Fall Leaf Relief Painting

 One of my absolute favorite fall activities is driving up to the mountains and collecting beautiful leaves with my family.

This year we were lucky and found a few beautiful spots with loads of leaves!  We brought them home and decided to do this really simple craft, Fall Leaf Relief Painting!

Relief art projects are so great for little kids because they don't have to be exact or complicated.  All I did was stick a piece of tape on the back of the leaves and then let my kids mix red, yellow and orange paint to use all around the leaf.  

Of course, my 2-year old turned it into a finger (or whole hand;) painting project ;)

Once your paint is dry you just pull off the leaf and you are left with this beautiful outline in perfect fall colors!

I don't even know if anyone looks at this little blog anymore, but if you do thanks so much for stopping  by and have a fantastic fall day! :)

Personalized Library Bags {Summer of 100 Books!}

 We are SO close to school being out...just one more day!!  One thing we are really trying to focus on this summer is reading more.  In fact, I have dubbed this summer the Summer of 100 Books!  We will be doing all sorts of activities and incentives to try and read 100 books before we start school again.  The first thing I thought we would do, is make our very own personalized Library Book Bags!

These were such a simple craft, my older girls did them before they went off to school yesterday.  For our bags we used plain canvas tote bags from Walmart (found in the craft section), fabric pens (found in the same place), and some really neat chipboard stencils I grabbed at Target the other day.

Once you have your supplies ready let your kids imagination go as they decorate their bags to reflect them and their personal style!  

My older girls did great with the stenciling, for younger kids though you may want to tape down the stencil so it doesn't move all over the place.  I did NOT do that for my 4-year old...but I actually love how her "abstract" flower turned out anyways ;)

Make sure you get enough bags to have one for yourself...nothing my kids love more than when I craft right alongside them!

Easy-peasy, and now my kids are asking daily when we can go to the library and use our new bags :)  The possibilities really are endless with this craft, you could also add glitter, stickers, poms, iron-on...anything!!

Do you struggle with keeping your kids reading over the summer?  I would love to hear what great ways you use to inspire reading in your home!

Resist Watercolor Flower Paintings!

 This week we are studying and learning all about plants and flowers. We have a few science experiments cooking as we speak, so today we did a really fun and simple art project that my kids (and myself!) completely loved!

For this fun Resist Watercolor Painting all you need are a few pieces of cardstock, watercolors, and a white crayon.

If you are like me and have VERY suspect artistic skills you can search on Pinterest for how-to's on drawing flowers.  Or you can just draw the same simple flowers you have been drawing since grade school ;)  Either way, just take a white crayon and draw flowers on white cardstock.  Once you have done that give your kids some watercolor paints and let them have at it!

My kids absolutely loved watching the flowers appear on their papers right before their eyes as  they painted away.  

These abstract works of art turned out beautiful, and I love hanging them in our family study.  The kids were having so much fun I had to join in with them ;) 

Have you tried any resist artwork at your place?  The possibilities really are endless from tape, to crayons, glue and even stickers!  Thanks so much for stopping by today!

Paper Bag Bird Craft {Bird Week}

 
I am totally in love with this fun craft we whipped up today, hopefully you and your kids will enjoy it too!  I completely spaced going to the store this morning so we had to improvise, but I love what we came up with.  Here are our simple and silly Paper Bag Bird Crafts!

All you need for this fun craft are paper bags, paint (I found some great paint brushes with the paint inside at WalMart the other day that we used), feathers, googly eyes, and orange paper cut into triangles.

Once you have your paper bags ready let the kids go crazy painting them any colors they want.  One tip-try and make sure your kids don't use TOO much paint, otherwise it will take hours to dry ;)  I had to get a paper towel and wipe off excess paint on most of ours after we were done...the other one I didn't wipe is still drying ;)

Once your bags are dry, just glue on googly eyes, an orange triangle for the beak, and feathers on the back for wings!  Your kids will LOVE their new Paper Bag Bird Puppets...mine sure did!

Thanks so much for checking out Blue Skies Ahead today, hope you have a great day!

Cinco de Mayo crafts {Homemade Maracas and Eye of God Craft}

Happy Cinco de Mayo!  I know its last minute, but thats how we roll around here ;)  Today we are sharing two really fun and simple crafts your kids will love...young and old!

First up are these adorable Pinterest-inspired Homemade Maracas!  I saw a pin HERE and knew these needed to be a part of our celebration.

These maracas are easy, the kids can do them mostly by themselves, and they will love playing with them all day long. To get started you need some plastic spoons, plastic eggs, rice, and washi tape.

All you do is fill up your eggs with rice, and then place two spoons around your egg.

Then use your washi tape to secure your egg and you are ready for the best part...

To SHAKE IT!!

 

(And yes, this is how we roll.  Dirty shirt, no pants and a crumb-covered floor ;) 

The next craft we did was creating Eye of God's.  My older girls really loved these, in fact they spent an hour making them with their friends last night...after they had worked on them for an hour after school :)

All you need for this craft is popsicle sticks, tape or glue and yarn...easy-peasy!  To make them as colorful as possible I used multi-colored yarn and colored popsicle sticks. 

To show my kids how to wrap the yarn around your sticks to make this cool design we watched THIS tutorial, they explained it all beautifully.

I hope these gave you some fun, last-minute ideas and ways to enjoy your little ones today!  Thanks so much for checking out Blue Skies Ahead!

