Hanukkah Crafts

Looking for some cute and quirky Hanukkah crafts? Looking for Hanukkah crafts for kids? Or more Hanukkah decorating ideas or gift ideas? Hopefully, the ideas I share with you today will give you a great source of inspiration to get you started. There are all the main themes to be found here from Dreidels, to Menorah crafts, David’s star and Gelt Bags. Hopefully something for everyone.

Dreidel Light Garland

dreidel light

 Dreidel Mobile

dreidel-mobile

Easy Star of David Stars made from craft stick.

star of david

 Wonderful TP Roll Menorah decoration!

TP-Roll-Hanukkah

Almost a “classic now”, but do adore the “Handprint Menorah” art!

menorah

Pretty tissue paper sun catchers !

hanukkahsun_mn

Spinning Dreidel Cards

dreidel-cards

Origami Dreidel 

origami dreidel

 6-pointed money origami star (star of David)

star

Space Exploration Day

space exploreOn July 20, look up at the sky and think back on all the advances humankind has made in exploring and understanding space because it is Space Exploration Day.

The annual holiday commemorates the anniversary of the first manned mission to the Moon. On July 20, 1969, Americans astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to step foot on the surface of the Moon.

In 1984, the day was proclaimed a holiday by United States President Ronald Reagan. The fifth manned mission of NASA’s Apollo program, Apollo 11 was launched from Florida on June 16. It returned to Earth with the 3 astronauts – Armstrong, Aldrin, and Michael Collins on June 24.

Moon Day

The holiday, which is also sometimes called Moon Day, encourages people to learn more about space exploration. It attempts to inspire young adults to consider space sciences and space exploration as careers.

How to Celebrate?

  • Visit your local space and science museums and spend the day there learning about space and our astronomical neighbors.
  • Join an astronomy club and participate in their Space Exploration Day activities.
  • If you have young children in your life, get them interested in space and related fields by reading them books about space and space technology.

Did You Know…

…that 12 people, including Armstrong and Aldrin, have walked on the surface of the Moon?

Mother’s Day Spa

bath salt12Mother’s Day is May 10! Give Mom a relaxing spa day at home with these spa science gifts you can make yourself using mostly household items. Bath salts add luxury to an ordinary tub while teaching about hard and soft water. Fizzy bath bombs delight the senses through a skin-safe chemical reaction. Homemade sugar scrub introduces exfoliants and humectants and their effects on the skin.

What you need:
• Plastic mixing bowl
• Plastic mixing spoon
• 1 cup Epsom salt
• 1 cup sea salt
• 1/2 teaspoon glycerin
• Fragrance or essential oils (craft or health store)
• Colorant (craft store)
• Liquid soap
• Jar with lid, baby soda bottles* or other airtight container

What you do:
• Mix together the Epsom salt and sea salt in the mixing bowl.
• Add glycerin to the salt mixture and mix through. (The glycerin is not necessary, but it helps the colorant and oil get dispersed evenly through the salt.)
• Add a few drops of fragrance or essential oils.
• Add a few drops of colorant. We recommend getting oil-based skin-safe colorant from a craft store or else leaving out the colorant.
• Wet your hands with tap water, add a drop of soap to your hands, then rub together to form a lather.
• Observe how much lather forms, then rinse off your hands.
• Fill a sink with water and add about 1/8 cup of salt mixture to it.
• Use your hands to stir the water to help the salt dissolve.
• With your hands still wet from the salt water, add a drop of soap to your hands and rub them together to form a lather.
• Store the remaining salts in a jar, keeping the lid on tightly to keep moisture out. Use about 1/4 cup of the salts in your bath.

What Happened: Most likely you found it easier to form lather (and more of it!) when using the water with salt rather than the water with no salt. This is because of the difference between hard water and soft water. Most households in America have hard water. Hard water has a high mineral content, usually with calcium and magnesium, whereas soft water contains less of these minerals. Calcium and magnesium ions in the hard water react with the soap, forming insoluble gray flakes called soap scum rather than a lather. This means you need more soap to get clean and the bathtub gets a grimy ring around it from the leftover soap scum. One way to soften hard bath water is to add bath salts. The calcium and magnesium ions in the water are replaced with sodium and potassium ions from the salt, allowing the soap to lather much more easily. (If your home has soft water, you may not notice too much of a difference in how well the soap lathers in the water with your bath salts and the water without the bath salts. However, the salt and essential oils will still have a beneficial effect on your skin.)
Another benefit of adding bath salts to your bath has to do with osmosis. Osmosis is the movement of water through a membrane (such as your skin) to achieve equilibrium. Your body contains water and salt, whereas an ordinary bath contains mainly water and very little salt. Therefore, water passes through your skin in an effort to balance the concentration of water and salt in you and in your bath. This excess water causes “pruning” (your fingers and toes wrinkle). Adding bath salts to the water causes a more equal balance of salt and water in both you and in the bath, so less water enters your skin and less wrinkling occurs. Salt is also thought to draw impurities and toxins out of your skin and soothes sore muscles!

