{for once, a real} Wordless Wednesday

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Yep, you knew it was coming. Brendan missed four days of school last week. Jack picked up a bad cough during that time (following in big brothers steps)…but little brother has 2 ear infections!

Two!

The kid has never had 1 in his life…that I’ve known of. Back in December the ENT specialist saw fluid in his ear but I guess that didn’t mean infection. We had a follow up appointment in January- still no mention of ear infection.

{Jack was born with a partial cleft palate – his uvula hadn’t fused together while he was developing in the womb. When he was about 14 mos. old the cleft was repaired and tubes put in his ears. The tubes have since fallen out. Thus the trip to the ENT for a checkup.}

So, kid #1 just finished his 5 day antibiotic yesterday…kid#2 just started his today.

Two more cute words we’ve heard come out of Jack’s mouth lately…ashdash ( mustache) and gumblebees…

he insists thats what a bumblebee is called

The boys and I made  papers bugs and frogs  today (scissors, glue, construction paper, crayons)…

The fish were made last night with paper, stuffed with a few balls of cotton and stapled shut. That one was inspired by Brendan’s craft he did in Sunday School at church. So precious to him has his original fish been that  he’s slept with it. Because it has staples I have him lay it under his pillow.

I don’t think we need ANOTHER trip to the doctors

One of my preemie-parent friends posted this project on her blog and did such a good job at it I decided to try the project myself, with the help of my boys. Its simply melting down old crayons into other shapes. Truly the hardest part was peeling the paper of the crayons.

There is more than one way to get the end results, I’m going to focus on sharing how I did mine. You can check out Lindsay’s post at her blog OurOrdinaryStories by clicking here.

After peeling the paper off the crayons I wanted to use (primarily our broken crayons), I  sprayed a little bit of cooking spray into the tins I wanted to use and wiped off the excess, then filled with the crayon pieces I wanted. I used three different tins or pans- one word of caution here- use only pans you don’t mind messing up. You may not be able to get all the wax or glitter (if using glitter) off the pans. I used a corn muffin pan, a muffin pan and a mini (tart?) pan.

I set the stove at about 350 degrees and just left in there maybe 20 minutes, when they looked melted I pulled them out. I let them sit for a little bit on the stove and then put them in the freezer to harden and to pull away from the pans. Almost everyone of them came out super easily. The corn pan which had some deeper grooves in it gave me a little trouble getting my orange corn crayon out. We did use glitter in some of the corn crayons.

I like that Lindsay used a silicon star shaped mold. I didn’t want to wait to go buy anything special so we just used what we had. These would make great stocking stuffers or party favors. At any rate, its a great craft to try out on all those broken crayons you may have around the house

Enjoy!

Kids love stickers. So when you get some unrequested address labels or other stickers in the mail, cut off the fun parts and give them to your kids or grandkids to use. My mother-in-law does this and we have a stash. The boys make pictures with them.

I keep a variety of crafty things for my kids to get creative with. Some of those items are wooden popsickle sticks, googly eyes, party confetti, sea shells, glitter glue, dry beans and macaroni…oh yeah, and markers and crayons and paints.

I get a lot of those items at the dollar store and as for markers and crayons I buy those when they go way down in price just before a new school year begins. I stock up on notebooks, markers or whatever I think we’ll use. You can get these items for as low as pennies.

Each of my boys have a notebook that I started teaching them how to draw or write in. Unfortunately for Jack (it gets harder to do all the same things with the 2nd child) his book hasn’t had as much work done in it. But I have a book or 2 from Brendan when he was about 2 yrs old or so and notes I made about how he said certain words. I was reading it the other day and realized I had forgotten some of the things I had written down. They grow up so fast ;(  They really do, its astounding. I imagine that for my own mom it probably seems like not too long ago that I was so young. In almost 10 years my oldest will be nearly driving. Okay, I’m digressing…

Anyways… kids need to be creative and my boys are no exception and it doesn’t have to cost a lot of money either! Be creative, think about the things your throwing out…old socks? My boys recently made puppets out of a few…and they seem to have forgotten about them almost as soon as they had them made. But you know what, the joy for them was in making them. And they did. And now I’ve put them away with the other projects I’ve saved. By the way, don’t be afraid to keep some and throw others out…I have to do it often- when they aren’t looking of course!

Enjoy them while they’re young!

Easy Kid's Craft

Paper Flower Bouquet.

The other day my 5 yr old asked me to cut out some flowers for him and then he told me to stick the pipe cleaner through it.  He told me he saw it on Caillou (kid’s PBS show that doesn’t seem to be on now, you can pick up the cds at the library).  I’m impressed he remembered such a  thing and was able to communicate it to me.  So we made a paper flower bouquet. For a couple of the flowers I folded colored paper and cut one side then opened it to a full flower…the others, my son drew and colored and asked me to cut out.  Just stick the pipe cleaner through and twist the top into a little ball and there you go.  Make several and you have a simple bouquet.   Kids could make these for Grandma, or a sick friend, Mother’s Day, a teacher…and so on!