Crayons & an Iron

This may have been a little bit above my children's skill level, but they still loved it!
Use a pencil sharpener to shave some crayons. The twisting and waxiness of the crayons made it a little difficult for the children--practice makes perfect!

Put the shavings between a few sheets of wax paper and iron. Throw in some ribbon if you want to hang the beauties when they are done.
After the wax dries allow your babes to cut out shapes. I drew hears in favor of V-day this next month.
Beautiful!

Mural for SunnySide Christian Church

I wanted to post a few photos of the murals I have completed at SunnySide's nursery. I've been asked to do a few more in addition to these, but think I'm going to take a break until baby 'corn muffin' is born. I've been completely drained lately. This weekend has been a weekend of laziness for me. *yawn* Enjoy the photos.

J is for Jaguars!

I watch two little girls along with my son Tuesday thru Friday and I'm always looking for cute little projects for them to complete. I hate not developing skills and doing creative art or science. Three year olds are so easy to entertain. Something that seems ridiculously easy to us can be very educational to them! For example--melting ice in a cup. Who knew that ice was actually water when it gets really really cold? I know I didn't! (Insert sarcasm obviously.) When my friend told me about this awesome website, "Totally Tots", I fell in love! I was already completing science projects and making up my own "letter of the day" projects, but Totally for Tots made it much much easier.

Last week's "letter of the day" was "J". We used "J" for jumping, jungle, jaguar, and jack-rabbit. (note: get 3 three year olds trying to jump in one room--hilarious!) I decided to try out "Totally for Tots" "J" project. Here are the results.

I'm poor and didn't have foam so I adapted and used construction paper. The children loved the project and at one point said "This is kinda hard!" (They had to use pincher fingers a developing technique for all three of them!)

                    I started with drawing a simple block "J" and then little heads to go with them.

Then I dug out my trusty hole puncher and started punching holes for the Jaguar's spots. 

Now that's a lot of holes!

 This is my son Tyler. He thought this was a great project and quickly put black dots all over his Jaguar!

What a ham!

 For the tails I cut off of piece of short yarn from my knitting and had them thread it for the tail. Make sure you tie a knot in the back or use tape to hold it in place. I normally keep their projects hanging in my home for a while, but they loved their Jaguars so much they took them home the same day!