How to create a variety of crafts for toddlers, including making a toilet paper roll tree; get expert tips and advice on arts and crafts for toddlers in this free instructional video. Expert: Stacey Scheideler Bio: Stacey holds a bachelors of science in education and human sciences, with an endorsement in inclusive early childhood education, specializing in birth to third grade education. Filmmaker: Jon Olson
February 7, 2008 — The Year of the Rat. For many people, Chinese New Year is the longest and most important celebration of the year. It is a time of celebration, eating special foods, cleaning and decorating the house, giving gifts, fireworks, and getting ready for the coming year. The color red is believed to be lucky, so people traditionally wear red clothes and give children “lucky money” in red envelopes. Family members gather at each other’s homes for visits and shared meals. Festivities usually end with the lantern festival, highlighted by a dragon dance. With your children, ring in the New Year with the following fun Chinese New Year Activities
Chinese New Year Dragon
The dragon symbolizes strength, goodness, and good luck. Help your child make a simple dragon. Use an egg carton with three cups and have children paint the cups with red and yellow colors. Draw a dragon face shape and decorate with cotton balls and wiggly eyes. Cut yarn into small pieces and glue to the back of the dragon. Glue pom-poms to the bottom of the egg carton cups to make legs. Have children perform their own dragon dances as they parade around together.
Chinese Lantern Craft
Paint a paper plate red and cut out a circle in the middle. Take clear contact paper and cut a circle to fit inside the paper plate and tape to the back. Tear red and yellow tissue paper into small pieces and place on the sticky side of contact paper. Cut two rectangles out of red craft paper and glue to the bottom and top of lantern. Make a tassel out of yellow yarn and glue to the bottom of lantern.
The Chinese Calendar Craft and Activities
Explain to children that the Chinese Lunar Calendar is based on the cycles of the moon. Each year in a cycle is named after an animal. Legend says that Buddha invited all the animals to join him for a New Year’s celebration but only 12 showed up. They argued about who was to head the cycle of years, so Buddha held a race—whoever first reached the opposite bank of the river would be first, and the rest of the animals would receive their years according to their finish. The race began, but unknown to the ox, the rat had jumped upon his back. As the ox was about to jump ashore, the rat jumped off the ox’s back, and won the race. The pig, who was very lazy, finished last. That is why the rat is the first year of the animal cycle and the pig is the last. The Chinese believe the animal ruling the year in which a person is born has a strong influence on that person’s personality. Have children make their own Chinese calendar by using our patterns. Let them find their zodiac sign and see if the characteristics match their personality.
Lai-See Envelope
One of the most popular activities observed on Chinese New Year is the custom of Hong Bao, or the giving of small red (the color red is thought to bring good fortune) envelopes filled with “lucky money” to children by adults. To make your own red (lai see) envelope, trace our envelope pattern on red paper and assemble. Cut the end of a drinking straw to a point to make a quill. Have children write some Chinese letters with the quill on the front of the envelope. Add a line of glue to the outer edge of the envelope and sprinkle gold glitter on it. Shake off excess glitter. Add a coin to the inside of the envelope and seal flap with tape.
Cleaning and Decorating the House
A common Chinese New Year activity is to clean and decorate the house. It is believed that cleaning the house helps sweep away any bad luck that may have accumulated over the past year. Encourage children to help you clean and tidy the house—dust all the corners, wash the windows, and sweep the rooms. Remember though, that sweeping or dusting should not be done on New Year’s Day because good fortune might be swept away! To decorate, help your children make paper curls. On the curls, write special messages like “good fortune,” “good health,” and “long life,” and then hang them around the house. Make and hang paper lanterns. Fill the house with fresh blooms and flowering plants.
Snacks
Serve children oranges and tangerines during Chinese New Year as they symbolize wealth and good luck. Some other lucky foods are noodles which represent a long life, clams and spring rolls which denote wealth, and sticky rice cakes which symbolize a rich, sweet life and abundance for the coming year.
Jolanda Garcia is a former teacher and educational content designer. Her goal is to provide parents and teachers with quality resources to promote their children’s health, development, and creativity. Visit her websites at: Preschool activities and crafts, and www.eartwiggles.com.
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Children are non-stop. They have to be constantly in motion and who can blame them with all that energy? If you’re a parent, you’re probably always on the lookout for new activities for your children to try, and one idea you might have overlooked is creating projects and gifts with printable paper. Paper is available in custom stock sheets of all colors, making it possible to personalize a project just for your family. If you find the right website, it’s going to be affordable as well.