DIY Soap
DIY Honey Scrub
DIY Fizzy Bath Bombs
DIY Lip Balm

Fizzing Easter Eggs

What you need:Fizzing Easter Eggs
• Hard-boiled eggs
• Food coloring
• Baking soda
• Vinegar
• Bowls
• Paintbrushes
• Tongs
• Newspaper or paper towels

What you do:
• Make a paste of baking soda and water and add a few drops of food coloring. Repeat in separate bowls with as many colors as you’d like.
• Using a paintbrush, apply the baking soda mixture to a hard-boiled egg (if the mixture is too thick and goopy, add more water, several drops at a time until it has thinned to the right consistency to spread easily).
• Once your egg is decorated the way you want it, set it in an empty bowl.
• Pour about ½ cup of vinegar directly over each egg and enjoy the colorful, fizzy reaction!
• Once the fizz has died down, use tongs to carefully fish your egg out of the liquid and set it on newspapers or a stack of paper towels to dry.
• Repeat with as many eggs as you like—you’ll find that the baking soda paint makes it easy to make more intricate designs on your egg than ordinary egg dye would!

What Happened:
A basic chemical reaction between the baking soda (which is a base) and the vinegar (an acid) is what caused all the fizzing and bubbling! The baking soda made a type of paint when you mixed it with water and food coloring. After the chemical reaction, the baking soda and vinegar were mostly used up, leaving the dye behind on the eggs.

Looking for more egg science? Click here.

Easter Grass

About two weeks after planting, the seeds will grow into long blades of thick grass, perfect for hiding colorful Easter eggs.easter wheat

You can order packets of wheatgrass (Triticum aestivum) from online suppliers or find seeds at health food stores. With seeds in hand, here’s how to get started:

What you need:
• Wheatgrass seeds
• Container
• Potting soil

What you do:
• Soak seeds overnight before planting to speed germination.
• Fill a container with potting soil. If the container doesn’t have a drainage hole, cover the bottom with rocks to keep water away from roots.
• Drain seeds; sprinkle seeds on top of soil so seeds are fairly close together, but not on top of each other.
• Cover seeds with a thin (1/8”) layer of soil.
• Water seeds and keep soil moist.
• Once seeds begin to sprout (in about 1 week), move the container to a sunny window sill.
• Water daily or as needed to keep soil moist.

Leprechaun Trap

What you need:Leprechaun Trap
• glass
• toothpick
• double sided tape
• scissors
• green and yellow construction paper
• pencil
• lego pieces
• coins

What you do:
• Cut strips of green and yellow paper.
• Tape the strips around the glass, layering them as you go up the glass.
• Cut a circle of paper slightly smaller than the opening of the top of the glass.
• Tape the paper circle to the toothpick to create a secret swinging trap door.
• Build a ladder for the leprechaun out of lego pieces
• To tempt the leprechaun into your trap balance a few coins on the center of the trap door.
• On the morning of St. Patrick’s Day, most children will find that the tricky leprechaun has managed to escape in a glittery trail of green dust — but not before leaving them a few gold coins in the bottom of the trap.

St. Patrick’s Crafts

Lucky Rainbow CoverLucky Rainbow

 

 

 

Snake for KidsSnake for kids

 

 

 

Spring FlowersSpring Flowers

 

 

 

Lucky Banner

Lucky banner cover

 

 

 

Macaroni kid shamrock craftMacaroni Shamrock

 

 

 

Shamrock Pin CoverShamrock Pin

 

 

 

 

Lucky RainbowLucky Rainbow Cover

 

 

 

Little TreeLittle tree

 

 

 

 

 

Leprechaun TrapLeprechaun Trap cover

DIY Reed Diffuser

What you need:reed-diffuser-instructions
• Glass bottle or vase with a small neck opening
• Diffuser reeds (or bamboo skewers)
• 60 ml alcohol
• 60 ml water
• 50-100 drops essential oil (orange is the best)

What you do:
• Make sure your reeds or skewers stick out several inches from the top of the container for maximum scent.
• Mix together alcohol, water, and essential oil in the container.
• Stick the reeds or bamboo skewers inside.
• After about an hour, flip the reeds over to saturate the top part of the reeds that stick out above the oil level. (This helps to speed up the process of the oil soaking up from the bottom diffusing through the entire reed.)
• Rotate the ends of the reeds or skewers once a week to refresh and prolong the fragrance.

Tip: You can substitute alcohol and water with 120 ml vodka.

Watercolor Mug

What you need:Watercolor mug
• Ceramic white coffee mug
• Old or Disposable Bowl/Container
• Hot water
• Nail Polish
• Gloves

What you do:
• Fill the bowl with warm water.
• Add a drop of nail polish to the water and let it spread out.
• Dip your mug in the water. (You can use nail polish remover to remove any excess nail polish on the bottom and inside of the mug or sections that got messed up.)
• Carefully pat mug dry with paper towel.
• You can repeat with additional colors if you want.
• Once you’ve achieved the look you want, let it sit for at least two hours.

Tip: Do it outside. Hand wash the mug.

Card Holder

What you need:card holder
• Clothespins
• Red and white paint
• Paint brush

What you do:
• Take the clothespins apart and paint the wooden pieces white or red.
• Let them dry.
• Paint snow flakes.
• Allow to dry completely and then put back together.
• Display your Christmas cards.

Bloody Candle

What you need:Bloody candle
• White candle
• Red wax candle or red crayon
• Matches or Lighter / hair dryer if your are using a crayon

What you do:
•Light a red candle and let it drip down onto the top and sides of the white candle.
• If you are using a red crayon, just hold it over the edge of the white candle. Using the hair dryer blow the air downwards.
• Display.

Web Candle

What you need:Web candle
• Wax candle
• Pencil
• Alcohol wipe
• Toothpaste
• Paper to put the candle on

What you do:
• Draw a spider web on the candle by pushing the pencil into the wax.
• Trace the design several times with the pencil applying pressure.
• Wipe the candle with the alcohol wipe to get rid of the extra wax.
• Using your finger dab some toothpaste over your web design.