For the last few days, Gracen’s been working on these sweet little nature wreaths at her creative table.
It started out as a very simple painting station with a few cardboard o’s and some paint in different shades of green.
When the paint was dry, I added a few other things into the mix… Glue, mini pinecones, bits of evergreen tree, and dried out red berries from her autumn nature shelf.
Though this creative table set-up didn’t take off quite like the paper christmas tree one did, it’s been something that she’s come back to each day. She’ll spend a little bit of time adding to one of her wreaths, move onto something else, and come back another time.
This morning, after walking past the wreath on our door, she asked if she could have some bows for her wreaths, so I brought out my glue gun, cut up some ribbon, and added a few to the table.
After adding her bow, she put on the finishing touches…
And voila! A beautiful little Christmas wreath made of things {mostly} found outdoors.
♥
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This evening, Miss G and I put together something I loved making as a child… a simple paper chain. We started with some paper scraps I had left over from a Christmas bunting and used a paper cutter to trim them into neat strips.
Miss G then chose her “special starting paper”, loaded one end with several swipes of a glue stick… 
And I helped her roll it up and she pinched it tightly while counting to ten.
Together, we added ring after ring…
Until we had this sweet little holiday-themed paper chain. I’m not sure what we’ll do with it yet… In my classrooms, I’ve always used them as a countdown tracker of sorts, snipping off one link until the big day, but I’m not sure that Grae is going to want to cut apart the creation she’s so proud of. It may just be a sweet little addition to the holiday decor we’ve slowly been adding around our house.
Making one of these sweet little ribbon wands for Miss G has long been on my project list, and since her last dance class took place today, it was the perfect motivation to not only make one for Grae, but to make one to gift to each of her little friends too. 
If you poke around the internet, you’ll find tons of different styles of ribbon wands and methods to make them, but when we stumbled upon these adhesive picture hanging strips (available at hardware stores), we came up with a way of our own. 
First off, we took wide satin ribbon and cut it into strips approximately 125 centimetres long, cutting one end straight across and one end at an angle. Then, using a lighter, we sealed off the cut edges.
Next, we took the adhesive backing off of the picture hangers and firmly attached them to the straight end of the ribbon. At this point I was going to sew the picture hanger onto the ribbon for added security, but the adhesive was so strong that it wasn’t necessary. 
With our ribbons ready, we moved onto the wand part of the project. Using painter’s tape, we taped off our 6 inch dowels about a third of the way up.
Then using crafter’s acrylic in colours that coordinated with our ribbons, we painted the bottom third of each dowel with two coats of paint.
When the paint was good a dry, we carefully removed the painter’s tape to reveal the handle part of our wands.
Next, we used a tack to poke holes in the top ends of the dowels. 
Then it was time for these guys – small eye hooks available at all hardware stores.
We screwed the eye hooks into the recently made holes by starting the process by hand and using pliers part way through. (One thing to be mindful of at this point is that if your eye hooks are on the larger side (like ours), you don’t want to force them down into the dowel too far. You’ll get a pretty good sense on when you should stop twisting, and please do so. Spoken from experience, if you force them down too much, the dowels will split open.)
Your wand should now look like this. 
Now the final step… We hooked the metal picture hanging hook onto the eye hooks and use pliers to squeeze the hook shut tightly.
And there you have it – a pretty little ribbon wand.
In order to transport them to dance class without a big tangly mess happening, we simply wrapped the ribbons around the wands, and secured them with a bit of polka dotted washi tape.
During nap time, I used different objects from around the house as tracers to cut the large sheets into an assortment of shapes. I placed the shapes, along with a spray bottle filled with water, on a tray next to our large front window, and left it there for my curious little monkey to discover upon her awakening.
Of course she beelined to the tray the moment she was up. I explained that we could use water to help the shapes stick to the window, and she was off. A little mist….
And stick a shape on top. 
Voila! Instant window art. Super fun and super easy.
It didn’t take her long to realize that looking through the shapes was pretty cool too… “Mama! Everything is all pink!”
Of course the previous method works well for seeing the outside world in pink, but this is much more effective for making your house turn pink.
The really cool thing about the fact that our shapes are primary colours is that they lend themselves to colour mixing very well. Grae was amazed at all of the colours she could make by simply overlapping two shapes.
And after experimenting with colour mixing, she tried sorting the pieces into groups based on shapes and colours.
And soon after that, the pieces started becoming pictures of things. The triangles stacked on top of one another became her tree and the tower of large circles became her snowman (if you look closely, you’ll see she is in the process of adding buttons to her snowman’s belly).
