Archive for the ‘Homeschooling’ Category

Decorate a Purse with Iron-on Patches

Monday, January 30th, 2017

decorate-a-purse-with-iron-on-patches

Today I’m going to show you how to decorate a purse with iron-on patches. This craft only takes a few seconds to make! Not only is it super easy, but it’s perfect for customizing gifts for friends and family to make them feel special.

If you have a friend who loves butterflies, get some iron-on patches of butterflies to put on the purse. If your friend likes cats, you can find cat patches. You can see a wide variety of patches in a craft supply or fabric store.

How to Decorate a Purse with Iron-on Patches

You will need the following items to create your unique purse:

  • An inexpensive felt purse
  • Iron-on patches
  • Iron
  • Ironing board

decorate-a-felt-purse

You can find an inexpensive felt purse in the same aisle of the craft supply store where you found the iron-on patches.

Go ahead and set up your ironing table and plug in your iron. You can turn the iron to a medium high setting. If you want to use a tea towel to place on top of the patch before you iron it, you can. I didn’t, and it turned out fine. I suppose if your iron was too hot or if you pressed it for too long, you would burn the patch and it would turn brown. I think this is why the instructions say to place a tea towel over the area.

iron-on-patches-tutorial

While you are waiting for the iron to get hot, open the package of patches and place them where you want them on the purse. (We also decorated a medieval hat, since we had plenty of flower patches in the one package.)

Press the iron on top of the patch for about 10 seconds. You’re done!

Yes, this craft takes 10 second to do (for each patch), so you will finish with the whole project (including heating up the iron) in less than five minutes.

Go ahead and give away your masterpieces as gifts to friends!

Video tutorial for decorating a purse with iron-on patches:

How to Make Graham Cracker Dominoes

Monday, January 23rd, 2017

Graham-cracker-dominoes

Why not make these fun Graham cracker dominoes? You will need a box of Graham crackers, some peanut butter, and a bag of chocolate chips.

Begin by opening the package of Graham crackers and placing one on the table. Open the peanut butter and hand your kid a table knife to spread the peanut butter over the cracker. Then open a package of chocolate chips and pour them into a bowl. Your kids can decide how many chocolate chips to place in each square of the cracker.

This activity is great for toddlers and preschoolers because you can teach them about numbers and counting. You can play a game of dominoes as they munch on their math snack. Plus, it tastes really great!

If you don’t mind making a mess, you can have your kids play a HUGE game of dominoes, using a whole package Graham cracker dominoes! Match the numbers together, and take turns until all the Graham crackers have been used up.

To find more hands-on math activities and games, here is my most popular math post:

10 Creative Uses for Wrapping Paper

Friday, December 2nd, 2016

creative-uses-for-wrapping-paper

Have you ever had extra wrapping paper that you don’t want to store? Or maybe you saved your used gift wrap because you were given a large present, and the paper really wasn’t wrinkled. (Growing up as a missionary kid, we re-used gift wrap all the time!)

Why not use that extra gift wrap in some creative ways?

10 Creative Uses for Wrapping Paper

  1. Cover a book or a journal.
  2. Wallpaper a doll house.
  3. Make a greeting card.
  4. Cover a checkbook box as a drawer divider.
  5. Create a fun pencil holder.
  6. Use it as a matting in a picture frame.
  7. Make a reusable gift box by wrapping a shoebox inside and out.
  8. Wrap the outside of a larger box to store toys, photos, or momentoes. Match the gift wrap to the topic. For sports trophies, choose sports gift wrap for the lid and box.
  9. Glue patterns of wrapping paper on a gift bag. Use patriotic paper for a star shape in the middle of the bag, or flower wrapping paper in the shape of a flower.
  10. Create clothing for a paper bag puppet. You can make changes of clothes with the different wrapping paper, and put tabs on the edges (like paper doll clothes) to keep the clothing on the puppet.

There you have it! 10 creative uses for all the extra wrapping paper scraps that are lying around. Can you think of any other unique ways to use gift wrap? Share your ideas in the comments!

Dolls Around the World

Monday, November 21st, 2016

dolls-around-the-world

A great geography project for kids to understand the cultures of different countries is to make dolls around the world. Why not have your kids look up the traditional costumes of several countries and sew or hot glue those costumes onto dolls?

You will want to collect lots of scraps of cloth. If you do this with a school or homeschool co-op, one child can sign up for each country, and you can have the child research the costume for that one country. Then they can write a speech or report to go with their doll, and present it on a geography day!

I had always wanted to do this project myself and never had the time. When I saw this homemade dolls around the world set at a resale shop, I was overjoyed that I could show my children the costumes of the different countries while decorating my homeschool room colorfully.

If you don’t want to buy so many dolls, you can make dolls out of toilet paper tubes. Just hot glue cloth and beautiful accessories on them, and you can have a less expensive version of the dolls around the world. When I was a teacher in the schools, I assigned a biography for each of my students, and they made a figure of the person beginning with a toilet paper tube. Most of the students’ figures came out gorgeous!

Looking at all these dolls makes me want to travel the world!