The Chocolate Muffin Tree

Styrofoam Rainbow Prints

2012-02-27T03:00:00.000-08:00

We've been busy creating with rainbows lately! C loves drawing rainbows and knows the color order of them well too. Over this past week we decided to create Styrofoam Rainbow Prints. Pretty Fun and colorful! Keep reading to find out how we made them.

To create Styrofoam Rainbow Prints you'll need:

styrofoam trays

a dull pencil

tempera or acrylic paint in rainbow colors

paint brushes

paper

First, cut the edges of your styrofoam tray off to form a flat piece of foam. Then, you can either pre-plan your drawing and transfer to the foam or draw directly on the styrofoam with a dull pencil. Press into the foam with the pencil to make an impression, but not so hard that you create a hole in the foam! My daughter created these drawings pretty quickly....your child may spend more time. (Remember words will be backwards.)

Then, I put out red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet tempera paint with a brush for each color. You could use acrylic paint too. C then brushed a strip of each rainbow color across her foam drawing.
Try to use a thinner layer of paint or the print will not come out very well.

Here is how the paint should look. C's first print did not come out because she had too much paint, but the great thing about printmaking is that you can create multiple pictures if you mess up!

After you have the paint on the styrofoam tray, take a piece of paper and put it over the painted tray. Then take your hands and rub over the paper with some pressure so the paint will transfer to create a print.

As you can see we created many many styrofoam Rainbow Prints! This is the beauty of printmaking! it is very addicting! I think they are just LOVELY!

What Rainbow projects have you been working on with children?

Check out our Shamrock Apple Prints and Glue Prints for some more Printmaking Fun!

Playing and Building With Plastic Cups

2012-02-23T05:34:00.000-08:00

There is no need to buy expensive toys....my daughter finds joy in the simplest things.... plastic cups ! We began building with plastic cups about 2 years ago and it has always been a huge hit! Even friends that come over have played with these cups. I have found them being built with, colored on, jumped over, filled with water, used as cones for riding around, and more! These cups have probably gotten more use than any other disposable cup! Here are some cup sculptures filling our whole living room!

More building with cups... you can see we have a great number of cups to play with....maybe that is the secret to why they are played with?

Then one day when we were stuffing our Paper Bag Puffy Hearts with poly-fil stuffing, I noticed C was inventing her own play with these cups. She was filling them with toys, yarn, and poly-fil! This is what happens when you let kids play!!! I did not tell her to do this at all!

Look at all that is going on here! What do you think my daughter was creating??? Like I said, "There is no need for expensive toys!" I guess we need to buy some more cups!!!

I know we'll be creating more with cups in the future!

Have your children been playing with cups? or anything else out of the ordinary?

*****

More Inspiration:

Maybe my daughter is on to something! Look as this beautiful Butterfly Sculpture made out of Disposable cups from EcoFriend.

And look at this Cup Sculpture made by artist Tara Donovan from The Boston Phoenix. Just Beautiful!

Now I'm really inspired to create some cup sculptures...

Our Local Ice Festival 2012

2012-02-22T04:47:00.000-08:00

Our town managed to pull off their annual Ice Festival even though it has been a considerably warm winter! It is a weekend in which ice sculptors come from all over to demonstrate their creative skills. There is a competition in which the sculptors can win ribbons too. Many of the sculptors had to contend with the warm sun and some even shaded their sculptures with cardboard at certain points! Thankfully it was colder by Sunday and most of the sculptures held together, but by Monday there were 40 degree temperatures and sun by the afternoon. Some of the sculptures were starting to form icicles on them because of the melting ice and dripping! I just wanted to share some of the AWESOME sculptures that were created considering the warmer temperatures.

It was definitely a great experience to see the ice sculptors at work. C was fascinated with the variety of tools the artists were using: chain saws, sanders, brushes, and more!

Here is just a sampling of some of the sculptures! A flying squirrel!

A fish that won a blue ribbon. Whenever we have gone to art shows C is fascinated with the ribbons. I try to explain to her that judges pick which ones win! I asked her which Ice sculptures she liked best and she said, "The ones with the ribbons!"

A bee which is our HS mascot!

A seahorse...which was another ribbon winner.

Not sure if this is Praying Mantis or what? It looks to be part something else.

Ironically, I got a shot of the moon sculpture at night!

The poor Moon sculpture fell over by Sunday morning! Unfortunately, this was a common sight at this years festival!

There were many more sculptures. We enjoyed the festival and it was a great learning experience for C to watch how the sculptures were made! Hopefully next year will be colder for the Ice Festival!

Do you have a Winter or Ice Festival where you live?

How has the weather been in your neck of the woods?

Pasta Collages

2012-02-21T02:00:00.000-08:00

FYI:In my last post we created Colorful Pasta Sculptures and we are still at it! This time we created Pasta Collages. C asked to create with pasta again and she rarely ever asks to do make anything again so I thought, why not? I enjoyed creating with this colorful pasta too! Here is my finished Pasta Collage.

If you missed our post on Creating Colorful Pasta Sculptures you can check it out here. To prepare for these pasta projects, we first used this pasta dyeing process found here at ehow.com. Again, you can also buy pre-colored pasta here if you want to skip that step. For the collages, you can definitely use white glue since the stability of a collage is not as important as a sculpture. C chose to use her low temperature glue gun again....she is very proud of her skills. She loves using it because is so much safer than our old hot glue gun!

Her collage came together pretty steadily. She worked on it for about an hour! I was very proud of her to stay so dedicated and focused!

Doesn't the collage look so cool up close? I love all the bright colors and textures!

Here is C's masterpiece! I think it turned out AMAZING!

I think we inspired each other!

We may make Pasta Frames next like this one below at Teaching Ideas. Pretty Cool!

What have you made from Pasta with children?

FYI: We used Neon Food Color to create our fabulous colors!

