Letter X Crafts

We take a long time in doing our letter crafts these days because we are now juggling so many different learning stages and subjects between the 3 gals who are old enough for school and crafting.  But we completed a few letter X projects to add to our alphabet books and they were really fun.  

1. X is for Xylophone

 

Simple set up.  All you need is two long black construction paper rectangles and shorter different colored construction paper rectangles for the xylophone keys.  Two more smaller black rectangles for the mallets (that form your "x") and two colored circles for the tops of each mallet.  And glue.  

For extra fun and learning, You can cut the strips all different lengths and have your kiddo put them in order from smallest to biggest.

Finished products

2. X is for X-ray

 

All you need for this craft are a few simple items: white/gray crayon, black construction paper, glue, and Q-tips.  

First, trace your child's hand and arm with the crayon.  Let them color with the crayon all around the hand print if they'd like.  Then use your Q-tips as the "bones" and glue them onto the hand x-ray.  

 

Finished products!

And finally time to move on to letter Y!

St. Patrick's Day + St. Joseph's Feast 2015

 Different years, we do different things for St. Patrick's Day.  Some things (like the basic components of the dinner meal) we keep mostly the same, but other things (like kid crafts etc.) we do differently from year to year.

One year we made shamrock shaped cinnamon rolls, fruit loop rainbows, and learned about the Holy Trinity using candles.

Another year, we had Lucky Charm parfaits, made a mosaic shamrock Irish flag, and a Trinity shamrock

Some years, we have done a mash-up of the above posts or I've pulled random ideas from Pinterest for a craft.  When my oldest was little I made orange and green finger paints for St. Patrick's Day.

This year, my friend and I decided to plan a little party playdate at the park for St. Patrick's Day.  We created this Pinterest board with fun ideas and chose a few each to make and bring for our St. Paddy's Day picnic.  And then we invited some other friends to join the festivities.

It's hard to tell from the pictures, but my friend made the White Chocolate-Mint Oreo Bark and the Spinach Dip Tortilla Chip boats and provided the bright green plates and napkins (plus the cauliflower for our Irish flag veggies).  

I volunteered to make the fruit rainbow with marshmallow clouds and pot'o'gold Rollos and the rest of the veggie Irish flag tray, plus several other green vegatable options (cucumber, green pepper, and celery).  

And because I can't live without fun crafts, I brought stuff for the kiddos to make cute Mosaic Shamrocks.  

Everything was delicious and the crafts were totally cute, so head over to that Pinterest board and pin some stuff for next year! Thanks, Jacinta, for all your work to bring this together!

This year, I thought I'd also share more of the recipes from our traditional dinner meal.  My parents never did corned beef and cabbage for St. Patrick's Day, but my grandma always made it (my grandpa loved it!), so when we lived up near them the 2nd year of our marriage, we began the tradition through them.  Some years, we've spent with my grandmother (my grandpa passed away on St. Patrick's Day 5 years ago) and she'll make the corned beer and cabbage and potatoes and carrots, and I'd make this Pistachio Mallow Salad  and this amazingly easy Irish Soda Bread .  Both recipes are great and have always remained part of our St. Paddy's Day dinner meal even when we aren't at Grandma's and I have to make the corned beef and cabbage on my own.

I have used this Crock Pot Corned Beef and Cabbage recipe before and it's pretty darn good and very moist.  Unfortunately, though our family has continued to get larger, my crock pot has not.  So I went looking for a recipe to cook the corned beef and cabbage in the oven.  I found this delicious-looking one cooked with oranges, celery, and onion (for flavor, not for eating).

Sadly, I was distracted because my oldest daughter came home from the park complaining that her tummy hurt, so I was late getting dinner on, and I was rushing (never a good idea).  In my haste, I did not read the directions carefully and forgot to add the water in with the meat.  I realized several hours into the cooking and added water, but the end result was corned beef that (as my husband put it) had great flavor, but was dry. Needless to say, I was bummed.  I love a moist, falling-apart corned beef and cabbage and I totally botched it.  Next year, it's my hope to try this recipe again because the flavor was delicious.  I also hope to have purchased a bigger crock pot for our bigger family and adapt the recipe to make in in the slow-cooker.  Easy and keeps the house cool.  I will say that the cabbage with golden delicious apples was delicious and turned out perfectly.  Mmmmm. 

