I had the kids go on a “hunt for hearts” this afternoon, and while my original plan was for them to take pictures of each heart they found with my point & shoot, we quickly learned the batteries were DOA, so I was immediately nominated as the official heart-picture-taker-er.  Or something like that.  Let me just say, this was a blast, something my 3 older kids all loved and all participated, without a single argument.  (that’s huge these days!).  The kids ran all over the house hunting for hearts, and as soon as they found one, they’d call me in to capture their find.  They found over 2o different hearts in our house, none of which included the ones we made.  Just hearts, hanging out, waiting to be found and photographed.  After the hunt was called to a conclusion, we uploaded all of the pics into Picasa and made a collage of all of our hearts.  And since I’m impatient, I wanted to share our collage right away, instead of waiting to have it printed out and framed…

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Remember MadLibs?!  They were one of my favs from growing up.  We would do them on the bus ride home from school each afternoon, at sleepovers, during recess, etc.  I totally thought they were hilarious, and guess what?  They still are!  I bought my nephew some of the books for his birthday, but recently we came across MadLibs online.  How very 21st century, right?

Visit Education Place here for a super fun (& educational, woot! woo!) game to play.  It’s geared at 3rd grade and up, but let’s face it, the hilarity of the stories is entertaining for all ages!  (They call them Wacky Web Tales, but we all know it’s MadLibs for the 21st century kid)

Here’s one of our examples…

Some Days Are the Worst

What a day this was! This morning before school, my dog broke, and I had to fly all the way to school. Then the teacher announced that we would be having a test next week on 18units of our textbook.

When I was running to the cafeteria, I stepped in fluffy flowers. I couldn’t get thepuddles off my shoes! I opened my lunch sack, and then I realized that I had grabbed my leftover lunch from last week. The only things I had to eat were stale eggs and dry grapes. Luckily, Lucy had some extra stickers, so I didn’t starve!

That afternoon we had gym class. The gym teacher told us we would be digging today, but I’d left my jeans at home. So I had to jump instead.

On the way home from school, I dropped my bag, and all of my jelly beans fell on the ground. At least we had my favorite books for dinner!

It’s been a long day. I hope tomorrow is better. I’m going to put on my special hatstomorrow morning, just in case!

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Good old MadLib’n fun!  I love it!

Enjoy!

Cute, aren’t they? I’m typing this post as ours are printing out right now. They print in color so you cut, fold and glue them together.  Get them here, on craftjr.com.

Check out these Santa’s from Divine Dinner Party:

I hope I remember to search my own blog archives next year so I can remember to do those.

My Pretty Purse has adorable SNOWMEN.  So smart.  You could even do these in January or February.

All the pages start the same:

I went on a Christmas walk, and what did I see?

After the kids color the pictures, we’ll slip them in protective sleeves and in a little binder to help them last a bit longer.

An alternative would be to print the pictures out on cardstock, and then do the activity on a magnetic board like this activity we did this summer.

You could also use these pages to do a Christmas Five Senses book.

I feel the warm candle.

I taste a sweet candle.

I hear the jingle bells.

I see the bright lights.

Etc.

I got most of the pictures on this site – a goldmine for outlined pictures to use for lots of projects.

This was so fun!  We saw the idea and directions on The Crafty Crow and put it on our December Must Do list.

You put 3 T borax in a jar for EACH cup of water that it takes to mostly fill up the jar.  Stir and stir and STIR and STIR (it took awhile) until the borax is dissolved. 

Make any type of shape with your chenille pipe cleaners.

We then used fishing line to tie the pipe cleaners onto a plastic spoon and have each one swim in its own jar of borax mixture overnight in a cool place.  (See the Crafty Crow link above for detailed how – to pictures.)

We forgot our crystals and they sat for almost 72 hours when we remembered them, which is why I think we have “snowy crystals” on two of our creations.

The one thing to know if you decide to do these (and you should!) is that it will take a LOT of stirring for the borax to dissolve.

They come out looking really neat with crystals attached to the pipe cleaners.

This would also be really fun to do later in the winter, when it’s still icy out, and hang the ornaments in the window attached to suction cups.

The original idea for these cookies came from Family Fun – but I don’t remember them dipping the cookies in chocolate.

We started out by adding a bit of Peanut Butter to the inside of a nutter butter cookie so there is room to fit a popsicle stick inside.  Then we dipped the cookie on a stick in melted chocolate chips, which turned out to be a whole lot harder than it sounds – the sticks kept falling out and mom and dad had to take over.

We put the chocolate covered cookies on foil and let the kids decorate, then stuck them in the fridge to harden up a bit. While taking the reindeer off the foil we had some antler malfunctions, as you can see above.

The original idea also called for a dot of white frosting topped with mini chocolate chips for eyes, but we just used what we had.

3 foam hearts

2 googly eyes

1 poof-ball nose

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We love Bingo dobbers at our house, and I’m a sucker when finding new colors and variations.  Usually we just do “free art” with them, but for Christmas I needed something simple to do… ah yes, a Christmas tree!

We got out our green dobber for the tree, let dry, then used our yellow and red dobbers and used our fingers to make the “star” and “decorations.”

Sometimes simple is best, don’t you think?!

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ps. sorry about the gross yellowing discolored mat.  white mats are only white until you put them over a piece of white paper!

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I love the concentration game – print out 2 on cardstock!

This page is cute to write letters to Santa (there are other stationary pages, too).

And that page is great for “what comes next” practice with patterns.