stART ~ Minerva Louise and the Colorful Eggs

Welcome to stART!  I hope that you will enjoy our story and art project and maybe even share your own too. All I ask is that you link back to A Mommy’s Adventures somewhere in your post by either adding my button or a text link, so that others can see all the other great projects that everyone shares too! The linky will be open all week.  Be sure to stop by and visit the different links…every week there are so many different and fun book and craft ideas!

Check out the  stART tab in my navigation bar where you can find our past stART projects.  All the books that we have read and did a stART project for are listed in alphabetical order.  I have also included a list of all the blogs that participate in stART. 

 

This week we enjoyed reading Minerva Louise and the Colorful Eggs, by Janet Morgan Stoeke.  In this story, Minerva  finds an Easter Basket that she thinks is a hat for her to wear.  When she puts it on she notices an egg inside of it.  Minerva Louise does not want the egg to be cold so she sits on it to warm it with her fluffy feathers.  As she is looking for the egg’s mother she notices another egg and then another egg.  Soon she decided to tell her friends what is going on, when they come out all the eggs are gone.  They look for answers however the Chocolate Easter Bunny and Marshmallow Chicks are no help!  Finally they find one last colorful egg that is quickly snatched up by a little hand.  The other hens felt better that the “farmers” were doing a good job taking care of the eggs and left, but Minerva Louise, found a nice full Easer Basket for her nest.

The girls loved this book and especially how silly Minerva Louise is!  To go along with this book we made some of our own colorful eggs. When I saw the idea to use jell-o powder with glue like on Pinterest I knew that we had to try it and that it would work perfectly with this book.

I cut out egg shapes for each of the girls and placed them on a cookie sheet.  I also poured the powdered jell-o mix into  egg coloring cups, that I saved from last year, in corresponding colors.   The girls made designs with their glue and then spooned the jell-o over the glue like using glitter.  It was a lot of fun to watch the pale jell-o mix turn a vibrant color as it hit the glue. (The jell-o was a pale color, I picked up one great value one from Walmart and it was a dark red color to start so the effect was not as dramatic)  It also smelled amazing as they were working!

 

This project was fun for all of the kids!

 Emily’s Egg

Juliette’s Egg

stART ~ The Wind Blew

Welcome to stART!  I hope that you will enjoy our story and art project and maybe even share your own too. All I ask is that you link back to A Mommy’s Adventures somewhere in your post by either adding my button or a text link, so that others can see all the other great projects that everyone shares too! The linky will be open all week.  Be sure to stop by and visit the different links every week there are so many different and fun book and craft ideas!

Check out the  stART tab in my navigation bar where you can find our past stART projects.  All the books that we have read and did a stART project for are listed in alphabetical order.  I have also included a list of all the blogs that participate in stART their and on Pinterest. 

This week we read The Wind Blew , by Pat Hutchins.  Emily read this book at school and said she liked it so much that we took it out of the library to read together.  This is a cute story about a big gust of wind that comes through and blows all of the peoples things up and then mixes them all up.  Then it drops them down and goes out to sea.  Emily’s favorite part is when all the things get blown around and then dropped back down.  We thought it was the perfect book to talk about a windy day!

To go along with this book Emily made a windsock to help watch the wind outside.

 

The top picture part of the windsock was colored in by Emily and then laminated.  Then they added green strips of a plastic tablecloth for the streamers at the bottom.  To hold it up is a piece of lanyard, so we can put it outside and the rain will not ruin it!

Roll and Fill a Counting Game

Check out the fun counting game that Juliette is playing…I posted all about it over at Totally Tots today!

Catching a Leprechaun

This year Emily was determined to build a Leprechaun trap and catch a Leprechaun.  She kept talking about it, and when I saw this yummy Rainbow Bundt Cake Leprechaun Trap idea on my friend’s Facebook page, I knew this was the trap for us to build! 

First, we mixed up some yellow cake mix and divided it into six bowls.

The girls loved mixing in the food coloring… …until we had all of the colors of the RAINBOW!

Sine we only had Red, Blue and Yellow to work with this turned into a fun color mixing activity for Juliette too.  Emily loved teaching Juliette about how the colors mix together!

We poured the colors in one at a time to make a rainbow in the pan.

  When it cooled we frosted it with green frosting and the girls added some plastic gold coins to cover the opening in the middle, hoping that the Leprechaun would take the coins and fall in the hole and get trapped!!

We added a little sign to point the Leprechaun in the right direction.

The girls with their Leprechaun Trap Cake and Leprechaun Masks

In the morning the girls couldn’t wait to see if the trap worked and this is what we found…

…our Leprechaun ate his way out and left us some tricky chocolate coins in place of the gold coins!!

He also turned the milk for our cereal green and the water in the potty green too, what a little trickster ;)

Hand Print Leprechauns

I love hand print crafts and when I saw these cute Hand Print Leprechauns on Pinterest, I knew I had to try them with the girls.

I painted their fingers with orange paint  for the beard and their palm with peach  for the face and then added a little orange where their hand met their wrist for the hair.   Then they made their handprint of the middle of a piece of white card stock.

To decorate him, they glued a green square and rectangle on the top for his hat and added a black rectangle and a yellow button for the band.

 

To decorate the border we made shamrock finger prints.  Just dip your finger in some green paint and make three finger prints close to each other.

Emily also used some green heart stickers to make shamrocks too.  Then she used a green marker for the stems and gave him a smiling face with a black marker.

