Summer Projects for Kids: Foamie Stamps and Butterfly Clothespins

Almost every Saturday this summer I've been doing an art project with my five and eight year old kids. For some odd reason, the teenager isn't interested. ;) Here are a couple of easy projects we tackled.

Foamie Stamps
For these you save the lids from bottles. I saved lids from Gatorades and a huge one from a Sunny D we had. Foamie stickers can be found at Michaels or Jo-Anns, and I've often seen them on sale for at least 50% off, making the huge value pack containers cost about $3.50 each, or the smaller packs cost about $1.50. Cheap ink pads can usually be found at a dollar store if you don't have any.

Just put the stickers on the caps--yeah, it's that simple! For ours we also used a little bit of Kids Mod Podge around the edges of the stickers for longer-lasting adhesion, then once that was dry, the kids had a blast using them. I cut off the top of an egg carton for a stamp storage spot.

Butterfly Clothespins

This one ended up not quite turning out as I expected, but the kids were happy with the end result. They painted their clothespins (generic acrylic paint) before lunchtime and let them dry for an hour or so. Then I gave each child two fuzzy pipe cleaners to put beads on, leaving some space at either end.

Once that was done, we formed each one into a wing shape and then (the part I'm not thrilled with) I lashed them to the clothespin using part of a metallic pipe cleaner. I probably could have used my glue gun to get the wings on there instead, but doing it that way did allow for the clothespin to still be usable so they can clip it onto places and the wings even flap a little if they bob it around. The remainder of the metallic pipe cleaner was used for some antennae.

In the coming weeks we'll be working with clay, making noodle light sabers and painting rocks!