Cinco de Mayo Tissue Paper Craft

So here we are again!  After a 4 month blogging hiatus I really thought we had put this whole blogging thing on the shelf, but then my kiddos changed my mind.  The other night we were looking for a recipe on the blog and we ended up spending over an hour pouring over past posts and remembering SO many fun things we have done together.  I realized what a blessing this blog has been, even if for NO other reason than I have preserved some wonderful memories I have had the chance to share with my kids.  

So there you have it!  I hope to be able to share with you just a tidbit of our lives, things we do that add a little bit of joy or laughter into the sometimes mundane world of a stay-at-home-mom.  There are good days, and there are bad days...but this blog is dedicated to focusing on the good, even with its imperfections and challenges!

Next week we are going to be doing a few simple things to celebrate and learn about Cinco de Mayo, so I thought today would be the perfect opportunity to make a craft we could display while we do all our activities, a Cinco de Mayo Tissue Paper Craft!

This craft was great fun for the kids, and took about 5 minutes of prep from me :)  All you need to make your own are a bunch of different colored tissue paper, some glue, and a 5 template cut out.

I just googled printable 5 template and then printed and cut them out for my kids.   

Once you have your supplies ready to go, let your kids go CRAZY ripping their tissue paper into pieces...my kids enjoyed this part.  Especially my kindergartner...what is it about ripping up papers and 6 year old boys?!  At least this time it wasn't one of my 9 year olds song lyrics or 7 year olds drawings.  Yeah, it happens a lot at this house ;) 

Once you have a good pile of tissue paper, you just spread glue around your 5 and squash those tissue paper slips down until your 5 is FULL of tissue paper. 

Did I mention this was a messy craft?  Well...it is :)  Luckily my kids still think sweeping is a novelty and something quite fun to do.

The kids loved the finished product and said they looked like number pinatas.  I thought after how cute it would be do some in the colors of the Mexican flag, we may have to make a few more later ;)  We hung them up in our family study and can't wait to enjoy them as we continue with Cinco de Mayo fun into next week!

Thank you so much for stopping by.  I have had so many wonderful comments, followers and friends over the years of blogging, it has truly been a wonderful experience for me.  I love sharing and learning from others as we navigate this crazy and wonderful stage of life...have a wonderful weekend friends!

Chinese Dragon Masks {Chinese New Year Week}

We are so excited to be kicking off a new theme this week, we are learning and exploring all things about the Chinese New Year!  I have been especially excited because we have never done this theme before so its given me a chance to learn some new things too :)

I've mentioned before that Monday is usually our LEAST crafty day of the week.  It seems like I usually spend the day getting the house back into some kind of order after we trashed it all weekend long ;)  Today, though, I really wanted to get my kids away from the electronice, but also knew I didn't have much time.  This activity was quick, cheap and the kids had an absolute blast!  Check out our Chinese Dragon Masks!

To get started you want to print out your very own Dragon Masks.  I found this great template HERE at Spoonful.

Then let your little ones go to town coloring their dragons. 

Oh...and if you happen to have a little man that's not quite up to coloring, you can just stick him in the high chair and enjoy his cuteness ;)

 

While the kids were coloring I got out some crepe paper we had from past birthday celebrations and some fantastic Sparkle Elastic Cords we received from CraftProjectIdeas.com.  We use these cords several times a week for jewelry, but they were perfect for these masks as well!

All you need to do now is cut out your masks and the eye holes, tape some streamers onto the back and then tie the elastic cord around the mask so it stays up on your little dragon.

The best thing about crafts like these are they provide hours of creative play once you are done!  My kids were running around playing dragons and trying to scare each other for quite a while ;)

Thanks so much for stopping by today, and come back tomorrow!  We have more fun crafts and activities, and a yummy treat we are really excited to try out.

Footprint Penguin Craft {Polar Animal Week}

 I may have mentioned before that I love handprint and footprint crafts, and when I saw some adorable footprint penguins HERE  I knew I wanted to do this fun craft with my little this week.

I was really excited to do this craft because let's be honest...I don't do NEARLY as many crafts with the kids I have at home now as I did with my first two.  I have a box FULL of handprints and footprints of my oldest two daughters, but the box is sadly lacking when it comes to my 4 year old son and 2 year old daughter.  Today was a great chance to add to that precious box just a little bit more, and even though I know its completely unrealistic to think I can do with 5 kids what I did with two...I have to at least give it a shot! ;)

Isn't this just the cutest little guy??  To get started the kids used cotton balls to paint some white snow on our paper.  Then came the really fun part ;)  The kids thought it was hilarious when I painted the bottoms of their feet black...its even more fun if your kids have particularly ticklish feet ;)

Once we stamped their foot down on the paper, we let the black paint dry and then I helped them paint the white body of the penguin.  We added flippers, a beak, eyes...and our cute little penguin was born!

This was a great craft for a slow morning when the kids may or may not have been driving me to the brink of insanity :)  Honestly, my baby has been sick for days and mommy with no sleep turns into Mean Mommy real quick.  I'm so glad I was able to put away the list of never-ending chores and giggle with my kids as I tickled their feet and laughed at the silly names they came up with for their penguins.  This is the real beauty of being a stay-at-home mommy.  These little moments that jump out at us from out of no where, and make us remember why we decided to do crazy things...possibly like have 5 children in 7 years or something like that ;)

Thank you so much for stopping by today, and keep checking in for more Polar Animal fun this week!!