Spring Fever Solutions

“It's spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you've got it, you want—oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!”

― Mark Twain

I love this quote from Mark Twain. We have definitely been feeling this way around here lately. I turned to the internet for some inspiration of just what we could do with the cold weather keeping us inside for far too many days in a row. Below you will find pictures and links to a few of the ideas we came up with. All the pictures are from others - click on the links to see the sites they came from . They were enough to inspire me so I figured they would inspire you as well. We have done some of these projects already and others will happen soon.

I can't get a picture to copy over right for this fun project. Just click the link to be inspired - 

Homemade air-dry modeling clay

Painted Paper Bouquets

Don't they just fill you with hope that Spring will come again? Plus this is a two or three day project since the kids have to paint the paper first and let it dry before assembling the finished bouquets.

Here are some great instructions on how to make painted paper.

Birch Trees with Red Cardinal

We have finished this one. We used a cotton swab and dipped it in the paint and then "stamped" it on to make the snow flakes. The finished projects look great and the kids had a lot of fun doing it. I want to try this again using brown paint for the birch trees and let the kids use some painted paper scraps from the bouquet project above to make flowers, birds, bunnies, turtles, frogs, etc. so it looks a little more Spring like instead of winter.

Melted Crayon Valentines

Here is another project we have done already. We used a silicone heart mold we bought for $1.50. The crayons were free since we had them already. I found it worked best to set my oven on 300 degrees instead of 250. The silicone made it easy to pry the finished hearts out. Even my middle school kids thought this project was cool. Now we need to make all the background cards so my elementary and preschool kids can actually give these away for Valentine's Day this week. It was a pretty inexpensive project to do that everyone enjoyed.

The other fun thing we did was decorate Valentine's Day houses. I had purchased a gingerbread house village kit after Christmas for $2 knowing it would store just fine until next year. Then when I saw all the cute red and white candies in the bulk section of our local grocery store, I had the thought to make Valentine's houses. Having the kit made it so very easy. I have learned to stick the houses together with melted sugar. Here is a link with pictures to show you the process of how to melt your sugar and use it as glue. Once they were cooled, the kids used the frosting in the kids to stick all the red, pink, and white candy on their individual houses. (They also enjoyed eating plenty of candy that evening.) I wasn't worried one bit about how they turned out so I let them do it 100% their own way. They had a blast!