Fluffy Bunny with Movable Ears

Fun little project in time for Easter. Best thing is most, if not all the pieces you probably have already.

What you need:
2 Paper Plates, Bag of Cotton Balls, Pencil, Sharpie, Pink Crayon/Marker/Highlighter, Glue, 2 Brads, and Scissors.
Here's some optional items: If you want your brads to disappear paintbrush, white paint and pink puff ball for nose, though pink marker/highlighter on cotton ball could work. You can always use googly eyes to, but we didn't want to on this project.

Pencil a rough pointed oval shape on one paper plate.

Cut. This is where I tried to smooth it out, as you saw my lines weren't to pretty. Pieces don't have to be perfect or even just roughly similar. These will be your ears. 

Don't throw out the middle piece if you are like us an chose to paint the tops of your brads. The middle piece works a as a good palette for your drop of white paint. I just let her old the brads by he base and paint the top with as much white as she wanted. We let them dry by laying them on the same piece of paper plate.

Let your kid go crazy with the pink on the flat part of the paper plate you had cut.

Decide where you will be attaching ears to top of plate, mark it or go ahead an pierce it. I just used one end of my scissors. I didn't want my hole punch to create a gap to big for the brad. You want the brad to just slip through. Pierce the paper plates very carefully however you chose to do this. Now for the ears, you want the bumpy edges to serve for the fluffy area and the flat to be the pink inside a bunny's ear.  Arrange plate pieces so it's rough next to rough with flat pointing out. Poke holes at base, the pointed part.

Place the base of ears behind the top of bunny's head. Try to line up your holes. Slide in your brads. Open and spread brad to secure position.

Now the fun really begins. Get out that glue and pink ball of whatever you chose. Glue it on. TIP- Let your child glue on the nose before you attempt to draw the face, it makes it easier.

I did the mouth teeth part. Just think lower case w (rounded version) with 2 rectangles coming out. I also showed her how I do the whiskers by counting "1, 2, 3" as I started my point then worked the marker outward on our scrap paper. She then went nose outward and counted as she went. Next she drew her eyes  and you can have a shape conversation there.

This is up to you and your kid, either glue 1 cotton ball at a time or do what we did and just squirt glue all along the bumpy edge of the plate, but not over the brads. Give yourself a tiny gap around the brads so they can spin as bunny's ear moves. Once our glue was down she picked whatever and however many cotton balls as she liked. Sometimes she felt like ripping, but as you can most were big solid cotton balls.

Let dry & "TA-DA, DONE!"

Your kid will have lots of fun changing the bunny ears. It's also kind of cute that each place of the ear changes the personality on your child's bunny.

Happy Easter Everyone!

Guest Blog: Orca Party Invites

What you need: 

• Pencil  for Orca template 
• Black fuzzy paper/card stock
• White card stock
• Turquoise/Blue(Sea Colored) card stock
• Scissors
• Clear drying glue
• Googly eyes
• Clear/Mail envelopes
• Blank Labels

Steps:
1. I traced a picture of a Orca whale onto the back side of  black "fuzzy paper" but you can use regular black card stock. Your choice.

2. Cut out all your black Orca whale patterns.
3. Repeat step 1-2 with the white parts of the whale.

4. Paste the white parts onto the black Orca cutout.
5. I also cut out an extra black fin to lay over the white stomach part to make it look better :)
6. Added a googly eye!!!
7. Out of turquoise card stock I made a little envelope. Folded the paper in half and glued the sides with tacky glue or any glue that dries clear. I then scalloped the top (the part not glued) to look like waves.
                7.5 I bought blank label makers and made a simple sea creature layout with a fun invitation saying and I added it to the back part of the turquoise/blue wave envelope.
8. I inserted the envelope and orca inside the envelope to a clear favor baggie. I then just used a glue dot to close the bag and delivered them by hand. I am unsure if you could mail these out. If not, forget the clear envelope and insert into regular envelope and take it to your nearest post office for mailing prices.

This was for my niece's 3rd birthday, right after she went to Sea World, and was in love with Shamu. We also attempted an Orca Piñata but that is another story....a very funny one...it was an epic fail but we had fun breaking it anyway!!!

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St. Patrick's Day Ideas

Fun art project time! We chose a less messy route, but if we had time would had liked to let my daughter, Riley do a finger paint rainbow then add our clover in, but it's up to you.

Doing it our way, all you need is: Scissors, Glue (stick), Green & White Papers of choice, Crayons, & Markers. OPTIONAL: You can skip the crayons & markers if you chose to paint your rainbow. In addition, you can also let your little one glue cotton balls at each end of the rainbow to make clouds.

First layer of crayon rainbow, clouds, sky, ground & dirt. 

I choose to make the leaves while Riley made her drawing. First I folded 1 sheet of green construction paper into quarters. Then cut along my folds. Each of the 4 little green sections I then folded in half again. 

Then cut like a rough over sized heart shape. You should end up with 4 hearts-leaves.

If your rainbow is all done, be it crayon or paint time to glue the leaves. Time to glue stick each leaf into place under the rainbow. It's fun for the kids kind of like a puzzle. Have all the points of the leaves touch, bottom of hearts. 

If you went the crayon route like us, you may want to then have the fun effect of markers on top of crayon. It just added a little more to it.

She decided this was gonna be for her Grammy & Nana, so we added a cute saying about Luck under the rainbow, then at base her name and date. All done.

So here's one key thing to remember while working on this with your little one. 3 leaves means shamrock. 4 leaves means 4 leaf clover. We made enough leaves that Riley could do either, and she choose the final result to be a "Lucky 4 leaf Clover."

*This is a Shamrock*

For the kid that is all about coloring I highly recommend printing out some of these Celtic Knot Patterns from Marcel's Kid Crafts, best part is they are free.

If you are looking for more books to help your child understand what or why here in the States we have Saint Patrick's Day Apples 4 the Teacher has a great list. I personally think Shamrocks, Harps, and Shillelaghs: The Story of the St. Patrick's Day Symbols by Edna Barth is a good one for school age children. 

Here's a few little counting rhymes/songs that we always loved: 

(If you feel extra crafty, time to make some puppets! Do your best at gluing leprechauns and shamrocks to popsicle/tongue depressor sticks.)

Five Green Shamrocks

One green shamrock, in the morning dew,

Another one sprouted,

and then there were two.

Two green shamrocks, growing beneath a tree;

Another one sprouted,

and then there were three.

Three green shamrocks, by the cottage door;

Another one sprouted,

and then there were four.

Four green shamrocks, near a beehive

Another one sprouted,

and then there were five.

Five little shamrocks, bright and emerald green,

Think of all the luck

these shamrocks will bring.

Five Little Leprechauns by Leanne Guenther (My personal favorite)

Five little leprechauns on St. Patrick’s Day

The first one said, “I’d like to play!”

The second one stood beside a rainbow.

The third one waved and said, “Hello!”

The fourth one said, “Good luck to the bold.”

The fifth one said, “Just don’t touch my gold!”

Plink, plink went the harp – they all danced around,

Then five leprechauns ran off with a bound.

*Tutu from: Tutus for Chichis*

Happy Saint Patrick's Day, Irish or not :)

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