Winter snowmen clip art for commercial use

This week I uploaded a new winter snowmen clip art set.  I hope that you will find them useful.  I purposely made their bellies big so that they are ready for any text or images you might want to add to them.  This set is available to purchase in my tpt store.  It is available in color and black and white.

And now for today's freebie!  This snowman is available for you to download for free, for today only (until 12pm MST).  (just click on the image to download)

Check back next month for the Sunday Surprise event!  On the first Sunday of the month I will showcase my newest clip art set, and to celebrate I will add an image free for the day.

And as always I'm always looking for ideas, so please let me know if you are looking for something in particular! You can check out more of my clip art here

To see more of my clip art for sale, come on over to my store.  
or have a look at my posts about the following sets (click on the image to read more):

I may get commissions for purchases made through links in this post. For more information about this please see our disclosure policy

Kid made recycled keurig pod Christmas ornaments

This week the kids and I started on our Christmas crafts!  The kids love to make crafts and Christmas time is the perfect time to make holiday gifts, ornaments, tags, and wrapping paper.  This week we made recycled crafts.  I love my Keurig coffee machine but I have to admit I cringe every time I throw away the empty plastic coffee container.  So this week I saved a few containers and we made some fun ornaments.

To make this snowman we used 1 coffee pod and 1 styrofoam ball.

Before we attached the ball I poked an extra hole on the bottom of the coffee pod and attached a string for hanging.  We then made a hat by cutting a bit of felt and then glued the long side together to form the hat.

We attached the hat, and drew in eyes, nose (sticker), and mouth.  We then glued the head onto the coffee pod (we found a low heat glue gun worked best), added buttons and a ribbon for a scarf and ended up with some cute snowman!!

To make this snowman we used 3 coffee pods and threaded the string through the holes in the bottom of the coffee pods.  We tied a bead along the string after each pod to give it a layer look.  The kids added googly eyes, a nose and mouth and there we had another cutie snowman.

So after making our snowman the kids wanted to make a reindeer so I said sure.  We figured if we glued a pompom onto the bottom of the coffee pod it looked just like a reindeer.  We added some goodly eyes, poked pipe cleaner through the coffee pod for antlers and we ended up with some cute reindeer.

Now if I had planned it ahead of time, I would have painted the coffee pods brown, but since this was an on the fly type of craft we ended up with white reindeer.  We will probably try this one again and paint them brown.  Goodness knows I have lots of coffee pods around!!

This post is part of the 20 Days of a Kid-Made Christmas series.  Several of the best kid bloggers are sharing their favorite kid-made ornament ideas!  

You can also hop on over to the Kid-Made Christmas Pinterest board to see all the ornament ideas.


Need more Christmas ornament ideas, but don't have the time to search around?  One of my favorite blogs is selling their book which is filled with 30 Christmas ornament ideas, so you can get crafting today! Click on the picture below to be taken to the Red Ted blog.

Find your favourite Christmas Ornaments for the Whole Family to enjoy in one handy downloadable and printable format!

How to make a fluffy snowman from shredded paper

This week on the weekly kids co-op, Housing a Forest posted a how to make a fluffy snowman from shredded paper.  I love how the shredded paper gives the snowman texture.  What an easy way to recycle scrap paper and it is so easy, your kindergarten and preschool students can finish the craft independently.  Make sure you head on over to the original post for all the directions.

What else could you make out of shredded paper?

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I may make commission from purchases made through links on this page. For more information, please see my disclosure page.

W is for Winter learning with letter crafts

Teaching the letters of the alphabet is always a favorite of mine.  One great way to engage kids in letter learning is to give them activities that create letter crafts.  Making a craft for each letter of the alphabet helps kids notice similarities and differences in the way the letters are formed and that each letter makes different sounds.  Today we are looking at the letter W, specifically W is for Winter.  

For this craft I cut out the letter W out of construction paper and gave the kids a small bowl of mini marshmallows.  Most kids are suckers for anything that involves food, so they are usually very excited to participate.   I tell the kids that we are going to pretend the marshmallows are snowballs and we are going to stick them onto our W to represent Winter.  Next I have the kids take a bite out of a marshmallow and eat that half and then stick the other half onto the W.  Because the marshmallow is so sticky NO GLUE is needed!  Such yummy fun!

 

This letter craft represents the letter “W” in the 31 Days of ABC over at All Done Monkey.  Where Each letter is linked to a craft on a different blog listed below.




After taking a break last year due to the arrival of Baby #3, we are back with one of my favorite series, the 31 Days of ABC! You can look forward to 31 more days of activities, crafts, books, apps, and more, all dedicated to teaching young children the alphabet.


