Friday Favorites and Freebies: General Conference Ideas

Our family really looks forward to the first weekend of April (and October!) for the special broadcast of General Conference.
Confessions of a Slacker Mom has put together a very comprehensive pinterest board for General Conference of outstanding ideas of ways to keep even the {littlest} of viewers excited and learning.
I'm also a big fan of her Walk Beside Me preschool curriculum that she creates and shares for free for our {little} people like this one:

This article has more great ideas about how to make Conference meaningful before, during, and after with some great ideas of traditions to start in your own family.
So many fun things to learn...so {little} time!  Enjoy!
Happy Weekend!

Rice Krispies filled Easter Egg Treats {surprise!}

Filling plastic eggs with jelly beans and candy is so... predictable.


Want to give them a happy {little} surprise instead?

Surprise!


My kids LOVE these rice krispie filled easter egg treats!

{this Little Project} is easy to make and festive too!

Follow the instructions on the package to make rice krispie treats but instead of putting them in a pan, you will form small egg shapes instead.


{little project tip}: rub some butter on your hands. It makes shaping them soooo much easier!

Then check to make sure the treat will fit into your plastic eggs and go ahead and roll it in sprinkles!

Then close them up and wait.  


No one will suspect, so it's a fun {little} surprise when they are opened!

And yes, the grown-up version of {this little project} means I dip them in chocolate ;)


It's the {little} things, right?

BONUS! {this little project} is kid-friendly to make 
(especially if you melt the marshmallows and butter in the microwave, like I do!)

More Moving in the "right" Direction

I'm over at abcand123learning.com today teaching more about following directions with some fun music to learn the directions (right/left and north/south/east/west).  

They go along perfectly with the
 {little} mapping egg hunt {project} here. 

 Come over to find some fun songs to sing and learn with!

Mapping An Easter Egg Hunt

It's that time of the year when I get a {little} sneaky and use 

our plastic Easter eggs to have a {little} extra fun learning.

My son Jay loves maps. He's pretty good at reading them so 

the other day we bought a compass for him at the store to try out.  

All the way home he told me which direction I was driving. 

It was a lot of fun!  

So instead of the usual Easter egg hunt, I put together a 

Direction egg hunt to help him practice learning to follow 

directions and direct himself using north, south, east, and west 

with his compass.

Kay isn't quite ready for the compass so her egg hunt was 

about counting her steps and practicing left and right.  

With Easter coming up and plastic eggs everywhere, 

I thought I would share {this little} resources with you 

as a fun way to practice learning to move in the right direction.

Since we were doing 2 different egg hunts, we have the boy eggs with directions for using the compass in them to find them all:
   
And the girl eggs to practice counting steps and turning right and left.

The great thing about using colored eggs is that when you hide 

them you can note which color that the kids will find first, 

second, etc.--just in case they get confused at some point 

and need to backtrack. Re-tracing their steps is all part of 

learning which way to go.

For each egg I put in a paper in that describes:

the type of movement (walking forward/backward, hop, etc.)

the direction of the movement (right/left, or north/south, etc.)

Here are some fill-in the blank papers I used:

Compass Egg Hunt Directions

You can fill in the blanks to fit where you hide your eggs.
When you are done, it would be fun to draw a map of where your hunt took you, looking at the clues you used to find the eggs.
I also used {this little} activity to talk about how important it is to follow directions to get where they are going and not get lost.  There are a lot of applications for teaching {this little} lesson.  
Of course learning about which direction is which is an important {little} lesson too :)

p.s. I am a guest writer at abcand123learning.com and shared some fun songs and musical activities to go along with {this little project} {here}.

Butterfly Snack (craft!)

Some of my favorite {little} projects are the ones we get to eat!
This past week we've been enjoying such warm spring weather and we put together a {little} butterfly snack to go with our butterfly finger puppets.
This a photo of the one that Kay made:

To make {this little project} start by cutting 2 circle crackers cut in half for the wings(use a sawing motion to cut for best results)
cover the crackers with peanut butter (you could use marshmallow spread if you have an allergy) 
and then add rainbow chocolate covered sunflower seeds to the "wings" 
The "caterpillar body" in the middle is a gummy worm, of course!
 Jay decided to watch the praying mantis life cycle this year, instead of the butterflies we did last year. And good news!  Our praying mantis egg (and the fruit flies to feed the baby mantises) arrived in the mail today!  
We have one excited little boy!  I'll have to let you know how {this little} science experiment turns out.  
I have a feeling we won't be making a look-a-like snack for them though ;)

How to make a Leprechaun Trap (2 of them!)

Well, we didn't catch any leprechauns in our traps this year...but Jay's art teacher did such a good job designing them and Jay had so much fun setting them, that I had to share them anyway...for next year, right?

This first leprechaun trap has a clothes hanger attached behind the rainbow that is cut and bent to go under the green paper too.  The clothes hanger is bent to hold up the plastic container. 

  

The "pot of gold" has pennies in it to weigh it down to hold the string in place.  When the {little} leprechaun comes to snatch the treasure the trap (plastic container) will fall on him!  

The "gold" on top is a gold foil wrapper in a mound that looks like gold!

His teacher told him that leprechauns do NOT like rules.  So they made a sign to stay off of the grass, just to tempt them closer!  

This is the second trap they made:  It's from a 2 liter soda pop bottle.  They cut off the top and used a cottage cheese lid to go over the top and covered it with felt.  The gold on top is the pop bottle lid upside down with pieces of gold circle fabric in it.

When the leprechaun climbs the ladder (bamboo skewers, I think) he walks across the top to get to get to the gold and he falls inside!  They had cut a hole in top of the lid and holes in the felt but covered it with felt so he wouldn't know!

Kay and Ellie have had fun setting it off...or was it the leprechauns that had escaped?  
It's a good thing we still had our own leprechaun peg dolls in their village to play with so we're not too disappointed.  
And you know those {little} shamrock necklaces and skirts?  They made the front page of our local newspaper for St. Patrick's Day!

Good Luck catching some {little} leprechauns!