Monday 30 March 2015

Butterfly bookmark

This is a craft that could have several steps depending on how long you want to stretch it out for. If you choose to let your child/student paint it could last a few days as you would have to let the butterfly dry and come back to it to complete the craft. A good idea is to couple this project with a book you might be reading. We have also used these bookmarks to decorate around the house and attached them to curtains and plant pots...so it lends to many things.




Materials:
card stock paper
Popsicle sticks
small googly eyes
pipe cleaners
hot glue gun and glue sticks
wooden clothes pins
pencil crayons or paint
paint brushes (optional if you choose to paint the butterflies)
glitter or sticky gems(optional if you choose to further embellish the butterflies)
school glue
sharpie pen or pencil
Directions:
* draw a uppercase B on your card stock the same length as your Popsicle stick .
*fold in half and cut out the "B" so it creates the butterflies wings
*colour or paint your butterflies wings in whichever way suits you
*hot glue your Popsicle stick to one side of your butterfly along the fold line.
*hot glue your clothes pin to the opposite side of the butterfly making sure to put it close to the head of the butterfly.
*create the antennae of the butterfly with a yellow pipe cleaner by folding it in half and creating a curl around your finger on each side.Add it to the butterflies head by wrapping it once around the Popsicle stick.
*Using school glue have the kids add googly eyes to their butterflies, make sure to get small googly eyes, i picked up pretty big ones, they look a bit goofy.
*enjoy saving your favourite pages during reading time with your cute butterfly bookmark!








Wednesday 4 March 2015

Piggy Bank Savings Craft

My daughter keeps asking me to buy toys for her, so to make her think about how she can make her own money and save it for the toys she wants I thought we might work on a piggy bank to hold the spoils of all the chores I am going to get her to do to earn the lego helicopter she has been talking about.


Materials:
*Canister with plastic lid or tin ( a yogurt container would also work, we used a tin and a hot chocolate canister that we recycled)
*Self adhesive foam sheets, we chose sparkle foam sheets(girls love the sparkle)
*Ruler
*Sharpie or pencil
*Scissors
*Ribbon
*Measuring tape
*Money


Directions:
Measure around the tin to find out how long a piece of foam you will need, then measure the height of the tin leaving 1/4 inch at the top so the lid will sit flush even though there is going to be foam wrapped around the tin.


Use your measurements to create a strip by drawing out where you should cut the foam.  Our sheets were an inch or two short of covering the whole length of the tin so we had to create a piece to over lap the gap.



Cut out the strips and remove the paper backing so you can expose the adhesive, carefully apply it to the tin leaving that 1/4 gap at the top of the canister, we didn't do that the first time and had to redo the tin, which wasted some foam sheets in the process.





Don't forget to add that little extra strip to cover the gap if you have one.



Draw a rectangle on your lid that is wide and long enough to allow all coins and cash to slip through. About 1.5 inches long should do it for most currencies.


Carefully cut out the hole.


Use your lid and lay it onto another sheet of foam on the wrong side with the paper, trace around your lid. Cut out the circle, and remove paper to carefully apply it to the top of your lid.



Flip the lid over and cut out the hole in the foam cover for the money to slide through.Add a ribbon bow around the lid to hide the overlap of the lid and to make it look pretty.




Add any more foam cutout decorations you like, my daughter loves everything pink so naturally she chose a sparkly pink heart!



Start saving!
I found some good free printable chore charts on line that I link below. You can add a monetary value to each chore and get your child or student to add it up after all the chores are complete so they can see their money grow. This also puts value to their savings goal that will help them see how far they have to go to achieve their goal!



http://yofreesamples.com/money-saving-blog/free-printable-chore-charts-for-kids/