Days 178, 179, 180

Friday:

We were at Jo-Anns on Friday and Iris found the "free craft ideas" sheets at the front of the store.  She picked out two things that she really liked, 1 being Popsicle stick butterflies wrapped in yarn.  Well, if there are 2 things we have PLENTY of in our house, it is popsicle sticks and yarn!  What an easy craft too.  I glued the popsicle sticks into X shapes, then gave the girls the choice of yarn colors they wanted.  Once i started the center, they were easily able to wrap the yarn to the outside.  I glued the ends with hot glue and then we picked out antenna colors.  Iris was even able to wrap her antennas around a pencil to get them to be curly.  Penny needed help with it.  Here are the instructions and our finished products.

Saturday:

I have wanted to do this for a long time, but have always found a reason not to.  But finally, i bit the bullet, bought a canvas and a box of crayons and we sat down to make the melted crayon art.  It was definitely closer to an Iris aged project than a Penny aged project.  Iris helped me sort all the crayons into color families, then we worked together to put them in order lightest to darkest.  Iris really picked up on it quickly, and I feel that she learned quite a bit too.  Then, I hot glued the crayons to the canvas and Iris and I used my hair dryer to melt the crayons.  We worked until Iris told me it was "enough" and this is what we ended up with:

Sunday:

Today, we did "caterpillars" or, according to the craft sheet, they are actually bookworms.  I modified the craft slightly and instead of using all buttons, I used mainly beads and gave the girls a few buttons to spread out throughout.  I started ours by hot gluing a bead to the "tail" to keep all the rest of the beads in place, then the girls strung their beads and buttons on as they saw fit.  It was a great project for Penny and I think it really helped her hand-eye coordination.  We finished by hot gluing a big button with googly eyes to the "head" and here they are.  (Note: the blue one is mine... Penny has lost hers somewhere in the house, of course!):

On a side note, i've been giving myself a little break from blogging on the weekends, it is kind of nice to have mini vacations from this.