Recycled Ornaments!

Need a few more ornaments on your tree? Don't buy new ones! Recycle old holiday cards and create lovely garlands for the tree!
Full instructions are here! Thanks, Martha Stewart!

Christmas Gift: Homemade Granola

Having trouble with Christmas gifts for your friends, coworkers, and family members? How about a consumable, healthy, and easy-to-make gift that's good for everyone and anyone?
 

Homemade granola is easy to make and is customizable to each individual's taste! Here you can find a video of Martha herself making the granola and here is the full recipe!

Let us know how yours turns out!

3D Moravian Stars

 

The only materials you need for this craft is florist ribbon and a little patience. A 3D Moravian star takes only a few minutes to make, but looks beautiful when finished!

The stars can be made to adorn a tree or to give away as Christmas presents. It's fun to experiment with different colors of ribbon and with varying sizes, too!

Get the full instructions here! There are videos at the bottom of the page if you find you need some extra guidance when creating your stars. 

Enjoy and have fun!

Make Your Own Owl!

Ava and her new owl friend!

This craft is super cute and easy! 

The materials you will need are:

*a paper tube * Yellow or orange (or any color you fancy) construction paper *feathers *glue *scissors  
*And googly eyes, of course!

Cut out and glue the owl's beak onto the tube. Then glue on the eyes and feathers in a pleasing-to-you arrangement and voila, you now have your very own owl!

Enjoy!

Paper Fan

Here is a new twist on the classic paper fan. We used foil paper with a wide craft stick and decorated with Sharpie markers. But we suspect plain or patterned paper would work just as well. This is a useful craft for the upcoming weather forecast that has the temps up over 90 degrees! Click here for directions and have fun with this craft!

Back of fan (front of fan top left)

Bug Observation Jar

Glass pasta sauce jar turned 

into a Bug Observation Jar!

This is a super interesting and engaging activity for kids and adults alike. The project is also recycled as well as recyclable! 

We decorated both a glass (left) and a plastic (right below) container (depending on the level of safety individual folks require) with Sharpie markers. 

Since this is a tool to "view" bugs and not indefinitely house them, there is no need to put air holes in the cover.

 Plastic Deli Tub with toy grasshopper 

and real (wasp?) nest that blew

down on a very windy day

Take your new bug jar out capture (gently), observe, identify (if you are so inclined) and release!

Materials: 

• Glass or Plastic Container
• Sharpie Markers
• Bug Field Guide (optional)

Umbrella Craft

'Rainy Day Craft' picture

With rain in the forecast though most of the week we thought this was a fitting craft for the weather we are having! This is a super-fun craft for any age and most of the materials you probably have around the house! Follow the link here for the material list and directions. Enjoy!

How to Make Mini Garden Gnomes!

Socialphy Craft Photo

Oops! With staff vacations and the upcoming Summer Reading Program, we are sad to say that we didn't get to make the craft this week ourselves. However, we found this excellent Garden Gnome craft at Socialphy. It looks fun as well as easy. For those folks who try this craft, let us know how the finished product came out! Click here to go to the craft.

Paper Fan Butterflies

Since we just love colorful flying creatures we thought this would be a nice late spring craft made from reclaimed magazine pages and Chenille Stems!

Thanks to Family Fun for the great idea!

These are the materials you will need:

• Chenille Stems
• Ruler
• Scissors
• Old Magazine with glossy, colorful pictures

For specific instructions click here to visit the craft at the Family Fun site.

 

We did note that the fan folds should be rather small, less than a quarter inch. The smaller the folds the easier it twists into the chenille stems.

Also the skinnier the chenille stems are, the better the butterfly body will look after the few twists needed to add in the wings. The fatter the stems the bulkier the body.

Enjoy!

Mother's Day Flowers

Mother’s Day is this Sunday, May 13!  Here’s a fun and easy craft for kids to make (with a little help) to show Mom that they are great!

What you’ll need:

Vase:

• Plastic cup
• Glue
• Scraps of tissue paper

 Flowers:

• Pipe cleaners
• Construction paper
• Markers
• Playdough/clay
• Pictures of you

 1. Glue the scraps of tissue paper onto the cup using a brush and let dry.

 2. Have your child decorate the construction paper (one sheet per flower) then cut them into three pieces lengthwise.  Tape the ends of each strip together to make a circle, then staple the three circles of each color together to make the flower shape.