This post os shared with: It's Playtime

Creating Colorful Pasta Sculptures and a Book

2012-02-16T04:00:00.000-08:00

We made Colorful Pasta Sculptures! Inspiration comes from Storybook Art, by MaryAnn F. Kohl. Each art project in Storybook Art incorporates a book/illustrator and there are 100 ideas! The particular book that goes along with this project is Strega Nona, by artist and illustrator Tomie dePaola. This project and book particularly appealed to my 5 year old.....she loves any kind of building or sculpture project! This project requires some preparation of dyeing the pasta (or not) and letting it dry before the sculpting/building process begins. I would give about a day for dyeing the pasta and letting it dry. Here are a couple of our finished pasta sculptures.

For this project you'll need:

assorted pasta shapes (we used lasagna, manicotti, rotini, bow ties, rigatoni, wheels)

***you could also purchase pre-colored pasta

Food coloring

rubbing alcohol

resealable plastic bags

wax paper

white glue

low temperature glue gun(used with adult supervision)

The first step is to either buy pre-colored pasta or to dye your own. To dye your own pasta, there are great instructions found here at eHow.com. You'll need to let the pasta dry overnight. It is a fun process and C and I have done before when we have made pasta necklaces.

Once the pasta is dry you can start building! We used a low temperature glue gun, but you could also use white glue. With white glue, you will have to allow for drying time to ultimately hold your sculpture together. I supervised C closely when using the glue gun. Sometimes the strings from the glue can get frustrating, but the low temp glue gun is a great tool for fast building. To build the sculpture, we tried to begin with a larger base noodle like lasagna or a manicotti. Then we added smaller pieces on top one by one.

Here is C in action with her glue gun. She was very empowered with using the glue gun. This gun pictured is her own!

Mostly all of our pasta sculptures became some sort of vehicle. Here is a race car.

An airplane.

Our collection of 3 vehicles. They look very Dr. Seussish to me. What do you think?

Not all of the sculptures were vehicles! Here is a self portrait of C. Notice the red curly hair, blue eyes, and purple hair bow! I love it!

My daughter really enjoyed creating these Colorful Pasta Sculptures. The book that goes with the activity, Strega Nona, by Tomie dePaola is a favorite of ours too. It is a magical story about pasta!

I highly recommend Storybook Art by MaryAnn F. Kohl for other wonderful literature/Art activities.

Macaroni/Pasta Art Inspiration:

Amazingly enough there are some Pasta sculptors out there! Here are some Penne Sculptures made by: artist: Eliza Tyrrell. Never would have thought? Here are some more pics of her Pasta Sculptures here.

A pasta sculpture of The Chrysler Building is pictured here by artist Alex Creamer.

Some pasta sculptures by an art student from New York are pictured here.

Macaroni sculpture from Flickr here.

Are you inspired to create Pasta Sculptures?

We used Neon Food Color to create our Fab colors:

This post is linked to: It's Playtime, Show and Tell

Experiment: How Is Frost Made?

2012-02-15T05:39:00.000-08:00

We made frost! We've made snow in a previous post and that seemed to be a big hit with those of you who don't get snow, so I decided to do another experiment involving a wintery theme. (Actually we haven't gotten much snow here in NE Ohio/Midwest either so it seemed to be popular with everyone!) The experiment for this post: Making Frost! We found this experiment at Weather Wiz Kids here. Here is some real frost on our garage window which has been a rare sight this winter! There is a real beauty to the frost formations that you find on windows in the winter. Keep reading to find out how we made frost in the comforts of our own home.

For this experiment you'll need:

2 tin cans without the lid the labels (not pictured)

table salt or rock salt

crushed ice

water

thermometer (if you want for extra fun!)

Here is how to create the experiment:

Fill one tin can 1/2 full with a mixture of crushed ice and 4 Tablespoons of salt. Mix it well for 30 seconds and let sit.

In the other can put only crushed ice and cool water. Fill the can about half way full of ice and then just enough water to cover the ice.

Now let both cans sit. Observe! One looks a little frosty already....can you guess which one? I asked C to guess which one she thought would form frost....she said, "The one with the salt."

The frost was forming on the can with the ice and salt mixture. The other can with ice only was forming just moisture or dew! We added a thermometer to see what temperature the frost mixture was.
Frost only forms at temperatures below freezing! We found this to be true! You can see the can on the left is close to zero with the frost on it! The can with just ice water is like a glass of ice water with moisture forming on it.....which makes sense! We found the thermometer measured above freezing on the can that formed the dew.

Here is the explanation from Weather Wiz Kids of why the frost forms on the can with salt:

The salt wants to absorb water to make a salt solution. To do that, the salt has to melt the ice into water. The heat needed to melt the ice comes from the ice itself. There is a chemical reaction between the salt and ice! Melting the ice actually makes the mixture cooler. The salt water mixture gets below freezing so the mixture on from the air collects on the can and freezes.

On the other can, dew forms because the mixture of water and ice is just at freezing. The outside of the can is warmer so that is why dew forms!

We have had very few days of below zero temperatures so there has been less frost! So the reason frost forms on windows and other surfaces is because the temperature outside goes below freezing. (just like the can) When the air becomes cooler, it cannot hold as much water as before. The excess water condenses on the windows. The water become crystalized or (interlocked crystals of water) when the temperature is below freezing. The cool patterns are formed because of the different air currents, dust particles, and because of scratches in the glass. Here is C looking at our frost on the garage. Check out this Google Image Search of Frost Photos which are simply GORGEOUS!

We plan to create some Frost Paintings with Epsom like they did here at Brimful Curiosities blog. We checked out the book: Here Comes Jack Frost by Kazuno Kohara which was recommended in the same post. It goes well with studies about frost and if you are creating frost paintings!

Other Wintery Experiments:

Exploring Snowflakes....Up Close

An Experiment In Making Snow!

Have You Done Any Wintery Experiment With Children?

