Slow Down, Gym Shoe!

Product Review: Shrinky Dinks I <3 You Cards!

Guess what, everyone... I've got a product review for you, and a giveaway! How does that make you feel?

If you grew up in the eighties, you probably remember making Shrinky Dinks. You used colored pencils to color small, clear sheets of paper with  pictures on them. Then, you (well, preferrably a grown-up!) put them in the oven, and they shrank into small, hard figures that you could play with! I remember I had a Cabbage Patch Kids set and a My Little Ponies kit. I have fond memories if Shrinky Dinks!
Well, the people at Creativity For Kids have taken Shrinky Dinks a step further and found a way for kids to use them to make creative greeting cards! They sent the kids and I a package of Shrinky Dinks I Heart You Cards to try out! 

I had signed us up for a Valentine's Day card exchange with one of our playgroups, so we were supposed to make eight cards to send out for that. I figured it would be the perfect opportunity to use the kit... we could make all of the cards we needed for our exchange, and the kids would each be able to make one or two to keep or give away!

Pufferfish didn't get into it that much. She's all about coloring on blank paper, and doesn't really understand the concept of coloring in some pictures. So she just made a few lines on her little papers, and scampered off. But Little Bear and Rafael really got into it!

Here is Little Bear working hard at coloring hers. 

Here, Rafael grins proudly after coloring in his! (He was excited about using the Kiss Me design to make a card for his mom!)

 

I remembered the shrinking part of the process being really long and complicated... but that must be because I was about six the last time I tried to make them! It really only takes about five minutes. Unfortunately, our oven doesn't have a light inside, so we couldn't watch them shrink! But here's how they turned out!

 

Next, the kids and I got busy making the cards. Each card had a hole cut out on the front, and we had to use the adhesive dots included to stick a shrinky dink onto each card. The kit also came with ribbons and sparkly paper to decorate the cards with. Here is a sample of one of the finished products!
 

I think they turned out very cute! The thing I like the most about this kit (and other products made by Creativity For Kids) is that they can inspire kids to do more. We used up the materials in the kit pretty quickly, but the ideas we got from the kit (like cutting out a shape on the cover of a greeting card and gluing something in the middle, or punching holes in a card and lacing a ribbon through it) can be easily used again and again with other projects that we do using things around the house. So it really does turn out to be a learning experience!

THE FINAL REVIEW

Positive Aspects: This kit provided a way for the kids to make very cute, unique, creative greeting cards. The cards could be used for any occasion, not just Valentine's Day! It taught the kids some new ideas that they could later use for other projects. And it involved multiple steps... coloring the shrinky dinks, making the shrinky dinks in the oven, and making the actual cards... so it took up a good amount of the dreaded after school time!

Negative Aspects: I really don't think there were any negative aspects. I think the kids would have liked it if the kit included more things to put on the cards, such as stickers or more sheets of the sparkly paper. However, I definitely don't have anything bad to say about this kit!

The Kid Who Liked It The Most: Little Bear! Pufferfish was really too young to enjoy it. (The kit is recommended for ages seven and up, anyway!) And Rafael will sit and work hard on one or two coloring projects, but then his attention span wears out. However, Little Bear was churning out greeting cards like a one girl card factory!

We Rate This Kit: A!!!

Now, for the moment you've been waiting for! You have a chance to win a Creativity For Kids craft kit for you and your children! If you win, you'll be able to pick any craft kit from the site! All you have to do is go to the Creativity For Kids site, browse around, and leave me a comment telling me about a product you think your kids would enjoy. TO make it a little more interesting, if you forward this post to someone, Twitter it, blog about it, share it on Facebook, etc, I'll give you an extra entry! (You get one extra entry for each time you share it.)

The giveaway ends on Valentine's Day... Saturday, February 14! On Sunday, I'll randomly pick a winner!

Good luck!!!

We Made It Friday Showcase: Glow In The Dark Paintings!

I've been mysteriously missing from We Made It Friday Showcase for quite a few weeks... first because I didn't have Internet access at home, and then because I was just too busy. But here I am, excited to show you the glow in the dark paintings we made for our Outer Space Week! I bought Tulip brand glow in the dark fabric paints. They're meant for fabric, obviously, but they also worked very well on construction paper! You have to hold these paintings up to a light for a few seconds, and then they glow very well. These pictures, though, were taken in daylight.

Little Bear made this one...

and this one, which is a little harder to see...

Pufferfish made this one, which is much harder to see. It still glows at night though.

What do you think of that?

 
 
 

Little Bear Is An Artist!

I love this town way more than our old town! At Little Bear's new school, she gets to go to art class each week. I found out that one very cool thing the art teacher does is to register each student at Artsonia! Each kid gets to have an online gallery of their art work. Others can join the student's fan club, leave them comments about their art work, and even buy mugs and stuff with prints of the student's art work on them.

