Creative Table - Week 5

MONDAY INVITATION - DRAWING or WRITING PROMPT

{Squiggle Drawings}

Today's simple drawing activity comes from Fireflies and Mud Pies. I created a sample, and then left this invitation out on the dining room table for when the kids returned home from school:

Both were excited to get started, and made some great squiggles to fill in! Honey Pot was working very diligently to stay in the lines, so hers was taking quite a bit longer. She decided to put it aside and will return to it another time to finish. But by the end of the creative session, here is the awesome work that they had done:

WEDNESDAY INVITATION - ART or CRAFT

{3D Raindrop Art}

It was a very rainy day here today. (Hooray for spring!) So I pulled this activity together for the kids for when they came home. The 3D raindrop recipe and idea came from this website, and the printable silhouette images that I used came from this one. In our trusty baby food containers (which have been getting a TON of use for crafts) I created various shades of blue, using the website's recipe of 1 part white glue to 1/2 part water. I measured very roughly though, since I was using such tiny amounts! Then I added a pipette to each.

At the suggestion of the website, I taped their papers to our easel at an angle, to allow the drips to fall slowly down, but not all the way. And of course, we covered the image below the umbrella with masking tape. Honey Pot went first, and did a spectacular job!

After waiting patiently, Little M&M took his turn.

Before he was finished, he wanted to do some experimenting with the colors. He mixed some of the blues together to create his own different shades. Since Honey Pot had already taken her turn, I definitely allowed this extra burst of creativity!

He used his new blues to finish his 3D raindrops.

The next day, I peeled up the masking tape, and offered another invitation to complete their projects.

Little M&M spread his glue across the top, and placed the cottonball clouds along there.

And Honey Pot did the same, but also added a few lower clouds to her scene. I love how these came out!

FRIDAY INVITATION - SENSORY or STEM

{Emoji-Inspired Playdough Creations}

This next invitation comes directly from The Curious Kindergarten blog. As soon as I saw it on Pinterest, I knew I had to assemble my own version for the kids! I put together a page of emojis to serve as inspiration, using clipart from the Internet. I gathered some of our playdough tools, round cutters and an assortment of small parts that they might need (this included heart gems, googly eyes, assorted dry beans, and small pieces of yarn and beads in three colors.

Most of the initial creations actually resembled emojis!

Here you can see Little M&M working on his own pink emoji, while Honey Pot recreates the heart-eyes emoji:

Aren't they cute?

And I love this clever idea to use the round cutter as the halo!

Eventually the kids began to make their own cute and strange emojis:

Though by this point I wasn't sure if we were still in the category of invented emojis, or if we'd moved onto monsters:

Either way, it was another fun week of invitations at the creative table!

Pokémon Birthday Party!

Little M&M chose Pokémon for his birthday party theme this year. Although this is not something I am terribly familiar with, I still had a ton of fun putting this party together for him. Take a look at some of our party details below:

FOOD

Here is our beverage table (the free printable water bottle labels came from here):

Our party began at 2pm, so we just served snack foods at the beginning of the party, cake at the end of the party and then ordered pizza for whomever was still around at night. This was a family-only party so that was basically everyone! Here are the foods we served as people arrived:

And here are our three homemade cookie cakes. We wanted to use primarily chocolate/vanilla frosting so we only made one Pokéball cake out of pre-packaged, colored frosting.

PARTY ACTIVITIES and GAMES

We love putting together fun games for our parties! Here is what we did today:

GAME #1: This game was for the kids and the adults. We simply placed gummy worms in a jar and asked our guests to guess how many "caterpie" were in the jar. At the end of the party we peeked at the guesses, and the person who guessed the right amount (or came the closest) was able to take the jar home with them!

GAME #2: Our first hands-on activity of the day was to design a pokéball. We purchased smooth foam balls from the craft store, and offered crayons for them to use to draw on them. I found a perfect chart on Google with some of the most popular pokéballs to serve as inspiration (though the link is faulty so I cannot credit the original maker of this awesome chart).

Some of the kids decorated a specific pokéball from the chart:

and others designed their very own:

GAME #3: Our next game was a scavenger hunt! I created this pokédex in Photoshop Elements and hid each Pokémon image featured on it around the main level of the house. This was surprisingly a super engaging and well-loved activity! The kids were so excited to run around looking high and low for these Pokémon. 

Later when asked what his favorite part of the party was, the scavenger hunt was definitely mentioned!

GAME #4: One thing I know about Pokémon is that you've "Gotta catch 'em all!" So that was the main idea behind this next game. I purchased red and white bowls from the Dollar Tree, and added one Pokémon image to each, with increasing point values. The kids had to use their own pokéball (which they decorated earlier in the party) to toss into the bowls. After five throws, the person with the highest sum of points was the winner.

They stood behind a masking tape line just a few feet away from the first bowl. Each kid threw the ball five times, and I was so pleased that everyone got at least a couple shots into the bowls. Some sharp throwers even "caught" the 100-point MewTwo!

GAME #5: I discovered this fun science activity on this website. It was such a great addition to the party! We purchased a bag of miniature Pokémon from Amazon. Using a 2:1 mixture of baking soda and water, we hid them inside little eggs. Then, using pipettes and vinegar, the kids were able to "hatch" some Pokémon eggs!