Chocolate Sugar Cookie Hearts

2012-02-14T06:09:00.000-08:00

Happy Valentine's Day! I've enjoyed sharing all our Valentine/Heart ideas the past few weeks! We've been very busy the past fews day preparing for the big day! Mostly we've been working on making edible treats to share with friends, family, and neighbors. Yesterday we made these wonderful Chocolate Sugar Cookie Hearts! They are identical to our Chocolate Christmas Sugar Cookies except for the shape and color of them! We followed the recipe here at Myrecipes.com ! We also made our Super Easy Chocolate Covered Strawberries from last year! (My absolute FAVORITE for Valentine's Day) Hope you have wonderful Valentine's Day and may it be the beginning of Loving of all those around you! A simple smile to a stranger might be the best Valentine gift you give!!!

"Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love." -Mother Teresa

"I have witnessed the softening of the hardest of hearts by a simple smile." -Goldie Hawn

YUMMY!

Super Easy Chocolate Covered Strawberries

What Valentine gifts did you make?

Give a smile today to those around you!

Shaving Cream Marbled Valentine Hearts

2012-02-10T00:00:00.000-08:00

I absolutely LOVE this process and have done it many times, but never did a post about it.....so here it is! We made Marbled Valentine Hearts with shaving cream! Here are some of our beauties. We put them on a string/yarn as a decoration to hang vertically or as a garland!

To create marbled papers of any kind you need:

Shaving Cream/foam

a tray of some kind

Water colors or food coloring + water

brushes/eye droppers

sticks of any kind or combs

paper

a plastic lid cut in half or piece of cardboard

To begin, spread shaving cream in a tray and flatten the top a bit like this. About an inch deep of shaving cream.

Now drip watered down paint or food coloring with a paint brush or eye dropper on the surface of the shaving cream.

Then, take a stick or comb and swirl around the paint to create zig zags, curvy lines, or whatever you choose.

Then lay down a paper on the marbled shaving cream.

Lift up the paper and you'll have something like this! (not finished yet)

Now take a straight edged piece of plastic or piece of cardboard (we used a plastic lid cut in half), and scrape the shaving cream off the heart. Messy!

Under the shaving cream layer will reveal a GORGEOUS marbled effect! Let them dry for a few hours.

Then we glued them on colored paper to frame them. Here is a close up of one of my favorite marbled hearts.

Here are bunches of our marbled shaving cream hearts! Love them all!

After we made bunches of hearts C just wanted to play in the shaving cream which is always a FAVORITE!

We've had fun with shaving cream in these posts too:

Super Easy Shaving Cream Bathtub Paint

Shaving Cream Cloud Paint

This post is linked to: Link and Learn, Craft Schooling Sunday, Learn Through Play Monday

Giveaway: Box of Projects from Craftprojectideas.com

2012-02-08T00:00:00.000-08:00

Craftprojectideas.com sent us this Wonderful Box of Projects for us to review and one to give to one lucky reader! Craftprojectideas.com is a sponsor, but is also taking part in The Heart Project to help donate money to The American Heart Association. Check out this post from last week to find out more about The Heart Project!

When we received this Box of Projects we couldn't believe our eyes! So much to make and create! C had a wonderful time creating everything.....there are still activities we still haven't gotten to create! This box has kept her busy for the past couple weeks! There are sticker play sets, mosaics, coloring rolls/markers, puppets, modeling clay, tissue paper animals, foam beads, and so much more!

Here is C working on the Foam Heart Mosaic with self sticking foam....no sticky mess!

Here is the Beautiful finished Heart Mosaic!

C enjoyed the sticker play sets and scenes. There was also a bear you could dress up too!

The coloring roll was a big hit too! Something about it being a roll made it extra special!

The monkey and dog paper bag puppet were pretty cool and colorful!

Thee tissue paper animals were really colorful and full of sensory exploration! Again, no glue and no sticky mess!

Overall, the kit was really a HIT and like I said there is still tons to create....clay animals, foam bead necklaces! It is great for ages 4 and up and would make a wonderful gift for a crafty child. If you want to purchase this "Box of Projects", it is available at your local Walmart!

Here is your chance to win the "Box of Projects":

Go to Craftprojectideas.com and check out their site here. Find one product that interests you (besides the "Box of Projects") and tell me about it in the comment section below. There are also great project ideas on their site too!

For extra entries "like" Craftprojectideas on Facebook here.

Winner will be selected February 15, 2012 at 10 pm EST.

GOOD LUCK!

Family Valentine

2012-02-07T12:57:00.000-08:00

We've been creating a lot of Valentine/Heart related projects this month! Here is yet another idea that I wanted to share. This Valentine is "special" because we worked on this Valentine as a family. I love this idea and it comes from my daughter's Pre-K teacher. Every student in C's class received a big white blank heart to take home. The directions were to design the Heart in any way that they want, but that they had to do it as a family. C wanted to use marker to decorate the heart so she started out, then I joined in and started putting the yarn around the heart. Then Dad finally joined in with glitter. We all added some glitter along with Dad! It was a great time to spend some quality time together! I think this Valentine turned out very unique and if we worked on this separately it would have never had the same outcome. All of the Hearts from her classmates are all so different and FUN to look at! Speaking of collaboration, below this post are zillions of "Valentine" ideas from many other blogs....check them out!

C and Dad working on the Family Valentine.

Putting the finishing touches on the Family Valentine.

Here are some of The Family Valentines from C's class. Pretty cool!

I would like to work on a family "Art Project" again sometime. Below this post there is a blog hop included of many other "Valentine Ideas" from other Bloggers. Check it out!

What projects have you worked on as a family?