Little Bear just got her first piece of art work published in her gallery. I think she would love it if you would go check it out and either leave a comment or join her fan club! (You have to register to join her fan club, but anyone can leave a comment.) Please go visit Little Bear's Artsonia page and say hi to her!

Whats With All These Sick Kids?

Scroll down if you want to skip the paragraph about puking and go straight to what we made for the We Made It Friday Showcase!
I thought the end of winter meant the end of everyone in this house being sick at all times... but, no such luck! We're all sick again! Me and Diana have both had colds, and Pufferfish seems to have caught it double time! She's been miserable, stuffed up and coughing and having asthma problems and spent most of the morning cuddled up in my arms, watching TV, not wanting to play or anything.
Meanwhile, Little Bear has been puking! She reportedly puked four times this morning, so she got to stay home from school. But during the day, she was as happy as could be1  She didn't puke at all, ate toast with jelly and cheese crackers and Kool-Aid, played outside, roughhoused with Monkeyboy, and played a rousing game of Hide-And-Seek with me and Pufferfish. So imagine my surprise when, right before, bed, she came and told us that she puked again! Then she puked another time, all over the bathroom. I put her to bed, cuddled up with her barf bucket... only to find her standing next to me, twenty minutes later, telling me that she had missed her barf bucket and puked all over her bed and pillow!
Scrubbed mattress. Scrubbed barf bucket. Scrubbed child. Threw pillow in the garbage. Put the bed back together, put the child back in the bed. Hopefully everything will go smoothly from here on out.
Little Bear is such a cheerful puker, though. When I was a little kid, I would be crying my eyes out when I had the stomach flu. In fact, I still get weepy when I puke! But Little Bear is happy as can be, playing around in her room as I clean up her bed, telling me how great it is that at least she has one more pillow left that she hasn't ralphed on yet, and that she can sleep with her head on the other end of the bed! she likes to look on the bright side of life, I guess!
Anyway.
Obviously we didn't go anywhere today, but stayed in and tried to amuse ourselves. I'd gotten them some bird sticker books, and they played with those for  while. Then we made some birds with colored feathers, and wrote stories about them. Take a peek!

Little Bear: "My bird's name is Colorful. He is a parrot. He lives in a park. He eats berries. He likes to fly."

 

Pufferfish: "My bird's name is Tweet. He lives outside. He likes to eat worms. He likes to play on the slide. He goes to Nicki's house!"

Here are a few bonus pictures of our day...

A lethargic Pufferfish dozes off in the middle of The Backyardigans.

Little Bear, feeling fine and enjoying her "sick day," takes Mijo for a ride in her jeep!

Well, thats all I got for now! Here's hoping for a better day tomorrow!

Spring Week!

Here's my post for the We Made It Friday Showcase! I need to type like the wind, though, because Pufferfish and Little Bear are amusing themselves and playing together right now but I doubt it will last more than a few minutes!

Anyway, take a look at what we did this week!

We painted with dandelions! I read about this on another blog somewhere, and it worked out really well. First of all, the girls had fun collecting all the dandelions in a basket. then we dipped the dandelions in paint and used them as stamps! Dandelions make very cool designs! 

Little Bear's dandelion painting. 

  

                                           

Pufferfish's dandelion painting.  

                                          

This is actually a variation of something my mom used to do with me when I was little! We made flowers using paper muffin cups. First we painted the muffin cups, and then we painted backgrounds on sheets of white paper. Finally, when everything was dry, we glued the muffin cups onto the backgrounds!

We planted an egg garden! This involved cracking eggs in half and emptying them out, putting dirt into the egg shells, and then planting seeds in the dirt. (Warning: It starts to smell!)

It got smelly after a few days... so our next project was to paint flower pots. Then we transplanted our little garden, eggshells and all, into the pots, and put them out in the yard! (I have no idea if they'll really grow, so wish us luck!)

It was a pretty great way to start out the spring!

And now, for no apparent reason, here are Little Bear and Pufferfish!

We Made It! Friday Showcase

This week, Little Bear and Pufferfish and I did some Easter projects. I borrowed some ideas from other bloggers I saw oh previous weeks of the We Made It Friday Showcase! See if you recognize any of these ideas!

1. We made an egg wreath! I cut out lots of egg shapes, and Little Bear, Pufferfish and I painted them with watercolors. (I love watercolors!) When we had enough eggs, I taped them together to form a wreath!

