The last few months have been full of crafts and activities as we attempted to beat the winter blues. Keeping two little ones busy all winter long can feel like a lot but I find that if we have creative activities to do, it helps to break up the day. The kids enjoy it and I get some kind of creative stimulation from it. It is a win win!
I started subscribing to the Magic Playbook in the fall. It is a monthly subscription to the cutest crafts, activities, and even recipes to do with your preschool age kids. It has been perfect for my 2 year old and 4 year old. And as this pregnancy has progressed, it has been a huge time saver in having planned seasonal activities at my fingertips without spending time planning or searching on Pinterest.
I recently signed up as an affiliate (just because!). So if you sign up with my link, I make a couple of bucks! I would share about the activities regardless. But an extra bonus if I can persuade you to try it yourself! It is only $9 a month and is so worth it. We don't subscribe to many things but this is one that I think is definitely valuable.
I especially love their color scheme choices. All our art projects look so pretty hanging up together. I know it is not important for your kids projects to be colorfully aesthetically pleasing. But let me tell you - it is a small joy in my day and I am not ashamed about it!
For New Years we made these fun 2021 crowns. One for each of us and they were too cute!
We also filled out these sweet year in review printables. How fun they will be to look back on one day, especially during such a historical year.
We had a good week of snow and when I wasn't in the mood to go outside again, we brought some in to play with!
Our local grocery store has been offering sugar cookie decorating kits during the different holidays. We got one for Christmas and another for Valentine's Day. They are a huge hit and no prep for me! It has been wonderful!
I also got these great white cafeteria style trays (not available in white at the moment but these are similar) that we now use for all our crafts and activities. They help keep all their supplies together and hopefully less messy. I absolutely LOVE them. They also are the perfect backdrop for snapping photos on to preserve some of our artistic projects through pictures.
My mother in law occasionally sends us seasonal craft kits from Hobby Lobby. They are always fun and easy to do with the kids. We love a little happy surprise mail from grandma!
For Black History Month we learned about Martin Luther King Jr. We made this picture using a MLK printable from Barley and Birch and read this book to learn more about him.
Valentine's are always a favorite of ours to make. We used stickers and jewels to decorate doilies and some old hearts we had from an old Valentine making kit.
It has been awhile since I brought out beans for a sensory bin. I have been nervous about my 2 year old making a huge mess! But the new trays are proving to come in handy again. We had a little bit of a mess but not nearly as much as I feared!
We occasionally paint and color but I am finding stickers to be our crafting best friend. In this season of pregnancy and the age of my daughter, it fulfills our creative juices without dealing with a huge mess. I love collecting cute stickers when we see them. We have a collection of jewel type stickers from Dollar Tree. And I like this big foam set of stickers we got on Amazon.
I also usually offer a snack when we craft. We eat a lot of popcorn around here and I like to add some fun little extra treats for the different seasons. For Valentine's I added conversation hearts and freeze dried strawberries. Both kids were big fans of this!
Window clings are also a lot of fun around here. I try to find ones in cute shapes that aren't puzzles. With little pieces and putting pieces together, I found that at this age they were always getting lost or ripped. So for now we have a collection of hearts for February and large egg ones for Easter.
We dressed up our food truck/play kitchen as a sweet shoppe for February. I will admit I had probably more fun than my kids did putting this one together!
It has been a fun and busy winter but we are very excited for spring to be here soon! I will be sharing some of our spring crafts and activities soon as well!