We were lucky in that our bag of assorted Pokémon contained 6 Pikachus! So we were sure to include those (distinguishing them with yellow food coloring dots on the eggs) to ensure each guest could hatch a Pikachu (only my two kids had to share one). We had each of the 7 kids hatch a total of three eggs, and then they could take them home with them!

For the kids this was a big hit, but note that the vinegar smell was strong at this moment, and the adults definitely noticed! Perhaps open a window or do this activity outside if you are able!

GAME #6: Our final game was a Beedrill Balloon Pop! We always like to have some kind of balloon game at our parties, but I wanted something different than the usual. So we blew up about 50-60 yellow and black balloons, filling some of them with images of Weedles and Kakunas (these are lesser evolved Beedrills). The object of the game was for the kids to pop all the balloons to find the one balloon containing the Mega Beedrill (the highest evolved Beedrill). They had SO much fun doing this. And...if you could believe it...the Mega Beedrill was discovered in the very LAST balloon!

PRIZES

Obviously the winner of the first game, guessing the number of Caterpies in the jar, received the jar of Caterpies. But for the other games that yielded a winner (Gotta Catch 'Em All and Beedrill Balloon Pop) we gave away these chocolate bar "medals." I quickly printed a little image to put on each of them.

PARTY FAVORS

I turned white favor bags into pokéballs using construction paper. Inside each was a Pokémon cup (Party City), Pokémon pencils and tattoos (Amazon) and some miniature chocolate bars with Pokémon face labels (free labels from here). Obviously, each guest also brought home their decorated pokéballs and the three figurines they each hatched from eggs.

It was a tremendous success, and Little M&M was so happy!

WE LOVE THROWING PARTIES! If you enjoyed looking at these party details, please take a look back at some of our other exciting themes:

Mary Poppins (Honey Pot's 6th birthday party)

The Good Dinosaur (Little M&M's 4th birthday party)

Aristocats / Kittens (Honey Pot's 5th birthday party)

Cars / Race Cars (Little M&M's 3rd birthday party)

Peter Pan (Honey Pot's 4th birthday party)*

Paw Patrol /Puppies (Little M&M's 2nd birthday party)*

The Little Mermaid (Honey Pot's 3rd birthday party)*

Hot Air Balloons (Little M&M's 1st birthday party)

Elmo / Sesame Street (Honey Pot's 2nd birthday party)

* Some of our most popular posts!

Creative Table - Week 4

MONDAY INVITATION - DRAWING or WRITING PROMPT

Today I had a very simple offering for the kids when they returned from school. I printed out a few copies of these sticker story templates, and set them beside our bucket of assorted stickers. We've done sticker stories many times before, sometimes during our themed units. We once used Easter stickers on pieces of construction paper, and Honey Pot told the story aloud as she placed the stickers down. Another time we used camping stickers to create a fun story in her nature journal. It's always a fun activity, and requires no setup whatsoever!

I was surprised that Little M&M grabbed his pencil and started writing. I thought I would have to transcribe his story for him, but he was an eager little writer! He asked how to spell words, and soon had written, "First there was a rainbow." And despite the clutter of alphabet stickers on there, he also made mention of a butterfly somewhere in there.

Honey Pot wrote a wonderful story that began, "It was a sunny day at the castle. And all the princesses are playing." Once they completed their stories, they each started a second one, but with those they only told the stories aloud instead of writing them. It was great fun!

WEDNESDAY INVITATION - ART or CRAFT

I had been seeing a lot of bleeding tissue paper crafts on Pinterest recently, and finally made the splurge to purchase a pack of them. For today's art project, I offered our new selection of bleeding tissue paper, a piece of cardstock/watercolor paper, a white crayon and a spray bottle full of water.

First the kids drew a picture with the white crayon.

Then they tore pieces of the tissue paper and arranged the pieces onto their pages.

And finally, they sprayed the tissue paper with lots of water!

We removed the paper scraps after just a minute or two, and noticed lots and lots of color! (In the future, we'll perhaps leave this job to just one person...a person wearing rubber gloves because it really stains your hands for a whole day afterward lol.)

We noticed the very lightest tissue paper colors didn't bleed well, so we then stuck to the really bright ones. The kids decided to layer on more tissue paper for a more brilliant effect! They repeated the process three or four times.

Here they are when they had nearly dried. Beautiful!

Little M&M enjoyed this so much he made a second work of art:

FRIDAY INVITATION - SENSORY OR STEM (science, technology, engineering, math)

We have enjoyed this activity before, but I recently saw the addition of beads from the Artful Parent, and just loved the extra challenge and appearance of it! So in today's invitation: mini marshmallows, two sizes of toothpicks and a container of assorted beads!

The kids got right to work (after a brief sampling of the marshmallows). Honey Pot started with a 3D structure:

Little M&M began with pattern-making:

We really loved using the beads, for example with this rainbow 3D square and a 3D triangle with a pretty pattern!

The play continued for a while.

And things became more elaborate.

But the sweetest part of this activity was when they decided to use their creations as houses for small characters.

Another successful week at the creative table!