Hand Print Butterflies Spring Craft

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Materials:

Scrapbook paper or other colourful paper 

Papertowel/toilet paper rolls

Paint

Glue

Googley eyes

Scissors 

Willing victims ;)

Paint one hand at a time and use to make the wings. Depending on the age/ability of the child either cut the wings out for them or have them cut their own. 

Paint the papertowel rolls while the butterfly dries. If its dry, use glue and apply glitter to the wings while the body (roll) dries. In our case it was lunch time so we put our glue and glitter on later. 

Glue body onto the butterfly wings. Add eyes and antennas. For the antennas we used scraps of the paper left over from the wings and folded it like an accordion. 

Apply dots of glue and glitter! 

Let dry and hand from the ceilings or in a window! Fantastic! 

Egg Carton Seed Starters

Use old egg cartons to start seeds for spring flowers or vegetables... For free! Just buy soil and seeds. 

"Robin Robin Red Breast" Spring Craft w/ Nest & Egg

Materials:

Brown Paint
Red Paint 
Paint Brush
Googley Eyes
Orange foam to cut beaks and feet
Scissors
Shredded brown or tan paper for nest
Blue foam eggs

Red feathers 
Glue

Paint the child's foot brown, or if they are able to, allow them to paint it themselves. Use the foot like a stamp to make the body of the robin on the paper.

Use red paint to paint the robin's red breast, this will later also have a red feather attached. 

Glue in eyes, beak, feet and feather. 

Build a nest out of shredded brown paper and glue it to the paper. 

Place your egg in the nest and glue it in place (I actually had self sticking eggs left from Easter). Voila! 

Blue Bird Spring Craft: Frugal Fun

We all love the sounds of the birds chirping in the morning and lately there has been a woodpecker making its home in a tree just outside the daycare. 

We have been talking a lot about birds and decided to do a bluebird and nest craft. This craft costs almost nothing, assuming you have the shredded paper we used to make the nest, it was saved from packaging of an item we ordered online. I knew it would come in handy one of these days! If you do not have the shredded paper, you can cut thin pieces of beige or brown construction paper, use a paper shredder if you have one. 

We started off by mixing some white, blue and a tiny bit of yellow together to make the colour we wanted for our bluebird. We then use a sponge to paint our hands (but not the thumb) and stamp them on the paper. 

We let the paint dry and then glued on eyes and a beak, and spread on glue for the nest. We finished by putting the shredded/crinkled papers under the bird as if it was a nest.

Once dry, you can shake off the extra papers. What a simple yet fun spring craft :) 

Free Craft Alert! Rainbow Colour Cards

Use large Behr paint cards to make this craft. You can pick them up for free at just about any location that sells Behr paints. I chose all the colours of the rainbow to help our preschoolers and toys remember and learn their colors.

We used the colors of the rainbow in that order:red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple. 

I pre-punched the little holes to put the ribbon and pre-cut lengths of white ribbon.  When doing the craft we handed out the ribbon and one colour card at a time. 

Once we had all 6 colour cards on the ribbon we tied it, and then used the fancy hole punches to decorateour colour   cards :)

Children under 3 needed help to put the ribbon in the holes and help to punch the  fancy hole punches but otherwise enjoyed the craft and loved their rainbow colour cards! 

Stained Glass Spring Snails

Materials:

Paper Plates
Glue
Tissue paper
Scissors
Green Construction/Green Cardstock Paper
Googley Eyes
Pipe Cleaners
*Optional: Hot glue gun (holds pipe cleaners on better)

Pick your colors of tissue paper, I used yellow, blue and pink because when laid over eachother they also produced green and purple.

Fold up tissue paper and cut the folds to make strips, cut the strips into squares.

Cover the plate with glue, stick on the tissue paper, let dry. This is the snail's shell.

While the snail's shell dries draw out the shape of the body on a piece of construction/cardstock paper. I cut out all of them at once where the majority of our children have no yet mastered scissors.

Glue the shell to the body, add an eye, antenna and smile :)

Voila!

Earth Day 2013: Earth Day Crayons, Globes, and Paper Plate Earth

Earth Day Crayons!

What better way to celebrate Earth Day than by making crafts in the likeness of our planet Earth! 

Materials:

Old/Broken Blue/green, blue, green, white crayons

Small Muffin tin

Fine cheese grater 

Oven

 Pam or non-stick spray

Where I am all about recycling and reusing materials, I dug through our crayon container and found several crayons that were broken or that the paper was coming off of. Singled out the blue-green and green and also found a small white one. We made our own crayon pucks last year around Christmas time, some were multicolored and some were red and green. They were fun to make and fun to color with. I thought, why not try to make an Earth shape with blue and green. When I found the little white crayon I wanted to make the earth crayon have clouds, just like the real Earth has.

