Month: October 2018

 

With Halloween coming tomorrow, we are officially done posting Halloween crafts and activities. It didn’t feel right to start with the Thanksgiving themed crafts just yet, so what is a not so crafty momma to do? To celebrate our upcoming trip to Disney (we will have 120 long days left as of tomorrow), I decided to work on shapes and colors with a shape micky mouse activity!

Materials Needed

• Construction Paper (Red, Black, Yellow, and White or Grey)
• Scissors
• Glue

As with most of what we post here, the prep work is super simple. You will need one bigger black circle along with two little ones, two little yellow circles, and a red half circle. After that, it is time for your little one to put it together. I said the shape and color before I handed my toddler each piece and encouraged her to say it back. She is still pre-verbal, but it is still a great way to develop basic sounds. If your child already has a basic concept of shapes and colors, try letting them tell you what each piece is!

The end result will be an adorable little Mickey Mouse. This will not take long, but it is a great way to learn about shapes and colors.

Halloween is a week away! Today, we explored color mixing with this mess free activity.

Materials Needed

• Paper Plate
• Yellow Paint
• Red Paint
• Black Marker
• Plastic Gallon Sandwich Bag

I started by putting red and yellow paint on the paper plate. You will want more yellow than red.

Next, I put it into the bag and let my little one move around the paint. She loves watching the colors change during activities like this one!

Once she was finished, I took the paper plate out of the bag and let it dry. It took awhile!

Once it finally dried, I helped my toddler draw on a face. If your child is preschool age, they will likely be able to draw it all on their own.

For more Halloween themed fun, try out the Open Ended Shape Witch or the Mega Bloks Painted Pumpkin.

Being a mom is hard work. You spend your days cooking, cleaning, and taking care of the kids. Some of you go to work all day and then come home to juggle the demands of your family. At the end of the day, you may forget to take care of yourself. Self-care as a mom is extremely important for your physical and mental health! There are a million ways you can do this, but here are my favorites!

It might take awhile to finish anything, but try to set aside even twenty minutes after bedtime or during naptime to read. You could read a new release, a classic, your bible, or a magazine. It is a great way to wind down for a bit.

When my toddler still napped, I always felt like I had to get so much done while she was down. Sometimes, the most important thing you can do is take a nap yourself! Your small child will wake up energized, so you should not feel bad about giving yourself some energy as well!

This one is the hardest of all. Try to find one day a month where you can do absolutely nothing. Send your child with a trusted adult and just sit around. The dishes and the vacuuming can wait while you recharge your batteries for just a little bit.

If you have a special needs child, these things are even more important. Momma in the Mix has some great tips to avoid parental fatigue as a special needs parent.

I’d love to hear from you! What keeps you sane as a mom? What is your favorite way to take care of yourself so that you can take care of your little humans?

Today felt like the perfect day to do a little painting. We made an adorable, but easy, little paper spider. With a few modifications, this is a perfect craft for kids one to five years old!

Materials Needed

• White Paper
• Construction Paper (We picked orange)
• Black Paint
• Paint Brush
• Googly Eyes
• Scissors
• Glue

Start by letting your little one paint the white paper black. Try to encourage them to cover as much as the paper as possible.

Once the painted paper dries, cut out a circle and 8 long rectangles. If your little one is preschool aged, try just drawing the shapes on the back of the paper and let them cut the shapes out.

Flip over all the parts and let your little one glue the legs on.

Next, help your little one glue the spider on your construction paper.

To finish the spider, add googly eyes! We just added two eyes, but if you want a more realistic spider, you can do that as well.

Today, we continued making Halloween themed art by making using paper to make a candy corn picture! Mr. Not so Crafty is not a candy corn fan, but I am, and it makes for some cute art!

**This post contains affiliate links. We may get a small commission, at no additional cost to you, for purchases made from our links. All opinions expressed are our own**

Materials Needed

• Orange, yellow, black, and white construction paper
• Glue
• A marker
• Scissors

I started by cutting out squares from the orange, yellow, and white paper. I cut about half a sheet of paper worth for each color. Make the squares big enough that your little one can grasp them to glue them down. The younger the toddler, the bigger the squares will need to be.

Next, I drew a candy corn shape on the black paper.

Next, I put glue on one section at a time and let my toddler glue the paper on one piece at a time. This helps with fine motor skills. Before we started each section, I named the color. If you’re child already has a grip on their colors, ask them to tell you what color they are putting on!

The finished result is a cute candy corn. I know it is a little more adult directed than most of our normal activities, but it is great fine motor skill and language skill practice.

To continue on with the Halloween fun into bedtime, we read the book Halloween Night by Marjorie Dennis Murray . It is a great story, but the pictures may be a little scary for some children. For more Halloween art fun, try our Open Ended Shape Witch.

 

Every two weeks, we head to the local library in search of wonderful new books to read. On our most recent trip, Even Fairies Fart by Jennifer Stinson caught my eye. We read it tonight and I wanted to share how wonderful of a book it is!

