Our first leprechaun craft is great for older kids, so they can have their own leprechaun cup to place coins in, as if the leprechaun is protecting his pot of gold!  The second, simple craft places a pot-of-gold at the end of a rainbow as a door handle decoration and is probably best for your younger children, but even older ones might find it fun!

The Crafty Leprechaun

The Crafty Leprechaun

What You’ll Need:

• 12. oz paper cup (like those used for coffee)
• 2 Green and 2 orange pipe cleaners
• Green, peach, yellow, and black construction paper (one small sheet each)
• Green paint
• One pair of googly eyes
• A black pen, black marker, and red marker (or pen)
• Glue

Here’s what do do:

1. Paint the paper cup green and let it dry.
2. Cut out a circle from the peach construction paper. Make sure it’s big enough to hide the cup’s rim when looking at it straight on.
3. Cut out a hat from the green construction paper and make sure the brim is a little bit wider than the peach circle that will create the head.
4. Use a black marker to make a band on the hat, but leave room in the middle for a buckle!
5. Cut out 3 small squares from the yellow construction paper and then cut out their middles for the hat’s and shoes’ buckles!
6. Glue a buckle onto the center of the hat and then glue the hat onto the top third of the peach circle.
7. Glue the googly eyes a little under the brim of the hat.
8. Draw a nose in black pen and a mouth in red marker (or pen) and then set the face aside.
9. Coil an entire orange pipe cleaner around a pencil or pen and slip it off.
10. Glue the ends of the coil onto the peach circle, making a beard.
11. Cut two small, straight pieces from another orange pipe cleaner and glue these above the googly eyes for eyebrows.
12. Glue the head onto the cup to cover near a third of the cup in length.
13. Take one green pipe cleaner and make a small loop at one end (secure it by wrapping a small part around).  Make a loop in the pipe cleaner right next to the one you just made and twist it so it stays in place. It should now resemble a flower stem with leaves. Take the straight edge and make a third loop that meets the other two in the center, making a clover shape!
14. Repeat the previous step again for the other hand.
15. Attach one on each side of the cup using tape or glue.
16. Cut out two small shoe-shaped pieces from the black paper and glue one yellow buckle to each shoe before gluing them to the bottom of the cup.

The Pot of Gold at the End of the Rainbow

What You’ll Need

• Paper plate
• Scissors
• 1 sheet of yellow and 1 sheet of green construction paper
• Black marker
• Markers for each color of the rainbow
• Gold and green glitter (optional)
• Glue or tape

Here’s what to do

1. Cut a half-circle into the bottom of the plate.
2. Cut out two pie-shaped pieces on the edge of the plate where the half-circle’s corners line up.
3. Have your child color a rainbow that follows the arch of the half-circle
4. Color the rest of the plate with black marker and be sure to color in a pot rim at the corners of the half-circle
5. Take the yellow construction paper and cut out a shape that resembles a pile of coins, making it as long as the diameter of the half-circle.
6. Run a clear glue stick over the “pile of coins” and sprinkle gold glitter over the construction paper to make it look real!
7. Glue or tape this to the back of the paper plate with the glittery side facing frontward
8. Cut out the shape of a shamrock from the green construction paper and glue it to the center of the pot. Optionally glue green glitter to it.
9. Hang it on any door knob in the house!

Have fun making these crafts with your children! They are a pot-of-fun!

Share These Great St. Patrick’s Day Crafts with Friends!

Sock Bowling

What you’ll need:

• One pair of rolled up socks
• 10 empty plastic bottles (any size will do)

Directions:

1. Place the 10 empty bottles in a pyramid shape, just like bowling pins, at the end of a hallway.
2. Stand at the opposite end of the hallway and toss the rolled up socks at the bottles to see how many you can knock down.
3. Too easy?  Try different techniques to throw the socks:  Spin around 10 times before bowling at the pins.  Turn backwards and throw the socks between your legs.  Try bowling with two pairs of rolled up socks at one time.  See who can make up the most creative way to bowl.

Balloon Tennis

What you’ll need:

• Two wire coat hangers
• One pair of old nylons (cut in half so that the legs are separate)
• Masking tape or tin foil
• One balloon or ping pong ball
• Scissors

Before you can play, you’ll need to create nylon rackets!

