Make-it-Yourself Felt Board

by Carrie Wells, Ed.D.
Have you ever looked at your craft supplies and gone...Duh! Why didn't I ever think to make that before? Yeah, that was me this morning. I have this cool die cut maker, I have a ton of felt, I have lots of cardboard, and I have a daughter who loves to mix and match different hair colors and outfits with the paper people I made using my die cut maker...um, why haven't I made her a felt board??

Make-It-Yourself Felt Board

Materials:

Piece of cardboard

Hot glue gun or craft glue

People die cuts (you could hand cut this, but that may be a bit challenging with felt)

Creativity

Scissors

Directions:

1. Cut the cardboard to the desired shape/size. Mine is about a 12" square.

2. Glue the background color(s) to the cardboard by gluing along the seam and wrapping it around the back. Glue along the edges to secure.

3. Cut various people, clothing, and scenery pieces out of felt. You can switch out pieces for each theme. I was thinking it would be really cool to make an alien scene by cutting people out of green and blue felt. A Halloween scene with different costumes and pumpkins would be so much fun, too! 

4. Endless play!

Recycled Swirl Crayons

by Carrie Wells, Ed.D.

Gather together all your broken old crayons to make this awesome project!

Materials:

• Old broken crayons
• Silicone muffin or candy pan
• Cookie sheet

Sift through all your crayons to find the broken ones.

Peel the paper off the crayons.

Break the crayons into small pieces. 

The peeling of the paper and braking of the crayons are both great fine motor exercises.

You may need to cut the crayons to get really small pieces.

We sorted our crayon pieces to make a Valentine's Day crayon and a St. Patrick's Day crayon. We filled each muffin cup about half way.

Place the silicon muffin pan on a cookie sheet. Bake at 230 degrees for about 15 - 20 minutes, or until the crayons are completely melted. Here's what they looked like when we took them out of the oven.

We let the crayons cool for about an hour and removed them from the tray. Here are our awesome recycled swirl crayons, perfect for the upcoming holidays!

   

Fall Craft #4: Does Your MUMMY Know It's Halloween??

Bottle Mummy

Materials:

• Dish soap bottle
• Toilet paper
• Glue
• 2 wiggly eyes (we chose two different ones)
• Paint brush

Directions:

Mix glue with a bit of water to thin it out. "Paint" the glue all over the bottle.

Wrap the toilet paper around the bottle. This will require adult assistance.

Glue two eyes on to the mummy. We did one big orange eye and one smaller purple eye to make it fun.

And here's our completed mummy!

Here's a picture of a mummy in one of our Halloween books, to use as inspiration. My daughter didn't understand at first that we were making a "mummy" and not a "mommy." 

From The Night Before Halloween by Natasha Wing