Easter Countdown: Egg #2

This whole basket full of eggs thing apparently was GENIUS on my part. Yesterday morning she ran down the stairs and opened her egg at 6:30. Before breakfast and Handy Manny! Impressive, I know!

A few weeks ago Maddie mentioned a desire to make a bird in a nest and I discovered this adorable clay egg scene at Ordinary Life Magic. The initial plan was to make something similar but then we sort of went off on our own little tangent.

Last weekend I used the last of our Pluffy clay to make the egg. I ended up rolling out about half of a package and then molding it around a large plastic egg. Despite the cooking instructions I tossed the egg (plastic egg and all) in the oven at 175F for about 10 minutes. I didn't want to completely dry the clay at that point but I did want it firm enough to keep it's shape. With an X-Acto blade I sliced around the outside of the egg and was able to split the egg in half and remove the plastic egg. I returned the clay to the oven at 275F this time for another 10 minutes to finish the drying process. 

Maddie set off into the backyard in her pajamas yesterday morning to scavenge for nest building materials. 

I ended up grabbing a few natural colored odds and ends out of the craft closet to supplement the twigs.

Then it was construction time, of course with a little break for oatmeal in between! Instead of building the nest in the egg we opted to build it with lots of glue on a paper plate.

ahh, can you spy the tell tale signs of a stuffy nose?

By the afternoon the glue was finally dry and Maddie layed her precious egg in the nest.

She was so proud of her nest and loved that the baby birds could hatch from their shell. She decided against painting her egg yesterday but I believe she intends on painting it today!

TP Flowers

Yup we made toilet paper flowers and they are just adorable! Okay some of them were made with paper towel tubes but some were made with toilet paper tubes too. I stumbled upon this adorable idea in the latest edition of Kiwi magazine and thought it would be a perfect project for Maddie and I to work on during our very rainy week. 

I assembled all of the flowers before Maddie and I started the project so all she had to worry about was painting her flowers. Armed with the giant bucket of acrylic paints we set to work. Maddie was in charge of the flowers while I painted bamboo skewers green for the stems.

Ack! Can you tell why I am not a fan of breaking out the paints! There is ALWAYS a mess.

Later in the day after all the globbed on paint dried I hot glued the flowers on to the skewers and Maddie matched buttons with each flower for me to glue on too.

 Maddie decided our flowers NEEDED bees so I quickly whipped up some small clay bees that she also painted. We used Pluffy clay and before I baked the bee bodies I left indentations for the button wings so that I would have no problems gluing them on after the fact. 

We assembled our flower pots in some Target Dollar Spot pails I had leftover from Maddie's 2nd birthday party. I used some of our sensory rice to help keep the flowers standing in the bucket too. Adorable!

Flower Assembly Per Kiwi Magazine:
Flatten the paper tube and cut into 3/4 inch strips. To make the flower petals, open six (we did five) of the flattened cardboard strips into ovals. Glue the bottom half of the petals together into a flower shape (I used hot glue), leaving a space between two of them for the stem.

Watch it grow

One of Madison's Valentine's Day gifts this year was a tiny little grass head pal and Madison is obsessed! He sits on our front window sill and Madison checks him every day to see how her grass is growing.

I was pleasantly surprised to see how excited Madison was with this little gift so of course when we saw another grass growing pal at the craft store we scooped him right up! Madison took care of the initial watering,

and now he is sitting on our window sill too.

I also wanted to give you all a little heads up on my great find at OrientalTrading.com. Check out this Watch It Grow Plant Viewer! The first day of Spring is around the corner and I order one of these so that Maddie and I can watch some little seedlings grow!

Save The Lions

This morning Maddie and I took our Earth Walk early (we are due for MORE rain this afternoon) and spent our time picking up trash and talking about keeping the earth clean for the animals. Maddie said we have to pick up trash to 'save the lions!' I don't think we have any lions roaming around in Southeastern Connecticut but if we do and they stumble upon our street it happens to be a nice clean place to take a nap today!

Maddie was more enthusiastic about picking up trash than I imagined, she was even perfectly fine walking past the playground without an inkling of a whine!

When we got home we spent a little time admiring the beautiful flowers that have bloomed in our yard. Even though we have been stuck inside the last few days the rain has done wonderful things for my gardens!

With all this rainy weather we were able to get a few Earth Week activities done earlier this week.

Michelle at Her Cup Overfloweth posted this awesome Keep Our Earth Sparkling craft that we made on recycled cardboard with daddy this past weekend.

We also made this cute coffee filter earth that I found at The Idea Box.