We Love Kiwi Crate!

I posted about how much we love Kiwi Crate over on The Shopping Mama the other day.

Kiwi Crate is a great monthly craft box subscription for your kids. Ariana has been getting them for several months now and we really get excited when that little green box arrives in the mail.

For this box, one of the activities was a watercolor "under the sea" animals craft. The other was a sailboat and there was even a bonus activity! I made a list of 10 things I love about Kiwi Crate and shared it with TSM readers. I thought I would share my two favorite things about Kiwi Crate here too.

Top 2 things I really love about Kiwi Crate are:

1. A new box is delivered to my door monthly!
2. It encourages curiosity and creativity!

To read the 8 other things I love about kiwi crate, be sure to check out my Kiwi Crate review post.

Do you do Kiwi Crate? Would your child like something like this?

It makes a great gift too!

Photo Scavenger Hunt for Kids {Free Printables}

Ariana and I were thinking of something fun we could do one day and I came up with a nature scavenger hunt. Ariana loves any excuse to use her Fisher Price Kid-Tough See Yourself Camera so I added a bonus challenge for her by making it a photo nature hunt and she had to take photos of each item she found. It became a good way to document our findings. You can shop our favorite kid cameras on Amazon.

This Nature Scavenger Hunt would be great for the backyard, local park, or a walk in the woods depending on what is around you.

 Print the Nature Scavenger Hunt

I whipped up the list one morning after breakfast and I printed it so that it was about half the size of my printer paper (about 5x7) and easy for her to carry in her bicycle basket.

We took her bike down to the local walking path and start our photo scavenger hunt. She was excited to start searching she hopped on her bike and off she went!

Some of the items were easy to find while others like the butterfly presented more of a challenge but it was fun to watch her and she enjoyed discovering nature around her and checking things off her list as she found them.

And for the city dwellers I've created a City Scavenger Hunt for you too. I tried to include things that I thought most cities would have and that would be easy for kids to find.

Print the City Scavenger Hunt

I included pictures and words to help with reading and word association that's perfect for preschool/kindergarten age but can also be used for older or younger kids too.

You can make your own version of scavenger hunt lists by just thinking about things you would see in your backyard or around your neighborhood! It's fun! Even I joined in on the fun!

Create a Summer Reading Fort!

I like to try to keep things creative for Ariana especially during the summer when she's out of school. Recently we created a reading fort in the backyard! She absolutely loved it.

Read more about our fort here on The Shopping Mama, as well as get tips to beat the Summer Slide. It's good to keep kid's brains engaged and active during the summer.

Constellation Craft For Kids

During our Spring Break road trip to Budapest, Vienna and Salzburg this year, we were in the car for a total of about 20 hours. That's a long time for a 4 year old to just sit.

I had to come different activities to keep her entertained. Of course I brought the busy book I made last year with a few updated pages and new coloring print offs.

But, my favorite little activity I created was this constellation craft that she could create in the car.

Constellation Craft

Supplies you need:

black construction paper

star stickers

white crayon

outlines of constellations (optional for older children)

I cut my black paper into 4 pieces to make them smaller and to stretch our black paper supply stash. 

With some of the papers I drew dots and let her connect them to make a constellation and then let her decorate her paper with the star stickers and drawings to make it a night sky picture.

With the others I drew a constellation outline (google was great for this before our trip) and she had to copy the constellation onto the black paper using stars and then draw lines with her white crayon to connect the star stickers.

The resulting constellations were these. We used fairly simple constellations: Leo, Pegasus, Orion, and the big and little dipper. She also practiced her handwriting at the bottom writing their names on each one. Then, we talked a little bit about space and stars and constellations in general. 

She loved this activity especially since she's told us numerous times that she wants to be an astronaut when she grows up. She loves anything learning and space related.

This is her in her Nasa outfit that Daddy brought back from the Space and Air Museum from his recent trip to Washington DC.

This constellation craft could be used for a car trip, plane ride, add to a busy book, space camp, preschool, or make them into cards for family and friends. Make it your own! Have fun!

Goodbye Lola

I'm back with some more Lola pictures I've taken over the recent days!

I'm glad she's a well behaved elf and we've enjoyed having her visit our home this year.

 She loved the Gingerbread house we made. I think she thought it was just for her.

 She brought Ariana a new Christmas book.

 One morning we found her hiding in our Santa countdown calendar.

Lola got into our homemade cookies our friends made for us! She was nibbling on a christmas tree cookie one day.

Lola was found covered in bows and hanging out among the presents one morning.

