One of my favorite things to do is spend time with my son's friends. I love having them over to play and like just sitting around and chatting with them. My goal for when I have teenagers is to have the house that kids want to be at and be a sort of parent that my kids like to be around and their friends feel comfortable with. I figure you have to start somewhere right?
...So I'm starting right now with marshmallows and chatting time around the kitchen table.
We got a bunch of new Halloween books from our Scholastic Book order today, so my little guy and I did a lot of reading before naptime. His favorite spooky characters right now are ghosts... so when it was time to start creating, he immediately decided to make a ghost! I decided to make a mummy and one friend chose to do a cat and the other picked a ghost as well. It was adorable to talk to them about what they were going to make. They were so excited!
Materials Needed: marshmallows, cardstock, markers, any other things you want to use to create with.
Directions:
1. Draw the outline of your design onto a piece of cardstock with a marker. Some kids designed their own and some kids asked me to draw their character for them.
2. Grab several handfuls of marshmallows and start designing. 🙂
I chose not to use glue because I prefer to play with my food and then eat it... instead of playing with it and displaying it. 🙂 By leaving the glue off of this activity, the kids were able to sneak a few marshmallows here and there and then swap design cards around and take turns designing different pictures on lots of different cards.
We enjoyed chatting while we created. It was fun to see how some kids were minimalists with their marshmallows and some kids just piled them on!
After awhile, my little guy started begging to read our new mummy Halloween story, so later on into our creating time, I read while the kids designed. Where is My Mummy? by Carolyn Crimi has some beautiful language and illustrations. The characters aren't scary and the rhyming in the story makes it fun to read. We probably read it six times this afternoon and at bedtime tonight.
Source: amazon.com via Kristina on Pinterest
I thought the book was so cute that I tried to get the kids interested in just making Marshmallow mummies... but they wouldn't have it and wanted to use their own ideas. Theirs were better... so it worked out great.
As we did this activity we loved...
- talking about the shapes we made and textures we felt
- pointing out important details in the story we were reading
- predicting what was going to happen next in the story
- planning our marshmallow designs and then sneaking some marshmallows as often as we could!
- creating... and then changing our designs... and then creating again!
- talking about other favorite Halloweeny things- what we are going to be for Halloween, favorite treats, etc.
You can find some of our other favorite marshmallow projects here.
We LOVED the Marshmallow skull craft over at No Time for Flashcards yesterday that got us thinking about creating with marshmallows.
I love your idea and am going to use it for my kindergartner's Halloween party. Did you know that if you lick the marshmallows (or dip them in water) you can stick them to the page and then still eat them later?
That is great to know Sarah 🙂
How fun! Who doesn't love activities with marshamllows =-) It's just an excuse to eat some, right =-) I am starting a Linky Party if you want to link up at livinglifeintentionally.blogspot.com/2011/10/first-ever-linky-party.html
This is a really wonderful idea! The marshmallows made such a great crafting tool.
So cute! Hey, I was wondering if you knew when the books were supposed to arrive. I made the mistake of telling Kyle and we've been checking the mail for days :).
I love any craft that we can eat when we're finished. And we also LOVE that book! I had to tape some of our pages back in because the boys like to read it so much it started falling apart. 🙂 I would love it if you would link up some of your great ideas on my new Monstrously Creative link party! I'm featuring some great ideas this week, and yours could be next! Come join the party!
Mandi at BBM