More Cool Kid Projects – Some of Our Favorite Ideas for the 9 Days

With school out, you’ll likely need to scrounge up things for the kids to do.  If you have these ingredients in the pantry, you’ll be able too distract them in an emergency.

1. Flour
2. Salt
3. Cream of Tartar or Alum
4. Kool Aid
5. Corn Syrup
6. Corn Starch
7. Oil
8. Baking Soda
9. White Vinegar
10. Food Coloring

Play Dough

I have two recipes that call for 1, 2, 3, 4, and 7 (flour, salt, cream of tartar or alum, Kool Aid and oil). It just depends on which method you’d like to use, the results are both great.

Awesome Playdough Recipes

Watercolor Paints

You have  a few options here.

1.  In an emergency, just open a pack of Kool Aid, dissolve in as little water as possible.  Paint away.  This smells nice too. A reader pointed this one out to me.

2.  If you have more time and you think putting together the ingredients will calm the kids, use 5, 6, 8,9, and 10.  These paints last longer.

How to Make Watercolor Paints

Finger Paints

1.  The easiest option is just corn syrup with food coloring.  It dries a little sticky.

2.  Water, flour and food coloring works too, though not as well.  But let’s face it, when your desperate, anything will do.

3. Cornstarch, water and food coloring heated on the stove is our favorite option.

I love this bloggers idea of using left over toilet paper rolls to make these cool monsters – all you need is some acrylic paint, little odds and ends crafting stuff like pom pom, pipe cleaners, Sharpies and googly eyes -and glue – SO MUCH FUN! sarah

LITTLE MONSTERS

by alisa burke

I was inspired to create a handful of colorful little monsters from recycled cardboard tubes. If you weren’t aware, I love finding new ways to upcycle cardboard tubes- they are free and super easy to turn into something unique. This project would be really fun for kids or for those who are like me and sometimes act like a kid!

note from Sarah: I also saw this picture – the same idea – you could make any type of animal with just empty toiled paper rolls and some paint! – so much fun

What a great for the big girls and boys to do – Seems so simple and who dosen’t have a ton of t-shirts that are stained and can’t be recycled? A great way to clean out your kids closets to boot Sarah

Hula Hoop Rug

by Nicole Blasenak Shapiro 

What does it take to transform a pile of old T-shirts into spectacular works of woven art? Just a spare hula hoop or embroidery hoop and the techniques we’ll show you here. The oversize looms and easy-to-use loops of T-shirt fabric make these projects particularly appealing to beginning weavers. Learn the basic hoop weaving technique by crafting a colorful accent rug to brighten up a room. And if you want to take the weaving a little further, check out our basket and chair pad weaves

Before you begin, some terms you need to know: the warp is the material you string on the hoop, the weft is the material you weave with.

Materials

• Scissors
• About a dozen T-shirts

• 33-inch hula hoop

Instructions

1. For the warp, cut 1-inch-wide loops from the bodies of one or two tees (we found a boy’s large worked best on our 33-inch hoop), removing the hem and stopping at the sleeves. Ideally these loops should all be the same color; we used two colors for clarity in our photographs. You’ll need a total of 11 loops. For the weft, cut at least 50 loops from the remaining shirts. Save the unused sleeves for the basket project.
2. Stretch one warp loop over the hula hoop, as shown.
3. Add and secure a second loop, perpendicular to the first.
4. Repeat, filling in the spaces, until all 11 loops are in place.
5. Push together two warp loops at the top of the hula hoop, as shown. This creates an odd number of warp spokes in your wheel, which allows the overunder pattern of the weft to alternate with each new row.
6. Secure the first weft loop to the center of one of the warp spokes (we chose the doubled spoke from step 5) by wrapping it around the warp and then looping it back through itself.
7. Begin weaving the weft over and under the warp spokes, forming a tight spiral. For now, treat both parts of each warp spoke as a single unit, weaving over or under the two together. As you work, push the weft material toward the center of the hoop and keep it just snug. If you pull the weft tight, the rug will develop lumps or bends. When you reach the end of the piece of weft, add a new loop by threading it through the end of the first and back through itself.
8. When your rug is about 8 inches across, begin treating each warp spoke as two individual strips instead of a single unit, weaving over or under each strand instead of going over or under the doubled spoke. This increases the number of warp spokes, improving the structure of the project. When you get to the two warp spokes that you pushed together at the top of the loom, separate them. Treat one of the spokes as two individual strips, but continue to treat the other as a single spoke. This maintains the odd number of warp spokes.
9. When the rug is the size you want, but no closer than 8 inches from the edge of the hula hoop, snip open your weft loop.
10. Tie the ends around a warp spoke, and tuck the ends into the rug.
11. Cut the warp spokes off the hoop one at a time.
12. Tie the ends in pairs, then trim them to make a fringe or tuck them back into the rug.

I’ve seen these all over the place lately and have been anxious to try them. You may have tons of crayons around your house–but if not, luckily, they are about 25 cents in all the Back To School sales now-a-days.

Peel off the paper. When I was a kid–this was easy. But crayons today are a bit more snooty.  They have some plastic stuff under the paper to help the crayons not break so easy–which also makes the paper harder to get off. Ask for help. I was surprised at how many people like to take the paper off of crayons.

Break them up and sort them into whatever color combos interest you.

Drop them in paper lined cupcake pans. Heat the oven to 350 degrees, then turn it off. Set the pan on the top rack and leave them there for about 10-15 minutes…

until they look about like this.

Set them in the freezer for about an hour.

Peel them out of the paper…

and there you have it…

Confetti Crayons for your very favorite little artists.