Paper Bag Monsters

I did some babysitting not that long ago. I knew it was going to be several hours long, so I tried planning ahead--I didn't want them to sit the entire time in front of the tv, but I also knew that they wouldn't play outside the entire time (it ended up being about 6 hours). I also had things inside that I still needed to do. So I came up with a quick, easy craft that all the kids could do and then play with.

 These two (above) were done by the 2 and 3 year old. The three (below) were done by a 4, 10, and 7 year old.

They spent about a half hour on the paper bag monsters and would have kept going if I hadn't needed to start making dinner. The paper bags are just the sandwich bags you can get at the grocery store (less than $2 for 50 of them). I had pipe cleaners, glue, crayons, markers, paper, safety scissors, tape, and googly eyes on hand already.

So give it a shot! Get some bags, put them in front of your kids with supplies, and let them at it!

Cricuts

So, I don't own one and I'm not really into scrapbooking, but my son's preschool teacher is letting me use hers to get some projects done for her (yeah for people who give you a discount for helping out!). Yes, I'm talking about the "Cricut" machine. It's AMAZING. And no, I'm not getting paid to advertise this.

Basically, imagine all those annoying, difficult cut out shapes. Are you thinking of them? The aching hands, dull scissors, and time spent? Well, now you have a machine that does it for you! All you need is one cricut, the sticky pads to put your paper on, a "spatula" utensil that takes your paper off, and whatever plug-in program you want (right now, I'm cutting out those really cute monsters you see everywhere right now). It's so effective that I'm almost convinced that maybe I might try scrapbooking...notice all of those non-commital words in that sentence before you hold me to it, though. :)