 Lola had a movie night. We found her watching Elf and sipping on some syrup! Ariana thought that was funny but told her that egg nog would have been better!

 Lola was excited to announce there was only 2 days left until Christmas. She was sitting in the bowl of cotton balls we used to add to Santa's beard and count down the days.

And finally it's Christmas Eve today. This morning we found that she brought Ariana some goodies and a sweet note saying how much she enjoyed being here and that she was going back to the North Pole, she'll be back next year! Tonight Santa comes!!!!!

In case you missed it, here are the other things Lola our elf got into.

Hope everyone has a happy holidays with family and friends this year!

Our Elf Lola

We jumped on the craze of the Elf on a Shelf this year and it's been pretty fun. Ariana named our elf Lola and she's a pretty shy tame elf compared to these other mischievous elves people have. Here is what she's been up to since we got her.

 She came one day while Ariana was at preschool and hid in our tree.

 We found out she was pretty shy the day we found her hiding by Santa. We think she was missing the North Pole.

 Lola started liking being with us us and brought us a special breakfast from the North Pole as well as a little wooden tree for Ariana to decorate for her room.

 With Ariana being so good we found Lola measuring her stocking one morning to see how many goodies Santa could fit in there.

 Lola was hanging out upside down in the kitchen.

 She got bored one night and started doing one of Ariana's puzzles.

Lola took a stroll in a barbie car. Ariana loved that and pushed her around in it.

 She got into my Christmas M&M's one night and practiced writing her name.

 She was found reading Christmas books by Ariana's nightlight one morning.

 Lola likes snow, since she's from the North Pole and Ariana found her hiding in her snow boot by the backdoor.

 She made a bed, or ball pit (we're still not sure) one night in the bathroom sink using the cotton balls. Ariana did not like this.

 Hiding in Mommy's apron pocket one morning.

Lola got busy one night making lots of tiny paper snowflakes.

I'll share more of Lola's antics on Christmas Eve. She's a silly one and the first thing Ariana says when she wakes up is "Let's go find Lola!"

Counting Cups

Ariana and I call these our counting cups. I used old egg dying cups and some dried noodles from when we made noodle necklaces and printed numbers cards (actually stickers). We put numbers by each cup and counted out noodles into each cup. Easy and good practice activity for a stay at home day or preschool activity. You don't have to use noodles, you can use anything smallish. Cotton balls would be something easy, or buttons, or beads. I just used what I had that day when I came up with the idea.

We only went to seven because that's how many of these egg dye cups I could find that day but obviously as they get better at counting you can add more cups and higher numbers.

We first made these in the Spring but I'm just now getting around to posting pictures. Ariana wanted to play again the other day after seeing the cups in our cupboard. Then she shocked me...

Ariana: "Do you know what Mommy? Five and two make seven"
Me: "Umm you're 3 years old, when did you learn to add!?"Ariana: "Today. I just know."

Oh boy!

Linking up with Hands On As We Grow and The Imagination Tree

Busy Book {DIY}

For our 9 hour flight from Germany to Florida, I created a "busy book" for Ariana. I had this idea in my head of activities I knew she would like so I decided to put it together the last few days I was in Germany. It was so simple. I got a 3 ring binder, some folder dividers, and some plastic sheet protectors. I printed off a bunch of fun pages I found online and made some of my own. For the coloring pages I put them in the folder dividers so she could pull them out and color them and for some of the other pages like matching etc I put them in the sheet protectors so she could draw on the plastic with dry erase markers and reuse some of the pages.

Here is a peek into her "busy book".

 Ariana loves color by number so I googled that and printed off about 10 pages of color by numbers. I also printed worksheets with shapes.

 She loves to color animals and I found these great pages with pictures and words. We also made the fun number book where they circle all the number 1's on one page, 2's on another page, etc

 Things that are opposite and things that go together pages were a big hit. The ABC maze took some concentration.

 I created our own uppercase and lowercase letter matching pages and she loved the thinking pages like "which way is the animal facing" and such.

Hidden pictures are usually a favorite with her so I got some from Highlights website. Also added in more counting pages.

These pages are just some of what are in her "busy book", there are over 60+ pages of fun activities. If you want to make your own "busy book" for your little one, I've linked some of the best websites I found when making our book.

Websites I printed from:

tlsbooks

kidslearningstation

animaljr

allkidsnetwork

highlightsteachers

It kept her entertained for a few hours of our flight although some of it took assistance from me to read the directions. Perfect for kids who need stimulation and something to think about. This could also be used if you homeschool as worksheets or just if you have little ones who need some fun activities to do inside on a rainy day etc.