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}

I have moved to Craft and Crave! To check out more fun crafts and delicious recipes be sure to head over to www.craftandcraveblog.com

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.

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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!

Be sure to check out these other fun crafts for kids!

Paper Plate Spiderwebs {Kid Craft}

Last week we had a Halloween Party for our squadron. Since I'm part of the spouses group, I signed up to help plan it. We had food, games, costumes, crafts, and fun decorations. Along with bringing food and decorating for the party I also signed up to do a craft with the kids. I came up with these paper plate spider webs and the kids loved them!

These are great for young kids, whether it's for a Halloween party, preschool craft, or just for fun this weekend with your kids.

Check out these other fun preschool crafts for kids!

Supplies needed:

paper plates (simple cheap ones work great)

scissors

hole punch

yarn

bobby pins

plastic spiders

tape

crayons and stickers for decoration

This is a simple but cute project that kids from age 2 to 9 enjoyed!

Prep your plates before hand by cutting a circle in the middle of the plate. I used a big stencil to trace my circle and then used scissors to cut out the middle. Around the inside circle punch 12-14 holes. 

To make the spiderweb tape a long piece of yarn to the back of the plate and tie a bobby pin to the other side. The bobby pin isn't necessary but it helps the kids be able to sew the yarn through the holes. Have the kids criss cross the yarn from one side of the plate to the other to create the spiderweb. 

When they are done cut the yarn and tape it to the back of the plate to finish. Let them color or decorate the plate. There weren't any halloween stickers on base this year so we just decorated ours with drawings with crayons. Lastly, glue (or in my case clip) your spiders onto your web and you're done. If you want you can punch a hole in the top and tie a piece of string through it to hang up the spiderwebs.

 Here are some of the kids at the party doing their spiderwebs.

 Ariana finishing up her spiderweb.

 Me and Ariana at the Halloween party. I was a witch (which the kids loved) and Ariana was Captain America's Daughter "American Dream".

I hope you enjoy making these spiderwebs with your kids!

Be sure to check out these other fun crafts for kids!

Busy Book {DIY}

Check out my other fun DIY activities and crafts for kids!

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

Check out these other creative kid crafts on my sister site!

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.