Printable paper crafts are extremely easy to set up and supervise, and yet are often engrossing enough to keep kids occupied for hours at a time. Best of all, you don’t have to worry about all of your kids’ projects cluttering up the house you can just tell them to share their gifts with friends and family. Just be sure to save a couple for the refrigerator.
The really neat thing about printable paper is that it lends itself to so many different activities. As an easy example, let’s consider some of the different crafts your child could create for his or her next birthday party.
If your child has a birthday coming up, you can stretch those creative muscles (and save a buck or two) by making your own party hats. Your child can design these on the computer, then add extra details using markers, crayons, stickers, and glitter. Be sure to make these on heavyweight paper, though the regular stuff might not be strong enough to support all of that glitter!
As long as you are preparing for the party, why not encourage your son or daughter to send out homemade party invitations? All you have to do is select a custom paper size your little Michelangelo will do the rest! If your child really enjoys this activity, you might even be able to squeeze some thank you notes out of the deal. When’s the last time you found a child willing to work on hose?
Next, you can make your child’s party special for the guests as well by creating printable paper gift bags. Your kid can find a template online or make their own on the computer, then print the design and begin the necessary folding, cutting, stapling, and gluing. You child can fill these bags with toys, candy, pennies, or even personalized notes.
For all these projects, be sure to save any templates you find or create on your computer. This will give you a leg up on next year’s birthday activities.
Wit so many projects available for birthdays alone, just imagine what your child might be inspired to create on Valentine’s Day, Halloween, St. Patrick’s Day, Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year’s, or any other holiday. In fact, your kid will probably never be short of project ideas, even if the only holiday on hand is that it’s Saturday.
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Easter is a wonderful holiday, especially for children. Family and friends have a great excuse to get together, and there’s great food and games. The games are key, as Easter is a time of the year that children really look forward to. After all, every year they expect the Easter Bunny to hide eggs, baskets, and/or treats, that they can than go and find.
So with such high expectations, what can we do to keep the kids happy and entertained? Why, games of course! Here is a list of some of the best Easter day games, guaranteed to meet both kids and parents expectations for a wonderful Easter.
The Egg Hunt
As already mentioned above, one of the most anticipated games of Easter is the Egg Hunt. In fact, it doesn’t matter if you have a small home or the weather isn’t cooperating for you to hide the eggs outside. An egg hunt doesn’t actually need a lot of space to still be fun. All you really need is creativity, and a half hour to an hour to play the game.
Just remember when you’re hiding eggs: don’t make the game to difficult! Hide them in easy to reach places, such as under bed or couch pillows, or behind the stuffed animals in a child’s room. This is a great hiding place because these soft toys are safe for children to be around, as stuffed lions, teddy bears, and other plush animals don’t have sharp corners or require kids to climb to get to them. The inside of shoes can also be a really fun hiding place, just make sure that the shoes you put the eggs in aren’t going to be worn, or you may find yourself with a mess! Remember, it’s very important to hide them in places within a child’s reach, because climbing sets them up for a fall, and safety should always be your foremost concern for children.
Also, just because the game is called an “egg hunt” doesn’t mean you have to just stick with eggs. Hide a stuffed rabbit in the home also, and tell them that the Easter Bunny left them a cousin of his to play with. In fact, you can use many things besides eggs. One really popular idea is hiding an Easter basket or baskets. You can fill the basket with candy (chocolate bunny rabbits, jellybeans, etc) and toys, like another stuffed bunny or a plush duckling. If you’ve got several children, and you want to make sure that they each get a basket, put each child’s name on one basket and tell them that they have to find the one that’s for them. This will most certainly be a great start to your Easter holiday!
Easter crafts
After the excitement and chaos of the Egg Hunt, it’s nice to have an activity for the kids that will wind everyone down, which is where doing Easter crafts come in. This is also great because it doesn’t require as much supervision as the egg hunt, and so is a little break for everyone. All you really need is some paper and crayons and the children can create all sorts of Easter related masterpieces. You can even give them some artistic inspiration by creating a display for them to base their pictures on. The display could have painted eggs, some chicks and a bunny.
Then you can make things as structured or unstructured as you’d like. Let them use their imaginations and draw anything they want about Easter, or tell them what do draw, such as painted eggs with chicks cracking through the shell, or a picture of the Easter bunny hiding eggs. You could even turn this into a contest, with the first prize drawing winning the bunny in the display, the second prize winning the chick, and everyone else getting the eggs as a consolidation prize.