Today we popped in and after very patiently waiting for me to browse the selection of new items, Gracen retrieved a brown paper bag and began filling it with treasures of all sorts. With a tiny bit of help from Mama {who had specific projects in mind}, the bag was brimming with crafting goodies in no time.
In the end, this is what we came home with in Gracen’s $6 bag… Everything from gift wrap to acetate sheets to brown boxes to medicine bottles and puzzle pieces…
This heart ornament also started as a flattened ball, and then I used a cookie cutter to push just part of the way through to the dough to make the heart shape.
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This afternoon we took out our crate, opened it up, and found all of the materials needed to put together a window garden. Needless to say, my little gardening enthusiast was thrilled.
Included was a clearly laid out instruction card complete with diagrams, and a sweet little observation booklet for Miss G to draw in. 
We carefully set up the garden, referring back to the instruction card after each step. Gracen, Miss ‘Let’s Do a Project!’, loved it and took her work very seriously.
With the exception of really making sure the suction cups were stuck to the window and printing the words “mint” and “basil”, Grae was able to do everything on her own, which was lovely.
We now have a sweet little garden set up right in our living room and I can’t wait to help Grae water it each day and watch as our fresh herbs grow. ☺
I’m happy to say, our experiment was a success. Not only do we have trees sprinkled with pretty bird feeders (thus some very happy birds), but Gracen was able to do almost all of the steps on her own at our butcher block and there was no stove required.
Here’s what we used for the project… Bird seed, gelatine, boiling water, straws cut into 2 inch pieces, some baker’s twine, and some cookie cutters and pancake moulds.
We started off by emptying two packets (not boxes – the above photo is misleading) of plain gelatine into a very large mixing bowl.
Then I carefully poured in a little bit of boiling water (this is one of the only jobs I did for the project).
Gracen then stirred the mixture very gently until all of the gelatine was dissolved.
Next, we measured out our bird seed. We used a “wild bird” variety, but I think pretty much any type would work as long as the seeds and bits are not too big – I think a finer blend works best in this case.
Then Grae poured the bird seed into our gelatine/water mixture.
We stirred it for a few minutes, making sure that all of the seeds were evenly coated and that there was no longer excess water at the bottom of the bowl.
Next, we covered a tray in parchment paper and laid out our cookie cutters and moulds.
Using a teaspoon, Grae filled each cookie cutter with seed, one by one.
You want to make sure that they’re a little bit overfull, so be generous with the seed. (This recipe made these five feeders, plus a large bird seed “cupcake” too).
Because the mixture gets really sticky, we covered the cookie cutters with a layer of parchment and Grae pressed the seeds down into the moulds.
You want to make sure the seeds are packed very tightly – it’s part of what makes the feeders stay together well.
Next, we took our straws and carefully inserted them into the cookie cutters, making sure to not place them too close to the edges. Once the straws were in the seed, we pressed the seeds down around them to make sure everything stayed tight.
Next, we popped the entire tray into the fridge and let them set for a couple of hours before taking them out and letting them dry out on the counter. We left them for most of the evening, and before I went to bed for the night, I flipped them over so that the bottoms could dry out too. (It’s a bit awkward to flip them with the straw sticking out the way it is, but you could trim the straw if you liked.)
The next morning, we gently popped the shapes out of their moulds.
Then we plucked out the straws and made sure that the holes were clear all the way through.
For the last step, we took some baker’s twine (ribbon or jute would be perfect too), put it through the holes, and knotted the tops. Voila! Pretty little feeders for the hungry birds in our yard.
Once it was dry, Grae used some clear glue and sequins to give the lantern a little bit more sparkle.
Then we let it dry again.
With a handful of brushes and little containers of purple, green, orange, black, and glow-in-the-dark acrylic paint, Grae got busy beautifying her pumpkin.
It was the best of both worlds, because not only did she get to decorate her pumpkin, but she also got to help us do all of the fun messy parts of carving ours.
After having her fill of icky gunk scooping, it was back to pumpkin painting. She covered the entire thing in a thick layer of paint and then we let it dry overnight.
The next day, we used a little trick I learned years and years ago and cut a hole in the bottom of the pumpkin (no need to mess with trying to get a lit candle in through the top – you simply set your candle down on a surface and place the pumpkin on top). Together, we scooped the insides out and used our apple corer to polka dot the pumpkin’s surface (which worked brilliantly, btw). 
Gracen loves it. It glows just like Mama and Papa’s jack-o-lanterns do, and we were able to preserve almost all of her painting masterpiece.
♥
