I spend a lot of time at home crafting with my four year old daughter. Some of our most favorite projects start with household items and require no special trips to the store. We use food dye to color macaroni noodles almost weekly. We started coloring macaroni when my daughter was just learning colors several years ago. Now she really enjoys mixing the colors to create her favorite shades.
You can use any shape or size noodles. The noodles are great for many different kids crafts.
All of the supplies to color macaroni can probably be found in your pantry.
Supplies:
dry noodles
vanilla
food dye
plastic baggie (not pictured)
Mix one tablespoon vanilla and a small amount of food coloring in the plastic bag. I add the ingredients, close the top of the bag, and let my daughter squish the bag until the dye and vanilla are mixed together. Then add one cup of dry noodles to the bag, close, and shake until all of the noodles are completely colored. You may need to add more vanilla and food coloring depending on the amount of noodles you are attempting to color. Empty your bag of colored noodles onto a foil lined baking sheet to dry.
Allow the noodles to completely dry. Now you are ready to turn your noodles into something fun! My daughter loves making jewelry with our colored macaroni.
What are you planning to make with your colored macaroni?
As a preschool teacher, I’m always seeking frugal crafts that can incorporate music and movement in the classroom. This week we are focusing on a safari theme and had fun making noisy shakers.
This project is fun for toddlers as well as older preschool aged children.
Supplies:
empty plastic milk bottles
buttons
stickers
If you’re working with older children, allow them to remove the plastic wrapper from the bottle. With toddlers, this would be a teacher prep step before beginning the classroom project.
Have fun sorting buttons by shapes, sizes, or color. Then drop them into the milk bottle.
Next decorate the bottles with stickers. The stickers add fun color to the bottles. You can also use other craft supplies to decorate the bottles and incorporate any classroom theme.
Now turn on some music and shake, shake, shake with your shakers!
For older children, you could turn this into a science experiment by using specific colors or shapes of buttons in each shaker. The children would have so much fun figuring out if color and shape changes the sound in the shakers.
A few years ago when we decided to build a new home, my husband and I took a lot of time to decide which builder offered options that were best for our family. We were very excited to be able to build an energy efficient home. Our home has many different features that help us save money and reduces our utility bills by up to 80%. We’ve lived in our home for almost 3 years and up until this point, have not had to replace too many light bulbs already in the home when we moved in. In our attempt to be as energy efficient as possible, we were thrilled to start replacing our light bulbs with GE’s energy smart bulbs. As part of my partnership with GE, I received coupons for my GE light bulbs but opinions posted about my GE Lighting experience are my own. With a 4 year old at home, we are taking advantage of our time replacing bulbs and also teaching her about saving energy.
Our home has many great features including energy efficient appliances, water efficient fixtures, and Low-E2 vinyl windows to reduce energy loss. We also have a programmable thermostat that adjusts the temperature according to a series of programmed settings that take effect at different times of the day.
One of the best energy saving feature of our home is the spray foam insulation. Buildings treated with spray foam insulation typically insulate as much as 50% better than traditional insulation products.
I was amazed when I read that GE has a lightbulb that lasts up to 22 years (estimated life based on 3 hour/day usage). 22 years!
My husband was already tired of changing a light bulb every weekend in our home because of the high vaulted ceilings. Dragging out the ladder from our garage every weekend doesn’t sound very appealing.
My daughter is just 4 years old and has been very interested in learning about recycling and saving energy. We go to the library frequently and read with her every day. She found a perfect book at the library last week to go along with our lesson on recycling. Her name being in the title of the book initially caught her attention but after sitting down to read the book with me, it has quickly became a favorite in our home this week.
In addition to reading about recycling, we recently added a small recycling bin near the trash can in our kitchen. The shorter tub has made it easy for my daughter to add her own items. She gets very excited each time she discovers the tub is almost full.
Do you do anything special in your home to make it easy for your kids to help recycle?
I am a member of the Collective Bias® Social Fabric® Community. This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias® and GE Lighting but all opinions and ideas are my own. #GELighting #cbias #SocialFabric