1. Start with one wire hanger.  Pull on the hook and the opposite side simultaneously in opposite directions, to create a diamond shape.
2. Take one leg of the nylons and pull it all the way down to cover the diamond shaped hanger.  You may need to squish the diamond a little bit to make it easier to pull the nylon over the hanger.
3. Tie a knot in the nylon right at the coil of the hanger so the nylon is snug and tight over the diamond.  Cut off any excess nylon.
4. Have an adult pinch the hook toward the rest of the hanger.  Tape the end to create a safe handle.  If you do not have tape, tin foil works just as well to wrap around the handle.
5. Repeat steps 1-4 to create a second racket.

Once you and your child have crafted two rackets, all you need is a ballon or ping pong ball and you are ready to play. Passing the balloon back and forth or counting the number of consecutive hits are great ways to stay entertained.

Share These Indoor Sport Ideas with your Friends!

Our fun trials!

Materials:

• Markers
• Paper
• Rain

Instructions:

1. Draw a scene, a beloved character (in our case, Frankie), or whatever strikes your fancy, using your markers.  Dry-erase board markers work well; permanent markers don’t work.
   

   Round 1: Permanent Marker? Permanently Unphased.

2. When you’re done, bundle up and step outside to submit your picture to the weather for 20 seconds!  Try and keep it flat when it starts to droop with water, so the picture is evenly exposed to the rain.
   

   Round 2: With Dry-Erase Black Marker and Neon Highlighters

3. Let your picture dry thoroughly, inside.

So, what’d you end up with?  We hope you like it.  The unexpected results are half the fun!  Here’s what we got on our final version of Frankie:

Raindrops mean added character!

We love hearing your thoughts, seeing your work!  Feel free to send in some of your neat results to:

Knowledge Adventure
Attn: Frankie Fan Mail
2377 Crenshaw Blvd, Suite 302
Torrance, CA 90501

OR

Frankie@adventure.com

Build this crafty castle!

What You’ll Need:

• A cardboard box (The bigger the box, the bigger the castle)
• Scissors or a craft knife
• String
• Decorative materials (paint, stickers, crayons, etc.)

Directions:

1. Cut a slender, rectangular box out of all sides of the box for towers.


Repeat on the other sides, as well.

2. Cut smaller rectangular boxes on the longer sides for watch posts.
3. Draw a drawbridge on the front and poke two holes (using a pen or the scissor tip) on the door towards the top, for the strings (we will put them in later).  Cut out your drawbridge.


Drawbridge

4. Poke two holes on the wall the door is connected to, near the top of the door frame.
5. Pull some string through the holes you have poked in both the wall and the door and tie a knot at both ends of each string at a length that allows the door to lie flat.


Feed the string through and tie it off.

6. Decorate the castle with whatever your child’s heart desires!


A Royal Creation

While this particular castle is definitely fit for a princess, we know you and your children will enjoy making it match their own tastes.  We’re interested to know what kind of different ideas for decorations they came up with! Comment or send us pictures if you’d like!

Show Your Friends’ Families How to Get Fortified!

The Peacock Hat Craft

Peafowl are awesome birds. The word “peafowl” refers to the birds most commonly represented by peacocks; the word “peafowl” is used when discussing both males and females.  Males are called peacocks, and they are well-known for their brightly-colored feathers and amazing tails they use to impress females, which are called “peahens” and are mostly colored a more somber brown.  These photos were taken by a JumpStart Team member while visiting Arcadia, California, a lovely city in Southern California that features peafowl as its city bird, allowing them to roam freely throughout the city.

A peacock cruising down a residential street.

In our hat craft, we’ll be attempting to create a hat that captures the essence of a peacock for kids to enjoy and run around in, brilliant blue crest and all.  However, if your child has another favorite animal he or she would like to capture, feel free to take it in an entirely different direction after the first instruction.

The Peacock Hat Craft

What you’ll need:

• A bowl that fits over your child’s head
• 12 pages of newspaper
• Scissors
• Tape
• Tempera paint – blue, green, white, and black especially
• Paintbrush
• Glue stick
• Access to a working sink

Instructions

1. Place the bowl upside down on your workspace. Soak a page of newspaper in the sink and lay it over the bowl making sure the overlapping edges are pressed down flat.  Repeat with nine more sheets, shifting the direction of the page with each placement over the bowl so no gaps are left.
   

   Compress the soaked pages.

