Owen's best friend, Emma, just turned 5. She's got plenty of toys and I was having a hard time coming up with something she'd really enjoy. She loves doing crafts at our house but her mom has told me they don't do them at home. So I decided to fix up some Craft Kits with directions and everything she needs to complete the craft all together in one spot. Owen loved this idea and helped me put them together and, of course, insisted on trying a couple of them out himself to make sure they work right. ;-) These are all crafts I found around the internet in various places because, let's face it, I'm just not creative enough to come up with these things on my own.
One of the crafts uses scrapbook paper, chenille stems (a.k.a. pipe cleaners), and buttons to make flowers. This is one of the ones we "tested." I put everything she could need to make 4 of these into a bag and added a little topper to it. I wanted to do the toppers on the computer like I did for the boys' birthday favor bags, but we were at the lake all week and I just didn't have time to design it, so I printed out the name of each craft on card stock and quickly (VERY quickly) decorated them by hand. By the time I got to the tenth craft kit, I ran out of creative ideas for the toppers.
Another one uses scrapbook paper and googly eyes to make a little bird. We also "tested" this one, and let me tell you my boys loved this. Riley, in particular, fell in love with this little paper bird and took it everywhere with him for a few days afterward. The sample in the picture is Owen's and he insisted on putting both googly eyes on one side, but both sides of the bird are done with the patterned paper so it's pretty all around.
Here's some of the other toppers. On several of them I sketched what the finished project looks like. The crafts included making crabs, jellyfish, mice, birds, zebras, giraffes, butterflies, submarines, caterpillars, and flowers and included materials such as felt, patterned scrapbook paper, chenille stems, buttons, beads, googly eyes, and clothespins. Mostly just stuff I already had at the house and I did alter most of them in some way to make it easier or prettier or to use materials I already had.
Then we decorated a little tote bag with ribbon and rhinestones. I had planned to put her initial on it too, but I forgot to pack the stuff for it to take to the lake with us, so we just kept it simple. > All the craft kits fit in this nicely and HOPEFULLY she'll use it to help keep everything organized so it's not spread all over the house.
Then we put the tote bag with the kits into a craft organizer along with markers, colored pencils, and glue so that she has everything she could need to complete the crafts! The tote bag fit perfectly into the large section of the organizer. The only hard part was figuring out how to wrap it!!!
Oh, and an added bonus is that many of the crafts came from a website of a homeschooling mom. At the bottom of each set of directions I put the website I got the craft from so they can go there for help if needed and the ones from the homeschooling mom all have tips on tying it into your school lessons. Emma is going to be homeschooled this fall so her mom can use the crafts as part of her homeschool lessons!
