January Craft Round-Up

This month was a little unusual for us; we didn't get to everything on our lesson plan in January because of a snow storm (I lost three days of work), and we also did more activities and "process art" than we normally do (so we didn't have a lot to show for all our efforts other than pictures and memories, lol). Still, it was worth it because some of these activities were just too much fun. :)

Some of our themes this month were ice, snow, cold (we talked about temperature in general) and winter. We worked on recognizing the colors blue and white (with limited success lol).

We started off the month remixing one of our favorite crafts from last month: sensory jars! This time we made them snow jars. The kids had a blast.

One day we did a slew of snowman activities.

First we practiced rolling the dice and counting out the same number of pompom "buttons" onto our snowmen...

... then we practiced building snowmen out of Styrofoam balls (cut in half so they'd lay flat) and construction paper arms, boots, and hats.


And finally we made "melted snowmen" with white glitter paint, googly eyes, and construction paper pieces. The kids did this one all by themselves and their mom and I got a kick out of seeing how each one turned out!

We painted on giant ice cubes (I used the freezer A LOT this month lol) with watercolors.  This was so much fun and I sort of wished I had made one for me, too. At first the paint went onto the cubes like regular paper, then as the water melted it changed until towards the end as soon as you put some paint on the cube, it changed the whole hue of the painting. Very cool.

We also tried painting on snow one day, inspired by this pin. It was a total no - go lol. Pinterest fail!

I also made ice cubes filled with glitter and confetti and let them go at them with paintbrushes and warm water. It was a good chance to talk about melting, freezing, hot and cold.

We did ice chalk! I've been too intimidated to try making my own sidewalk chalk for awhile, but somehow ice chalk seemed less scary. Since it turned out well (and the only significant difference between sidewalk chalk and ice chalk is drying vs. freezing), we'll probably be doing that sometime soon. This was a fun activity! Definitely part sensory activity, as it got rather messy, but fun. It went on like fingerpaint and dried like chalk. Lucy enjoyed "stamping" with the blocks.

We tried making silly putty with cornstarch and Dawn dishsoap, and it failed miserably. I ended up adding a little bit of this and a little bit of that and making it into "snow dough" instead.

I rigged up a makeshift clothesline between the front and basement doors and we worked on some fine motor skills and matching by pinning pair of mittens and gloves. It took everyone quite awhile to get the hang of it, but once they did they had a blast!

That was our month. Of course, there was also a lot of playing in the snow, outings, and play. :) I'm definitely looking forward to warmer temperatures and getting to do more outdoors activities again!