 These Oven Roasted Potatoes were delicious.  I didn't have Onion Soup Mix on hand, so I used this recipe to make my own.  And we like our meal to include carrots too, so I just made a little extra and threw in carrots with the potatoes.  Instead of cooking them for 450 degrees for 40 minutes, I threw them into the roasting pan next to the foil with the corned beef at 310 degrees for about an hour and 20 minutes or so.  They were perfect.  Saving that for next year too, and maybe adapting that to cook them in my current smaller crock pot.  :)

I made the Pistachio Mallow Salad (recipe in link above or here), but skipped our usual Irish Soda Bread.  Instead, because on St. Joseph's Day (tomorrow) it's traditional to have a variety of fun breads, we'll have it then.  Instead, to finish off our St. Patrick's Day meal this year, I made another of the Fruit Rainbows which was yummy and made the table look especially festive.  

Looking for some fun ideas for St. Joseph's Feast day?   Just click on the link.

This year, I found "Song of the Swallows" by Leo Politi which tells a story of the San Juan Capistrano Mission (which incidentally is quite near) and the swallows that arrive on St. Joseph's Feast each year.  I'm not brave enough to head down there with 4 littles this year, but reading the book will be fun.  We visited the San Juan Capistrano Mission back in January and it was beautiful.  

image found on kathleendeady.com

        

Happy Feasts, friends!

Saint Patrick, pray for us!

Saint Joseph, pray for us!

Prayer Journaling for Kids

I mentioned in a previous post about how I enjoy prayer journaling. My daughter recently finding my journal and adding her own bit, gave me an idea that perhaps she would like to begin a prayer journal as well.

So here I am to share about our ideas for starting a prayer journal for young children.  My daughter is 5, so though she is just starting to read and write, she is limited in the number of words she knows off the top of her head.  Currently, her prayer journal is mostly pictures that she draws, but we have found ways to add other elements that she can use more and more as she grows and becomes more familiar with language.  And she loves it.

To start off, I grabbed a cheap spiral notebook for her to use.  She decorated the front with stickers and her name.

Yes, all we have in the way of stickers at the moment is Minnie, Hello Kitty, and Doc McStuffins...

I finally found a use for the holy cards, bookmarks, etc that come in the mail from all the lovely Catholic organizations asking for money.  I save them for Kayla to put in her prayer journal now.  

She loves the pictures that remind her of holy saints and Jesus, and sometimes she uses them to look at and draw her own version.  Some of them have little prayers on them as well, which she glues in and she'll bring me the journal at various points in the day to pray some of them.  

The next tool I made to aid her in prayer journaling is a Word Book. 

Ta-da!

Inside I have a section for each letter of the alphabet and I wrote a bunch of sight words as well as the names of some of her favorite saints and words that often relate to prayer and the Bible (i.e. grace, pray, sing, love, light etc...)

She is pretty good at being able to sound out a lot of words, but obviously the Word Book still requires some assistance from me at this point.  If she wants to write "Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord..." she can pretty much always find the right letter for each word, but sometimes needs some assistance finding the word under that letter category.   Eventually this book will give her the ability to prayer journal pretty much entirely on her own and add new words as she grows and learns more and more.  And of course, her sisters can use it as well when the time comes.  

And just for fun, here are some examples of a few pages from her prayer journal.  I love that she loves praying decades of the rosary with us as a family, saying prayers at bedtime together, learning our new family consecration, singing her own little songs to Jesus, and memorizing scriptures, but I am thrilled to see how prayer journaling has given her a whole new way to pray and relate to Jesus on a more personal, individual level that is unique to her.  

 

On the left is a picture she drew of Jesus and the right is part of a scripture verse that she memorized and loves.

And this one is Mary

I love this page where she wrote a bunch of prayers to some of our favorite saints asking them to pray for our family.  

Little hearts are so beautiful and pure.  I hope and pray that she always stays this close to Jesus. 

Letter U crafts

We finished up some letter U projects to add to our alphabet books.  Considering how slowly we have moved through the last few letters, this letter seemed like we zoomed right though it!  I got inspiration mostly straight from Pinterest for all these projects.