The egg hunt and the arts and craft projects are very traditional Easter games, but you can make them more fun than usual by adding plush chicks and a stuffed bunny to motivate the children even more. Remember, there’s a lot you can do to make your Easter holiday one that all the kids will have fond memories of, just follow some of these simple ideas!
To find some great plush chicks, cute baby ducks, fluffy stuffed bunnies and many more plush animals just like the ones in the article visit KCPlush.com. Also, read the second part of the article for more fun activities to have on Easter!
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Product Description
Table of Contents
Uh Oh 3
Grab a Box or Not 4
Fill’er Up 5
Crafty Ideas 7
• Tin Foil Shapes
• Potato Stamps
• Eraser Stamps
• Sock Puppets
• Bread and Glue Clay
• Toothpick shapes
… More >>
Rainy Day Activities For Kids: Teach Them & Keep Them Entertained For Hours
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Westport CT Kids
What can Westport CT kids do for fun? Parents will find that in Westport there are so many different things for their kids to do all day long that no matter what season kids will never run out of fun things to do. There are a wide range of places to visit that offer both indoor and outdoor activities so whether it is winter, spring, summer or fall you will never run out of things to do with your Westport CT kids. Check out these places for just a sample of great things to do in Westport that will keep your kids active.
Westport Historical Society
At the Westport Historical Society there is an event called the Time Travelers Summer Program. It runs from July 6 through the 10th and July 13th through the 17th. Time Travelers is for children ages five to eight. These two fun filled sessions will include walking tours, games and crafts as well as drama plays and scavenger hunts. The children will even be able to make their very own ice cream. For the children ages 9 to 13 the first week will be Mysteries and the second week will be Time Traveling to Africa. Each of these sessions will include craft time, plays, games and cooking lessons as well as a field trip. You can read more about Time Travelers Summer Program at this web address westporthistory.org.
Creative Castle at KidsU
Another great event for Westport CT kids is Creative Castle at KidsU. It is a creative art camp split into two groups, age’s three to ten and one for the younger children ages 18 months to three and a half years old. They give the children art classes, art education with videos and even have an art gallery for the children’s art work. More information can be found at this website creativecastle.net.
Earthplace
Westport CT kids are pretty lucky to have Earthplace in their neighborhood. Earthplace has family and kid events planned like Friday Family Campfire to see the night sky. They also offer the kids a workshop for exploring the Streams in the area, and a workshop on how animals build their homes. They do a weekly nature place program as well with animals and crafts for the kids to enjoy. With all these wonderful events for Westport CT kids it’s a sure bet that the children and their parents feel very lucky to live in Westport Connecticut.
Joanne is the webmaster of koochoo.com the largest and most current Connecticut Kids Directory
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Product Description
Parents, teachers, and caregivers looking for ideas on how to get children outdoors and instill in them a love of nature can find more than 75 creative crafts, games, and activities using objects that kids can collect from nature in this idea book. As children make race cars out of rocks, create paint from plants, and assemble funny grass masks, they learn to be environmentally friendly—absorbing information on recycling, reducing waste, and inspiring others to … More >>
Organic Crafts: 75 Earth-Friendly Art Activities
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How to create a variety of crafts for toddlers, including making a paper plate snowman; get expert tips and advice on arts and crafts for toddlers in this free instructional video. Expert: Stacey Scheideler Bio: Stacey holds a bachelors of science in education and human sciences, with an endorsement in inclusive early childhood education, specializing in birth to third grade education. Filmmaker: Jon Olson
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Halloween is one of the most enjoyable time of the year especially for children who get to wear their Halloween costumes and go from houses to houses to do their trick or treat. There are other fun ways on how to celebrate the event, most likely when you hold a party at your house or a particular place.
Face painting is a fun thing to do; this will boost the creativity of your kids while having fun using the washable face paints. You may also interest the children crafting some goodie bags out of brown paper bags, black canvas bags, and old pillow cases and beautify them with art supplies or fabric paints. Tied dye shirts and socks would do great for the costume of your kids. Home made slime is best enjoyed during these Halloween activities.
Viewing a Halloween film would be fun. You may serve popcorn, put up blankets, and arrange the whole area for a more spooky appearance. For little children, you can let them view a less scary film or pick something like cartoons. For the meal, you may make sandwiches in shapes that will match the spooky scene.
Games shouldn’t be left out like guessing the number of pumpkin seeds in a jar or apple bobbing. Create the scariest mask using paper plates, yarn, construction paper, paints or markers. Set up a theme for the party. Pin the Tail on Donkey or Black Cat is a fun game also. Record scary sounds and play them during the party to feel the mood of Halloween.
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