Thanks to Sharon with Mom on Dealz for providing today’s guest post.  If you’re looking for fun, budget-friendly craft ideas for kids check-out Mom on Dealz Kid Corner to keep your child entertained for less.

Military Thank You Bookmarks

I was told that soldiers overseas read a lot, so I thought it would be nice to make some bookmarks that could help them keep their place while reading!

Materials:
Card Stock
Crayons
Clip Art
Glue/Mod Podge

Directions:
1.  Cut out bookmarks from white or colored card stock.

2.  Have your child color and decorate them, including a “Thank You” Message.

3.  Cover the completed book marks with Mod Podge to protect the homemade gifts.

Educational/Other Activities

• Language Arts:  Have your child create thank you cards to go with the bookmarks.
• Science:  Discuss magnets and their properties.  Then create a magnetic picture frame to honor a soldier your family knows.
• Create A Care Package:  Include the book mark and other needed items for the soldier.  Some frequently requested items are deodorant, snack mixes, ziploc bags, toothpaste, toothbrushes, sunscreen, phone cards, etc.

Thanks to Sharon with Mom on Dealz for providing today’s guest post.  If you’re looking for fun, budget-friendly craft ideas for kids check-out Mom on Dealz Kid Corner to keep your child entertained for less.

Egg Carton Butterflies:

Materials:
Egg Carton
Markers
Cardstock
Glue
Pipe Cleaner

Directions:
1.  Clean and dry the egg carton.

2.  Cut the bottom in half leaving you with your desired number of “humps”.

3.  Trace your child’s hands on cardstock (2x each hand for a total of 4 hands).

4.  Have your child color the egg humps and the hands in various colors.

5.  Glue the hands to the carton to create a butterfly.

6.  Draw a face on the butterfly and add the pipe cleaner to create the antennae. We also created the traditional Egg Carton Caterpillar so that we could discuss the life cycle of a butterfly.

This activity lends itself to a lot of science lessons (life cycles, habitat discussions, physical characteristics).  Also some highly recommended books about butterflies are:

Thanks to Sharon with Mom on Dealz for providing today’s guest post.  If you’re looking for fun, budget-friendly craft ideas for kids check-out Mom on Dealz Kid Corner to keep your child entertained for less.

Nature Art

Materials:
Cardstock
Mod Podge
Sticks, Rocks, Flowers, Grass, other Nature Items

Directions:
1. Take a walk with your child and look for items in nature that could be used to create art. Help your child identify certain things and which are appropriate to take as a “treasure”.

2.  Cover a sheet of cardstock with Mod Podge (or glue).

3.  Allow your child to create words or pictures by laying the “treasures” on the glue.  Be sure to have your child ID characteristics of the items while you work (color, shape, size, texture).

Educational Activities:

• Language Arts-1.  Have your child spell words or names with the nature items.  2.  Create a nature book with your child.  Put one item on each sheet of paper and label the item and have your child write the name of each item.
• Science-This craft lends itself to just about every single Standard of Learning there is for Kindergarten students.  1. Have your child describe items both verbally and pictorally by telling you about them and then drawing pictures in a journal when you get back home. Be sure to have them ID colors, shapes, and sizes of the items.  2.  ID the changes in the enviroment that are happening due to the season change.  3.  Play around with larger items by creating shadows with them.
• Math-When you get home you can have your child measure each object or line all the objects up and measure the complete line.  You can group objects by size and count how many are in each size group.

Thanks to Sharon with Mom on Dealz for providing today’s guest post.  If you’re looking for fun, budget-friendly craft ideas for kids check-out Mom on Dealz Kid Corner to keep your child entertained for less.

Newspaper Art

Materials:
Cereal Box
Newspaper
Mod Podge
Paint

Directions:
1. Grab those leftover newspapers and allow your child to rip or cut it into pieces.

2. Cover the empty cereal box in Mod Podge.

3. Lay the pieces of torn newspaper to completely cover the Mod Podge. Allow to dry.

4. Paint your child’s hand with paint and have them put their handprints on the box to create tree top.

4. Paint a bottom to your tree and allow your child to fingerpaint leaves.

Since the cereal box acts as like a thick canvas print, we are using ours to cover up the thermostat!

Educational Activities:

• Language Arts: Read the book The Great Kapok Tree: A Tale of the Amazon Rain Forest and discuss all the features of a tree and the rainforest and how important these things are for our environment. You can read this book before doing the craft above and have your child try to recreate their own Kapok Tree.

