Mailboxology

Photo Credit: ©Renaissance Woman (aka Bird Legs)

What gives a home instant curb appeal?  For me, it’s always the little touches: a willow garden arbor; watching hummingbirds blissing out on red geraniums in window boxes; that classic rocker calling my name on the porch.

When I think first impressions, I always recall a teacher of mine who had the kind of front yard that made you want to stop and linger.  Her brand of curb appeal started less than six inches from the street.  It was always about the mailbox.  People went out of their way to see her latest creation.  I know because I was one of them... her mailbox groupies. 

Today, as I finished revitalizing a seriously sorry looking mailbox at the end of my country lane, I realized I was paying homage to that most extraordinary individual who taught me the true meaning of painting on a whole different kind of canvas.  I only wish it hadn’t taken me so many years to do something about the forlorn sight that greeted every visitor to my home. 

When does a mailbox become more than a mailbox?  It ceases to be a standard 6-inch x 18-inch receptacle when it becomes a means of celebrating life, personal expression, and the essence of home.  Thank you, my friend, for teaching me to see the potential in everything.  If there were such a thing as human curb appeal, its name and definition would be Carolyn.

Though my first mailbox renovation isn’t on a par with her works of art, I think she would be pleased that I went all out to create something whimsical.  Carolyn, more than anyone, understood that whimsy is good for the soul.  I hope my new mailbox makes someone, maybe you, smile on the inside. 

What kind of whimsy might you express today? 

Note: The author may receive a commission from purchases made using links found in this article. “As an Amazon Associate, Ebay (EPN) and/or Esty (Awin) Affiliate, I (we) earn from qualifying purchases.”

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Easter Craft Egg-Citement!

Easter Blessings!

It's not too late to get crafting for Easter - we have been busy making little chicks, coloring in Easter bunny paper dolls and even making some little chocolate eggs of our own with a chocolate mold.  

The past week we have also made baskets for an egg hunt, and were lucky enough to attend a willow weaving workshop at our local zoo, where we learned how to make these bird nests pictured! These make a lovely Easter gift, with a knitted bird or two and some pretty foiled eggs. 

This time of year is a haven for crafty ideas - spring is in the air, nature is abundant with bits and bobs to use in crafting, and we have Easter and Earth Day to inspire us! Tomorrow we're going to combine the two events by recycling the pretty colored foil that my children's Easter hunt eggs were wrapped in (below), and using them to create some kind of object or collage. We've not decided yet! 

Hubpages is the perfect place to find Easter craft ideas, or to write your own how-to's and reviews! Whether you want inspiration for a craft, or want to see how you can share your own ideas, take a look at some of these terrific pages. 

Older preschoolers might like to help (or receive!) these Resurrection Easter Eggs, demonstrated by ideadesigns. And if you're all out of painting and decorating eggs enthusiasm by now, why not try something different, such as this great idea by prosperity66, who shows you how to make Easter Bells from plant pots!

Finally, I love this tutorial from KyraB. Now spring is here, we are itching to get gardening, and have been looking at making a fairy garden in a barrel and a terrarium. So her lens on How to Make a Christian Easter Planter seemed like perfect timing for getting crafty with planting, with an Easter theme!

I was delighted to see my Chick in Egg Easter Cards tutorial selected as Lens of the Day today! This is a great craft for little ones as you can keep it simple (a colored chick in a plain egg) or have fun decorating, coloring or painting it to the hilt! 

I am also delighted to have been blessed with the new regular position of Saturday poster for Review This, so from next weekend you will be able to find reviews, tips, inspirations and ideas from Little Crafty Kids here every week! 

Once again, have a Happy Easter, and happy crafting!  

Note: The author may receive a commission from purchases made using links found in this article. “As an Amazon Associate, Ebay (EPN) and/or Esty (Awin) Affiliate, I (we) earn from qualifying purchases.”

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Learning through Crafts

Crafting with little ones is perfect for bringing out their creative side, nurturing their inner artist and exercising their imagination. But crafts can also be a wonderful learning tool in other ways as well.

As an unschooling home educator, I use play and art as part of the learning process. We learn and craft with the seasons, the things we see and do daily, and whatever interests my children currently have. 

Of course, right now it is coming up to Easter, so there are lots of beautiful spring, egg and other Easter themes in abundance! We have been making these chick in egg cards (left) to send to my daughter's friends and pen pals, a prime example of learning as we craft. The activity led to a discussion about the life cycle of the chicken, farms, and whether there are chicks in the eggs that we have in the fridge! 

We also belong to a home educators book club on Facebook, which has a different book to read every week or fortnight, and we incorporate lots of crafts and similar activities alongside the reading of the books. We've made stick people in the forest for Stickman (below left), play dough aliens (below centre) and a washing line full of colourful cut-out pants for Aliens Love Underpants (below right, which prompted a mini science lesson on the weather, how clothes get dry, and what we could use to "dry" our craft by representing the wind and sun). Not to mention Jack and the Beanstalk stick puppets, Room on the Broom peg dolls, Three Little Pig houses made of smoothie boxes - well, you get the idea! 

So, when you craft together, think about what other elements you can bring in to teach your child, to make learning fun! Even simple concepts like cutting paper or lacing beads (motor skills), counting out or measuring materials (maths), or trying out a new way of painting (art) are teaching key lessons.

Here are some ideas for the season for you! hlkljgk shows you how to dye eggs naturally for Easter in her Natural Egg Colouring lens. This activity combines craft with science, as you can explain the dyeing process and so on.

You can also get inspired by general craft ideas and apply an Easter theme. Here I show you How to Make a Shadow Puppet. You can teach children a basic history of shadow puppetry or the science of reflection and shadow, and create an Easter puppet show at the same time! 

Finally, why not inspire further crafting this Easter by popping a crafty gift egg inside your child's Easter basket? CorrinnaJohnson has some beautiful examples of these in her lens Crafty Non-Candy Easter Egg Surprises. 

Happy Easter, and happy crafting!  

  

Note: The author may receive a commission from purchases made using links found in this article. “As an Amazon Associate, Ebay (EPN) and/or Esty (Awin) Affiliate, I (we) earn from qualifying purchases.”

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Imagine, Create, Inspire!

Today I'm going to talk about why it's so great to share your crafts for kids online, and the best ways to do it!

First off, crafting for little ones is so very important, because it encourages them to be creative and imaginative from an early age, makes for great messy play (also very important!) and can benefit them in a number of other ways, ranging from fine motor skills to learning counting, colours and shapes.

It can be hard to know where to start for new parents, so anything online that can help inspire moms and dads is a wonderful thing - it's where I started when I was a new mama! Reviews of books and kits, ideas for resource materials and basics, and step-by-step tutorials for different age groups are all so very helpful to your readers! And even when you're a crafting pro, fresh inspiration for your kids is always welcome, so any more complicated crafts and fabulous ideas you may have are perfect for young crafters as well!

Remember, everything that you do with your kids that makes them happy, could make other children happy too! Sharing resources with other parents means you are inspiring others to imagine and create their own crafts and fun ideas.

As the Little Crafty Kids Contributor, writing about kids crafts comes easy for me because, chances are, we'll be doing crafts weekly anyway, I'll be taking photos anyway, and I'll be wanting to share them online anyway! So it's really easy to find things to write about each week. Plus I love doing it, so hopefully that shows in the writing! Be inspired by the seasons, festivals and events, what you can find in your recycling bin, or the story you've been reading together at bedtime. What can you make today?

To write a great article or tutorial about what you're doing with your kids, make sure you take nice, clear photos of each step, as well as the finished result! It can help to have a not-too-cluttered background, but hey, this is parenting, so that's not essential! Take some colourful pictures of the materials you're using, too. Pictures of your children actually doing the crafts are fab, but if you prefer not to put pictures of them on the internet, then take back-of-head shots of them crafting, or shots of each stage on the tabletop. If you're a wiz in a photo editing program, then you could make a montage of some of the photos with a tagline like "How to make a Toy Oven out of an Old Box" or "10 Great Crafts to Make with Pine Cones"! You could use this as an intro photo and also to promote the article on social media, especially great for visual ones like Facebook and Pinterest.

Think about niches and keywords, and how to get traffic for different kinds of craft articles. Individual how-to's might not get many searches, especially if your tutorial is something unusual, but if you can slot it into a niche phrase that is searched for, then write a piece that incorporates it - for example, you might have a review of an Easter Make and Do book, a tutorial on how to make an Easter bonnet, and a how-to on different ways to dye and decorate eggs, and so on. Write a lens or blog post on "Fun Easter Activities for Preschoolers" or "Easy Easter Crafts for Toddlers" and link to each of your related articles!

How else can you help other moms and dads? Last time I talked about reviewing craft kits. Craft books are also great to review - most parents will want to buy at least one or two of these, but there are so many out there, a really good selection of reviews can help them choose. If you put effort into your reviews and really show your enthusiasm or passion for the book (along with things you've actually made) then your readers will turn into shoppers!

Share your thoughts on:

• The ease of instructions for each craft
• Age suitability
• How clear/inspiring/beautiful the photos are
• How many projects and ideas there are
• Levels of difficulty
• Do they work? Are they easy to make? Are there good challenges? 
• And most importantly - do your children enjoy making the projects? 

 I created a list of craft books suitable for under-fives here, which you can use as a starting point for writing a book review. There have been some fantastic reviews written by Squidoo'ers in the last few weeks, such as this review of Show Me a Story by MeltedRachel, which shows the passion she has for the book as well as lovely photos of how she used inspiration from it to make story mats and maps from her leftover textiles. Meanwhile, tonyleather shared this bumper binder of books for making things from household items, which gets his granddaughter in the creative mood! Finally, CorrinnaJohnson gives a great example of how to review a seasonal crafts book with her take on Valentine Things to Make and Do.

Of course, when it comes to crafts for little ones, you don't have to just stick to basic crafts - you could also come up with recipes and ideas for materials (home-made paint, play-dough and so on), crafts to create toys and other items (we've been making rainbow rice for sensory play, and we've saved an enormous cardboard box to make a rocket out of!), and crafts for grown-ups to make things for preschoolers. The sky is the limit when it comes to creativity!

Next time I'll be looking at making recycled crafts from household items. Happy crafting!

Note: The author may receive a commission from purchases made using links found in this article. “As an Amazon Associate, Ebay (EPN) and/or Esty (Awin) Affiliate, I (we) earn from qualifying purchases.”

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Let's Get Creative! I'm the "Little Crafty Kids" Contributor on Squidoo

Hello! I'm Louise - author, freelance writer and home educating mum from England - and I'm delighted to be writing here on Review This!

I'm the Little Crafty Kids Contributor on Squidoo, where you'll find me under the name of MissMerFaery. As a proud mama of two wonderful children, I am super excited to be sharing our crafting adventures with you, and will be asking you to share yours, too!

It's my job to showcase craft ideas, resources and reviews for crafting with the under-fives. So if you love getting creative with babies, toddlers and preschoolers, I want to hear from you! Parents, grandparents, teachers, and anyone who lives, works or spends time with children - that means you! Even if your little ones have all grown up now, perhaps you have memories and past craft ideas that you can share?

When I'm not busy crafting with my own little ones (I have a 4-year-old daughter and baby son), I'll be busy sharing our craft ideas and resources, reviewing our favourite craft kits and materials, providing craft tutorials, and much more. There will be some crafts for grown-ups too, for making toys, learning tools and other items for small children to play with!

But it's not all about us - I'll be looking for stellar craft ideas from everyone else, too! I'll be promoting top notch lenses on Squidoo, finding the best ideas from around the web, and inviting you to review your favourite products or create fun how-to's to share with other parents, caregivers and preschool teachers, so that we can spread the crafting bug everywhere!

I caught the crafting bug in my twenties, and it seems to have rubbed off on my little girl, too. She delves into her craft jar most days, eager to make something new! So if this all sounds familiar, why not share your knowledge and expertise?

Arts and crafts help little ones to develop their creativity and imagination, fine motor skills, artistic ability, and so much more. It's also great for recycling a wealth of materials, creating your own toys and games on a budget, and providing kids with fun activities that create good memories and teach them new skills!

So, I hope you will join me in creating a network of craft ideas for under-fives. To find out more, please stop by my Little Crafty Kids Contributor page. You can also follow and enjoy all our ideas and inspirations on the Little Crafty Kids Network on Pinterest.

If you're not already on Squidoo, and would like to try your hand at sharing your passions (kids crafts and otherwise) then you can join Squidoo for free, and enjoy a wonderful creative platform for your writing!

I'm a roving poster girl for Review This! so I'll be popping up now and again between the lovely regular writers here! I shall leave you with an invitation to review the best kids crafts kits for under-fives, and look forward to seeing what you come up with! 

Note: The author may receive a commission from purchases made using links found in this article. “As an Amazon Associate, Ebay (EPN) and/or Esty (Awin) Affiliate, I (we) earn from qualifying purchases.”

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