Toddler "Gingerbread" House

This morning (before I went to the dentist) Hazel and I made a "gingerbread" house out of graham crackers. I learned this technique from a friend who is a preschool teacher. What you need is an empty and cleaned milk carton--cup or pint size work best for toddlers, graham crackers, frosting, and candy or things to decorate with.

The milk carton is the form of the house and gives it stability. You put frosting right on it and stick the graham crackers on it. Hazel loved putting the frosting on the milk carton.

Once you have the graham crackers (you may need to help with the roof and the triangular shape up to the roof--I just broke the corners and hid any holes with frosting), you spread frosting on it to decorate. We started with the roof. hazel loved putting the candies on. Since M&M's are her favorite she kept telling me she wanted to save them to eat later.

Then we decided the lollipops could be people, so we put them on the front of the house and one on the back. Hazel tried to use the flavors she doesn't like very much for the house.

We spent about 30-45 minutes doing this. It was a lot of fun. We bought a kit to do a gingerbread train. We'll see how it turns out.

Have a sweet day!!

St. Nicholas Day

Today is when Hazel's school celebrates St. Nicholas Day. This is a holiday that is not traditionally celebrated in the United States, so I had not heard of it. However, in her advent calendar she got a needle felted St. Nicholas (I made it last night). I did some research and the best site for information on St. Nicholas including free stories--printable or on-line-- is St. Nicholas Center.

We read a story about The Real Santa Claus after opening  the advent calendar. She then started to color one of the print-outs from the website, but got distracted.

Before her nap, she sat on my lap while I read to her several of the stories on-line. Many are like books on-line. She fell asleep in my arms. The free stories can be found here.

This website also offers crafts and activities. Printable ones are found here.

They also have suggestions to celebrate on your own. The idea I liked most was leaving a gift of food at a neighbors with a card about St. Nicholas (printable). If we have time to bake some banana bread after Hazel's nap we may try this. Run a loaf with a card attached to a porch, ring the bell and run.

I'm hoping by celebrating the different saint days with Hazel that the Waldorf School does, she will get a better understanding of each of them. I know Steve loves this part of her education, being the one who is Catholic in the family.

So Happy St. Nicholas Day! I hope you find a way to spread some love and goodwill to all.

Snow and Winter Fairies

Today it snowed...well not outside, but in my kitchen. We have been reading many books about snow lately and Hazel has been asking to make a snowman, a snow fort and tracks in the snow like the characters in her books. So this morning we took the idea from Rachel over at I HEART CRAFTY THINGS and used the recipe (and mix technique) from The Magic Onions. So while Hazel mixed the dry ingredients it snowed. (And trust me, it snowed in our kitchen--I needed the broom to clean it up.)

Then I added the oil and hot water and mixed. Then as it cooled I put a small amount in a different bowl for Hazel to knead and I kneaded the rest. We added white glitter as we kneaded to make it sparkle like snow.

Then I rolled it out for her and we used her toys to make tracks. We used a Barbie doll for footsteps, her various animals for animal tracks, a car and tractor for different tracks and then we pulled out her various texture tools for play dough. Then she wanted to make footprints in it so we re-rolled it and she stepped on it. Then we flipped it over and she made handprints. Then we took some of the rest and made snowmen. It took some creativity to dress them. My idea of paper hats, didn't work well. I went to look for new ideas and came up with beads. Luckily we had orange ones that somewhat looked like carrots for the noses. I used a pink baby sock with the toe cut off for Hazel's hat and some ribbon for scarves. You can see some of the sparkle in the picture of Hazel's.

Hazel's Snowman

My Snowman

My plan for today's post was to show you the toddler form of bendy dolls we came up with. Hazel had trouble wrapping the pipe cleaners well so I wanted to find something easier for her. We decided to make poinsettia fairies.

These are pretty easy. You need a pipe cleaner, medium to large wooden beads (2), small wooden beads, a fake poinsettia, embroidery floss (yellow), and tulle for the wings.

Cut the pipe cleaner into two pieces--one should be 1/3 of the entire and will be the arms.

Take the longer piece and fold in half. Stick both ends into your head bead (medium or large).

Wrap the floss around your and many times and then cut. Stick the entire looped floss into the loop of the pipe cleaner on top of the bead and pull the pipe cleaner tightly through the bead to hold the floss in place.

Take smaller pipe cleaner and twist under the head to make the arms and hold everything in place.

Next add a poinsettia flower (take the flower apart and use just the petals). Then the second medium or large bead. Put small beads on the legs and arms for more stability.

I used a slightly larger bead at the feet for the feet or shoes. I folded the ends up, but also used a little glue on it since my ends were not really long enough.

Then cut loops out of the hair so it is stringy. Take a piece of tulle and gather in the center. (I folded the ends in to the center so there would not be rough edges.) I used yarn to gather and on one I left the ends and tied it on and found this works best. On the other I used glue after cutting the ends.

I used some leaves for wings in this one.

I also made a few other winter fairies which I stuck in her advent calendar since I'm behind in my needle felting of nativity figures.

Mistletoe and Holly Berry Fairies

Snow Princess and Pine cone Fairy

Hope you are having a wonderful evening! Tonight I'm planning on needle felting a St. Nicholas for Hazel's advent calendar since tomorrow is St. Nicholas Feast Day. I have many stories and crafts to do with her in celebration.

More Salt Dough Ornaments

We had a busy Saturday doing lots of fun things. We started with a small craft that I will share tomorrow. Then Hazel and I went to our church for a gingerbread man decorating fundraiser. Hazel had so much fun decorating them. I let her do two. We came home and had some lunch and of course no nap, and she and Mommy and Daddy really needed one, but when Daddy is home we often do not take one.

Then we made some salt dough ornaments. I used a different recipe this time. I wanted to make them like a play dough at first after seeing the post at The Magic Onions. I loved her idea of decorating them with glitter and just have it colored. I got to thinking if the cream of tartar makes the play dough last longer, does it need to be there. I did some research on line and then remembered I had a book, The Arts and Crafts Busy Book: 365 Art and Craft Activities to Keep Toddlers and Preschoolers Busy by Trish Kuffner, with an appendix full of such recipes. I was going to make a no-bake craft clay with cornstarch and baking soda, however to color it you added the food coloring in the beginning. Since I wanted to make two colors this wouldn't work. So I went with the Salt Clay recipe which is the same recipe you see everywhere. I used the method of mixing the dry ingredients that The Magic Onions suggested--the snow method. Hazel loved it!! Then we added the water and still mixed with our hands. At first Hazel didn't like it sticking to her hands but after I did it some she wanted to try some more. I thought I had added too much water at one point but kept kneading it and it became the perfect consistency. We divided it up into two parts and mixed in red in one and green in the other. 

The first rolling, after I got it pretty flat, we used one of Hazel's textured rollers to give stars on our ornaments. Then we cut them out. Used a straw to punch a hole in it and added some glitter.

The next ones we did not give texture by a rolling pin, but used some rubber stamps after we cut them out.  Overall, I love how they came out. We of course added some more glitter to the stamped ones as well and then we baked them for several hours.

Sharing Saturday #8

We had a less than average active Sharing Saturday. I'm guessing it was due to Thanksgiving and the fact that I was sick so I wasn't inviting people as much. I'm hoping the numbers pick up this week. Here are some of the most popular and my favorite: