Eco-Friendly Craft and Game: Reusing Plastic Eggs to Make Flowers

We were inspired to create our own garden math game during Easter break.  Real flowers outdoors are at least a month away, so it was cheering to add some color to our day.  Interestingly, it was my five-year-old son who was most eager to make these, and then knock the flowers down of course.

Materials Used:

• cardboard tubes (from toilet paper rolls or paper towels)
• cardboard cereal or cake boxes
• scissors
• paint
• paintbrush(es)
• clear tape
• leftover plastic Easter eggs
• tin can or softball

Directions:

1. Draw flower shapes onto cardboard, using the plastic egg halves as centers to give a sense of proportion.  Cut out flower shapes.
2. Paint flowers and use egg halves as stamps in the paint.  Let dry.
3. Paint or color cardboard tubes green to serve as stems.  We slit them lengthwise and rolled them tighter, securing with tape.
4. Assemble flowers by standing tubes upright to form stems, then adding flower petal layer, followed by the plastic egg halves to be the center of each flower.
5. To play a bowling type of game, roll a tin can (I stuffed ours with a plastic bag to add ballast) or softball to knock down the flower "pins."  Keep score of how many flowers are toppled for some fun addition practice.  Another version of a math game requiring a die to roll can be found here.

One of my children created this variation, which looks like mushrooms.

Find more creative ideas each week at Your Green Resource and these fun places.

Top 8 Craft and Recipe Posts of 2012

Certainly the 3D highlight of our year was adding another child to our family.  After a tense first month of life, our little girl is doing well and been growing fabulously, as you can see.  What you cannot see are her delightfully chubby thighs under all that gear.

Somehow I managed to share some unique ideas here on this blog as well.  What posts attracted the most readers?  Here are some of the year's most-read entries, split into 2 categories:

Crafts and Games:

Cardboard Mini-Plinko Game

Rainbow Games

Snowflake Stomp Game

Homemade Baby Mitts

Recipes:

Cane Sugar Marshmallows

Chocolate Covered Banana Slices

Dairy-Free Caramel Apples

Sausage and Egg Casserole (Dairy-Free)

What were your offline & online highlights of 2012?

Cardboard Mini Plinko Carnival Game

For the occasion of my daughter's birthday party this month, I decided to construct a game for the party-goers.  Recalling the fun we had playing plinko at various carnivals, I bought some golf tees and practice golf balls to make a miniature version of our own.

 Materials Used:

• Large cardboard box
• Golf tees
• Plastic golf balls
• Packing tape
• Metal skewer (to puncture the thick cardboard).
• Clear packing tape
• 3 Plastic cups
• Cardboard tubes (for side bumpers)
• Wrapping paper

Playing the Game:

Each child was given the same number of golf balls to drop (four or five).  They released each golf ball from the top of the board to roll and bounce down into the cups at the bottom.  My daughter thought it would be fun to make it a point-based game (she likes math).  In this case, each cup had a number, and we added the number of points scored by each child.  The person with the highest point total was the winner.  We let that person choose first from a prize box.

It's Playtime is where you'll find more playful ideas like this.

Earthworm Encounters: A New Sensory Activity (+ a Favorite Song)

The lowly earthworm is such an important creature.  A songwriter called Mr. Nicky captures some of the many reasons why in his delightful song, "Earthworm."  Some facts that he highlights are that earthworms:

1) help gardens grow,
2) are nocturnal, and
3) are covered in slime.

The slime never bothered me too much as a child, since I managed to collect earthworms for my worm farm and impale them on hooks for fishing bait.  And my children love to find live earthworms in our backyard too.  But for a slime-free approach, I made some segmented worms out of plastic drinking straws.

Materials:

• plastic drinking straws
• sharp scissors (to be used by an adult)
• fake dirt* (black rice and stale Grape Nuts cereal in our case) or sand
• medium to large container
• ruler or tape measure, optional

Methods:

1. Carefully cut segments in the straws, being careful not to slice all the way through.
2. Fill a container with fake dirt or use a sand box.  Hide the worms under the dirt or sand.
3. Ask the kids to find the plastic earthworms.
4. Optional: Use a ruler or tape measure to measure each earthworm found.

First we measured one worm.

Then we put two worms together and measured again.

* For fake dirt, you could also use birdseed, coffee grounds, or wood shavings.

Additional Resources:

You can find more facts about earthworms at the Worm Facts Page.
 This post is linked to It's Playtime, where more fun ideas abound!

Rainbow Games, Part 2: Using Paper and Felt

Instead of the Hunger Games, my kids and I have been exploring more cheerful themes, like rainbows.  My previous post featured games that get kids moving on a bigger scale.  These next activities involve more focused movements, like coloring and aiming smaller objects like coins or cotton balls.