Paper Bag Puffy Heart

2012-02-05T21:24:00.000-08:00

We are taking part in TinkerLab's Paper Bag Challenge along with many other bloggers. Hope you check out all the ideas other blogs have done with paper bags after this post! We've made a few things with paper bags before, including our Fandango Inspired Paper Bag Puppets and Paper Bag Self Portraits...hope you check those out too. Paper Bags are so versatile and the great thing is that you can cut them apart to create a surface to paint on or create a sculpture too! We did both! Since Valentines and hearts have been our minds, we decided to make a three dimensional version of our Heart Blotto Valentines that we did a couple weeks ago and we also did Heart Blotto T-shirts too!! Here is one of our Paper Bag Puffy Hearts floating on a cloud of poly-fil stuffing.

To begin, I first cut apart a larger paper bag so that I could cut two identical paper bag hearts. You want two hearts: one for the back and one for the front. Then we folded the hearts and created blottos. First paint on one side of the heart.

Then fold over to transfer to the other side of the heart. You can keep repeating the process until you like what you see.

Here are two hearts that will go together. Beautiful!

After the hearts are dry, put a ring of glue on one side, but leave an opening to later put poly-fil stuffing, newspaper, or even pieces of scrap paper. Let dry.

Next stuff your heart. You can use a ruler or stick to get all the stuffing back in the tight corners. After finished stuffing, you can either glue the opening and wait to dry or staple! We were impatient and just stapled the last bit together.

We wanted to add yarn around the heart, so first I punched holes all around the heart. Then C sewed around the heart. Great fine tuning of motor skills!

When finished sewing with yarn, tie a knot and create a hanger for the heart. Here is C holding two of our hearts. She loved swinging them about....an active girl....no doubt!

Here is another Paper Bag Puffy Heart! We had a lot of FUN! You could make any type of stuffed shape....such as a fish, person, or even a cloud shape! This is C's "Tree Blotto With Red Apples".

Thanks TinkerLab for inspiring us to create with paper bags! Be sure to check out all the other Great ideas in the linky below! Please let me know what you think of our idea too!

This post is linked to: Made By You Mondays, Craft Schooling Sunday, Link And Learn, Show And Tell

Paper Bag Self Portrait

2012-02-03T00:00:00.000-08:00

If you follow me on facebook I mentioned we've been creating with paper bags for TinkerLab's Creative Challenge and now we have far too many ideas and we need to start sharing now! For this activity I presented C with a bunch of supplies: paint bingo markers, pom poms, construction paper, stickers, scissors, markers, and more! And, of course, some paper grocery bags!!! She came up with a Paper bag portrait of herself! Perhaps she was inspired by our Paper Bag Puppets that we did about a month ago? It turns out that this is an activity many Art Therapists use...keep reading to find out more!

C got working on her idea right away! She didn't like the writing on the bag, so we quickly covered the words up with yellow construction paper! Then she began drawing a face right away!

Soon after that, she began adding more with paint bingo markers, smiley stickers, hair like our construction paper strip sculpture (she reminded me), and more construction paper , and pom poms! Then she said, "I'm done!" Definitely the attention span of a typical 5 year old!

And that is why the post is over....that is about how long it took C to make this!

I think the paper bag self portrait turned out rather well.

What do you think?

An Art Therapy Activity?

***The interesting thing about this Paper Bag Self Portrait Idea is that it is featured as an Art Therapy Activity here from The Art Therapy Blog. I researched a bit more and found this to be a popular activity that people do in an art therapy session! On the front of the bag you are to make your self portrait (like C did), then on the sides and back express fears, dreams, and aspirations. Then inside the bag put things that about yourself. I love the idea about putting things inside the bag...C would love doing that!

Here is a Paper Bag Self Portrait that someone submitted from the post I mentioned above. Pretty cool, huh? I think so.

Now I am inspired to create a Paper Bag Self Portrait!

I would love to try this with a group of kids to see what they would create. This would make a great "Getting To Know You Activity" too.

Are you inspired to create a Paper Bag Self Portrait?

Join TinkerLab's Creative Challenge...Feb. 6

Heart Blotto T-shirts and {The Heart Project}

2012-02-01T00:00:00.000-08:00

Remember our Heart Blotto Valentines? We made some lovely ones in this post last week! Well, now we have created some Beautiful Heart Blotto T-shirts based on this same idea! Take a look.

To create some of your own Heart Blotto T-shirts you need:

Fabric paint (we used.... Tulip Dimensional Fabric Paint )

paper in heart shapes

plenty of newspaper

a t-shirt or two

First, cut the size of heart you want from some fairly sturdy paper. Fold the heart in half and get your fabric paint and newspaper ready. Also have your t-shirt(s) ready with a piece of cardboard or newspaper (or cardboard) inside the shirt so the paint won't leak to the other side.

Paint on one side of the heart with the fabric paint.

Then close up the painted paper heart so that it transfers to the other side. Rub the paper. You may want to put newspaper on top just in case the paint squirts out. (I forgot to take a picture of the paper folded....so here it is before it is folded!)

Then open up the heart and you have a beautiful Heart Blotto. If there is too much paint (as you can see there is!) print one heart on a piece of newspaper so some will transfer off.

Now take the heart and carefully flip it to where you want it on your t-shirt!

Then take a piece of clean newspaper and put it on top while smoothing over the painted heart blotto.

***Our newspaper had paint on it so we got mess around the heart....oops! Carefully remove the painted heart from the shirt too!

Since we had this (oops!), I improvised and painted around the heart! C loved it ! This was a good lesson in how mistakes can makes things more beautiful or how they can force you to be more creative! Here is C's shirt again.

Here is my shirt without the Lovely design around it.

Which heart design do you prefer?

**********************************************************

NEWS FLASH: the heart project

Speaking of Hearts.... my friend Jamie from hands on: as we grow is having a fundraiser for the American Heart Association called The Heart Project with 70 bloggers (including me) involved. Bloggers from around the world have submitted over 100 Creative "Heart" projects for a book called: the heart book. It is available in e-book format as well as in print form to purchase. The proceeds of this book will go directly to The American Heart Association.