   Soak two  more pages and place them directly on top of each other, separate from the bowl pages; these will be used for the tail and crest.  Let them dry overnight. You should be able to remove the newspaper from the bowl the next day and have it retain the shape of the upended bowl.

2. Use scissors to trim the edge of the dried newspaper into triangular points. Don’t trim points into the area you decide to be the front; this part will be folded up to create the beak.
   

   Triangular Support.

3. Fold and the points up into the inside of the hat. To make the beak, cut a rectangle shape out of the newspaper’s overlapping edges that make up the front you decided on.  The rectangle shape should be made by dedicating one of the length-wise sides to remain attached to the main body of the hat, and fold the two opposing edge corners back towards the hat body, creating triangular folds. Tape these triangles together and then to the front of the hat (use double-sided tape or loops of tape preferably to hide the attachment).
   

   Make the triangle folds out of the rectangle's corners and bring them together.

4. Paint the hat like a peacock’s head!  Reference the photo of the peacocks below.
   

   Two peacocks moving through a front yard.

5. Add on some iconic features of the peacock from the two separate pages you molded together.  Use the upper half of the conjoined pages to create the larger, bright green tail.
   

   The extravagant tail.

   Use the lower half to create the crest; after you paint these with embellishment and let it dry, tape them to the body of the hat to complete the look.

   

   Time for some fun!

Enjoy your excellent peacock hat!

Tell Your Friends’ Families to Strut Their Stuff!

Materials:

• 1 pint jar with cap
• 1 straw, preferably clear
• Some clay or play dough
• Water
• Rubbing alcohol
• Food Coloring
• 1 marker

Instructions:

1. Fill the jar with equal parts water and rubbing alcohol about ¼ of the way up the jar.
   

   A little too much pouring.

2. Add a few drops of food coloring to color your temperature-sensitive liquid. Using red coloring best mimics a standard mercury thermometer.
   

   Food coloring emphasizes the liquid level.

3. Secure your cap and shake well to mix the liquid and to ensure the food coloring is evenly dispersed.
4. Punch a hole with a pen in the center of the cap, allowing the straw to feed through.
   

   The hole should be sized closely to the straw.

5. Position the straw so that it dips into the liquid but does not touch the bottom of the jar.
6. Use the modeling clay or play dough to wrap around the straw where it enters the cap to create an air tight seal.
7. Use a marker to mark on the jar the water level in the straw at room temperature.

Building the thermometer is only half the fun. Now go and experiment with your child by taking your thermometer and placing it in differently-heated places to watch what happens. Try the refrigerator; take it outside; place it in a shadow, in the sun light, or wherever to see how temperature reacts with your thermometer.

How does it work?
Liquids contract and expand depending on the temperature. Rubbing alcohol is more temperature-sensitive than water, so the liquid changes according to temperature quicker than using only water. When it is hotter, the liquid in the jar expands, pushing fluid up through the straw; the opposite is true for the cold.

This is also a good chance to educate your child on the Celsius and Fahrenheit temperature scales. Water freezes at 0 degrees Celsius and boils at 100 degrees Celsius. Fahrenheit, on the other hand, has water freezing at 32 degrees and boiling at 212 degrees.

It just goes to show that, no matter how cold it is outside, there is always fun and learning to be had!

Liked This Experiment?  Share It!

Make This Snow Day One to Remember

Materials:

• Small, clean jar with tight cover or lid
• Mineral or baby oil
• Winter glitter
• Hot glue gun
• Figurine with some height to it

Directions:

1. Take the jar’s lid and turn it upside down. Use a glue gun to attach your figurine to the inside of the lid. Make sure the glue sets before you submerge it in the liquid you chose.


Hot glue, once set, handles liquids well.

2. Fill the jar with mineral oil or baby oil, leaving only a half-inch pocket of air at the top. Water will also work; however, the glitter will fall more snow-like in the oils.
3. Add about a teaspoon of glitter for the snow for a mason-sized jar, adjusting your amount according to the size of the jar. We used white and silver glitter.


Add glitter according to jar-size.

4. Carefully set the lid (with figurine) onto the full jar and seal it tightly.
   Consider applying more hot glue around the rim of the jar to ensure it doesn’t leak, before you set the lid. Gloves, people; gloves! That glue will bulge, and it is hot!

A fun addition to the den.

There you have it. This snow globe is ready to be shaken up by your family, providing hours of distraction and escape over the winter months into your child’s own winter wonderland.