Rainbow Board Games

1.  Color Toss Game

This could be a great waiting room activity when you have a wiggly toddler or preschooler along.  Or just play it at home because it's fun.



To Make It:

Cut a rainbow from 6 colors of felt.  Attach curves to a felt backing with thread or tacky glue. I decided to only attach the purple and leave the other 4 colors as puzzle pieces.

To Play:

Toss cotton balls and/or coins, aiming to get one to land on each color.

Variations: 

                   a) Use paint or paper scraps to create the rainbow on scrap cardboard
                       instead of using felt.

                   b) For a math challenge, assign point values to each color band.
                       Or add up the value of the coins that land on the rainbow.

2.  Rainbow Shuffleboard

To Make It:

Print out and color the rainbow page (scroll down below to find it).  Overlay the rainbow with a long sheet of waxed paper, about 2 to 3 feet long. 


To Play:

Slide coins or glass stones across the waxed paper toward the color bands on the rainbow.  Count up who gets the most objects to land on the rainbow.

Printable Rainbow Coloring Page

This post is linked to Show and Tell
and It's Playtime.

Rainbow Games, Part 1: Using Chalk and Bins

Rainbows are a symbol of hope.  They illustrate the colors and wonder of creation and remind us of the promise given at the end of the story of Noah's ark.   I find the rainbow theme to be an inspiring springboard for learning and play.

Rainbow Games and Activities

1. The Rainbow Twist Game

Draw a giant rainbow on pavement with colored chalk.  With or without a Twister game spinner, call out right or left, hand or foot, and a color.

Variations:

• Sometimes we make this a bilingual game by saying the names of the colors in Spanish or another target language.  For example, "left hand azul!"
• You can turn this into a tossing game by using rolled up socks.  Aim to toss the sock ball onto each color band.

2. The Rainbow Clean Up Game

If it is time to clean up a fairly large mess of toys, papers, etc., enlist children to sort the objects based on their color and then put them away.

Tip: Provide a matching container for each color, or label containers before the clean up begins.  You may want to assign a particular color (or colors) to each child.

This post is linked to Show and Tell
and It's Playtime.

The Snowflake Stomp: A game to learn sight words and more!

We developed this snowflake word game last winter.  Today's frigid temperatures prompted me to set it up again for my 4-year-old son, who is now a pre-reader, and likes to move.

How to play:

1. Set up the snowflakes and secure with tape.   Decide what version you'd like to play--sight words, letters, pictures or numbers.
2. Call out or say a phrase that includes one of the words/ targets.  The child should step or stomp on that snowflake.
3. After he or she has stomped on all of the targets, ask the child to choose a target word/ letter/ number and stomp on it.  Or the child can be a "caller" to instruct someone else where to stomp.

Helpful tips and options:

• Tape page protectors lengthwise so that the opening is available to slide paper flashcards in and out. 

• If using zipper bags, tape around the edges except for the opening, so you can insert and remove what is inside. 

• Electrical tape or masking tape are probably superior to painters tape, which we used.

• If your tape is not sticky enough, reinforce it with clear packing tape.

• At first we wrote on the plastic with wet-erase overhead markers.  The ink rubbed off after playing the game, so I switched the text to paper flashcards placed under the clear plastic. 

• We taped our plastic covered "snowflake quilt" onto a fleece blanket, which can be folded and reused, but you can also tape the snowflakes onto the floor/ carpet directly.

I'm linking this idea to Show & Share Saturday , Show and Tell and It's Playtime.

More snowflake-themed activities:

Snowflake Flying Disks
Snowflake Window Clings
Crystal Snowflake

How to Make a Fishing Game in Five Minutes

Got 5 minutes?  This game kept my almost 3-year-old son busy all afternoon.  His older siblings and their friends enjoyed it too!  That's a pretty grand payoff for the minimal time and materials required to make it all.  Simple summer games certainly work for me and my kids.  I think this could also be a fun VBS or birthday party activity as well.

What we used:

• Wading pool (or other large container) with a bit of water 

          (indoor idea: bathtub)

• Styrofoam egg cartons (craft foam would also work)
• Shiny metal paper clips
• Scissors
• Ribbon (or string)
• Old fishing poles (or sticks)
• Magnet clip or magetic alphabet letter

Instructions:

1. Cut fish shapes out of the foam.  Clip on a paper clip over each fish head.
2. Tie a string to the fishing pole.  Instead of a hook, affix a magnet chip to the end of the line.
3. Release fish into pool of water.   Instruct child to drag the magnet on the line near the fish "mouths" until the magnet sticks to the paper clip.  
4. Count up how many fish get caught.

This idea is linked to Kiddos Create, Show and Tell, and...