You can make a $5.00 donation to The American Heart Association and receive the heart book (ebook). The ebook includes links to the projects that you see on the pages of the book. For every book purchased this month, CraftProjectIdeas.com will be donating $1.00 (up to $500.00) on behalf of The American Heart Association.

You can also purchase the soft cover book for $20.00 (+shipping). The soft cover book is full of beautiful color images and is 8.5" x 8.5". For every book purchased $5.00 will be donated to The American Heart Association.

US $20.00

Order the Printed Version

This book will only be available through the month of February!

Preview of the book:

If you would like to simply make a donation to The American Heart Association, without purchasing the book feel free to do so here:

Check out Hands On: As We Grow here for more information about this project!

Including: Information about Fundraiser Auctions from Sponsors, Special Giveaways, and a list of all The Contributing Heart Project Bloggers!

Craft Caravan Review and {Giveaway}

2012-01-31T04:00:00.000-08:00

Have you heard of Craft Caravan? They are a wonderful company that wants to make craft time simple for parents and FUN for kids! Craft Caravan has card making kits (sold in class sets too!), eco-friendly art supplies, and a kids craft club that sends your child a theme based craft to make each month! So if you don't have the time to organize projects for your kids, Craft Caravan is for you! Maybe you just want an extra dose of creativity and surprise for your child each month? I know my daughter loved receiving the bright green envelope in the mail and was curious what would be inside! Everyone loves receiving something in the mail and the added plus of a FUN craft kit to make is a plus too! Craft Caravan sent us their February Craft Package to review and we had a FUN morning creating some Valentine themed projects. Craft Caravan is providing one of my lucky readers a 3 Month Subscription to their craft club! Find out the details after this post on how to enter this Fab Giveaway!

We created the two projects of the treasure chest and bank provided....and more! We were also able to make a Heart Person and I made a card with the extra supplies left over.

Here is C happily working on her projects. She loved the idea of the bank and treasure chest! The bank is going to be a gift for Dad. Craft Caravan provided (along with the cardboard bank and treasure chest) a variety of collage materials to create the projects: metallic hearts, pretty printed papers, colored scraps, punched papers, and glittery confetti! All we needed were glue and scissors to complete the projects.

Craft Caravan focuses on open-ended craft projects for preschool and early elementary students. They are also have an Environmental Commitment in which they try to use recycled content wherever they can. They avoid foam products, use paper envelopes for shipping, and their products are manufactured in the USA and Canada.

Go to CraftCaravan.com and check out their site. All Chocolate Muffin readers can use the special discount code of chocmufftree to get a BONUS month added on to a 3 month subscription for the kids craft club! A great deal... a savings of $9.95!

Here is your chance to win a 3 month Subscription from Craft Caravan:

Go to CraftCaravan.com and check out their site. We know you want to win the 3 month Craft Club Subscription, but tell me in the comment section below which Craft Kit or Eco Friendly Craft Supply you would like best for your children or classroom!

For extra entries "Like" Craft Caravan on Facebook here.

Winner will be selected February 7, 2012 at 10 pm EST.

GOOD LUCK!

Chocolate Chocolate-Chip Muffins....and the story behind the name!

2012-01-30T04:00:00.000-08:00

On this past Friday I celebrated my one year Blogiversary of The Chocolate Muffin Tree and within that post I had pictured some scrumptious looking Chocolate Chocolate-Chip Muffins (did you notice?) Today I'm sharing with you the recipe for these wonderful muffins along with the story behind where the name "The Chocolate Muffin Tree" came from at the end of this post. These muffins were really yummy and the extra chocolate added just the right amount of sweetness! Chocolate Muffins are not quite as sweet as chocolate cupcakes so they are a great excuse to eat something maybe a little bit healthier! (or not)

Here is the recipe-----I modified a few things, but they were still good! (it comes from the food network website here):

1 3/4 cups of all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 tablespoons best quality cocoa powder (I used Hershey's)
3/4 cup superfine sugar (I used regular white sugar)
3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips, plus 1/4 cup for sprinkling (I used Ghirardelli bittersweet chips)
1 cup milk (I used soy milk)
1/3 cup plus 2 teaspoons vegetable oil
1 egg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

Put flour, baking powder, baking soda, cocoa, sugar, and 3/4 cup of chocolate chips into a large bowl. Pour all liquid ingredients into a bowl. Mix the dry and wet ingredients together. Spoon into paper muffin cups. Sprinkle the remaining 1.4 cup chocolate chips on top and make for 20 minutes or until muffins are dark, risen and springy. Enjoy!

What does a Chocolate Muffin Tree look like? According to C this is what she drew when I asked her:

Do you think I should use this for a logo or symbol for my blog? Let me know your input. What do you think A Chocolate Muffin Tree looks like?

***

Where Does the name "The Chocolate Muffin Tree" come from?

Answer: After celebrating her 4th birthday with chocolate muffins, my daughter said to me while at our garden, "We could plant an apple tree and a chocolate muffin tree! No, I want to grow A Chocolate Muffin Tree!" Six months later I remembered this story when trying to think of a name for my blog and the rest is history!

The Chocolate Muffin Tree Is One Today!

2012-01-27T10:00:00.000-08:00

It is hard to believe one year has passed since I began this journey! It has been FUN, but a lot of work! I've enjoyed inspiring others to be creative with their children. It is something I have strived for since my daughter was born. I remember coming home from the hospital with my daughter and wishing we could create something! (maybe not that soon...but not that far off) Even before I was an Elementary Art teacher, I felt so sad if I saw kids that had no creative materials in their homes. I would ask, "Where are your crayons? your paper? play dough? anything?" It would break my heart if children didn't have one of those materials in their home. In my first days being an Art Teacher I worked in inner city schools where I would see students steal sheets of construction paper, pencils, and markers. Sometimes I just wanted to let it slide by and let them have those materials, but then I would have no materials to work with if I let this happen! After working in urban schools, I worked in the opposite end of the spectrum: Rural! The rural children had more, but on occasion there would be some students that would try to steal some supplies too. Sadly, I was laid of from my rural Art teaching Job because of budget cuts. The saddest thing is that I was replaced with a Non-Art Teacher. I spoke up for myself, but it did no good when money is an issue in a school district and where there is little support in the community.

