Year of the Rabbit Chinese New Year Decoration

It’s been a very very busy Chinese New Year this year so I haven’t had time to post about this easy craft that I did with Littlelam for the Year of the Rabbit. I’m trying to give her more ownership with the crafts now, since she will be turning 5 later on in the year and I’m trying to get her to be more independent. So I figured a simple craft that doesn’t look that great, but is safe and easy for her to put together almost totally by herself would be good. So here’s a hanging decoration that I thought up for her to do:

Happy New Year!

Items needed
- Red craft foam or cardboard
- Cotton wool
- Gold sequin/ confetti or bead
- Twine or string
- Hole puncher
- Red packets (preferably square ones)
- glue

How to:

Step 1) Draw a circle (use a round container to trace it), and rabbit in the middle of it, on the red craft foam/ cardboard.  Get your child to put glue inside the rabbit outline.

Step 2) Get your child to tear the cotton wool into small pieces and stick it onto the rabbit shape to form a furry rabbit. You might need to help with the edges.

Step 3) For the eye, stick  on the gold sequin/ bead. Leave aside to dry.

Step 4) Get your child to write the Chinese characters on each of the 4 red packets. I’ve chosen the very basic “Happy New Year”.  Usually Chinese New Year well-wishes consist of 4 characters so you can take your pick. I can’t type it here cos I’m using my laptop which has no Chinese character programme.

Step 5) Punch holes in the top and bottom of each red packet. Cut some twine/ string for your child to thread through the holes to join each character together.

Step 6) Cut out the circle with the rabbit on it and then join it as the top. And there you have it!

It’s not very pretty, but very very easy and fun for your child. Try not to assist, and let him/ her try to do most of it. You can let your child copy the Chinese characters – that’s what I did. Cos she can only write the “kuai” on her own.

Christmas Tree Craft

This year, with the baby still nursing round the clock, I have had hardly any time to do housework or spend quality moments with Littlelam, much less do the usual baking for her classmates and teachers for Christmas.

Instead, I came up with this idea for a Christmas Tree craft which accomplishes a couple of purposes at he same time. 1) Keep Littlelam occupied for a while
2) Gives us a more purposeful ‘quality time’ to spend together
3) Serves as gifts/Christmas cards for her classmates and teachers
4) Develops her fine motor skills
5) Looks pretty and gives me a break for the norm!

So here are the pictures and steps to follow should you want to attempt this super easy craft too:

Things Needed
- Green Craft Foam (usually they sell it in a pack)
- Craft glue (Get the white glue that dries on clear)
- Shiny confetti (any design)
- Star confetti
- Scissors
- Ice-cream sticks
- Pen

How to:
Step 1: Draw a Christmas Tree shape on a piece of the craft foam. Cut it out. This will serve as your template. Using this template, trace as many Christmas tree shapes out of the rest of your craft foam as your require. Cut them out.

Here's what your cut-outs should look like

Step 2: Separate your confetti shapes into different bowls/ containers. Let your child choose what she’d like to put on the tree – they will be the ‘ornaments’. Because the confetti is very small, flat and hard to put glue on directly, you may wish to use a cotton bud to apply the glue.

Littlelam trying to apply the glue onto the tiny confetti

Step 3: Remember to glue the star shape on top of the tree. Leave the confetti to dry for a few hours (or a day). Once dry, you can get your child to turn it over and write a message at the back of the tree, directly on the foam. Just be sure that you leave a space in the middle for the ice-cream stick.

Step 4: Apply glue onto about 2/3 of the ice-cream stick. Press the glue portion onto the back of the tree, acting as the ‘stem’. Leave to dry.

Stick on the ice-cream sticks

And there you have it!

Toy Story 4: Littlelam’s Round-up!

So Littlelam turned 4 last week, but not without a ‘last hurrah’ party I planned for her at a holiday bungalow. Figured I’d give her a great bash before her baby sister comes along, so I happily slogged it out getting the party theme, cake, games and stuff despite the fact that I was already 35 weeks pregnant!

Littlelam’s been enamoured by Toy Story, even though she didn’t last 20mins into Toy Story 3 (which I actually won’t recommend to young kids cos of the more ‘mature’, emotional themes and scary bits). As I mentioned in my previous post, she is particularly crazy over the Cowboy toys ie: Woody, Jessie and Bulls-eye, with Jessie being her favourite cos she’s a girl. So with this very complicated theme in mind, I had to trawl the web for ideas while adapting them to my very low budget and lack of supplies in Singapore. To reduce the need for me to yell and do active ‘crowd control’ (and to save my aching back), I enlisted the help of a friend who earned much admiration from the little boys (& parents) but scared the babies with his too-good impersonation of a Cowboy aka Gamemaster!

