Vampirina Mania has taken over our house. My daughter cannot get enough of that adorable little vampire. I have to admit, I like her too. It is such a cute cartoon about a little vampire girl just trying to find her place in the human world with a little help from her human and not-so-human friends. Our new favorite character inspired this vampire girl paper plate mask.
Do you remember those old cone pop-up puppets? I used to love them as a child and just knew that my daughter would love them too. Puppets are wonderful for the imagination and for pretend play. These pop-up puppets are fun, interactive, easy to make and you should have most of the materials readily available.
My daughter just received her first Barbie for her birthday, as well as an Elsa and Anna doll. She loves playing with them, but hates that they only have one outfit. I told her that when I was a little girl, I used to make my own Barbie clothes out of socks, so of course she wanted to do this. While sliding one of her dolls into a tube sock to show her, she told me that it looked like a Barbie mermaid tail. Light bulb! We found our first project.
Yesterday, my daughter and I made mixed media truffula trees inspired by one of our favorite Dr. Seuss books, ‘The Lorax’. We kept the Lorax love going with one more craft. The Lorax is known for his short stature, his love of the environment and that signature mustache. We thought that a mustache prop would be a ton of fun.
Time has flown by so quickly. My little girl turned 5 last week and I can hardly believe it. A few months ago, I asked my daughter what kind of party she wanted. She asked for a Lego party and an art party. I loved the idea of having both. Both would be wonderfully interactive for my daughter and all of her guests.
I have to admit, I love throwing parties, especially theme parties. I knew that my daughter and I would have fun with this one.
The winter is officially here and we enjoyed a couple of snowy days this week to welcome the start of winter. We played outside in the snow all day yesterday and took in all of the beauty of the season. Watching the snowfall and looking at the snow-covered trees was enough to inspire some winter crafting.
We love working with clay and nature items. We have a collection of sticks and stones set aside for occasions just like this.
It has been Legomania in our house as of lately. My daughter is obsessed with building and has completed most of her instructional booklets.
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It can be hard to find the pieces that you need while digging through a bucket of Legos.
There is a lot of negative feedback these days regarding crafting with children. I have been on the receiving end of some of this criticism. While I fully believe in the benefits of process art. I do not find anything wrong in doing arts and crafts with her too. We practice both. We have been painting, drawing and crafting together since before she was out of a high chair.
Through the years, we have worked with many different materials. In the beginning, I showed her many different crafts. If she was interested, we would work together and I would show her the different things that she could do. It opened her mind to many new options and ideas. My daughter has a beautifully creative mind. She draws freely everyday and paints pictures too, but still, she loves our craft time together.
Over the years, my daughter started to come up with many of our projects on her own. She has great ideas. I am sometimes in awe of the things that she comes up with. Check out the video I took of her latest idea.
Over the weekend, I filled up a tray with assorted craft supplies & just put them down on our craft table. Invitation accepted.
She jumped up and started grabbing at the supplies. “Mama, I need these,” she explained as she grabbed for the scissors. She started cutting and gluing and telling me all about her craft as created. She wanted to make a mama and baby alien.
She gave her baby a button for a binky & debated on hair, but decided that she was going to have a bald baby.
She glued her little alien baby to her mama’s arms. “Isn’t she cute, mama?”
Next, she used magic markers to color in craft sticks and the cut foam pieces and glued them to her sticks with buttons.
She explained to me that this was her Kazoo store. That had me in stitches.
As usual, she was fascinating to watch.
She even made a bracelet out of a pipe cleaner and buttons for me.
I look forward to many more years of crafting, painting and exchanging ideas with my daughter.
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My daughter really has such a lovely way with babies & smaller children. She is very gentle, protective and nurturing. It is very sweet.
She behaves this way with her dolls as well. She pretends they are sick and takes their temperatures. She feeds them, reads to them, even pretends to load them in their cars seats. It is wonderful to watch & listen to. She found an old doll while cleaning out her toys the other day. It is one of those dolls that wets itself if you squeeze its belly. My daughter, of course, needed to make sure that she cleaned up her wet baby and asked me for something to use as a diaper.
It gave me an idea.
I am not much of a seamstress, but I thought that I could make her some cloth diapers with Velcro tabs. I had a little bit of felt and thought this would be perfect for her diapers. Again, I am not a seamstress, but I was pretty excited about how these came out & so was my girl.
I measured out a piece of felt by holding it under the doll to see how big I would need to make it. I cut the felt into a rectangle that slightly flared at each end. I folded the long edge on both sides of the diaper and then sewed both edges & pulled the thread snugly so that they gathered just a little. Then I folded in the edges again, but this time only sewed the center portion so that the diaper had a sort of hour-glass shape.
I cut a tab to sew along the front edge of the diaper. I sewed the tab into place & then used a fabric marker & wrote the word diaper across it.
I sewed two tabs to the upper sides of the back-end of the diaper. I stuck Velcro to each tab & then added the coordinating Velcro pieces to the edges of the front tab that says Diaper.
I showed my daughter how to use the diaper & let her play. She even asked me to make more, so that she could change all her dollies.
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