Squirt Squirt Ocean Art!

If there's anything in the world that will brighten up a preschooler's day.... it's water play.  Water is seriously magical.  Give a kid a bucket of water, a pool, a water gun, or a hose...  and bam!  Laughter and good times are bound to be in your future!

Today 4 other creative preschool bloggers and I are sharing some really easy and engaging water activities.  You can find the entire list at the bottom of this post!

In our home, we've really loved making Ocean Crafts and rainy day process art. So I thought it would be fun to combine the two with this fun Ocean Process Art Activity!  We got a chance to use a whole bunch of art materials (including water guns) to create some ocean-inspired artwork.

Squirt, Squirt Ocean Process Art!

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Easy Spin Art With Kids (No machine required!)

Looking for an art activity that's sure to entertain kids of all ages?  Then salad spinner spin art is just the activity for you!  My husband, son, and I spent hours having fun making some colorful psychedelic artwork!

Easy Salad Spinner Spin Art!

How to Make Tissue Paper flowers

Are you looking to create gorgeous, realistic tissue paper flowers with the kids?  Then this is the tutorial for you!  These flowers are beautiful and super easy to make.  Just grab a bunch of tissue paper, pipe cleaners, and scissors and you're all set to make a colorful bouquet for someone special!

How to Make Tissue Paper Flowers

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Slinky Rainbow Garland

Are you looking for an easy, fun, and colorful kids craft?  Well, then today's slinky rainbow garland is just up your alley.  I've been digging rainbow crafts lately.  They're just so fun and happy! And these rainbow garlands are totally rocking my world.  I was inspired by Minieco's folded rainbow paper garlands and decided to make some of my own!  Chuck loves playing them like an accordion and watching them wiggle around. (Ok, I kinda do too. They're mesmerizing!)

Slinky Rainbow Paper Garland

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How to Make Colorful Kirigami Flowers

Spring is here! La la la! Although our current grey skies don't exactly scream "warm, sunny, bursting-with-new-life weather," today's kirigami flower craft certainly does!

How to Fold and Cut Kirigami Flowers

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Now, I had a lot of trouble naming this craft.  These flowers kinda felt like origami... and yet they weren't quite origami because I used scissors to make the designs too.  Luckily Mr. Google taught me the term kirigami.  It's a Japanese term that basically describes origami that also involves paper cutting too.  Bingo!  So cool right?

By the way, if you love these flowers, you'll also love these

• AWESOME paper stars  
• Lego Snowflakes! 

Glue Suncatchers

Awhile back I made this lovely apple faux stained glass using black glue as the "lead" and tinted clear glue (affiliate link) to paint colorful panels.  Ever since making that craft, I kept wondering if there was a way to adapt it for preschoolers.  So I came up with this super easy kids glue sun catcher activity.   It takes only 2 ingredients to make the "paint" and you probably already have all the materials on hand!

Super Easy Glue Sun catcher Art with Kids  

Egg Carton Flower Pins

I love seeing kids' homemade gifts.  Don't you?  There's something beautiful about receiving a gift made by tiny hands.  Today several kid-craft loving bloggers and I took on an egg carton craft challenge.  We came up with different ways to craft with  egg cartons.  Since Mother's day is coming up next month, I thought it would be great to make some egg carton flower pins!  Like our styrofoam mosaic tile picture frames, this craft turns "junk" into lovely gifted treasures.

Egg Carton Flower Pins

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Tape Resist Ant Art!

Are you going buggy over spring?  Well, then today the preschool collaborators and I have 5 preschool bug activities that you'll absolutely love.  We've been digging ants lately, so I thought it would be fun to combine art and science to make some tape resist ant art!  

(And if you're looking for even more bug crafts, check out these egg carton bugs and my
fluttering butterfly craft!)

Tape Resist Ant Art!

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Kid Science: Studying Bird Beaks

Now that it's spring, I feel a severe kick in the bum to start doing more nature and science themed activities with Chuck.   There's something really cool about seeing blossoms, birds, bees, and bugs (whoa- bs!) all around.  We recently visited our nearby natural history museum and Chuck spent quite a bit of time playing with a bird beak activity.  It was so simple and fun that I had to share it here!

Kid Science:  Studying Bird Beaks with Kids

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How to make Woven Easter Baskets

Easter is tomorrow! And if you're looking for a super easy and cute kids Easter craft.... this is it!  Check out these woven Easter Baskets! 

How to make Woven Easter Baskets

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A friend left her strawberry baskets at our place the other day.  I kept meaning to return them to her, but never got a chance.  Oops.  So they just kept staring at me this past week... whispering, "Craft with me, craft with me."  Well, of course I had to obey their siren calls.

With all their open holes, I knew they would be perfect to practice weaving on!

(By the way- we've done so many weaving crafts over here that this was a nice one to add to the collection:

• Woven Paint Chip Easter Eggs
• Yarn Cup Weaving
• Spring Flower Weaving) 

Painted Tin Can Succulent Pots

Spring has sprung!  Are you enjoying all the lovely blooms popping up around your neighborhood? In honor of Spring, today's Creative Preschool theme is.... plants!  So I wanted to share how we painted and repotted these tin can succulents.

Because this is part of the Preschool Collaborators Series, there are links at the bottom of the post to 4 other bloggers' great ideas for teaching preschoolers about flowers and plants!  (So scroll down to the bottom of the post to check those out!)

How to Repot Succulents in Painted Tin Cans 

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Woven Paint Chip Easter Egg Banner

Last Friday we held an early Easter get-together at our place.  I wanted to "spring-ify" our place up, but didn't want to spend a fortune to do it.  So during a trip to our local hardware store, I picked up a couple  oh let's be honest, A WHOLE LOT of paint chips.  (I can't help it! The colors... the colors!!!)  And then I wove myself a colorful Easter garland.  :)

Woven Easter Egg Banner

I love how the eggs are just so colorful and modern looking!