1. Umbrella

That is her fake smile for a camera face.

 Yep, it's as easy as it looks.  You could use different shapes on the umbrella to work on shapes, or you use one or two shapes and work on simple patterns.  Make them varied colors AND shapes, and you can work on both .  We just made it simple and I let them pick out colors and shapes they liked and do whatever they wanted.  :)

2. UP

(the craft is inspired by the UP movie with the balloons taking the house up and onward to Paradise Falls)

Fun for counting and colors.  

We just drew a house and then cut out different colored circles from construction paper and glued them on for the balloons.  They loved this one.  Probably because we dressed up with an UP theme as a family for Halloween this year.  

3. Underground

Easy, peasy.  It's just some construction paper for dirt and add stickers!

We just learned about trees and roots, so I was happy to see that my 5 year old was listening and put the tree roots purposely under the ground a bit.  My 3 year old just loved putting the bugs and seeds in the "dirt" and the butterflies in the sky on hers.  Fun, fun, fun! 

 I saw a cute underwater picture that was similar except it's water obviously and you put fish stickers.  

U have a happy day crafting now!  ;)

Letter "T" projects

Just a few projects for letter "T" to add to our ABC book....

1.  Trees

Easy peasy: all you need is a penciled basic outline of a tree, paint, and Q-tips and you can make a sweet tree for letter T!  My 5 year old made a plum tree, while the 3 year old and 2 year old made apple trees. 

2. Turtle

Example 1: 

This was done by my 3 year old.  We focused on naming colors and shapes while she glued them on in any manner she chose.  Great for fine motor skills (gluing on the little pieces) and practicing colors and shapes. 

Example 2:

 This is my 5 year old's. We are homeschooling her for Kindergarten and are currently working on patterns.  Each row she made up a new pattern to practice and she cut out the turtle body and head to practice scissor skills.  She knows her colors and shapes, but of course, you can always review those too, because why not?

3. Tulips

Cover a piece of paper in paint of all colors (be sure there is a good amount of green for stems!) Once the paint is dry, you can cut the green section into long, skinny rectangles for tulip stems and the other colors into tulips.  I cut out the basic tulips and my 5 year old cut the tops zig zag to practice her scissor skills.  The 2 year old merely painted, the 3 year old painted and glued on the tulips and stems (hers is the picture at the top) and my 5 year old painted, cut some parts, and glues hers and the 2 year olds.  Fun project, pretty result.  We made some of the tulips into little cards to send to people since we had extra tulips.  :)

4. Trains

 

You need 3 rectangles (1 big, 1 medium, 1 smaller), 2 small triangles, a sqaure, and 4 circles. 

5 year old: I drew outlines of the shapes, and she did the cutting herself and glued the train on and drew all the train tracks (on both pictures actually because she got so excited)

3 year old: I cut out the shapes, and we worked on shape recognition and following directions as I verbally directed her to glue to the pieces on the paper.  I did need to show her a few times what I meant, but we worked using phrases like "place the circle next to the other circle" or "place the little rectangle on top of the medium rectangle".  

Lots of fun with letter T!

Letter Q projects

1. Queen of heaven pictures

The easiest thing to do if you have a printer at home is find free printables of Mama Mary.  In the Bible it talks about "a woman clothed with the sun, with a crown of twelve stars" so we made Mary a crown of twelve stars using glitter glue. If you prefer, you could make her a crown of flowers or one with jewels.

     

2. Queen crowns

We made simple crowns with paper.  Color and add stickers/glitter before you attach the two ends together. 

     

 

3. Paper Quilts

Just cut out squares using different patterned and colored paper and let the kids make a patchwork, paper quilt.  You could work on patterns if you wanted to and use triangles instead of squares for more detail, but I just let them make their own design for our alphabet book project.

4. Quail Mosaic picture

I made a simple outline of a quail and cut it into a few pieces.  You could just leave it as one if you prefer.  The girls used the left over green scraps from our St. Patrick's Day Shamrock mosaic to make some grass for our quails to walk on.  Then they glued on the quail and added brown paper and felt (you could just do paper) to make it look like the picture of the California quail I showed them. 

 

 

     

   

Have some fun with letter Q!