Share This Snow Day Craft with Friends

This ‘hands on’ experiment will help your child understand the very special insulation polar bears and penguins use to keep warm during the coldest season. Now, prepare to get a little messy and test your tolerance for less-than-tepid temperatures!

Polar Bears and Penguins in Parkas

What you need:

• Butter or margarine
• Bucket of ice water
• Stopwatch

Directions:

1. First, set the bucket of ice water in front of your child and have them dip their hand into the ice water. Time how long they can keep their hand in the water. It shouldn’t be very long, considering ice water is not fun to expose yourself to.
2. Write down the length of time your child was able to hold their hand in the ice water. Then allow them about 5 minutes to warm up their little hands.
3. Now for the really fun part! Take a stick of butter, or margarine, and have your child completely cover their hand in a thick layer of butter. Make sure that they really cake it on.
4. Have them dip their buttered hand into the ice water bucket and, again, time it with a stopwatch. When they take out their hand notice how the water beads off their buttered-up hand. They will be surprised to discover that the coldness of the water doesn’t affect them as quickly the second time!

Why’d the butter layer help?

Explain to your child that butter is a fat, and winter animals have a very thick layer of fat under their fur that comfortably wraps up their insides like a blanket. Polar bears for example, have a layer of fat, or blubber, up to 11 centimeters in thickness! This blubber helps animals insulate their bodies, especially in the freezing water while swimming. Also, fat works as a natural water-repellent, as your child saw when the water beaded up and slipped off his or her skin.

You can learn about other ways different animals stay warm in the cold by clicking here!

Your friends have buckets, ice water, and stopwatches too?  Get’em on board!

Poor Frosty…this jolly soul, made out of snow, laughs and plays with the children, until he melts away and has to say goodbye. So sad! Well, this snowman craft will make your children smile and laugh, and we can guarantee that this Frosty won’t melt away once winter is over!

Perma-Frosty

Flower Pot Snowman

You will need:

• Medium-sized flower pot
• Medium-sized wooden or styrofoam ball
• Small piece of ribbon
• Green and red colored felt
• Old mittens or old socks that you can cut up (preferably fun-colored ones)
• 2 buttons
• Black, orange, and pink markers
• White paint
• Googley eyes
• Glue

Directions:

1. Paint the outside of the flower pot and the Styrofoam or wooden ball white. You may need 2 or 3 layers, so allow the first layer to dry, then paint the next layer after.


Layer the paint as needed.

2. Once dry, flip the pot over and glue the ball onto the bottom of the pot.
3. Take the felt scraps and cut a piece about 4 inches in length and 3 inches in height. Glue the felt around the top of the ball to give the snowman a little hat. Gather the felt at the top and tie with the ribbon.


Place the felt and gather it to create a hat.

4. Glue the two buttons onto the body of the snowman.
5. Cut the old sock or mitten into a mini snowman scarf, or, if you have a few pipe cleaners handy, you can simply twist these to form the scarf, as shown here. It needs to be about 5 inches in length and about an inch in width. Wrap it around the neck of the snowman and securely glue it.


Besides, scarves are en vogue.

6. Once all the glue is dry, stick on the wiggly eyes, make a dotted smile for the mouth, an orange carrot nose, and add some pink circles for the cheeks.

Completed with style.

You’re done! The flower pot snowman will surely conjure up some holiday joy and bring Frosty back to life!

The Flower Pot Snowman draws a respected crowd.

Throw the Flower Pot Snowman your friends’ way!

Super Snowman Snowflake

What you’ll need:

• Paper
• Pencil
• Scissors

Instructions:

1. Take a sheet of paper and fold it as shown below:
2. Cut off the side panel of the paper in order to create a square
3. Take the square and fold it in half. Then fold it in half again. And finally fold it in half again, creating a third, final triangle.
4. Now draw out a pattern that you like with a snowman in it. Look at ours below if you need an idea of where to start!
5. Now that your snowman is drawn, start cutting around the edge of your drawing. This is what our leftover paper looked like after we cut out our snowflake.
6. Once you have finished cutting, open up your snowflake! If you want a few more holes cut into the snowflake to make it look fancier, just fold it back up and make a few inserts and then reopen.  Here is what our final JumpStart Super Snowman Snowflake looked like:
   

   Super Snowman Snowflake, you're welcome in our climate-controlled office anytime!

   Have friends welcome the Super Snowman Snowflake into their homes!