My Life in Pin: Mess Free Finger Painting

This week's My Life in Pin installment comes from my To make with kids board. Mess free finger painting (original pin). I love the idea! I've had the same jars of paint for too many years because I don't like the mess of paint  + kids. 

I decided to pull this one out one day when I needed to distract Jackson for a few minutes so I could do some work with Hazel and Abiah. Amelia was content to color.

To begin you squirt some paint into a ziplock bag. Then you place it on top of a piece of plain paper and tape both down to the table surface. 

The child is then free to mix the paints up as much as they like...but the paint stays in the bag!

Of course, some children just prefer to rip the bag off of the paper...

and color like sister.

I think this project will work better with the older kids. They understand the concept of "don't rip that off there!" Well, kind of. They were all interested at least so I'm sure I'll be using it again.

If you haven't already, find me on Pinterest! My username is queenshiree.

My Life in Pin: Matching Letter Eggs

For years I've avoided it. The evil time worm hole know as Pinterest. I avoided it for a reason. I knew I would be powerless against it. So many cute things!

My life is already busy. I wouldn't be able to do all the projects I would want to "pin." And I won't be to own half the clothes I've labeled "My Style."

I had friends tell me to join. Over and over. They knew I'd love it. But I couldn't.

Until this last weekend.

Through facebook I had been exposed to one too many cute ideas that I just HAD to do with the kids. I even talked my decision to join over with HH. All along he's known what would happen if I joined. He was right.

Day one and I've spent a few evening hours clicking on one cute thing after another. Day two and I've got 12 boards each with multiple pins and I spend a good 15 minutes laughing so hard I'm crying over funny pins I want to pin but don't have the guts to pin.

I did decide from the start that I would have to try a good portion of the ideas that I do pin. Pin. I'm planning a few weeks of craft with the kids for advent and have lots of ideas stored up for that time.My goal is for them to make gifts for their 14 cousins for Christmas. You call it slave labor, I call it Craft Time which means Mommy gets some good mom points! I'll try to post our versions of the crafts here.

It's a two-for really. (Two birds, one stone. Keep up!)

So, my first pin craft is from my School Ideas board for uppercase and lowercase egg matching (original pin). Here's what mine looks like and my twist:


I have a big supply of left-over plastic Easter eggs so I didn't spend any money on this project.

Basket of eggs!

 My twist was to put the letters in print on one side...

And cursive on the other...

The idea behind this is for the girls to get familiar with both versions. Whether this was a good idea or just a good way to confuse them is yet to be seen.

The first time we played with them I had the girls write down the print version of the eggs they found matches for. Since they were both begging to do this project since I made it Sunday afternoon I knew neither of them would sit patiently waiting for the other to match all 26 eggs so we did it together and it was basically first come first match.

Hazel's written work

I didn't focus on their paper work as much this time since it was all new to us. Also we were at the end of our school day and they really just wanted to play with the eggs. Of course I helped Amelia with her written work more then Hazel.

Amelia's written work

We all really liked this and I know the girls will be excited to play with the eggs again. Come find me on Pinterest!