So if you want to make this simple and FREE Easter decor, visit DIY Candy for my woven Easter Egg Garland tutorial today!  Plus, you can always find other easy Easter crafts on the blog too! 

Let's keep in Contact!

Check out other fun and easy ideas on my Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter accounts!  (Or subscribe to my email mailing list by filling out the pink bar at the top of your screen.)

Happy creating, friends!

Paper Bag Bunny Pinata

Last weekend we attended a friend's Easter party.  It was so fun!  The kids dyed eggs, played with play dough, went on an egg hunt, and broke open a paper bag bunny pinata.   What?  Yup.  I know, Easter isn't usually associated with pinatas, but I made this super quick and easy pinata from a paper bag to add a bit more fun for the little guys.

Paper Bag Bunny Pinata

To see how I made this cute guy (and the goodies we fit inside), visit MollyMoo for bunny pinata directions.  And if you're looking for more holiday crafts, definitely check out my other Easter crafts (like these fun confetti eggs.)

Let's keep in Contact!

You can always find  fun ideas on my Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter accounts!  (Or subscribe to my email mailing list by filling out the pink bar at the top of your screen.)

Happy creating, friends!

Rock Tic-Tac-Toe Game

Ah, oil pastels.  After seeing that they could be used to decorate pumpkins, I thought they would be perfect for creating a cute and colorful rock tic-tac-toe game.

Rock Tic-Tac-Toe Game

St. Patrick's Day Clover Sun Catchers

Looking for an easy St. Patrick's Day craft? Well, today's your lucky day.  Here's a simple St. Patrick's Day Clove Craft to make with young children!

St. Patrick's Day Clover Sun Catcher Craft

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Preschool Weather Science: How can we stay dry?

I'm always looking for really easy ways to help Chuck learn science and math concepts.   We've been fighting colds these past two weeks, so activities that are easy to throw together and take little time to prep have been on the top of my list.  That's probably why I really appreciate good ebooks like STEAM: Preschool Activities for STEM Enrichment  (affiliate link). It's co-authored by one of my blogging buddies, Jamie from Handmade Kids Art and contains over 30+ simple and fun ways you can teach young children about science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics!

I recently received a free copy to review and ear-marked several ideas that I'd like to try out with Chuck.  Inspired by one activity in the book, here's a fun Preschool Science activity that we did to look at how we stay dry during the rain.

Easy Preschool Science:  How can we stay dry during the rain?

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Super Easy Cardboard Biplanes

The plane obsession continues over here!  Just when you think we're done with transportation crafts... oh no... we've got another one up our sleeve.

Awhile back Chuck and I made this toilet roll biplane.  But sadly, that plane broke.  Chuck still loves biplanes, so I came up with this super easy practically unbreakable cardboard biplane craft for him to make and then fly.

Super Easy Cardboard Biplane Craft

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Fluttering Butterfly Craft!

Hello friends!  Today I wanted to share this really neat fluttering butterfly craft that I recently did with Chuck.  We cut out, painted, and folded butterflies that flutter when you move them!  (We also made some lovely butterfly notebooks too!)  The whole process entertained Chuck for quite awhile, so I thought other kids might like it too!

                                             Fluttering Butterfly Craft

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I know it's winter, and most people are doing winter crafts with their kids, but honestly, I just haven't had the heart to do so.  Our weather is right now in the 60s which is totally bizarre to me.  I'm used to cold, wet, or snowy winters.... not cool, sunny ones.  It's very weird ... but I'm thankful for the sun and warmth!

This butterfly craft was inspired by our local butterfly grove.  Nearby our home is a plot of land where monarch butterflies migrate to during the winter.   How neat is that?  Last week we hiked up to the butterfly grove and saw thousands of butterflies, clumped together in tree branches.  It was a pretty amazing sight.  (And I WISH I could have taken photos of them, but they were just too high up to get a decent shot.)  One of the other children at the park found a dead butterfly on the ground and showed everyone.  Chuck really wanted to find one of his own, but we never did.  So I came up with this craft so that he could have his very own fluttering butterfly.

Looking for kids' butterfly books?

This would definitely be a great craft to go along with any of these great butterfly books!

• Hungry Catterpillar
• My Oh My- A butterfly
• Butterfly and Moth 
• Gideon's Dream 
• From Caterpillar to Butterfly  

Kid Science: Let's Study Seeds

Are you looking for ways to incorporate science into your child's daily life?   Lately Chuck's been really enjoying the television show Sid the Science Kid.  I typically work beside him while he watches tv, but dang it, that show hooks me in EVERY TIME.  They make science so accessible for little kids (and adults too, apparently.)  Plus, I love how they encourage children to be curious, observe, and explore their world. Thanks to Sid, I'm now trying to do some really easy science activities at home with Chuck too.  In fact, here's one fun activity that we recently did together- we studied seeds!

Kid STEM Activity:  Seed Study!

Rainy Day Process Art

We got rain!  We got rain!  Whoopie!  This was a pretty big deal here in SoCal because we've been in the middle of a drought for a looooong time. Since I love trying easy art projects with Chuck, we took advantage of the rain and collaborated with Mother Nature to create some beautiful rainy day process art.

Let's Make Rainy Day Process Art!

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This was a really fun and easy art project.  I really enjoyed it because we didn't concern ourselves so much with the final product.  Instead, we just really enjoyed making art together and then watching Mother Nature add her bit too.

Here's how we made our rainy day process art!