The Chaos and the Clutter

Crafts and Activities

Easy Christmas Gifts to Make

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Last year, I made a few really easy things to gift to some friends and neighbours for Christmas.

I got this idea from here. These are so easy to make and a unique way to gift some holiday cookies.

You need:

-empty Pringles can
-paper
-ribbon
-double sided tape
-hot glue gun

 

I found that the hot glue didn’t work well for attaching the paper around the Pringles cans  so I used double sided tape for affixing the paper but added a drop of hot glue to the bottom of the can to secure the ribbon. This is such an attractive way to present your gift of cookies and my kids loved helping empty the Pringles!!!

It has been my experience that most kids like playdough. I decided to make it in army green and brown because most girls will enjoy playdough regardless and boys love to drive little matchbox cars through the “mud” so I made the colours appeal to boys.

I will post my recipe below. As another gift idea, you could make my gingerbread playdough and gift it with gingerbread cookie cutters.

I put the playdough in plastic containers and using ribbon attached cookie cutters to the top of the containers. These were very well received!

Playdough recipe:

1 cup flour
1 cup water
1/4 cup salt
2 tsp. cream of tartar
1 Tbls. vegetable oil
food coloring or food paste (I used paste)
optional: a few drops of essential oil for scent (I used vanilla)

Put all the ingredients into a pot, stir. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until it forms a ball. As soon as it goes into a ball, take it off the heat and dump it onto the counter or wax paper.  When it is cool enough, knead it until it is nice and soft.

Here is a group of them all ready to go out the door. Obviously, there is nothing fancy about the packaging…some scotch tape to secure the ribbon holding the cookie cutters and a bit of curl added to the ribbon ends.

Catapult

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Glue popsicle sticks across two popsicle sticks to create a base. Glue a clothespin to the middle of the base and let dry. Secure a plastic spoon to the clothespin and your homemade catapult is done! You can use mini marshmallows or pompoms to test it out and improve your aim.

We made these during our Knights & Castles unit to correspond with our Story of the World reading.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The kids especially liked trying to aim the mini marshmallows straight into their mouths!

Shaving Cream Painting

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Since I had oodles of free shaving cream from back in my couponing days, I had been wanting to try shaving cream painting for awhile. I wish that we had done it back in our Color Week because it was a great exercise in color mixing. It was also a great sensory activity. I used the lemon-lime scented shaving cream to add to the sensory experience.

I used muffin tins and it worked really well. Just add drops of food coloring to the shaving cream and stir. I let some of the kids help in this step and they had fun mixing different colors to see what the outcome would be as far as making a purple that was more on the blue side or making pink by only adding a few drops of red.

Next, they got painting…

 

 

 

 

 

 

Or I should say that the girls got painting! First, they experimented with different brushes and foam and then they got in there with their hands. Meanwhile, the boys had disappeared into the bathroom and were using their paint in a different way…

 

 

 

 

 

 

They were practising shaving using the foam brushes! Pretty soon, the girls had painted their own faces with shaving cream and all the kids had loaded their hands up with as much as they could carry and gone outside to paint the trees!

While my kids didn’t use the shaving cream paint in the way that I expected they would, they had an awful lot of fun!

FYI: On my paler kids, the shaving cream did stain their faces for a few hours so you may not want to do this prior to any public outings or family portrait sessions!

How to Make Sensory Balls

Create Your Own Sensory Balls (for pennies each)

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I have been busy making activity bags (also known as busy bags ironically!) for Dancing Queen and one of the things I decided to make for her were sensory balls. Making your own stress ball or sensory ball is easy to do and so inexpensive. Now that I know how easy these are to make, I keep some in the van, one in my purse, one in each of the kids’ backpacks, one in each of the calm down kits, and some in almost every room of the house.

How to make a stress ball (also called sensory balls) for just pennies each.

How to make a stress ball:


The first time I made sensory balls, I filled balloons with homemade playdough. I didn’t bother to add scent or food colouring because once it was inside the “ball”, it wouldn’t be seen or smelled.

The next step seemed easy enough…stuff some of the playdough into a balloon. This was much easier said than done!!! I tried holding the balloon open with my fingers and shoving it in with the other hand. I tried holding it open with the fingers from two hands while having one of my girls shove playdough in and that resulted in little cuts on my fingers from her nails.

