Thanks to the Lego Movie, Jack has now shown interest in Legos. I was happy to find a Lego Junior set and he actually followed the directions (with help) and built the sets!
He has asked for a few different sets already.
Lego Juniors are great for little hands that still need a little assistance!
Well today The Adventures of Action Jackson blog turned 1 year old! Thank you to everyone who comes and reads on all the activities we do. We hope that everyone had a Merry Christmas is you celebrate. Jackson’s birthday is also Christmas day so we get to celebrate his awesomeness with a lot of presents. He turned a might 4 years old!
You can also keep up with us on Facebook. See everyone in the new year!
We did it! We finally did it! Last year we saw this A-M-A-Z-I-N-G snowflakes in the shapes of your favorite Star Wars characters! We are complete Star Wars geeks in this family. Jackson is obsessed. Even more now since they merged his Angry Birds with Star Wars.
Thanks to Anthony over at Anthony Herrera Designs he gives step by step instructions on how to fold and cut this awesome snow flakes.
So far we have only made C3-PO and Yoda, and let me tell you this is hard work! I did find a trick though after I finished C3-PO, cut the small stuff 1st! Then cut the outer edge. This gives your hand something to hold on to while you cut with your fancy Xacto knife.
Best of luck on your cuttings and holidays! Merry Christmas and May the force be with you with this craft!
It’s a few days away from Halloween! This is one of my favorite holidays! While I would love to decorate the outside of my house like all my neighbors, we just don’t have the money for that. Plus I like decorations very inexpensive! OR FREE!
This week we have made outdoor lanterns for the sidewalk and we have made spooky silhouettes for Jackson’s windows. Both were made with items from around the house!
We will start with the silhouettes. Sorry I didn’t take pictures of the process since it was super simple. All we did was use Contact Paper. Yup that is it! I heard you can even use Press N Seal paper too. For us all we had to do was draw on the back side of the contact paper our spooky shapes and cut it out! We made ghost, pumpkins and bats. Once you cut it out gently peel the backing off and stick it to your windows! That is it. How super simple! At night just have a light shining through the back of the curtains so people from the street can see your spookiness!
Spooky Outdoor Lanterns
Yes another easy and (cheap) project. I collect everything, jars mostly, but my craft room is full of random stuff. Thankfully I had several jars for this project.
What you need:
You might want a paper plate or something to rest your jar on while you work.
Take you a section of tissue paper ( like a quarter of a sheet) and cut it in to strips. You will be placing them vertical on the jar, make sure they are long enough.
Take your jar and start brushing on the Mod Podge.
Once you get your jar covered ( or you can work in sections) start laying your strips of tissue paper. After each strip laid coat a layer of mod podge on top and repeat until the how jar is covered.
Once your Jar is covered with Mod Podge draw a face on your black construction paper and cut it out. Finally Mod Podge it on your jar as well.
Next take your black duct tape and tape around the mouth of the jar.
Just let dry and your are all done. Drop a tea light or a battery operated tea light inside and let it light you walkway!
As our children get older the more questions they have. A big one they might as is “Where do I live?”. Jackson has recently become obsessed with space. As parents, his father and I are super proud. But it started me thinking he knows earth, he knows how to give me directions to Target or Publix, but does he really know where he lives? So I set out through Pinterest to see if there was somehow to give him a correlation between Earth and where we live. And thanks to Teach Mama, she did just that. Breaking down the sections to make it easy on kids. You start at our house, to your street, city, state, country, continent, and planet. She even gives you a downloadable file that has the different sized circles to make it easy.
What you need:
Step 1:
Print your circles out
Step 2:
Collect your print outs for each location
Step 3:
Color and decorate
Step 4:
Glue
Step 5:
Whole punch and connect.
Now that we have finished with this location, I think we will have to do one with all the planets.
Resources where we got our maps:
Street and City maps- Google Maps
Continent- www.yourchildlearns.com
Planet – Google Images
State and Country – www.50states.com
We are at the stage of monsters. Monsters under Jackson’s bed (even though there are drawers under his bed) and in his closet (again no closet doors) are starting to go wild in an active 3 yr olds imagination. It doesn’t help when he loves Monsters Inc. We used Febreeze last night to spray the monsters last night but that was a little too strong. So we had to come up with something else…
What to do: Have a spray bottle and some essential oil (we added peppermint) and fill with water. Decorate the bottle and have your child lightly spray their room for monster’s every night.
