Week Four - Beach - Craft time

This weather has me inspired to offer a few more easy options for indoor fun.

Today's crafts include making a boat (it floats!), a sun catcher (I would love to catch ANY sun after all of these days of rain), and sand dollars.

All of these crafts involve items you see at the beach. While you are making these crafts, ask your child to tell you what they see at the beach. What items did they forget? What things do you only see at the beach? Work on letter sounds, and see if you can come up with one word for each letter for things at the beach (example: animals, beach ball, crab, etc.) Here is a list of some beach words to give you some ideas (good luck with q).

Make your own sand dollar. The link takes you to Disney FamilyFun where they have very detailed options that involve glueing to circles together and using clothespins so they dry well - which is great but a little to much for my four year old. I suggest you use two white paper plates (the cheap kind), a stapler, a q-tip, glue and barley (if you don't have barley on hand [what's wrong with you??!!] use tan construction paper and tear it into little pieces and ball them up).

First, tear the tan (or brown) construction paper into little pieces and make them into little balls (this does not have to be perfect - just give them the 3D look). This was a highlight for Little Man - he was a paper tearing champion. We had a lot of fun with jet this step (in fact the rest was really for me). You can skip that first step if you were able to put your hands on some barley (go you!). Next, take the back of one of your paper plates and using the q-tip draw a star that reach almost the the end of the plate in glue (these look best if they are thin stars). Put the balled construction paper (or barley) onto the glue - let dry. Once it is dry staple the other paper plate to the back of the first, back side out to give the 3D feel (you can skip this step). If you are really a perfectionist cover staples with white out or white paint. Tah Dah! Sand dollar.

Create a sun catcher. You will need heavy paper or card stock, a push pin, yarn or thread (something to hang it - tape work too), something to put underneath the sun when using the push pin, and crayons or paint if you want to decorate after you are done. Cut out a sun shape (template for those of us who are not born artists), if you did not use printed paper - decorate it with crayons, stickers, paint, etc, let your child create a decoration with the push pin by placing it on cardboard and pushing it through the paper. I was nervous about this but Little Man loved getting to use the "big boy" tool. Attach thread and hang by a window (I taped it to our sliding glass door). Enjoy!

Make a paper boat that really floats - perfect for the beach! Use the link for step by step directions with pictures. This is a little complicated for preschool hands but Little Man was good at following me step-by-step. The look on his face when a boat he made launched was priceless. I would suggest if you are going to bring the boat to the beach that you waterproof the bottom of the boat with clear plastic tape.

Finally, in case you are stuck in the house like I am here is a free online game the encourages kids to help pick up the beach. It is a great opportunity to talk to your child about keeping our world clean and doing our part to make sure the places we love are kept for the next kids that want to enjoy them.