2. Little Bear and I made an egg wall! I actually made two, one here and one for my  mom's house. The ones I saw in the other blogs went all the way to the ground so that you could walk through, like a beaded curtain. But the kids in my family are a little more... uh... spirited than most, and I could just imagine them trying to swing from the eggs, whipping each other with the egg ropes, etc. So I cut ours so that they were out of reach of little hands. The kids still like looking up at the eggs, though! To make this, I just used thumbtacks to hang pieces of thread from the ceiling. Then, Little Bear and I closed plastic Easter eggs over the thread!

3. We went to an Easter party at the library, and kids were supposed to make Easter bonnets at home, to wear to the party. I found an idea online that involved cutting a head-sized hole in a paper plate, and then taping a paper bowl over the hole. The kids then decorated them. Pufferfish didn't really want to do hers, but here is Little Bear's! She got really creative, and used some of the leftover eggs from the egg wreath to hang from the brim of her hat! (I don't think you can see that in the picture, though...)

4. Finally, we made sandpaper eggs! To do this, I cut egg shapes out of sheets of sandpaper I got at the Dollar Store! The kids then colored the eggs with crayons. Next, I ironed the eggs! (If you do this, put newspaper under the sandpaper, and put a sheet of white paper or wax paper over the sandpaper, and then iron it.) Its hard to see in the pictures, but the crayon marks melt into the sandpaper, , giving it a kind of sparkly, painted-on look!

And tonight, we're doing the best project of all... coloring Easter eggs! I love Easter, don't you?

Kid's Product Review: Wikki Stix!

UPDATE: I'm putting this project up on the Saturday Showcase over at Ramblings Of A Crazy Woman. If you and your kids made anything fun this week, why don't you put yours up, too?

I'm still partying with the Ultimate Blog Party, and I've already made some new friends there! One of them tagged me for a brand new meme that involves reviewing a children's product! (I also tagged a few more people, so be sure you scroll down!)

I like to do theme weeks with the kids. This week we we were learning about shapes. This theme was mostly for Pufferfish's benefit, because Little Bear is a very bright kindergartener who has known her shapes for years! But I wanted to look for some shape-related activities that Little Bear would be able to enjoy too. So, when I was browsing through a teacher's supply store, I found this Wikki Stix Basic Shapes kit. I brought it home for the girls, who really enjoyed them!

You may have seen commercials for a similar product called Bendaroos, which are colorful, waxy sticks that can be bent, twisted, shaped, and stuck on things. Wikki Stix are the same idea, but I've heard that Wikki Stix ar actually a better product. They are colorful, flexible sticks that can be used for endless art projects!

The Basic Shapes kit came with some dot-to-dot boards where kids could use the Wikki Stix to follow the numbers and create specific pictures. But Little Bear preferred to come up with her own creations!

Here is a textured picture she created by putting Wikki Stix on paper. (You don't need any glue or anything... you just push the stix onto the paper, and they stay... even when you hang the paper up on the wall!)

And here is Little Bear holding a 3-D work of art she created for her little sister!

Meanwhile, Pufferfish liked playing with the stix, although she wasn't quite sure what to do with them. I used the time to form some simple shapes of my own (circles, hearts, squares and triangles) so I could quiz Pufferfish on them! I loved playing around with the Wikki Stiix too... they were rather addicting!

Little Bear used up most of the Wikki Stix and has already asked me to buy more... and I'm sure tht I will! I definitely think this is a great product for creative kids of all ages!

 

Now its your turn! What children's products do you love?

1. Mom2Amara

2. Gabi's World

3. Mommy, Just One More Minute!

4. Two Times The Fun

5. My Little Corner Of Life

Getting Ready For Saint Patrick's Day!

The little leprechauns in our house have been pretty busy in the last few days doing some green-themed art projects! Their favorite was when we used shamrock-shaped cookie cutters dipped in green paint to make designs on paper. We then sprinkled green and gold glitter on the paint! Check it out!

Little Bear's shamrock painting... isn't this one cool? It looks kind of like puzzle pieces, to me!

Pufferfish's shamrock design!

Little bear's favorite part was the glitter. she has a lot of sensory input needs. Thats the difference between her and Pufferfish! I give Pufferfish, age 20 months old, a baking pan with glitter shakers, and she manages to neatly keep all of the glitter on the tray, with minimum mess. I give 5-year-old Little bear the same baking pan with glitter shakers, and she dumps all the glitter everywhere, mixes it with paint, aks for a spoon and a bowl, and creates a magical potion!

I also made their macaroni and cheese green at lunch time. they liked it that way! (it looks a little gross to me, but it tastes fine!)

We can't wait for St. Patrick's Day!

"Peace"... by Little Bear (with some help from Nicki!)

Peace...

Peace looks like an angel.

Peace smells like roses.

Peace tastes like ice cream falling from the sky.

Peace sounds like a butterfly's wings.

Peace feels like a loving heart.