• Science: Discuss with your child the importance of reusing and recycling and discuss how nature provides us with things we use everyday (trees=paper, etc). Some good books to use for this is I Can Save the Earth!: One Little Monster Learns to Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle (Little Green Books)and The Adventures of a Plastic Bottle: A Story About Recycling (Little Green Books).
• Math: 1. Have your child cut the newspaper into shapes such as rectangles, squares, triangles, circles. 2. Have you child rip apart the paper and estimate how many pieces they created, then have them actually count them.

Thanks to Sharon with Mom on Dealz for providing today’s guest post.  If you’re looking for fun, budget-friendly craft ideas for kids check-out Mom on Dealz Kid Corner to keep your child entertained for less.

Math With Donuts

Materials:
Card Stock
Glue
Hole Puncher or Scissors

Directions:
1.  Using the donut template here, cut out donuts and icing from card stock (save the “holes”).

2.  Using a hole puncher of your choice, create the “sprinkles”.

3.  Label the donut holes with numbers and have your child add that many sprinkles to the donut icing.

4. Glue the sprinkles and icing the donuts and you now have a number matching game!

Educational Activities:

• Math:  1.  Discuss the word dozen with your child and practice making piles of a dozen items (toys, shoes, crayons,etc).  Then talk about a baker’s dozen and the difference between them both.  2.  Create math problems with donut toppings or mini donuts (you can use cheerios as mini donuts).
• Language Arts:  1.  Use the book Arnie, the Doughnut and discuss the character, character feelings, and the different vocabulary found in the book.  2.  Make a whole week out of things with the letter D (obviously including donuts).
• Body & Mind:  1.  Play hide and seek with the paper donuts.  Create different colored donuts and have your child locate the color you yell out to them.  2.  Play the game  Learning Resources – Smart Snacks Mix and Match Doughnuts to help your child work on their memory skills and creativity.

Thanks to Sharon with Mom on Dealz for providing today’s guest post.  If you’re looking for fun, budget-friendly craft ideas for kids check-out Mom on Dealz Kid Corner to keep your child entertained for less.

Scrabble Crafts:

#1.  Scrabble Coasters

Materials:
Scrabble Letters
Cork Board
Mod Podge
Scissors

Directions:
1.  Decide how many scrabble pieces wide you would like your coasters.  I chose 5.

2.  Lay the pieces out on the cork board and trace them to ensure the correct measurements.

3.  Cut the cork board and cover it in Mod Podge.

4.  Lay the Scrabble letters in the order you’d like.

5.  Cover with Mod Podge and allow to dry.

6.  To further protect the bottom of the coasters, we covered that in Mod Podge as well.

#2 Scrabble Photo Frame

Materials:
Photo Frame
Scrabble Letters
Picture (s) of Your Choice
Glue

Directions:
1. Arrange desired picture(s) in the frame.
2. Decide on phrase or phrases.
3.  Glue letters on the glass of the frame.

Educational Activities:

• Language Arts: 1.  I chose to make the coasters using letters of family member names and sight words.  This way Will can recognize his most important words.  2.  Have your child create other words using the left over letters.  If they are not able to do words, just review letter sounds using the game pieces. Scrabble is obviously a wonderful language arts game.
• Math:  Add the “score” of your coasters and frames by having your child add the numbers together of your created words.  If they are more advanced, have them multiply the numbers.  If they are younger, simply have them ID the numbers on the tiles.

Thanks to Sharon with Mom on Dealz for providing today’s guest post.  If you’re looking for fun, budget-friendly craft ideas for kids check-out Mom on Dealz Kid Corner to keep your child entertained for less.

Pen Flowers

Materials:
Pens
Fake Flowers
Floral Tape
Flower Pot
Glass Rocks/Stones

Directions:

1.  Have your child decorate the flower pot according to the recipient (you can’t tell but ours says “Mommom”)  If you’re making for a teacher you can put the message “Thanks for making me bloom with learning!”

2.  Break off the lower stems on the flowers.

3.  Using the floral tape, attach the flowers to your pens.

4.  Fill the pot with the glass rocks/stones and stick the pen flowers inside.

Educational Activities:
Science:  Discuss the plant cycle with your child or talk about the needs of plants.  The books Plants Are Living Things (Introducing Living Things)and How a Seed Grows (Let’s-Read-and-Find-Out Science 1)are great children’s books about plants!