Bouncy Ball DIY (Alphabet Summer)

It's B day which means we are doing a Bouncy Ball DIY. Bouncy balls are a favorite toy in this house. On any given day you can find all 3 boys crowded in our little kitchen watching half a dozen balls bounce all over the place. I knew that making their own would be a huge hit.

I followed the directions as I found them on Free Fun in Austin. Our ingredients included Borax, clear Elmer's glue, food coloring and craft sticks. Since I use Borax to make my own laundry detergent, I was able to do this project without really spending any money (I had to buy the clear glue but that was about a dollar).

Even though they looked pretty good, this project ended up being a bust. We bounced them once or twice and they started crumbling. Reading up on this more it looks like recipes with cornstarch work better. Oh well, it created a good opportunity to teach the kids that not everything is always going to go as we expect and that it is more important to enjoy the process than the final product. And it gives us an excuse to try it again soon!

Our memory verse today came from Acts. I found this great blog that has scripture verses to correspond with each letter so I will be using that for the rest of our Alphabet Summer.

Jeremy was home today so he and the boys tackled a Baseball Stadium for our Alphabet City structure today. Lots of fun!

We also did two different B worksheets today. One came from education.com and had a butterfly inside of a large B. The other came from 1plus1plus1equals1.com and was a color by number of a bat on a B. I am going to try and mix these up and I will keep sharing where I find my printable worksheets so that you can use them too if you want.

Another Alphabet Summer activity is in the books! Want to see what we still have on our list? You can follow our Master List here.

Clothespin Dolls

One of my nieces just turned 4 and I have almost always made something homemade for her birthday and Christmas gifts. This year I went completely homemade with Magnetic Paper Dolls (watch for a post soon with a girl version and a boy version) and Clothespin Dolls. I got the inspiration from these Disney Princess Dolls I saw on Pinterest. I was originally going to do those but I wanted to use what I had on hand and painting something to look exactly like something else isn't really my specialty. So I dug through my supplies and found clothespins, yarn, scraps of fabric and a wooden box. And Clothespin dolls were born! Here's what they look like:

I think they are pretty cute if I do say so myself! And they were pretty darn easy too. I don't have a true step-by-step for you because I just kind of winged it. But I will share the basics with you. First I started with some clothespins and I painted the face a neutral color and some different colored "tops" that would match the fabric scraps I had.

Then I added the dress or skirt. This really was as simple as cutting and wrapping the fabric and using a hot glue gun to secure it to the clothespin. No sewing involved! You can go very basic or as complicated as you desire. Here's the first one I came up with (kind of looks like a mermaid:)

Finally, I added hair. Again this step just involved choosing a length and a style and hot-gluing it into place. I started pretty basic but as I went on I was able to do some more creative styles:

At the last minute I decided to glue pieces of craft sticks onto the bottom so that they would be able to stand. And there you have it, 6 unique dolls using supplies I already had on hand:

I happened to have a cute wooden box on hand so I tucked them all inside so that she would have a nice place to store them all.

Want some more homemade gift ideas? Be on the lookout for my next post, Magnetic Paper Dolls for both boys and girls.

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