Mother's Day Flowers and Butterflies

Spoiler Alert: If you are a grandmother to our kids, you will want to skip this post.  

I just love hand print and fingerprint crafts.  Today I have a hand print butterfly and fingerprint flowers to share with you that could both be used for a preschool or school-aged Mother's Day craft.

For the fingerprint flowers, I simply cut some white cardstock into smaller pieces (approximately 4x5).  My four year old practiced on paper first, but really wanted to complete her flowers independently, which means no or little guidance from this mom.  Her flower is pink.  My 2 year old son's is blue.  He thought this project was great fun and allowed me to help him.  Of course, afterwards, both children painted with paintbrushes.  After the paint was dry, I added grass and stems and a personal message on the back.

 To make hand print butterflies, you could actually use two children's hands, but in this example, only my daughter wanted to participate.

We traced M's hands.  While I cut them  out, I had her cut out two "bodies" for the butterfly.  We arranged the hands between the two bodies.  Then she drew a face on it.

 

Ours is displayed in our window by the front door.  With it being two sided, it makes a great window display, even if the colors fade quickly.

I can't believe it's nearly Mother's Day.  It's just a few days away since it is "early" this year. 

Coffee Filter Flowers and Easter Wreath

When spring was officially here, I had to remove our coffee filter snowflakes from our French doors in the kitchen.  They really had been so pleasant to see, that I knew I wanted to do something fun for spring.

It didn't take long for me to think about how flowers could be made in the same fashion as the snowflakes. I wanted to make a little scene full of flowers, but as it turns out, the children weren't so interested in the process.  They did sweeten our view though.

 M knew she wanted to add stems and leaves.  She made the grass herself after I got her started.

 We used small coffee filters.  We colored with markers, and then spritzed with water, just like with the snowflakes.  After they dried, I folded them and cut them into varied flower shapes.  Consider skinny or fat petals and rounded or pointed petals.  

(The Frugal Family Fun Blog did something similar with water colors.  You might like to see that, too.) 

Since no one is looking to make an Easter wreath at this point, I'm just adding this project to this spring post.  We also made an Easter wreath when M asked to decorate before the family came to visit for Easter weekend.  (I don't decorate seasonally.  I just don't.)  I know a blog I love inspired this, but I'm not sure which one.  (If you know, please leave me a comment!)  The children colored and decorated eggs with markers and stickers.  I also wrote on a few.  I loved it when I drew a cross, and M wanted me to write, "My Jesus is alive!"  The "I ♥ Jesus" was also her idea.  So sweet!  I'm thankful that my daughter knows the reason we celebrate Easter.

I cut the center out of a paper plate to prepare the wreath.  After cutting lots of egg shapes, I let the kids decorate.  When they were completed, we glued them to the plate.  Voila!

Spring's Bird Nest-Edible!

Don't forget this is the last day for the FOUR GIVEAWAYS!
M had her Easter party at preschool last week.  She brought home this incredibly cute bird's nest!  Though I didn't make it, I did help eat it.

M formed her own little nest (and was very proud of this).  It is made from chocolate flavored crsipy rice treats.  Under the little peep are three blue jelly beans pretending to be eggs!  They were quite a surprise.

I love that she attends a Christian preschool and as we've been reading and teaching about the death and resurrection of our Savior, Jesus Christ, the same exact things are being reinforced and taught at school.

Though this Christian school goes through eighth grade and has a good reputation, we are only intending to use the school for M and E's preschool years.  After that our plan is to transition to the local public school.  It is a purposeful decision on our parts, though we recognize the benefits to homeschooling and using a Christian school.

Counting Spring Beauty

Spring has sprung here in southeastern PA.  A week ago, on our (35 minute) drive to church we noticed all the lovely spring trees.  What stood out especially to our children were all of the pink trees.

Image Source

On the way to church we pointed out each pink tree we saw.  Then on the way home we counted each pink tree we saw.  (Actually, we counted each pink tree the children saw or the obvious ones that the parents saw.)

It was quite the blessing to enjoy God's beauty in something as simple as a pink tree.  I can't wait to show M lilac bushes since she loves purple!

This week on the way to church, M noticed that there are not too many pink trees the few miles we have in Pennsylvania or Maryland on the way to church.  It's not until we get to Delaware (and town) that they are really noticeable!  We counted over 25 trees!  Even our 2 year old enjoyed pointing out the pink trees!

Rainbow Dessert

As yesterday was the first day of spring, and my husband was away on business, I decided to give my kids something to enjoy since they have been miserably sick for a full week.

(M's chest infection has much improved.  E however has a horrific cold-but just a cold at this point.  I don't mean to be pessimistic, but in all likelihood it will become an ear infection since he currently has fluid in his ear.)

Offering Hospitality had a Spring Party Hospitality Challenge.  The best I could do for our "party" was make rainbow pudding!  I had wanted to use vanilla yogurt to keep it healthier and keep the colors true, but as it turns out, this was tons of fun, and we were able to eat it for dessert.  I also do not care for vanilla yogurt-not even if it's pretty.

First, I made instant vanilla pudding during nap time.  Once M (but not E) was awake, we turned that pudding (divided into several bowls-but left out indigo) into a rainbow by adding food coloring and mixing well.  I added the color and M mixed.  We did not add food coloring for yellow.


M told me what color to make each time by looking at a recent rainbow project.  Though she loves to mix marker colors to create new colors, she needed some help remembering how to mix colors.

After all the colors were looking so pretty, we created rainbows in clear plastic cups.  I let M decided if she wanted to begin with red or purple, and she started with purple.

I wish I had started with more pudding in each individual bowl.  We were a little shy on making the pudding stretch to the sides, but for a certain four year old, it did not matter one bit!  (And I didn't mind giving the 2 year old a little less.)

I filled E's cup and my own.  M then used the remaining pudding to fill her cup.  She loved this process so much.  If she does indeed have a rainbow birthday party in October, we may revisit this as rainbow yogurt (along with these rainbow party ideas), even if the party is just for our family.

As I expected, M was not able to finish her pudding in one sitting.  E was too sick to want to even try it.  Yep, that is sick!

In case you haven't experienced this, explaining that spring has arrived to a 4 year old isn't as easy as it seems since it could still snow!

If you are interested, we have a simple rainbow craft you can check out.  You can also return tomorrow to see our newest name rainbow craft!

Spring and Easter Crafts and Activities for Preschoolers

Happy spring!!  We have a few spring crafts from the past that I thought I would share with you now that I have all of our snow crafts shared!

We love the Resurrection Eggs that we made!  Included is also a printable for you!  (Also available for purchase, but we enjoyed making them.)  Last year M was 3 and was able to use the eggs to tell the story of Jesus death and resurrection.

A simple preschool rainbow craft, or you can take it a step further by including God's promises on each strip like discussed here.  In fact, we may do this activity again this year and include God's promises.  (We didn't previously when M was three years old.)  I was also thinking this could be turned into a name craft.

Colored pasta necklaces would be great gift for Mother's Day!

Button eggs are fun!  For a younger child you may want to leave off the ric rac stripes.