The children and I peeled the papers off the crayons and broke them into small pieces. Before putting the crayons in the tin, make sure you spray it with a non-stick cooking spray like Pam.





We first added blue bits to 9 of the 12 mini-muffin tins. We then added the two shades of green. After this was complete I used a cheese grater to shave off little white bits. We sprinkled those on top of the blue and green.



Bake in the oven at 200 degrees for 5-7 minutes or until all the crayons are melted. be careful when you remove it from the oven, the wax will be very runny and HOT!



Let the muffin pan cool completely. You should be able to turn it over and the crayon earths will fall out, if not, shake or twist the pan like you would an ice cube tray.

They should turn out something like these! 


Use the crayons to color on paper and watch as the color turns from blue to green and back to blue again. It is a really fun way to color!

Earth Day Globes

Materials: 

Air Dry Foam Modelling Clay in Blue and Green

Wax paper/parchment paper

Air dry foam clay can be found almost anywhere, the most economical is Dollarama stores. There is not always a wide variety but I try to stock up when its available.

Roll a ball with a chunk of blue modelling clay. Immediately get a much smaller chunk of green. Break the green up into 6-8 smaller chunks varying in sizes, flatten these out with your finger on the wax paper to make a random shape. Stick the random shapes on the round ball, to look like the green land and blue water on a globe. 

Paper Plate Earth

Materials:

Paper plates

Blue paint

Glue

Scissors

Green paper or other material, prefurably recycled or reused

(we used old paint swatches)

Paint paper plate blue. I asked the children to do their very best job to cover all the white. 

Cut out completely random shapes of green, this is a great way to practice cutting skills! 

Glue the green stuff on the paper plate. So simple!

Free Craft Supplies!

Have you ever went to the paint store and picked up those little free sample paint color cards when choosing paint colors for your home? If so, you likely tossed them after you found your ideal shade.

Have you ever though of reusing these paint cards for a craft? Likely not. Last Valentine's Day the children and I did an easy and fun activity using paint cards. While at Home Depot I picked up a few in red/pink shades. We used a heart shaped hole punch to make heart confetti, and then also used the paint cards themselves as a craft.

While at Home Depot today I realized they have much larger paint cards in a wide variety of colors and picked up a few in some nice, bright spring colors. I haven't decided what to do with them yet, but it is nice to have a wide variety of craft supplies for whatever craziness pops into my head.

Wrapping Paper/Paper Towel Roll & Popcorn Spring Blossom Craft

We always save all our papertowel and wrapping paper rolls and have asked parents to save theirs as well. There are literally hundreds of crafts you can make with them (toilet paper rolls too).
  
Materials:
Wrapping Paper Rolls or Papertowel Rolls (either works, one just makes a taller tree)
Liquid Glue (the thickest and quickest drying kind you can find that is non-toxic)
White popcorn kernels and a method to pop them
Red food coloring

Age rating: 4+
(younger children needed substantial help and did not have the attention span to finish the craft)

 You can use a popcorn popper or a pot on the stove ( check this or other youtube videos if you are unsure how to do this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgKxDcMKbUs)

Usually when making popcorn you 1-2 tsp of oil, for this I used no oil at all. When the popcorn is still hot, squirt the red food coloring on it, you have to be quick, and use it sparingly, too much will cause the popcorn to be wet and shrivel up. You can also use Mio or Liquid Koolade to squirt on if you are going to be eating it as well, mio however has artificial sweeteners, so use your own judgement.The popcorn should come out almost tie-dyed red/pink and white. Let the popcorn cool completely before trying to glue it on.

Cut the top 1/3 of the roll so that when you fold the flaps or "branches" down to look almost like a willow or palm tree. *DO NOT FOLD THEM DOWN YET*

Use liquid glue to glue the popcorn on the tree blanches. We found the best way was to put the glue in a small bowl and dip the popcorn in the glue. Use the glue sparingly, if you use too much glue the popcorn will shrivel up.

Work you way around the roll,the glue should set slightly and be tacky enough to hold the popcorn on when you roll it over, we however found it was easier to tape the roll to the table and let it hang off the edge, so we didn't get glue on the table and it wasn't touching anything until it was dry.

Leave the craft to dry completely (1-2 hours).

Gently fold down the branches so it looks like a tree. Repeat the process on the top side of the "branches" as well, so both sides are covered in popcorn. Viola! Let it dry another 1-2 hours or overnight.