**This post contains affiliate links. We may get a small commission from purchases made using our links. All opinions expressed are our own. We are not being compensated directly for the book review, nor were we asked to give it**

Even Fairies Fart uses a wonderfully written rhyming story to tell young readers that no one, not even a fairy tale creature, is perfect. The story tells us that fairies fart, elves have accidents, giants forget their manners, and so much more! The message is that it is okay not to be perfect. This book is filled with adorable illustrations and young readers will love that it uses words like fart and burp. My toddler listened intently to each page. This book is sure to bring some giggles into your home every time it is read!

We love messy art, but sometimes we like to keep things mess free. This mess free melted monster will be a huge hit with your messy little monster!

Materials Needed

• Two pieces of construction paper. We went with a light color and a dark color.
• Paint
• Plastic Gallon Storage Bag
• Glue
• Scissors
• Googly eyes

I started by putting paint on the middle of the lighter colored paper. If your child is older and you are brave, you can have them help with this step. After that, I slid the paper into the gallon plastic bag.

After that, I let my little one squish the paint all around. Once this was done, I took it out of the bag and let it dry. It took most of the day to dry.

After it dried, I cut out around the paint. Your monster could be any of a variety of shapes, depending on how your little one moves around the paint. I helped my little one glue it on the darker piece of construction paper and then we added eyes!

The end result will be as unique as your little one!

We love Disney. Mr. Not So Crafty had never been there before we had a beautiful Disney wedding, but now he is just as addicted as I am. It is definitely the happiest place on earth for us. We feel like the cost is an excellent value for the level of entertainment provided, but saving money can help many families go more often! Here are three ways that you can save money!

**This following post contains affiliate links. We may get a small commission for purchases made. The opinions expressed are all ours**

Use Amazon Prime Now to get basics delivered to your hotel

Prime Now offers everything from fruit to adult beverages with free two hour delivery with prime membership. Trying new food is a highlight of each of our Disney trips, but eating breakfast in the hotel room and taking some snacks into the park can save tons of money! We will save about $100 on our 7 night trip this way. You can also order baby supplies like diapers and wipes so that you do not have to pack them!

Stay at a Value Resort

Our last trip, we decided to stay at Pop Century to save money. We were a little worried that we wouldn’t like it, but it was wonderful! The rooms were just refurbished so we are very excited for our upcoming stay! I have had family members and friends stay at all of the other value resorts and they have also given similar wonderful reviews. The value resorts just have food courts and no sit down resturants, but we did most of our dining in our room or in the park, so we didn’t mind.

Take Surprises for your little ones with you

Souvenirs can really add up! This is our first trip as a family of three, but this idea has been something that I have been excited to put into action. Secretly pack some Disney themed gifts that you buy before the trip and have your spouse or a family member distract the kids while you sneak up and set out a gift before they get back to the room. Small children will love thinking Mickey or Minnie left them a gift! We will also be buying things in the park, but this will help our budget stay on track.

We hope these tips help out on your next trip! We would love to hear from you! What is your favorite place to vacation and favorite way to save money while you are there?

We love fall in our house. Earlier this week, we did a Open Ended Shape Witch and today, we did our first pumpkin craft for the season!

**This post contains affiliate links. We may get a small commission from purchases made from our links. Any opinions expressed are purely our own**

Materials Needed

• White Paper
• Orange Paint
• Brown Paint
• scissors
• Glue
• Mega Bloks

We started by reading Clifford’s Halloween by Norman Bridwell. It is an adorable story and a prefect book to read before a fall themed craft! This activity does not have much prep work. I simply cut out one big piece of white craft paper and one little piece. Next, I put some orange paint on the paper and let the little one move it around with the Mega Blok. Legos can be used for bigger kids. It was so much fun, that even Mr. Not So Crafty joined in.

After that, we repeated the process with brown paint.

Next, we let it dry for the rest of the day. This much painting fun takes awhile to dry. The next morning, I cut out around the shape of the paint. Your little one’s pumpkin might be round, it might be square, it might be all over the place, but it will be a unique creation of theirs. After that, I cut out a stem shape from the brown painted paper and glued it on!

 

We love Halloween. Christmas is probably the favorite holiday in our house, but Halloween is such a close second. Since it is officially October now, we did our first Halloween themed activity of the year.

Materials Needed

• Construction Paper
• Glue
• Scissors

This activity is quick, simple, and can be done with very few materials, so it is perfect for days where you want to do something with your little ones, but do not have tons of time to prepare. Start by cutting out shapes. The colors you use are up to you. We used a brown for the hair and blue for the eyes so that our little one could see a bit of herself in the witch. We used a green face, but you can use any color face you’d like!

After you cut out the shapes, let your little one assemble the witch! Try to give them as little guidance as possible. For these shape activities, we usually just hand our toddler the shapes one by one and let her glue them on. The end result might hang off the paper or be a bit malformed, but it will be a perfect representation of who your child is at this stage in their life.

If your little one enjoys this one, check out our Open Ended Shape Fish or our Open Ended Shape Dinosaur!