Wabi Sabi Baby » kids craft

Happy Chinese New Year!

Wabi Sabi Baby — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 16:38:13 +0000

2011 - Year of the Rabbit

The 2011 Chinese New Year begins with blistery cold weather ( at least to us here in the south) and hopefully snow, an unusual treat for us Austinites. Here’s a fun indoor craft to do with your kids – mini lighted paper lantern:

Make an origami cube or ball out of a square piece of paper. Two links to well-illustrated instructions: How to Make an Origami Cube on eHow and Origami Ball on Hardin K-12.
Before ‘puffing’ out the ball, unfold one of the four flaps and put a glowstick, LED throwie, or in our case, an LED clip-on light inside the ball.

Here’s another fun thing to make on an indoor day – homemade fortune cookies.

Homemade Fortune Cookies

Advent Calendar Made Out of Legos

Wabi Sabi Baby — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 21:32:52 +0000

Here’s a super easy Advent calendar that your kids can make themselves and have fun doing it. Well, mine are still quite young so I helped them with the layout.
Lego stores are popping up everywhere and if you’re lucky enough to find yourself close to one, head back to the Pick A Brick wall and see if they have these 2 x 3 boxes and accompanying doors that just happen to be in Christmas red and white colors. The recently opened store in Austin at Barton Creek mall does! These boxes are just big enough to hold several pieces of jelly beans, reeses, or M&Ms. You can fit at least 24 of these drawers and doors in their small pick-a-brick containers with enough room left over for more pieces.

Rock Candy, Patience, and Chemistry

Wabi Sabi Baby — Sat, 29 May 2010 21:57:57 +0000

Making rock candy is a fun and easy experiment to do with your kids while teaching them a little bit about chemistry and a lot about patience. Plus, there’s a sweet reward at the end. Candy making usually involves thermometers and lots of corn syrup. Not so with rock candy! You just need sugar and water and although you could use a thermometer, you need not be so accurate.

There are many contraptions to this simple experiment. In general, it involves suspending a weighted string or wooden skewer in a glass with the sugar solution. I like to use a short cocktail glass and toothpicks stuck in a piece of wire mesh screen. It’s less time consuming to set up and you can make several small sticks of rock candy per glass. You can find the wire mesh screen in rolls at Home Depot for under $8. Besides serving as a toothpick holder here, these mesh screens have many other uses such as lining the bottoms of your plant pots, repairing window screens, and patching wall holes. In other words, they are handy to have around the house and well worth the $8.

To make the sugar solution, start with:

1 part water
2 parts sugar

by volume. I.e., one cup water to two cups sugar.

Sugar crystals after one week.

Directions:

Heat the water in a saucepan until just boiling.
Add the sugar and stir continuously until all the sugar is dissolved. Optionally dissolve extra sugar, a spoonful at a time. A well saturated sugar solution speeds up the crystal growth. If you add too much sugar and not all is dissolved, simple add a little bit of water at a time.
Let cool a few minutes, occasionally stirring.
Pour the mixture into clean, dry glass.
Dip toothpicks in the sugar solution and roll them in sugar. Let dry. These tiny ‘seed’ crystals jump starts and accelerates the crystal growing process.
Cover glass with prepared toothpick in mesh screen and wait.
And wait and wait and wait. It will take at least a week for the crystals to grow to a good size.
If you want to add food coloring or flavoring, add it after the first week when sizable crystals have formed. Otherwise, it will take much longer for the crystals to form. Let the crystals grow for at least another week.

At first, the kids were super excited and would check on the rock candy every day. By the second week after adding the color and flavor, they almost lost all interest after I told them they had to wait at least another week before they can eat it. But the longer they wait, the bigger the candy and well worth the wait!

Rock candy is just one of many experiments to show how crystals grow. Here are a few sites that explain the science behind it.

Easy Clean Tablecloths

Wabi Sabi Baby — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 01:37:42 +0000

Borrowing another great restaurant idea: oil cloth (vinyl) tablecloths. Primary reason? Easy to clean. You can purchase the fabric by the yard from Fabric.com and simply sew fitted tablecloths so that your tots can’t easily pull them off!

Homemade Upside-Down Tomato Planter

Wabi Sabi Baby — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 20:17:34 +0000

My husband saw an info-mercial on upside down planters late one night and thought it would be a fun project to do with the kids. It was very easy to make but not very pretty. It was made out of a gallon jug container with about a 1.5″ diameter opening for the tomato plant. He cut out a rectangle on the side towards the bottom to fill in dirt (and also for watering) and later covered it with mesh. And lots of duct tape. It never produced quite as much as our in-ground tomato plants. The kids enjoyed picking tomatoes off of them though. Click here for a nicer looking inverted tomato plant.