Cherry Blossom's Pops of Color: Recycled Spring Activity in Black & White

I seem to be on a real kick with reusing magazine pages lately! This is a great activity but is tedious and takes a fair bit of patience. I helped even the older preschoolers glue all their edges down. This black and white spring craft's only pop of color is the blossoms on the tree, and it really pops!  *This can also be done with newspaper but will make your fingers black.*

Materials:
Cardstock Paper (any color, it will be covered with magazine clippings)
Glue stick
Old Magazines 
Scissors
Tissue Paper
Black Tempura Paint

Look through the magazines (ahead of time) and rip out any pages that are most white & black print, cut out off any colored parts. I found I needed twice as much black & white as I thought I would need.

Rip about 1/2 of the pages into fairly large strips, about 2"x2", take remaining pages and rip them into smaller pieces, maybe 1"x1". Divide the smaller pieces into two piles, set one aside.



Starting with the larger pieces, glue them into the paper. Take special care to get the glue on the edges of the magazine paper. It may seem easier to put the glue directly on the cardstock paper, just make sure you work in a small area, glue sticks dry very fast!




After you have applied the larger size of black & white paper, it should look kind of like this, next glue on the smaller one to fill in most of the spaces. You will probably have some tiny spaces leftover, and even if you dont, still take some of the remaining small pieces, and rip them up really small, this will give the background more depth!




 Turn over the finished product and trim the edges to make it look neat and tidy. Let the page dry for at least 15-30 minutes to make sure all the layers are dry. 

Use the black tempura paint to paint the child's hand and inner forearm. *Note* Do you not paint straight down from the write to inner elbow, paint diagonally toward the back of the elbow. Lay your arm down on the table and look at what part of your skin touches, you will see what I mean!

Use the hand and arm like a stamp, and stamp it into the page to make a tree. 

Let the paint dry completely. 

While the paint dries rip up pink tissue paper into small pieces (1-1.5") and roll it into balls to look like cherry blossoms. *I had light and park pink leftover from a little girl's birthday party. If you want it to be two-tone and cant find/don't have light and dark pink you could always use white and pink, or pink and red, etc, let your imagination guide you (man that sounds cheesey lol!).

Put dots of liquid school glue wherever you like a cherry blossom, we put them on the tree and on the ground. Next, place them on, randomly mixing the shades of pink. Voila!

Spring Flower Craft: Frugal Fun!

Materials:
1-2 Magazines
Cardstock Paper (1 per child)
Glue Stick and Liquid Glue
Scissors
Pop bottle caps or buttons

Look through magazines and rip out colorful pages, set aside any pages with green on them (for the stem and leaves). Gather colorful pages so you can cut the flower shapes, we panted to make poppies so made mishapen wavy circles. We cut about 7-10 pages at once, and first we cut them into squares of different sizes (8-9 different sizes depending on how much depth you want your flower to have). We cut the"circles" out and laid them in a row from biggest to smallest. Then we cut green strips and circles/tear drops for the leaves.

Glue the steams on the paper, and then start with the largest "circle".

Glue progressively smaller circles on top of the first one. Some of us tried to stick to a color theme and others did not. The finished product looked really pretty either way. 

Once you have added all the circles and you are happy with how the flower looks, use the liquid glue to attach either a button or a small pop bottle cap for the center of the flower. 

If you dont have old magazines or buttons/caps kicking around the house, you can buy magazines at Value Village for less than $1 each and buttons for around 1-5 cents each. 

 

The only real cost involved in the craft was the cardstock paper which is $5 for 50 sheets. Frugal fun at its finest!

Getting to Know Mother Martha

I own and operate a small non-commercial Daycare in rural New Brunswick (Eastern Canada). I live with and run the daycare with my partner Kyle; we provide meals and snacks for the children, and do crafts daily. I am always pulling something together from leftover and recycled items, and have been told that I need to share more of my creations. I also use Pinterest and will add a link to my Daycare Board.

I would like this to be a blog with crafts for children but will likely also include some Recipes (for kids and Adults), DIY projects, and just about anything that may or may not be worthy of sharing.

 Hillbilly Martha Stewart is a nickname that I acquired last summer. I had brought ham salad sandwiches to share with some people on a trip in the woods. The sandwiches were on buns that I had made, instead of mayo I had used home made tzatziki sauce, cut up my own home made dill pickles, and used green onions which I re-grew in a cup on my windowsill. One of the girls said I was a regular Hillbilly Martha Stewart, and well, I kinda liked it! I use that nickname online as I feel it suits me well.

I decided to call the blog "Mother Martha" because in many ways I am a "mother" of sorts to our daycare children, our 2 dogs and 3 cats.

Pinterest Daycare Board:
http://pinterest.com/mirandag1984/daycare-crafts-ideas-from-little-panda-s-nursery/

Twitter/Instagram @hillbillymarthastewart  

My Daycare site for Little Panda's Nursery
www.simplesite.com/little-pandas-nursery