Santa Laterns at momstown Monet in Red Deer

How do you ensure Santa finds your house?

You make a special Lantern of course to light his way!!

momstown Central Alberta's preschooler Craft program got busy making special MAGICAL Santa Lanterns!

What you Need:

Mason Jars
2 Pipe Cleaners per mason Jar ( Handle)
Paint Brushes
While Paint
White Glue
Epsom Salts
Sprinkles



Pain the INSIDE of the mason jar with white paint.

Take 1 pipe cleaner and measure around the top, tie together to make width and make a handle with the other pipe cleaner.

Paint the OUTSIDE of the mason jar with white glue, then roll in Epsom salts and Glitter.

Let Dry.

Spray with Varnish.

Place a glow stick or battery operated tea light inside!

Then make sure you place your latern where Santa is sure to see it!!

MERRY CHIRSTMAS!!

Poppy Crafts: Teaching our kids why we remember

Here is a simple craft to do with your kids, to help explain why everyone has a red flower on their coat.

 Easiest way to make these simple paper poppies is to cut 4-6 hearts out of Red Paper.

 Glue them together...

Cut out a black circle for the middle...

 And Glue to a Popsicle stick!

Apple with a WORM! craft!

momstown Central Alberta held our Art & Play program this week, and we love our Fall theme of APPLES!

We made this super cute craft with the kids!

What you need

Paper plates
String
red paint
green paper
Brown paper
O shaped Cereal (we used Apple Jacks)

Poke a hole through the middle of your paper plate and pull a string threw. Easiest to do this first so you are not waiting for the pain to dry! Make sure you knot the end at the back of the plate so it stays!

Have the kids paint the outside of a paper plate for the apple peel, (Or the whole thing - up to the kids) add a few seeds with a black marker or crayons.

With scrap pieces of paper, we used green and brown scraps, to make the apple stem and leaves.

Add some o cereal (We used apple Jacks!)to the string for your worm. Great for practising the fine motor skills! Not the end and you are done! Of course make sure you have lots of extra cereal as it gets munched on during the craft!

Join us at next months Art & Play when our theme is YOU TURKEY!!

Four Fun St. Patrick's Day Crafts

momstown Central Alberta hosted a fun CRAFT event in honor of St. Patrick's Day!

For the occasion the moms and kids could choose to do one or all four of the crafts, all with the St. Patrick's Day theme.

So of course there were all about shamrocks, pots of gold and lots of GREEN!!

We had Green Pepper Stamping
Super easy, all you need is Paper, Green Pepper cut in half and Green paint!

We had lucky hand print clovers.

A Faux Tie Dye Shamrock - use a green bingo dauber and coffee filters.
Cut the coffee filter like a shamrock, (hearts are easiest) fold like you would cutting out a snowflake, and create your design!

And last but not least a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. We used construction paper to create our pot, tissue paper for our rainbow and 'fancy' gold wrapping paper to cut out our gold coins!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Unforgettable Valentine Craft

momstown Central Alberta was invited to chat and get crafty with mommy connections Red Deer, and since it was so close to Valentine's Day we made a foorprint Valentine to tell their Valentine how unforgettable they were!

Using only hearts and a foot print we created a very easy and cute Valentine Elephant!

We also had the kids test our toilet paper roll stamping, which is such a great art project for little ones!

Thanks for letting us introduce momstown to your participants!
I cant wait to all our new members at some of our 20+ events each month!

Salt Dough Stamped Valentines

The girls and I were looking for a fun Valentine's Day craft, and we found THIS recipe from momstown for Salt Dough Ornaments, but we changed it up a bit, as my kids do not have the patience or the attention span to wait for the ornaments to cook/dry between the rolling and cutting and the decorating.

So we stamped them BEFORE they were placed in the oven!

Here is the recipe that we used
2 cups of Flour
1 cup of Salt
1 cup of water
Bake at 200 for 1 hour

Mix, Roll and start stamping!

We think they turned out great!

Art and Play: Silly Crafts for Preschoolers

January's Art & Play program for momstown Central Alberta was all about being Silly!
We had some great silly easy crafts for the kids and their moms to get creative with!

This first craft was Silly Finger Monsters.
This is an Easy Craft, that the kids loved to make as silly as possible.

To make your own Silly monster you need
Two Styrofoam Balls
Pipe cleaners of different colors
Googly eyes

 

These finger puppets are super easy to make. Just insert a pipe cleaner cut to your child's hand size into the bottom of two Styrofoam balls, Glue googly eyes and hair or antennae with pipe cleaners, and you have a very silly and fun finger puppet!