If this "layoff" didn't happen I wouldn't be here writing to you right now! Inspired by Artsy blogs such as The Artful Parent, Paint Cut Paste, and Frugal Family Fun, I began my journey on this day one year ago. I followed these blogs just like you might be following me with your children doing activities each week from these blogs. These blogs were such inspiration and I felt like these were the type of Moms I strived to be! I struggled as a working Mom to feel like I was a good Mom and felt like if I did what they did with their kids that somehow I would be a better Mom. Being a working Mom was very difficult for me and I so wanted to be the Mom that you see reflected in The Chocolate Muffin Tree! So here I am, now realizing it is a lot of work being a Mom Blogger (Thank you to all that inspire!) and that is also a very fulfilling too! I inspire more people all around the world....more than in all the years I have taught Art! For those of you who have followed me all they way through.....Thank you! and for those who are recent followers Thank you too! I hope to continue this journey! Thanks for your support!

Some Ways to help Bring Art and Art Supplies to the less fortunate:

Find a child near you that is in need of Art supplies and donate to them! (ask local art teachers and I'm sure they could give you some names) Recently I met an 11 year old girl, through a neighbor, that was definitely an aspiring artist in need and I gave her a simple gift of colored pencils and a sketch pad. You could see her eyes light up instantly with this gift! I hope to give her more art supplies in the future.

A great article about ways you can donate supplies to classrooms through Adopt a Classroom and Donor's Choice: Donate Supplies to A Classroom in Need

A way to donate art supplies for kids around the world from: Oxfam America Unwrapped

Research online and you will find many local organizations to help kids through the Arts!

Have you ever donated Art Supplies to those less fortunate?

(please share any other great ideas or organizations)

Heart Blotto Valentines

2012-01-25T03:00:00.000-08:00

We made Heart Blotto Valentines! They turned out simply gorgeous! (keep reading to see more that we made!) Paint Blottos are always a Fun process and create a Wonderful result! We created our Blottos on a heart shape since we were going to create them into Valentines.

To create a Heart blotto all you need is:

Heart Shaped paper

Brushes

Tempera paint

To begin, fold your heart in half so you form a crease in the middle of the heart. Then use a paint brush to put paint blobs or shapes on one side of the paper.

Then, refold the paper and rub gently over the outside so that the paint transfers to the other side.

When you open the paper you'll have something like this below. You can keep adding paint each time you reopen the paper. You want to put wet paint blobs so that the paint will transfer. If the paint is dry tit will not print on the other side.

We made a bunch of hearts of all different sizes. Making blottos is very addicting! Cassie was having fun using her imagination to tell me what the blottos looked like (lots of faces, trees, angels, and more!)

Paint Cut Paste did a whole post on imagining images in their blottos and naming them! Check out the post here.

After the blottos were dry, we glued them on red, pink, or any valentine color. Then we cut around the heart, but made sure to leave an edge to create a frame around the painted blotto. As you can see, we used some of our fancy scissors to create a more elegant touch! I LOVE these! What do you think?

I know we'll be creating more Heart Blottos soon! They make very unique Valentines! You could create a message on the back and send them to all your valentines!

Blottos are fun to make when creating Butterflies like Tinkerlab did in this post !

Have Fun Making Blottos!

This post is linked to: It's Playtime, Link and Learn, Show and tell

Giveaway: Artterro Eco Art Kit

2012-01-24T00:00:00.000-08:00

Last Month in this post I introduced you to a wonderful company, Artterro, who produces over 12 great eco-friendly art kits for kids and adults! I'm pleased to be having a giveaway for your choice of one of their their Gorgeous kits! There are so many kits including: Bubble Wands, Paint with Wool, Wool Felt Bugs, Bookmaking, Garden Art, and more.... I'm reviewing their Wire and Bead kit in this post, but take a look at all there other kits here. At the end of this post find out how to enter!!!

The Wire and Bead Kit comes with twistable wire of many colors, unique beads, and marbles!! All you need to include is some wire cutters (or nail clippers) and some pliers.

C jumped right in making a bracelet before I even got a chance to look at the kit! She definitely needed help, but she could easily string the beads and bend some wire!

Here are our creations! So much Creative FUN! These kits are for ADULTS too....so if you are a creative Mom Like me you'll Love these kits!!! Pick one for yourself to win or buy one!!! If you choose to buy a kit all Chocolate Muffin readers can use the special discount code of TREE20 for 20% off your order until Janauary 31, 2012!!! Go to www.arterroecoartkits.bigcartel.com/ to use the special code!

Here is your chance to win an Artterro Art Kit:
GIVEAWAY IS OVER!!!!
Visit Artterro Site here and pick out a Kit (under $20.00) that you would like to win!
Leave the name of the kit in my comment section below!!!

For extra entries "Like" Artterro on Facebook here
Winner will be selected January 31st at 10pm EST.
Winner will receive a kit of your choice (under $20.00)
Open to US Residents only (sorry)

Good Luck!

Balloon Sculpture and a Book

2012-01-23T00:00:00.000-08:00

Would you ever think of making Balloon Sculptures? (Besides the twisty animal kind) Well, we made Balloon Sculptures! This idea comes from the book Storybook Art by children's art author MaryAnn Kohl (and it happens to be her Birthday today!....Happy Birthday! and with balloons too!). This is a wonderful book filled with 100 Hands-On Art Lessons that incorporate Great Picture Book Illustrators. This particular project appealed to my daughter immensely because she LOVES balloons and sculpture projects. We first read the book, Harvey Potter's Balloon Farm, which is the book that goes along with the balloon sculpture. The illustrations by Mark Buehner really made the "Balloon Farm" of the character, Harvey Potter, come to life!! The book itself with the imaginative story by Jerdine Nolen Harold and colorful illustrations was a hit for my 5 year old! I think any child would be intrigued by this book!