Shan’t go on anymore except that I’m really thankful for all the help I received from my in-laws and hubby – they cooked the food and brought it all the way to the chalet! Here are some of the pictures of the day:

According to theme, I drew and made two cardboard ‘Bulls-eye’s for the Horse Race. Basically it is a relay race with 2 teams, just pretending to ride the horse on a stick. In this case, it was a cardboard face attached on cardboard rolls (less dangerous for the kids who were all below 6 yrs old).

Bulls-eye Horse Race

Next up, we played ‘Pin the face on Mr Potato Head’, which is a simple variant of ‘Pin the Tail on the Donkey’. For large groups of kids, you can have them line up and hold a eye or ear each while you blindfold them, so you have less chaos and everyone’s occupied for a longer time!

'Picasso' version of Mr Potato Head!

Best version of Mr Potato Head - only the moustache out of place!

We also had pass-the-parcel, with forfeits, not prizes at each opening, but that kinda failed a little cos the kids either refused to do the forfeits, or burst into tears. Oops, my bad! Over-estimated the kids! No photos of this game. Thankfully, the bringing out of the lovely Toy Story 3 cake after lunch brought out all the smiles and eager faces again.

The super detailed Toy Story 3 cake. Obviously I DIDN'T bake it!

All the little ones trying their best to keep their hands from the cake!

The final game we played after chomping on the delicious chocolate cake was ‘Gold Nugget Hunt’. Got the Gamemaster to hide Hershey’s Gold Nugget chocolates out in the garden, and we got the kids to hunt for the Nuggets. Judging from the squeals and happy faces, I’m guessing they enjoyed themselves!

Dashing off (with their cowboy hats as the baskets) to find the last 2 'gold nuggets'!

Taking stock: Counting how many gold nuggets had been found so far!

Littlelam opening her presents...and being very pleased with her new Jessie doll!

 I’m glad I didn’t go into labour during the party. Don’t think I’ll ever do a party on such a large scale again while pregnant! But now it’s counting down to D-day for me… if I don’t update for a long time after this, you know what happened! haha!

We don’t know anything about Cowboys here

Littlelam turns 4 next week and we’re having a big party for her…kinda like a last hurrah before she becomes a big sister. Little did I expect her to choose such a difficult theme for her party! Since she (sorta) watched Toy Story 3 in the movies, and then later watched Toy Story 2 on Disney Channel, she’s been totally crazy over anything Toy Story, in particular the characters Woody, Jessie and Bulls-Eye. Thankfully, we have not needed to buy ANY new Toy Story 3 toys in the stores because if you remember, the 1st Toy Story installment came out in 1997. Littlelam’s Daddy and I had just started dating at the time, and Toy Story was one of the movies that we first watched in a GROUP DATE (we were already old enough to drink alcohol legally, mind you). Anyway, the thing is that the both of us somehow managed to amass a large collection of free Toy Story toys that were given out at fast food joints during the time, and even through to the Toy Story 2 season.

BUT, this post isn’t supposed to be about the embarrasing secrets of my past, but rather how ridiculously HARD it is to find anything Cowboy-themed for parties in Singapore! Ok, if I was willing to spend more $, maybe, but there’s really hardly any novelty stuff to find here. So I searched heaps of party shops, went online etc.. and did not find a viable, affordable, practical option, until I went to my trusty, favourite $2 shop store DIASO. There I found cowboy hats, bandanas and toy guns (which I didn’t buy cos I thought it might a bit too violent for a little girl’s party).

Cowboy hat and Bandana I finally found

Instead of the guns, I decided to make Sheriff Badges for each of the kids. The party’s not till next week, so I haven’t written the names on it yet, but basically the kids will get to dress up in the hat and bandana, and write their own name on the Sheriff Star. Sometimes I really think kids’ parties are as much for the parents as the kids! I sure am having fun thinking of Cowboy games and props … I know, I’m nuts but I actually like doing nonsense like that now that I’m totally done with my real official adult work.