Our second craft was Silly Clothes Pin People

Another easy craft, all you need is
Clothes Pin(s)
Pipe Cleaners
Feather(s)
Markers
Embellishments - we used glitter glue

Cut a piece of pipe cleaner for the arms, insert and make the arms hands by bending the pipe cleaner, insert a feather into the top for hair, use a marker or other embellishments to make a face and outfit for your person


Our third craft was to help our kids get Silly!
Their own "blinged" out Microphones... all ready to dance and sing with!

All you need is
Toilet Paper Roll
Tin Foil
Stickers, embellishments anything to make your microphone "FANCY"

Take some tin foil and roll into a ball that is larger than the opening of one end of your toilet paper roll, use tape to help it stay in place.
Add stickers, embellishments, tape anything to get the desired look of your silly microphone!

After we had our fancy microphones made, we turned on the music and the kids danced and sang with their microphones! A perfect way to get Silly! First we had to dance to I'm Elmo and I know it, and then of course we had to end with the classic shake your sillies out by Raffi!!

Join us next month when our Art & Play is all about Polar Animals!

Winter Wonderland Craft Party

Our first Craft Party of 2012!!

We had two different crafts ready to make!

We had mittens to cut out and decorate.


Then we had snowstorms to paint!



We then read our Scholastic Book of the Month Perfect Snow By Barbara Reid, and Aylssa and Melia were the lucky winners of their very own copy!

We loved the vibrant pictures, and how Jim and Scott found a way to share in the day of perfect snow! It is a much loved book in our house! We loved the descriptive language, it described the day the smells and the characters so well, it could have been played out in any school in Canada.



We have two craft events planned for February, one for our Valentine's Day event, and one devoted to our monthly theme of Mix n Match! You child too young for crafts, and maybe not the crafty type, no worries, come out to visit with other moms, and of course we always have the bucket of toys and the parachute to play with!!

Wild West Craft Party

It was a week filled with sickness it seamed for the momstown moms in Central Alberta! Hopefully this means that sickness will not stick around for the holidays! Because of this we had a smaller turnout at our monthly craft party, but we still had fun!!

We of course had our craft time, making a horse tracing the kids foot and forearms! I love these types of crafts as we can see just how little our kids were, and really who doesn't like having their foot traced?



We also had our story time, and well I hope someone heard me read it! ha ha

You see I have our monthly story books delivered ahead of time to our house, and my toddler loves to "test drive" the books before our monthly events...

This month's Story "Are you a Horse" by Andy Rash, happens to be her ultimate favourite!! (Here is a great recap about the book) As I sat in my chair, handed over a crying baby to another mom, toddler comes over and wants to "read read" the book herself, there is no way mom will read it!! So guess what happens next? ha ha if you have been reading this blog, or attended this event, you know!! ha ha Crying and a great tempter tantrum!!



I did manage to read the story, and the kids were listening, and in the end momstown mom Bradley won the book, which we all asked her to HIDE so that toddler did not see that it was gone!

No need to worry about toddler losing her favorite book, we have our own copy at home! ha ha

At the Zoo Theme and Craft party

I hosted my first momstown Central Alberta craft party, and it went well!
The kids played - of course!

I had two crafts for the kids to do (1)Finger painting which I know is always a hit and this great craft Spiralling Snakes, from the momstown arts and crafts blog.

We topped it off with a Reading of THE UNDERPANTS ZOO by Brian Sendelbach which is our Scholastic book of the Month, and Mandy was the lucky winner from our event draw, who took home her own copy of this great book.

See you at October's party where our theme is Scarecrows

This one's for the boys!

What does every little boy love?  Trucks!  Construction vehicles - or anything that makes noise and is big to be exact.  We celebrated all things construction at our monthly craft party this month - and gave the boys a chance to shine.  They each brought their favourite trucks - and had some fun being boys!

Then we got crafty with some popsicle sticks and playdough.  Building... whatever!  We ended up coming home with a porcupine and a picture frame - gotta love the creativity of a 5 year old, and the funny faces he makes when he's told to 'smile'!

We then had some more free-play time - where my 5 year old once again got creative with the puzzle mats.

Congratulations to Ashley C. who took home a copy of Hot Rod Hamster by Cynthia Lord courtesy of Scholastic Canada!  We'll be giving away a new book each month as a part of momstown.ca's focus on early literacy!  Join us next month for Fun at the Beach!