*** Update – We have been spraying his room for a few weeks now when he goes to bed and he always tells me ” No more monsters in here!”. That is exactly what I like to hear. I like to know that he isn’t so scared anymore, it makes mommy and daddy’s job a lot easier at night. ***
Today was craft day today with my mom’s group. The theme was sock puppets. I don’t think Action Jackson was very interested in it after he colored on the sock. Maybe he will grow to really like his sock like he did with Mr. Pickles (his Muppet). He usually runs around the house though with socks on his hands, which is silly since more often than not they aren’t clean.
Supplies:
EVERYTHING IN YOUR CRAFT ROOM! No, seriously, anything and everything works to make sock puppets, but if you need a list here you go:
As you can see from all of our mom’s we had a lot of items!
Step 1:
Choose your sock. Slide your hand into the sock so that your fingers are where you toes go. Open your hand at the toe of the sock and push the sock in to your palm. This will be making the mouth.
Step 2:
Cut your felt out to the color that you would like your mouth to be. We chose green, and later cut out just enough red for a tongue. Hot flue the felt in.
Step 3:
Decide what kind of eyes you want either the google eyes or if you want to sew on buttons. Mark and make your sock puppet see!
Step 4:
Design. Have fun with your puppets. Give it a nose, hair, scales, anything you can think of. Here is some inspiration!
Our lovely mom Elizabeth made a dragon for her little one.
She ended up adding her google eyes to the pom pom’s so that they stand up more!
Jackson’s and mine needs some help, but it was still fun making it
All of our socks!
No sock puppets are perfect. They are supposed to be silly and a lot of fun to make. It’s the memories made that are more important than a physical appearance.
I hope everyone has fun!
You have kids, you have crayons, you end up having broken crayons, am I right? Last week I bought a bunch of crayons thanks to a free deal through Target. I stockpiled. Well now I am thinking what am I going to do with 8 boxes of crayons plus the ones we already have. My dear husband suggested the other day to take a box and melt them down into a few big crayons. Well I took his suggestion and made 3 larger crayons, but I also made some Alphabet crayons. Since Action Jackson knows most of his alphabet, he still needs help. I am hoping this helps.
What you need:
Step 1:
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Line your muffin tin with liners.
Step 2:
Start removing the wrapper from all crayons. After doing several of these by just my fingernail, I had the bright idea to run them under hot water. This was much faster! As you remove the wrappers start breaking the crayons ( or using the broken ones) and placing the pieces into the muffin tin.
Only have a few crayons in each liner for the alphabet (We refilled another time to make the whole alphabet)
However, if you want big blocks for crayons fill the liners to almost the top.
Step 3:
Bake for the alphabet for roughly around 4 min. Until they are all melted.
Bake for the larger crayons around 8-9 minutes. Until all is melted.
Step 4:
For the alphabet: Once you remove your melted crayons from the oven, carefully pick up one liner at a time and pour it into the alphabet mold. Allow them to cool completely in the mold. Repeat until the entire mold is full.
Bottom, still allow to cool.
Front.
For larger crayons: Allow the crayons to set for roughly 5 min. Remove from tin and allow to cool completely.
Top
Bottom.
Step 5:
For the alphabet: Once the crayons are cooled flip the mold over and lightly push on the mold to release the crayons.
Step 6:
Enjoy!
It might be summer but I am trying to keep Jackson up with his alphabet and his numbers. Since it is a big part of learning!
Target has there Up and Up index cards (and crayons) for $.25 and they have a coupon when you buy 4 (school supply) up and up items get $1 off. So hello freebie!
I started with the alphabet and but the index cards in half. I made upper case on one side and lower case on the other. Hopefully this will help him be able to start matching his alphabet! I also made 3 prefixes for him to match with different letters to spell new words. Hopefully it will help him start to read.
Then we made number flash cards. Same way as alphabet flash cards just cut the index cards in half. I made the numbers from 1-20 with spelling them out on one side. Then from 20-50 by 10’s. This way I can use the previous 1-9 words and match them with the higher numbers, (IE. 25- twenty-five, 37- thirty-seven, ect). I also made a few flash cards 1-10 with shapes on them for little man to count.
(I’m not the best artist, but it works)
Since sensory bins are everywhere it seems, Jackson and I decided make two today.
The 1st one all we did was mix water beads ( already hydrated) and shaving cream. He usually likes to play with shaving cream, today he just wasn’t into having his hands all dirty. I however did enjoy it. I love the feel of water beads, instant hand massage for me. Shaving cream just gives it a little bit more friction.
The second sensory bin we made used beans. We used black beans, red kidney beans, small red beans. I even added some cashews. Warning if they get wet they become slimy. So you may not want to add them. Jackson loved this one. He even put his Angry Birds and farm animals in to play.
Let’s scoop them
Yum mommy!
Even has to add some beans to the shaving cream.
Hello Angry Birds
The Adventures of Action Jackson 