At this point, I still did not have one full stress ball! I then came up with the idea to insert a coupler (cake decorating tool) into the top of the balloon and make skinny snakes with the playdough and get them in that way. It was still tedious, but it was much easier than the other methods I had tried.After making about five of these playdough filled balloons, I began to think that there must be an easier way to make these sensory balls. I did a google search and read about filling them with flour. I made a funnel out of paper and quickly filled five balloons with flour.

The flour filled sensory balls felt very similar to the playdough filled ones. They had somewhat of a softer feel and did not hold their shape when pressed in the way the playdough filled ones, but when surveyed, every one of my kids preferred the flour filled sensory balls. I also filled a few with dry rice (also using the paper funnel) for a different sensory experience. None of my kids like the rice filled ones.Now when I make sensory balls, I don’t bother with the playdough ones at all. I fill all of them with flour instead of messing with the playdough or bothering with rice. The kids really like squeezing the sensory balls and they are a fraction of the cost that store-bought stress balls are.

*note: use the helium quality balloons for best results

Update: We’ve made these using just flour another half a dozen times or so over the past few years. They sometimes last for many months at a time. You can use permanent marker to draw a face on them or write the name of the child it belongs to. Remind kids not to bite them as they will break if bitten hard enough.

We take our sensory balls with us everywhere. The kids each have one in their backpacks. I have one in my purse for waiting rooms or in the van. Our kids also include them in their anti-anxiety kit and we have one in our sensory room.

Important note: Balloons present a choking hazard and a mouthful of flour isn’t very fun either, so only use these if you know your child won’t be putting it in their mouth and always provide supervision. If you have a child who always needs to put things in their mouth, give them an alternative sensory item for chewing.

For sensory information and resources for the home or classroom, check out Sensory Processing Explained: A Handbook for Parents and Educators. 

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Create Your Own Anti-Anxiety Kit

Make Your Own Feelings Jenga Game

Backyard Olympics

Create Your Own Backyard Olympics

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We are doing a mini unit on the Olympics to get ready for the Summer Olympics. I am so excited for the Olympics to begin because there is so much it can teach our kids! Today, we had a family backyard Olympics which was so much fun.

Create your own backyard Olympics complete with awards ceremony

Food. I made gluten free cupcakes iced in vanilla icing and topped with M+Ms to represent the Olympic rings. It doesn’t get much simpler than this!

Backyard Olympics squareI also served Bugles and Cheezies for the kids to make little torches with. They really liked this.

Crafts. We made two easy crafts. Both used really basic supplies and the same paint colours so prep was very easy.

I didn’t get a picture of the finished product of the first one, but the kids each chose one colour to paint a ring. The rings were made by cutting the centre out of a foam plate. When they were done, we had all five Olympic rings which we later used both as a decoration and as our discus!

The other Olympic ring craft turned out so well. To make this, just dip plastic cups into the paint colours and press down onto paper.

Backyard Olympics Events. The only materials needed were empty water jugs, the discus rings that we had made earlier out of foam plates and open space. We did use the trampoline for a wrestling event but that could be done on the grass or on a mattress.

The first event was a simple 100 meter (or so) race. All you need is open space for them to run.

backyard race

 

The deck stairs made a perfect podium for all our medal ceremonies! I picked up medals at the dollar store.

Backyard Olympics Medal CeremonyThe other events included discus, ring toss (tossing the rings we had made out of foam plates onto large empty water bottles), wrestling (on the trampoline), gymnastics floor routine on the grass (this was the kids’  favourite!), and hurdles (over empty water jugs).

Backyard Olympic EventsWe have more Olympic activities planned in the coming weeks, so stay tuned! For more ideas, you can also check out my Olympics Pinterest board.

Huge List of Olympics Craft and Activity Ideas

Olympic-fb

Photo Scavenger Hunt

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I have been trying to find great activities to keep the boredom complaints to a minimum this summer.  This one was easy, free, and took about 5 seconds of preparation!

All that I needed to do was to draw and write items on a piece of paper, give the kids an old camera, and sit down to finish paperwork while I listened to them laughing and running around the yard completing their photo scavenger hunt.

The list I made for them (excuse my lack of artistic talent!):

And here are some of the pictures that the kids took to complete their challenge:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I find it interesting that the kids had such different interpretations of what was on the list.  As an example, these are two interpretations of the word “garbage”:

 

 

 

 

 

 

I also love their different perspectives:

 

 

 

 

 

And this one is just plain cute: