Pinterest Weekly Kids Activity/Craft Challenge: Week1

I LLLLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOVVVVVVVVVVVVEEEEEEEEEEE Pinterest, it has been such a source of inspiration while decorating our house. I am not a great DIYer, but that is what is great about Pinterest, there are such a wide range of projects. So loads of simple, but impressive crafts/ house ideas that most people can easily do.

And more recently I have been using it for ideas for crafts/activities to do with my Little Man (LM). So I am setting myself a challenge, alla the greats before me (YHL, BowerPower, tutusandteaparties, etc).

So the Challenge: To pick out one of the hundreds of pins relating to kids crafts/ activities on Pinterest and do this with my LM. One a week.

And hopefully with all this creativity flowing through me, some will rub off on me and I will come up with some more of our own unique Pins.

Pinterest Challenge Week 1:

Snow Globe: Aquarium Take

This is a Christmassy one, but also a winter one, or modified to be a captured fairy/ elf/ aquarium themed one.
Some pins I loved were:

from ucreatewithkids.com


from yesterdayontuesday.com

We previously made one of these at Christmas, and LM loved it. Took about an hour, but very enjoyable and entertaining.

Here is our completed Christmas Snow Globe:



Christmas Carol Singer Snow Globe: http://being-a-mama.blogspot.com/


So this time, we are going to do an Aquarium Themed one. My LM absolutely loves all things fishy/ aquariums/ Nemo, sea… last library visit we got a load of related books, and he also got some for Christmas presents, and had some before, some mentioned below.

• Peek Inside the Coral Reef

• Where’s the Meercat? book (along lines of Where’s Wally, but Where’s the Meercat)- there’s a Great Barrier Reef page

Where's the Meerkat?

• Curious Clownfish



Curious Clownfish

• Finding Nemo

Finding Nemo

• Whale and the snail (mentioned already in Books We Like)



The Whale and the Snail



Things you will need:

• Large glass/plastic jar with lid (I used a Hellmann’s mayonnaise extra large jar for snow globe. A plastic one would be ideal- in that it can be a bit child proof. But we’ll make do and have this as a display item in his room to be looked at with mama and dada only).

• Small little sea creatures (we got s set in Aldi recently- had to get a 2^nd set, as there is no way LM would part with original set). Set includes dolphins, whales, lobster, crabs, shark, sword fish, lobster, coral, walrus and seal. I also found a transparent plastic sheet from the inside of a soap dispenser that had little clown fish and a larger blue fish- so LM love this, as Nemo and his dad were now in our aquarium.



• Shells/ pebbles and some sand (nice activity to collect these on beach before hand)
• Super glue and hot glue and hot glue gun.
• Ribbons/ embroidery thread- to represent seaweed/ coral- we luckily had a piece of fake coral in our sea creature set- so we used this.
• Semi flexible wire (I’m using jeweller wire)- to stick little sea creatures to, so they appear to be floating
• Glitter- blue/ green
• some blue crepe paper- we juststuck this on to the back of the jar (the alreadysticky section, due to not being able to remove stickiness!)
• Baby oil- for snow globe I used 3 350ml btls and had a small bit left over (at Christmas had only needed 2 as statue was large and took up a lot of room).

How to:

Beforehand

1. Glue sea creatures (underwater swimming ones) to wire, cut each to various lengths, so sea creatures are swimming at different levels.
2. Using super glue stick some shells, pebbles and ribbons to the inside of the top of the jar itself. Could maybe do this before hand, so little helper doesn’t get too bored!
3. Ask LM to paint the outside of the lid blue, allow to dry (could be doing this while you do 2). We used blue and green acrylic paint.
4. Using hot glue and gun (so get LM to watch this bit, and advice) stick on shells, pebbles, the crab and coral to base of the jar. This is difficult as has to be done in base of jar (oh why couldn’t the plastic sea creatures just float instead of sinking, make my job easier!). So I put the hot glue on the coral, shells and quickly dropped them in use kitchen thong to stand up/ put in correct place. Leave aside to dry.
5. Using hot glue stick on wire (with sea creatures attached) onto the inside of the lid. Leave aside to dry.

6. When glue is dry (leave for 5 mins to be safe- snack break). Now comes the fun bit for the helpers. Add in the glitter- lots of fun sprinkling it in. Can get messy, so best to put down newspaper under work area.

7. Squeeze in the 3 btls of baby oil to the jar- great fun as the oil gurgles as it is is added.



8. Pop in the seal and lobster so they are just floating around when shaken, and then sink to the bottom.
9. Run a good bit of hot around the inside of the lid and quickly put lid on jar. Then run a bit of super glue around the outside of the lid. This did not work for me first time, the oil was leaking out, needed to detach and re-attached and ensure jar lid was catching the tread of the jar top.
10. On top of the lid, stick a large rock and the walrus sitting on top.

11. I also had fun trying to remove the label stickiness from the outside of the jar, but to no avail, I tried scrubbing, soap and water, oil, but nothing worked. I see WD40 attached, but at that stage I had moved on, and just stuck some thin blue paper on back, added nice colour to aquarium.

Some Images of the finished Product:

Aquarium Snow Globe: http://being-a-mama.blogspot.com/

Aquarium Snow Globe: http://being-a-mama.blogspot.com/

Aquarium Snow Globe: http://being-a-mama.blogspot.com/