I am so happy to be working with an amazing group of kid bloggers, who will be sharing their amazing ideas with us in the coming days. And this year for the first year we are also adding a giveaway, so be sure to scroll to the end and enter for a chance to win!


So join us as we jump, skip, hop, and read our way through the alphabet this October!


Don't forget to follow our 31 Days of ABCs Pinterest board for even more great ABC ideas!

31 Days of ABC

Teaching the ABCs - October 1

All Done Monkey: Creating a Preschool Letter of the Week Curriculum

A - October 2

Frogs and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails: Apple Scented Glitter Glue and Apple Craft

B - October 3

Witty Hoots: How to Make Fabulous Button Bookmarks

C - October 4

Preschool Powol Packets: Construction Truck Preschool Action Rhyme

D - October 5

ArtsyCraftsyMom: Printable Dinosaur Alphabet Sequencing Puzzle

E - October 6

Preschool Powol Packets: Elephant Art Project and Thailand Lesson

F - October 7

Spanglish Monkey: Spanish-English ABC Flashcards

G - October 8

Royal Baloo: Simple Ghost Painting Project

H - October 9

Peakle Pie: Hide and Seek

I - October 10

Look! We're Learning!: Insect Activities for Kids

J - October 11

All Done Monkey: Olmec Jaguar Craft

K - October 12

Preschool Powol Packets: I Am a Kite Action Rhyme for Preschool

L - October 13

Raising a Trilingual Child: Letter Learning with a Mult0ilingual Twist

M - October 14

Creative World of Varya

N - October 15

Peakle Pie: Narwhal Fingerprint Pictures

O - October 16

For the Love of Spanish: O es de Oso

P - October 17

Little Hiccups: P is for Places, A Travel ABC Book

Q - October 18

All Done Monkey: Bilingual Letter Craft - Q is for ¿Qué? Q is for Question

R - October 19

Sugar, Spice & Glitter

S - October 20

Crafty Mama in ME: Patterned Paper Plate Snake

T - October 21

Discovering the World Through My Son's Eyes: Puerto Rican Flamboyant Tree

U - October 22

Witty Hoots: How to Make Awesome Unicorn Headbands

V - October 23

Creative World of Varya

W - October 24

Scribble Doodle and Draw

X - October 25

All Done Monkey

Y - October 26

Our Daily Craft

Z - October 27

Discovering the World Through My Son's Eyes

123's - October 28

Hispanic Mama

Prewriting - October 29

Sugar Aunts

Books, Songs, & Apps - October 30

The Jenny Evolution

Alphabet Clip Cards - October 31

The Kindergarten Connection alphabet clip cards

Find more great resources in 31 Days of ABCs 2013 and 2014!

Giveaway

Don't forget to enter for a chance to win this great prize package, open internationally!





3 month subscription to the Kidloland app, which includes 575+ interactive nursery rhymes, songs, stories, and educational activities to help children learn ABCs, animals, fruits, vegetables, shapes and more!





The Alphabet Experts Mega Bundle from Kindergarten Connections contains 500+ of alphabet printables, including tons of activities for each letter of the alphabet! ($58.50 value)


a Rafflecopter giveaway

coffee filter snowflakes

Don't you just love coffee filters??  They are so cheap and great for so many crafts!  This is more pictures from last year (they are 2).  We folded up a coffee filter, cut shapes out (with my help) and then painted them.  They looked great hanging in our window.  This is another easy center idea for kindergarten or grade 1 students as well.  Great fine motor, cutting practice, and who doesn't love painting!!

Fun fine motor activity guaranteed to keep kids busy in winter

Winter time brings lots of fun learning experiences but sometimes it is just too cold to go outside.  That is when I bring the icy the cold inside!  One of my kids favorite fine motor activities is to dig toys out of a block of ice.  I take a bucket and fill it with a variety of toys and then add water and put it in the freezer (or leave it outside if it is -30 degrees like it was here last week)  The next day, I take the bucket out and give the kids wooden or plastic hammers, screw drivers, spoons, forks, etc.. and let them try to "dig" the toys out.  

You can also bring out a spray bottle and a squeeze bottle to pour water onto the ice to help it melt.  All great fine motor activities and it keeps the kids occupied for a long, long time!!  Don't forget the gloves, small hands get cold fast.

This activity works great in the water table with kindergarten and preschool students. Although if possible it works best if you give kids their own ice block and a bucket. Less accidental hammering of your neighbors fingers.

What kinds of things do you do to keep the kids busy during long winter days?

You might also be interested in the following fine motor ideas:

Check out our fine motor page for more ideas.