To make these muffins, you'll need a batch of your favorite cornbread muffin batter. (Mine comes in a little blue box with "Jiffy" on the front.)  Divide up your batter between two bowls. My kids enjoyed helping determine when the bowls are filled equally- which is great practice in estimation. Next, tint one bowl blue and one bowl green. Adding color & mixing is great for little hands! Your can also discuss how the color value of the batter changes with each drop of food coloring, as it gets darker and darker. (For older kids, you can ask them how you could make the batter lighter again? It might take them a bit to realize you'd need to add more batter.) Next, drop alternating dollops from each batter into each muffin cup ending with a green dollop on top before baking as usual. 

After making easy sock puppets with the kids, I've been wanting to add more puppets to our collection. Since I wasn't able to find a pattern I really liked online, I created my own. {Free for you, see the end of the post} As I kept adding new characters, I really enjoyed seeing their personalities develop...

Of course the best part is seeing them come alive, and sing their many songs, on sweet little fingers.

Making your own:
{My Free Finger Puppet Template} Click Here
*Please make sure that your felt is folded in half before you use the template, lining it up to the seam.
*Craft-store felt was used for this template, it might need to be adjusted for wool or any other thicker felt.
*Embellishments, such as beaks, can be sewn or hot-glued on.
*These eyes were created with a three-wrap French knot, but you can also use sewn on beads (for older children's play), little dots of black felt or fabric marker.

Isia loves her accessories these days! There's the princess crown she wears on errands, the lip-glosses stored away in her special suitcase (away from little brother's inquisitive hands), and the Jewelry. Rings, bracelets, necklaces... she's collecting it all and wearing it often. Here's the newest piece in her collection, an easy to make wire & bead bracelet. Perfect for kids to make & wear themselves, or gift away to someone special.

The first thing we needed was wire. I picked up this 24 gauge wire at the hardware store. For each bracelet I measured her wrist, then roughly tripled that amount. It's better to have it too long than too short- you'll cut the extra away at the end.