So for any of you moms in Singapore or in other Asian countries that have a diurge of country Western party stuff, I’ll be sharing what I did for the party in my next post. For now, here are the pictures and steps to make your very own SHERIFF BADGE:

Materials
- Cardboard
- Cutter/ Scissors / Ruler
- Permanent marker pen
- Yellow / Gold acrylic paint
- Paintbrushes
- Gold Glitter glue (preferably in a small tube)
- Safety pins
- Sticky tape

STEP 1) Draw either a 6-sided or 5-sided star on a piece of cardboard. This will be your ‘prototype’ star.

Step 2) Using your prototype, trace out your full required number of stars. Cut out.

Step 3) Mix a batch of yellow and gold acrylic paint. I found the two colours combined to have the nicest effect. Yellow alone is too ‘cartoony bright’, while gold alone is a little too dark. Paint all the stars. Make sure you do it on newspaper because acrylic paint is permanent. Make sure kids are watched as they paint.

Kids can help to paint the stars themselves

STEP 4) Leave the painted stars to dry for at least 1 day.

Don't worry about getting the painting perfect; I find the 'raw' & scratched effect suits a worn-down look of a seasoned Sheriff's badge

Step 5) Use a permanent black marker and write the word “Sheriff” on the upper half of each star. This is so you can leave a space for the child’s name to be written at the party itself.

Oops, picture already shows the gold dots, but you get what I mean

Step 6) Using your tube of gold glitter glue, dot each point of the star, as close to the tip as possible. Just a small glob of glue will do, don’t over-squeeze. Kids would also love to be involved at this point.

Littlelam concentrating hard on squeezing out the glitter glue!

Step 7) Make sure the gold glitter globs are completely dry; then attach a safety pin to the back of your cardboard star using some sticky-tape. And there you have it!

For additional security, if you have time and if you rather pre-write the names of the kids coming to the party, then you can laminate the stars using the soft-type laminating paper.

Enjoy!

Very Belated Easter Post – Resurrection Eggs again!

My apologies I’ve been slacking off posting the past 2 weeks because a lot of stuff has been happening at home and the pace has been relentless. Illness has befallen Littlelam’s Daddy and he’s to be quarantined till next week, so I’ve been up to my ears managing work, home and trying not to fall ill myself!

Thus this very belated Easter Post. We actually held a small (ok, not so small when you count the number of kids) Easter Party at my place over the Easter weekend. Making use of plastic eggs (didn’t want the choc eggs to smash or get attacked by ants) and Resurrection Eggs, I hid them in the living room and also along the common HDB corridor for the kids to find. I had the participation and help of my neighbour and her 2yo girl – so we created a nice outdoor seating/eating area for the kids along our HDB corridor too. Which reduced the food mess tremendously.

Unfortunately, I do not have any pictures of the 8 kids that came and the chaos that ensued, namely because I was running the show and didn’t have time to whip out the camera! So I’ll just have to share the craft pictures only.

After we had the Easter Egg Hunt, I got all the kids to sit down while I explained the Easter Story through the use of Resurrection Eggs. I actually got a hold of these actual commercially-made ones through my good friend Wini who lives in the US – poor girl actually lugged it all the way back for me. Last year, I didn’t have these actual ones, so I improvised and made my own 2-D ones, which I blogged about here. Anyways, I managed to get the kids to participate through the telling of the story by asking for the colour-coded eggs in sequence, so all of them got a chance to open and pass me an egg.

After the egg-illustration, I added another important component to the programme. Explaining why Jesus had to die on the cross. The 3+ yos all listened very attentively and understood, but I’m not so sure about the younger ones! But this is a relatively simple illustration to use:

We are separated from God because of sin. Though we try our very best, through good works, religion, being nice, it still doesn't cut it cos we can't be 100% holy.

That's why Jesus had to die on the cross to break the power of sin and death! He is the only perfect sacrifice so he died in our place on the cross. Now, we can have a personal relationship with God himself!

After the illustration, we had our lunch and then a wonderful craft of making their very own Easter Egg basket (or bag), crafted up by our very talented friend P. Unfortunately she couldn’t join us because her two girls were down with the flu! (Check out her site of amazing crafts)

We used the bag to store the mini chocolate eggs that I gave out as doorgifts instead!

s’khor-a-hit! designs

So I’ve finally gone and done it – I’ve launched a new baby/ toddler t-shirt line at my blogshop site!

Choose from a range of charms to personalise on your very own necklace-tee!

Do pop by and I’ll be happy to hear your feedback ! Contact me at skhor.a.hit [AT] gmail [DOT] com