 3. Glue pictures of your child to the front of the flowers, and attach the pipe cleaners to the back using tape.  You may need to use something more rugged than pipe cleaners, like colored craft sticks, to support your flowers.

4. Finally, place the Playdough/clay at the bottom of your vase and press the flowers in to it to secure them.

 Happy Mother's Day!

Moon Sand

We found this recipe for form-holding Moon Sand and gave it a try.

The materials you will need are:

     

     * All Purpose Flour

     * Baby Oil

     * Measuring Cup

     * Mixing Vessel

Measure out one (1) cup of Baby Oil

and add to mixing vessel.

Measure out and add eight (8) cups of All Purpose Flour to your mixing vessel.

Hand mix!

This part was great fun and smelled good too!

While the Moon Sand is not really able to be hand sculpted, it will hold the shape of a form. 

We used a shell (on the right) to make the two shell shapes (both on the left) out of Moon Sand.

Here we used a small plastic container. 

Have fun and experiment with different forms and share your results with us!

Bird Nesting Bag

Bring the birds to your backyard with nesting materials in a leftover onion bag. I first saw this craft on Family Fun!

Simply fill the bag with materials that are around the house and backyard, such as yarn, cotton balls, leaves, and twigs!

There are all kinds of things birds can use to build nests, so don't stop at what we used - get creative!

We used pine needles, twigs, cotton balls, bits of yarn, and bits of crepe paper to create a colorful mix that would be attractive to the birds.

For example, Family Fun suggests using pet hair in the mix - after brushing your cat or dog, use what's left on the brush!

Tie off the open end with string and secure the bag to a branch on a nearby tree.Make a few and watch as the birds flock to your backyard!

The instructions suggest using an onion bag, but I used an orange bag and it worked just as well!

These are easy to make and are perfect for spring when birds are busy building their nests. If you use colorful yarn, it will be easier to spot their newly-made nests.

Daffodil Candy Cup

These Daffodil Candy Cups are super easy to make with coffee filters, food coloring and paper cups.  I originally saw these on the Martha Stewart website.  If children are making these use white glue instead of the hot glue gun; it works just as well.
 Try making these in other colors. They would make great birthday party decorations in pinks, oranges and reds and yellows!

Let's Go Fly a Kite!

These kites meet all our requirements for a great craft:
1. They are easy.
2. The materials are readily available
3. They work!
4.  They are fun.

We've made these many times for many different groups of kids and they are a hit every single time.  All you need is colored paper (construction or copy), masking tape, bamboo skewers, surveyors tape, and string! Older kids can make these on their own, and even young children can make them with a little help on the folding and taping. And once the kites are made the kite flying begins!  Take them outside to see how well these work with just a little bit of running. The full instructions are available from FamilyFun and are clear and easy to follow.   Have fun!

Beaded Dragonflys

Beaded Dragonflies are fun to make for the garden, a sunny window or just because! This was the Make It and Take It craft on Saturday, March 17th. Click here for the directions and enjoy!

Robins in the Children's Room!

I saw a flock of robins the other day, so it seemed like the right time to start putting up our spring decorations!  While we were looking through all our old decorations we found some construction paper robins that I'd made a long time ago.  They were pretty faded and and a little crumpled, so I took one apart to make templates, and we made a bunch of new ones. The old robins were made from brown and red construction paper, but I wanted to make the new ones in more authentic colors so I  made some custom paper by painting construction paper with acrylic paints.  If you don't want to go to all that trouble, solid color scrap-booking paper comes in all sorts of colors and is a good weight for this project.   If you'd like to make your own, the directions and templates are here.  Next I'm going to try making a standing robin with paperclip legs....

Giveaway Extended

The Finger Puppet Giveaway is extended for another week  The new deadline for posting a comment is Saturday, March 17th.  You can also comment on Facebook to enter your name for the giveaway!

I didn't get a craft posted this week...sorry.  I had planned to post the directions for a robin decoration that we'll be hanging up soon, , but didn't get the sample or the directions finished.  Look for them next week!

The First Ever Weekly Craft Giveaway!

Win the entire set of Finger Puppets in the previous post(including this bonus one)!   All you need to do is comment on the finger puppet post by March 10.  One name will be randomly chosen to be the winner!  Good luck!