Homemade Flour Tortillas Using a Stand Mixer

Wabi Sabi Baby — Sun, 31 May 2009 21:35:03 +0000

Say goodbye to your tortilla press and use your stand mixer for fast(er) tortilla-making at home. For these instructions, you would need the pasta roller attachment (not just for pasta making)! Here’s how I make 32 tortillas in under 30 minutes (not including dough resting time or extra little helpers):

Big ball of tortilla dough

25% wheat tortillas

Flatten

Hold top taut to stretch out dough

Ingredients:

4 cups flour, all-purpose or high-gluten bread; you can substitute up to 1 cup with whole wheat or spelt flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup shortening
1 1/2 cups warm water

Directions:

Combine flour and salt.
Cut shortening into flour/salt mixture using a pastry cutter.
Add warm water.
Knead using the dough hook until the mixture comes together in a ball.
Keep dividing the dough in half until you get 32 balls.
If you have time, let dough rest at least 30 minutes.
Heat a skillet over medium high or high depending on how fast you want to work.
Attach the pasta roller onto your KitchenAid. Set the thickness to ’2′
Generously cover a plate with flour, about 1/4 cup to start adding more as needed.
Flatten each ball of dough on the floured plate while dusting both sides with flour.
Feed the flattened dough into the pasta roller, holding and gently pulling on the top edge to stretch out the dough.
Turn 90 ° and feed the long side through the roller again.
Place the dough over your closed fist and using your hand, pull and stretch out the dough to desired shape as needed. This is similar to making pizza dough. The longer the dough has rested, the easier this step will be.
Cook the tortilla about 5 to 15 seconds per side depending on how hot your skillet is. While you are doing this step, you can start feeding the next tortilla through the pasta roller.

Believe it or not, you can get your kids to help you make tortillas. When my son was three, I would flatten the dough for him and he would feed the first pass through the pasta roller. I would do the second pass and adjust his extremely oblong tortilla. Now that he’s four, he’s actually very helpful – he can flatten and make both passes through the roller. My two year old? Well, she just enjoys playing with a small piece of dough trying to imitate big brother. It definitely slows down the process but the three of us make quite a tortilla baking factory!

Little helper

Easy Creamy Fruit Shakes

Wabi Sabi Baby — Thu, 21 May 2009 02:51:19 +0000

Here’s a healthy shake for the kids. It’s easy enough for them to make it themselves too. It’s just fruit and milk.

Cut up fruits into blender friendly size.
Freeze.
This is also a good way to make good use of over-ripen fruits.
Blend frozen fruits with milk. You can pretty much use any kind: cow, goat, rice, almond, coconut to name a few.

Berry blend
Bananas and berries
Mango
pineapple and coconut milk
yogurt to any of the above

Better Homemade Soap Bubble Recipe with Glycerin

Wabi Sabi Baby — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 03:24:46 +0000

photo via dominic's pics

Glycerin has many uses besides in soap and skin care. Add it to your standard soap bubble recipe to make it stickier and more like the commercial ones. Some recipes claim adding sugar makes better bubbles, but I say avoid it unless you want to invite sugar-loving critters to join in on the fun. Here’s my tried and true recipe:

Ingredients:

1 cup water
3 fl oz (6 tbsp) dishwashing liquid
1 fl oz (2 tbsp) glycerin

Directions:

Using a 2-cup capacity measuring cup, fill it with 1 cup water.
Add the dishwashing liquid and glycerin using the fluid oz measurements on the cup, much easier than using tablespoons.
Stir the mixture to blend. Don’t shake.
The mixture usually improves after a day or so.
Variation: add food coloring and/or at most 5 drops of essential or fragrance oils
Have Fun!

Valentine’s Day Craft Making Origami Fortune Tellers

Wabi Sabi Baby — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 23:04:28 +0000

Folding origami fortune tellers is my go-to kids craft for party favors. It is simple, inexpensive, and great fun for a wide range of ages. For the younger kids, I do all the folding and let them decorate with stickers, drawing, etc… For slightly older kids, I fold to make the crease lines, unfold, and let them replicate it themselves. And of course for the much older kids, I just provide the instructions. Here are a couple of printable instructions:

6″ square is a standard origami paper size. You can easily find seasonal and holiday paper in the scrapbook section of craft stores. Conveniently, 12″ square is a standard scrapbook paper size – all you have to do is cut it in fourths!

Make Kid-friendly Tree Ornaments Part II: Salt Dough Decorations

Wabi Sabi Baby — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 06:18:38 +0000

At our house, we have a tradition of hanging candy canes made of salt dough. Then on the night before Christmas, they magically turn into real candy canes!

Salt dough craft is easy and fun to do with the kids. Click here for recipes and instructions. They also taste pretty bad so hopefully, that alone will deter the curious toddler.

1. With the palm of your hands, roll two strands.

2. Twist together.

3.Press and roll with your fingers. The two strands should begin to stick together and elongate.

4.Voila! Let dry for a day, flipping over once.