 

Emily’s Handprint Leprechaun

 

Juliette’s Handprint Leprechaun

Juliette enjoyed these so much that she talked about making them all day and told everyone we saw about them!

Lucky Leprechaun Masks

When Emily came home from school her teacher had turned her into a…Leprechaun!!   Juliette really wanted to be one too, so we made her a mask to they could be Leprechauns together.

    First I copied the Leprechaun Mask pattern pieces (click on picture above to download template) onto green and black construction paper and cut them out.

At school, Emily used a green paper plate with the center cut out as the base.  Since we only had white paper plates  Juliette painted hers green and had a lot of fun doing it too :)

Finally she glued all of the pieces together and I taped a popsicle stick to the bottom for her to hold it in front of her face!

What a happy little Leprechaun!!!

stART ~ 10 Little Rubber Ducks

Welcome to stART!  I hope that you will enjoy our story and art project and maybe even share your own too. All I ask is that you link back to A Mommy’s Adventures somewhere in your post by either adding my button or a text link, so that others can see all the other great projects that everyone shares too! The linky will be open all week.  Be sure to stop by and visit the different links…every week there are so many different and fun book and craft ideas!

Check out the  stART tab in my navigation bar where you can find our past stART projects.  All the books that we have read and did a stART project for are listed in alphabetical order.  I have also included a list of all the blogs that participate in stART. 

This week I was the Special Reader for Emily’s Preschool class and I don’t know who was more excited about it, Emily or myself!   Emily and I picked out 10 Little Rubber Ducks, by Eric Carle to share with her class.  This book  was inspired by a real shipment of bathtub toys that fell off of a container ship and floated to various places.  In this story, 10 Little Rubber Ducks are made in a factory and packaged and shipped.  Then on their way over the water a fierce storm knocks a box overboard and into the ocean.  The 10 rubber ducks float in various directions until the 10th one finds a real duck and her ducklings.  I love the fun way that this book incorporates ordinal numbers, as well as directional words (over, under, north, south).  Emily, Juliette and I think Emily’s whole class LOVED the special squeaking sound that is on the last page of the book, it definitely adds a special touch especially when you are reading it to a group of kids!!

To go along with this book I set up a project for Emily to do when she came home from school.  I love Eric Carle’s illustrations so we made ducks in the ocean inspired by the cover of this book.

I gave the girls a  duck template (click on the picture above for a free download) that I drew on a piece of construction paper.  

First they glued on pieces of yellow tissue paper for the body and orange tissue paper for the beaks.

When they were finished the glued on a blue wiggly eye.

For the water Juliette decided to finger paint the piece of paper.  I gave them a few different shades of blue and some green to make it look like the picture on the cover.

Emily used the same colors, but she decided she wanted to use a brush.

When everything was dry the girls glued their ducks onto the water backgrounds.

Emily’s Little Rubber Duck

Juliette’s Little Rubber Duck

Juliette loved this project and was so proud of it, she asked if she could hang it in her room when it was ready!

Exploring Alternate Canvases ~ Sticker Balloons

I love giving the girls alternate canvases to work on.  It is a great way to have them think out of the box and use materials in different ways.

Balloons and Stickers are two things that almost every child loves so for this open ended art project I put the two together and the girls had so much fun with it.

The little kids (21 months – 2.5 years) placed the stickers all over the balloons. The older girls (5 years old) turned them into people.  They made eyes, hair, a mouth, teeth, a nose and even a bow to go in the hair all with the different shaped stickers.

After they finished their creations it was fun to use the decorated balloons to play keep it up.  They tap the balloon trying to keep it from touching the ground.  It was interesting to feel the difference between a plain balloon and one that is covered in stickers!

Bible Alive ~ Turning Water into Wine

This year I am teaching Emily’s Sunday School class at our church.  As we prepare for Easter during this season of Lent we are talking about Jesus’ miracles.  Since I love doing story and art projects (stART).  I try to do the same with the kids in my Sunday School class.  I think this helps make the story come alive and be something that they can remember and re tell a little better.

To start I read Jesus Goes to a Wedding (John 2:1-11) from Jesus for Little Ones: Illustrated Bible Stories for Children, by Charles Foster.  I like this book because the stories are written in a way that makes them easy for children to understand.  It also tells you where you can find this story in your bible so it is very easy to make the connection between the two.

After talking about the story we made the Turning Water into Wine craft from Crafts From Your Favorite Bible Stories , by Kathy Ross  to remind the children of Jesus’ first miracle.

To make this craft you will need 2 paper plates.  I cut out a curved section from one of the plates before the kids started. Then I traced around the cutout onto the bottom plate to give them a guide for coloring with the blue and red markers, but after completing the project realized you don’t need to do this, you can just have them color half of it blue and half of it read. Emily colored one half of the plate blue and the other half red.  Then she colored the top piece with the cut out green.

Next, we put the green plate on top of the red and blue plate and attached them with a paper fastener.  (I already made the holes so it was easy for the kids to do on their own.)

Finally Emily glued the brown Jug that I cut from construction paper on one side of the plate so that it looked like the water/wine was pouring out of it.

Now for the fun part,

as you turn the bottom plate around it looks like the water is…

…turning into…

  WINE!!

Check out Bible Alive! Tuesday at The Fantastic Five for some more great ways to make the Bible Come Alive as you share God’s Word with your little ones.