For the project you'll need:

All sorts of balloons

double sided tape (we used tape pockets----rolled tape)

square of cardboard or matte board

also string or rubber bands for extra support

(we just used tape and I could see string and rubber bands being helpful!!!)

Here is one of our finished sculptures:

Here are all the balloons we gathered: twisty animal balloons, water balloons, small balloons , and birthday balloons.

C wanted to play with the balloons (and we did!) You can see the joy on this girl's face before the project was ready to begin!

I had a bunch of tape pockets (rolled tape) ready in preparation for the project and used a piece of scrap matte board for a base, but you could use any kind of cardboard. To begin, C first started stacking the balloons!

She wanted to stand on the chair, because I think she imagined it to be really tall! We found it wouldn't stack very high!!! I talked about using the skinnier twisty balloons for support on the sides and that helped. It would be fun to make a Balloon Hanging Sculpture too! Here is our Balloon Sculpture again.

I never would have thought to make a sculpture with balloons, but then take a look at this Google Search for Balloon Sculptures if you click here! There are zillions of them!! These will definitely inspire you to create Balloon Sculpture or at least have an appreciation for them! Here is one Balloon Sculpture to awe you with from Balloon Sculptor: Jason Hackenworth. Pretty Amazing, huh?

We had a lot of FUN creating this balloon sculpture and we may just do more with all this inspiration!

Other Ideas with Balloons:

Next time we might Draw on our Balloons before we start sculpting with them!!!

We might make some Homemade Stress Ball Balloons too!

Making a Balloon Yo-Yo would be FUN!

A Hot Air Balloon toy has been on our list for a long time!

Printing with Balloons looks like a cool way to paint!

We'll be creating another project from Storybook Art so stay tuned!

This post is linked to: Link and Learn

Paint Chip Valentine Cards

2012-01-20T00:00:00.000-08:00

A few days ago we created Paint Chip Valentine's!!! (I have a thing for Paint Chip Projects if you haven't noticed yet!) We've been getting into the spirit of Valentine's Day by putting up our Heart decorations and by making Snowy Hearts. C was super excited to get our Valentine making underway since we just took down our X-mas decorations last week. To create the hearts on our cards we used a mixture of construction paper and paint chips (paint samples). We began by cutting a zillion hearts! We folded our papers and I drew a half of a heart so that my daughter could easily cut them out by herself.

We glued the cut out hearts on our blank cards. I happened to have some red, purple, and white blank cards, but you could use folded construction paper too. I talked about overlapping and arrangement of the hearts before actually gluing. C seemed to grasp the concept most of the time.

Here are some of our finished cards. I love how they look!!!

The next day we added some Metallic Markers to our Valentines for an extra special touch! We used these metallic markers on our Spin Art Valentine's from last year too.

Stay Tuned for more Heart and Valentine related posts!

What kinds of Heart/Valentine projects have you and your children been working on?

This post is linked to: Link and Learn

Snowy Hearts

2012-01-18T19:49:00.000-08:00

If you've been following me a while you know that I LOVE Land Art. We've done quite a few Land Art Posts that you can check out here or at the end of this post. Winter introduces a whole new medium: SNOW! It adds a crisp white background to everything. We made Snowy (Land Art) Hearts since Valentine's Day is on our mind! Check them out and let me know what you think!

Evergreen Bush and Cranberries

More Evergreen and Cranberries

C painting our Snow heart on a tree
Recipe for snow paint click here

Finished Painted Snow Heart

A great book to go with our Snowy Hearts is Snow Valentines by Karen Gray Ruelle. The brother and sister cat in this book create Snowy Valentines because they want to be unique! This is such a sweet Valentine book!

I'm sure we will be doing more Snowy Land Art this Winter!

Stay tuned!

Land Art Posts:

Our Land Art

Outdoor Fall Leaf Art

Rain Shadows

This post is linked to: Link and Learn

Exploring Snowflakes... Up Close

2012-01-17T06:16:00.000-08:00

Have you every really looked at snowflakes? Real snowflakes up close? Well, that is what Cassie and I did recently after finally getting some snow! (snow has been a precious commodity this winter) Either way this activity is fun to talk about even if you haven't had snow or live in an area with no snow accumulation. Here is a picture of what a snowflake can look like up close. Keep reading to find out how we did this activity and the fabulous book that we read too!

First we gathered a black piece of construction paper and a magnifying glass. Some sites like Weather Wiz Kids recommend putting the paper in the freezer, but it was a cold enough day for us!

Then we caught snowflakes on the black paper and our mittens. It was a little easier catching them on our dark mittens because our paper would blow about at times!!! We observed lots and lots of beauties! Each snowflake is truly different and it is nice to show this through this activity. C was a little scientest practicing her observation skills.

When we observed the snowflakes we saw all kinds of shapes very similar (but different) to these pictured below. Each snowflake is different depending on the temperature, humidity, wind speed, and how long it takes for the snowflakes to hit the ground. I'm sure if we observed snowflakes each time it snowed they would be different. If you don't have snow you could observe Snowflakes Photographs from a Google Image Search by clicking here. My daughter was fascinated at looking at the pictures too!!!

An excellent kid's book to go with this activity is Snowflake Bentley, by Jacqueline Briggs. It is a true story about a man, Wilson Bentley, whom they called "Snowflake Man". Wilson Bentley was obsessed with taking pictures of snowflakes in the late 1800's and early 1900's. He was the first to do this and had a true passion for doing this. He published a book in 1931, Snow Crystals ,with over 2,500 photographs of snowflakes!!! There is a Snowflake Bentley Museum too!

Have Fun Observing Snowflakes!

