craft ideas I come up with, a basic Valentine card making station has always been the most popular with my girls.

It’s better than any art project I, or anyone else, can come up with.

Luckily, this is probably the simplest Valentine idea around. Any parent can put together a Valentine card making station. It really is easy.

It’s nothing more than a simple invitation to create with a selection of craft supplies that allows your child to make as many open-ended projects they want. The kids will love it and you will too.

Explore open-ended creativity when you set up a simple Valentine card making station for kids. Grab a few simple supplies and get started crafting. #ValentinesDay #kidscrafts #CreativeFamilyFun

Keep reading to find out all the basics for setting up your own Valentine Card Making Station.

Disclosure: This post contain Amazon Affiliate and other affiliate links. Please see my Disclosure Page for more details.

The Basic Supplies

Construction paper cut to size (I like to cut a piece of paper in half and then fold each of these pieces in half.)
Markers
Crayons
Glue
Scrap paper
Scissors

You really don’t need any more supplies than the basics that I’ve listed. Just leave them out with an invitation to make Valentines. Your kids will take it from there.

Extra Supplies

If you want to mix it up, add any or all of these extra supplies to your card making station.

Decorative scissors
Glitter
Glitter glue
Heart stamps and stamp pads
Heart doilies
Valentine stickers

(Not Pictured)

Paper punches
Heart stencils or heart cookie cutters to trace
Fabric scraps
Buttons
Or anything else you may find among your craft supplies

Create with your Valentine Card Making Station

When I first pulled all the supplies out, my girls were so excited.

I purposely don’t leave any examples out because I wanted them to create whatever they wanted.

They spent an entire afternoon cutting, glitter gluing, and writing.

My oldest (2nd grader) even worked hard trying to come up with clever Valentine puns for her cards. My favorite was, “I flutter by to wish you a happy Valentine’s Day,” surrounded by butterfly stickers.

This open-ended Valentine station is always popular at our house.

We’ve got plans to pull it out several more times before Valentine’s Day.

Since I don’t have a space where we can leave the supplies out all the time, I found a basket that easily holds everything. It takes very little effort to pack up the supplies and the girls can easily get them out the next time they create.

If you’re looking for a fun Valentine’s activity for kids, set up a simple Valentine card making station. It’s a fun, creative activity to do together with the kids.

Valentine Negative Space Art

February 2, 2015 By Terri Thompson

I don’t think we’ve ever let Valentine’s Day pass without doing a ton of craft projects. And, this year is no exception. For this project, we played around with the concept of negative space, which is the space around and between an object, to make these pretty Valentine’s paintings.

Supplies Needed:

Thin cardboard

Drawing paper

Pink and red paint

Cotton swabs

Before we began the project, I cut several heart shapes from a recycled cereal box. I cut a few different sizes, so we had many to choose from.

Next, I told the girls we were going to make heart shapes by painting around our stencils. And, to add a fun twist to the project, we used our cotton swabs to paint dots.

The process was easy and they didn’t need much explanation afterwards. We did find that the heart shape was much more apparent if we did a row of dots that overlapped the edge of the cardboard. After that, we used our own creativity to create our heart pictures.

It was so much fun to lift up the stencils and see the heart shapes left behind!

If you’re looking for a fun and easy Valentine’s project, this would be perfect. The supplies are minimal and the possibilities are endless.

Holidays