Finger Puppets

Try making these finger puppets...they are pretty easy!  All you need is some felt, glue (fabric glue or a hot glue gun works best) and whatever other decorations you want to add.  Just remember not to use anything small if the puppets are for very young children.  Directions and patterns for all the animals shown (plus a chicken) can be found here.  And don't stop with these...start with the basic patterns and create you own designs: you could make a monkey, or a duck, or almost anything!  I'd love to see what you come up with!

Felted Egg Soaps

This is a craft we did as part of our Summer Reading Program last year, and it was a lot of fun.  Because the theme of the program was dinosaurs we called them dinosaur eggs, but you could make them for Easter too.  In fact, you can make them any shape (I've seen them made to look like rocks) or you can felt over the bar of soap without changing the shape of it at all.   Click here for printable instructions.  For more wool/yarn craft ideas check out the "Wooly Yarns" display in the Children's Room!

Cinnamon Dough Hearts

In Story Times this week we have been making Cinnamon Heart Decorations. We made cinnamon scented  dough ahead of time, and during Story Time kids rolled it out and used cookie cutters to to make heart decorations.  The recipe for the dough comes from "Mudworks" by MaryAnn Kohl.  It's full of every kind of clay and dough recipe you can think of, and it's one of my favorite craft books. You get a completely different result depending on whether you bake the clay or let it air dry: the heart on the left was air-dried, and the one on the left was baked. When I use this clay at home I bake it because the house smells so good! Click here to print the recipe.Note: this dough is not edible.

Waxed Paper and Crayon Hearts

These Valentine's Day decorations look great, and are surprisingly easy to make.  All you need is waxed paper, crayons, an old-fashioned hand held pencil sharpener, newspaper or craft paper and an iron. Basically, you use the iron to melt crayon shavings between sheets of waxed paper. The full instructions are on the Martha Stewart website, but here are a few tips:

• A few crayon shavings go a long way: if you use too much, when the crayon melts it makes a thick glob that's difficult to cut and the hearts won't be translucent.
• Always fold the edges of the wax paper twice: you don't want the melted crayon running out the sides onto your ironing surface!
• Change the newspaper/ craft paper protecting your iron and ironing surface often:  the waxed paper does leave a residue on those papers, and after a few uses they start to get messy.
• Preselect crayons of similar colors: there's no way to control how the colors will mix when the crayon is melted, so you want to avoid colors that will look ugly when melted together.
• Only adults should use the iron.

We made these as a Make-It and Take-It craft several years ago, and it was a great project for all ages. Kids used the pencil sharpener to scatter crayon shavings over the waxed paper, put another sheet of waxed paper on top and folded the edges over.  The librarian (or adult volunteer) ironed the sheets to melt the wax. Once the sheets were cool enough, kids cut hearts out to take home for decorations.  It might seem like a complicated craft, but it was actually pretty easy and even the really young kids can participate by spreading the crayon shavings on the paper.

One of the things I love about this craft is that you don't have to be limited by hearts or Valentine colors.  The decorations for the Summer Reading Program this coming summer are going to feature a lot of nocturnal animals, so I'm going to make this up in pale shades of yellow, blue and green, and then cut out stars to hang from the ceiling.  It would make great butterfly wings as well....

Have fun!

New and Improved Blog

Welcome to the new and improved  Rochester Public Library Children's Room Blog! 

We get a lot of questions about the crafts we do in Story Time, for Make -It and Take-It, or for our decorations, and we love hearing that you enjoy what we do!  So we were inspired to make this an "all craft" blog, where once a week we would post the instructions for a craft that is child-centric!  Some of these will be crafts we have used for Story Times or Make-It and Take-It.  Some will be projects that have too many steps for us to make in our programs, but are too cool not to pass along.  Some will be instructions for our more popular decorations.  And some may even be crafts that grown-ups can make to share with their children. 

Happy Crafting!

Cheerio Heart Bird Feeders

Come join us for the Make it and Take Craft on Saturday, February 11th. 

We will be making 

Cheerio Heart Bird Feeders 

for our feathered friends! 

Kids 2 years old and up can drop in any time between 9:30am and 11:30am. Older children may attend independently, but younger children should be accompanied by an adult. Children may leave when their projects are completed so parents are requested to stay in the Children’s Room. Please call us with any questions at 335-7519 or visit our website at www.rpl.lib.nh.us.  See you there!