Links:

Official Snowflake Bentley Website/ Museum
Experiment: Observing Snowflakes from Weather Wiz Kids

My Other Snow Links:
Beaded Snowflakes
Snowflakes from Recycled Water Bottles

An Experiment in Making Snow

Two Kinds of Snow Dough

Bringing Color To Snow (Snow Painting)

Revisiting Snow Painting

Colorful Ice Sculptures

Painting With Ice Cubes

This post is linked to: Link and Learn

Two Kinds of Snow Dough

2012-01-13T05:03:00.000-08:00

There has been a lot of buzz about Snow Dough lately!!! You ask, "What is Snow Dough?", basically it is White Play Dough. There are a lot of recipes floating around claiming to be the best recipe for Snow Dough and we tried a few of them. It came down to two recipes and one that was ultimately our favorite! Keep reading to find out our Favorite Snow Dough! My daughter and I had a lot of FUN playing with Snow Dough and here are some of our creations: snowmen, snow snails, and snow caterpillars! It is definitely fun to add pipe cleaners, buttons, beans, and beads!!!

The Snow Dough pictured on the left is from Family Fun Magazine and you can click here for the recipe. This recipe makes a nice modeling compound and it is made with flour as its main ingredient. It claims if you put white tempera paint in it that it will make it white, but not as white as our favorite! This recipe is a cook play dough recipe.

Our Favorite Snow Dough:

The Snow Dough on the right is from the The Imagination Tree (one of my favorite blogs!!!) and you can click here for the recipe. This recipe uses corn starch (or corn flour) for its main ingredient which makes it a wonderful bright white! I believe it is the whitest of all the recipes we tried. This dough is much more smooth and silkier which is always a plus! (it could be the addition of glycerin) We definitely enjoyed this recipe the best! Oh, and more..... this recipe is is a no-cook play dough recipe and Gluten Free!

With both recipes you can add iridescent glitter and snowflake sequins which adds a sparkly touch! Both recipes make a great sensory experience for working out tiny fingers. So whatever ingredients you have on hand I'd suggest you try one of these fab recipes for Snow Dough!

We had so much fun with Snow Dough we decided to pack up some snow dough for our friends along with the accessories of pipe cleaners, beads, beans, toothpicks, and some snowflake sequins. Our friends had a blast with this and my daughter played with her snow dough for three days straight! Snow Dough makes some great pretend snow play for those of you out there who don't have any snow!!!

Hope you have fun with Snow Dough too! I'm sure you will!!! Let me know if you find (or have) a secret recipe for Snow Dough that you and your children enjoy!

18 Creative Ideas For Making Puppets

2012-01-11T17:39:00.000-08:00

My daughter and I have created a few different types of puppets in the past months and we've been having a lot of fun with creating and playing with them. I wanted to compile a list for us (and you) so that we could try other kinds of puppets! Hope you can find an idea that you like on this list. I know we'll be making some of these! Tell me what ideas that you would like to try! Let me know if you do any of them too!

1. Paint Stick/Paper Plate Puppets

from: Emily Green

2. Box Puppets

from: Deseret News

3. Finger Puppets

from: My Creative Family/Hands On: As We Grow

4. Wooden Spoon Puppets

from: A Bird and a Bean

5. Paper Bag Puppets inspired by Fandango

from: The Chocolate Muffin Tree

6. Papier Mache Puppets

from: Instructables

7. Paper Hand Puppets

from Krokotak

8. Envelope Puppets

from: Dr. Jean

9. Sock Puppets

from: The Chocolate Muffin Tree

10. Milk Jug Puppet

from: De tout et de rien

11. Rod Puppets

from: Sun Hats and Wellie Boots

12. Paper Tube Puppets

from Arts for Life

13. Coffee Filter Puppets

from Craft Ideas Online

14. Clay Puppets

from Arkansas Art

15. Egg Carton Puppets

from Huggies Kids Activities

16. Paper Cup Puppets

from Kings Norton Library

How to click here

17. Milk Carton Puppets

from Instructables

18. Popsicle Stick and Model Magic Puppets

from Art Club Blog

What other puppet making ideas have I left out?

(Please Share!)

Paper Bag Puppets Inspired by Fandango!!!

2012-01-10T04:00:00.000-08:00

Have you ever heard of the Fandango Puppets? (I'm sure most of you have....) They are these great paper bag puppets from the Movie company Fandango that are designed with unusual items such as candy, pasta, straws, licorice, fruit pieces, and more....!!! Check out there website here to watch some of their videos. I remember first seeing these puppets on movie posters at the theater and later in the commercials and I always felt compelled to make puppets in this style. Cassie and I tried our hand at making these puppets and here is how they turned out. What do you think??? Keep reading to find out how you can make A FANDANGO Bag Puppet Online!

Here are some actual Fandango Puppets. Aren't they great? The idea for these puppets came from creative director Len Fink whose many credits include the Coca Cola Polar Bears. The puppets are made by artist James Hayes who has designed for the Jim Henson Company (The Muppets!) No wonder I like them so much!!!

To create these puppets we gathered lots of cool items such as pasta, candy, shredded paper, beans, fabric, bottle caps, yarn and paper bags, of course! For the lips we used construction paper.....which seems to be a definitive feature on all the Fandango Puppets. We used glue and scissors to add all the items.

C having fun with the variety of materials!

This is C's puppet. She used orange noodles for her hair and cheerio eyes! Can you see the resemblance? Do not do this project when hungry because she wanted to eat all the treats!

This is my puppet. I had a lot of FUN!

Now you can try making a FANDANGO PUPPET!!! Online or like we just showed you!

The last puppet (the black haired one pictured in the first pic) we did together. It is kinda scary, but cool! ***If you want to try your hand at designing a Fandango Puppet without gathering materials or making a mess try the online game: FANDANGO Bag Puppet Creator!!! You'll have a blast! C had a lot of fun with it and made countless creations!!! Let me know what you think!

This post is linked to: Pinteresting Party