Things For Thursdays-Snowmen

These snowman goodies look fantastic! This is what I'm doing with the preschool kids today. Since we are in the desert, our Winter is short lived and so I figure I need to get all the Winter crafts in that I can. I think it looks so yummy and quick and easy!
Next, I found these melted snowmen! So funny. This is one of our snowmen that we just made. The other Preschoolers really didn't want theirs to be puddles and so theirs were just glue snowman. I used to get all worked up over my daughter not doing the crafts the may they were supposed to be done (or the way I wanted them to be done). Luckily it only took the first time or two of her having other ideas, for me to get over that frustration. Isn't it better when they can see supplies and come up with their own things? Don't we want our kids to be able to think for themselves? And isn't doing crafts with kids supposed to be fun? Well, you will notice in future posts that I tend to let the kids have full reign on craft projects. I show them what it could look like, and give them the supplies to be able to make the same thing, and then I let them do what they want. If we are using super glue (which I did today in my other snowman craft) then the crafts tend to end up looking more like I envisioned, because I do the super gluing for them.
Here is another really cute snowman mobile. I, however, opted to just wing it for my next craft. I had the supplies for the other one...and then I saw that we had empty juice bottles in the recycle crate. I usually don't have those as we try not to buy things with lots of packaging. But since we just went on a road trip, we had them. I hate to then just let these bottles go into our landfill, so I made up these snowmen. I'm sure you have seen variations of them everywhere. I also have socks with no mates, and so I used them for the snowmen's scarves and hats. I think they turned out pretty cute! I used to have the kids paint on the outside of containers, but have found that the paint chips off. So, if I can I have the kids squirt the paint into the bottles and paint it from the inside. They love shaking the paint around to make sure it's all covered. I cut the tops (cuffs) of the socks off to make the hats and then cut strips out of the socks for the scarves. The carrot noses are just made out of orange felt. I swear, I need to own stock in googly eyes and felt! We use them for EVERYTHING!
If anyone makes any of these things, I'd love to see your versions of them. It's always so much fun to look at something and then come up with your own version of it. I think I've used these juice bottles in 4 or 5 other crafts. Snowmen crafts are so easy and fun to come up with. I had also envisioned snowmen out of paper plates (another thing I need to have stock in), snowmen out of pompons, snowmen masks (I love masks for everything!). For the last part of today I just had the kids do Preschool work on papers that were snowmen themed. DLTK is a great "go-to" place for any of this stuff. I seemed to have collected so many files of worksheets that I can match just about any theme I can think of. Another great site is ChildCare.com. She has great preschool worksheets, and many of them are free!
Rebecca