Your child may not have been able to have as much crafting time as they would have liked this year, but we have the perfect solution! This craft can be made with many of the items found around the house, and will also help set the festive mood of thanksgiving we are all used to at this time of year. This is a great activity for making together with your child, so let’s gather all the ingredients and cook up a whole lot of fun!

Materials:

You should be able to find most ingredients around the home, but if you are missing seeds or beans, you can always substitute something else for the tail feathers. You may have to visit a craft store for the popsicle sticks and googly eyes.

• An empty egg carton
• Elmer’s glue, or any school glue
• Pencil
• Scissors
• Two googly eyes
• One piece of orange pipe cleaner
• Sunflower seeds
• White beans (dry)
• Red beans (dry)
• Corn kernels
• Pumpkin seeds
• Popsicle sticks (you can substitute with strips of cardboard)
• Round piece of scrap wood (you can substitute with a thick, round piece of cardboard)
• Glue gun (if not available, use the school glue but allow 30 minutes to dry)

Approximate crafting time: 45-60 minutes (including drying time)

Step 1 – Draw

Use the pencil to draw five leaf shapes on the bottom of the egg carton. If you don’t have a piece of wood for the turkey’s face, you can also use the rest of the egg carton bottom to cut out a circle for the face.

Step 2 – Cut leaves

Carefully cut out each of the five leaf shapes from the bottom of the egg carton.

Step 3 – Cut turkey body and glue

Use the scissors to cut out two halves of the molded side of the egg carton. Try to cut them so that there is a uniform height all around the top openings of the halves. Put some glue around the edges of the wide openings at the top, then fold together so that they form a shell with the flat sides on both top and bottom. Put aside and let dry.

Step 4 – Glue turkey feathers

On each leaf, put some glue on just one side and then put just one kind of food item on each of the leaves. You should end up with five leaves with something different on each one. Be careful not to put too many seeds or beans on the leaf as the feather may not stay upright if it is too heavy. Glue a popsicle stick to the back of each turkey feather.

Step 5 – Put it all together

Glue the piece of wood to the egg carton body and let dry. Then glue each of the five tail feathers to the back of the body. Glue each of the googly eyes onto the wood piece. Fold a 3” piece of pipe cleaner in half, then glue to face to make the turkey’s mouth.

Share With Us!

Get creative! We can’t wait to see how your turkey turned out, did you use anything different to decorate your turkey tail feathers? Show everyone your best turkey creation by posting them on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter with #mothergooseclub. Gobble gobble!

Teaching your children literacy can be a lot simpler (and much more fun) than it sounds. Sometimes, all it takes to get through to your kids is a creative, entertaining way to do it, and this Alphabet Bean Craft/Game is a perfect example. This activity is great for helping kids visualize the letters of the alphabet and interact with them in a hands-on way. Here’s how it works!

Materials:

You don’t need too much for this craft. Everything you need can be found in your own home, or in your local supermarket. The materials are…

• Dry butter beans
• Muffin liners
• Small alphabet stickers (small enough to fit on a bean)
• Muffin tray (optional)

(Note: If you don’t want to use stickers, or if you don’t have any available, you can use a sharpie marker instead)

Step 1 – The Muffin Liners

After you’ve assembled all your materials for this activity, the first step is to take your muffin liners and let your kids stick one letter of the alphabet at the bottom of each one. Do this 26 times until you have at least one muffin liner for every letter.

Step 2 – The Butter Beans

Next, take the rest of your stickers and put a letter on each bean until you have one bean for each letter of the alphabet as shown in the picture above.

Step 3 – Have Fun!

Now, let the games begin! Let your kids match each lettered bean with the accompanying muffin liner to get them familiar with their ABC’s. When they’re done with that, there are a host of other activities they can do with these beans and muffin liners as well. For example, you can call out a word and let your kids find the right beans to spell it out. Or, you can put several different letters in a muffin liner and challenge them to come up with as many different words as they can using only those letters.

Using nothing but beans, muffin liners and stickers, you can come up with dozens of different ways to teach your kids about letters, spelling, words, and phonetics—all of which are skills they’ll need their entire lives. What Alphabet Bean ideas can you come up with? Let us know on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter using #mothergooseclub.

Whether you’re a veteran green-thumb or just trying to learn, tending to a garden is a wonderful way to get you and your kids out enjoying the summer weather and learning about our beautiful earth! There are lots of mental, physical and emotional benefits from gardening, so we’ve gathered up some tips and resources to get you and your family started.

Bring the Classroom Outside!

Gardening provides opportunities to introduce and engage first-hand with subjects like biology, geology, ecology and more.

For instance, weather directly affects what happens inside a garden, so try pointing out some of those connections to kids:

• Plants need water to grow, and you’ll be able to see how green and lively your garden will get after a few rain showers.
• Alternatively, a hot stretch can leave your soil a bit too dry. Balance is important!
• Frost is bad news for plants, so make sure to harvest before it gets too cold in winter.

Working within a garden makes biology concepts much more accessible. Keep the conversation going with some of these talking points:

• Plants need three things to grow: water, sunlight and air. They drink water from the ground with their roots, and they absorb sunlight and air in their leaves. Leaves are like sponges that soak up light and air.
• Sometimes we find holes in the leaves on our plants because bugs eat them! Caterpillars, for example, eat, eat and eat so they can rest in their cocoons and turn into beautiful butterflies!
• Some fruits and vegetables grow on vines, like tomatoes and grapes. Others grow on branches, like apples and avocados. And others grow in the ground, like potatoes and peanuts!
• It’s a good thing if you spot some worms crawling around. Worms eat soil and make food that’s yummy for plants!

Gardening also provides physical benefits. Digging holes and moving pots around requires some labor and strength. At the same time, planting seeds requires some meticulous attention to detail – good for fine motor skills!

Perhaps most importantly, it gives kids a good excuse to get a little dirty!

Gardening With Mother Goose Club

Mother Goose Club has plenty of resources that can help teach and inspire your young gardener! Check out the crafts and videos below.

• Bird Feeder Craft
• Spring Garden Craft
• The Planting Song Craft
• The Planting Song Video
• Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary Video

Share your gardening tips and experiences with us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter using #mothergooseclub!

Happy gardening!

Get a scoop of this cool and delicious homemade ice cream recipe! Parents, we recommend you lead the way on this one, but encourage participation and conversation along the way. Gather up the simple ingredients below, and then follow the instructions and tips.

For some ice cream-themed inspiration and background music, sing along to “Ice Cream Song“!

Ingredients:

Instructions:

Check out this video for reference, and our in-depth instructions below.

1. Take the quart-sized resealable bag and add the sugar, milk, heavy cream and vanilla extract. Seal the bag to make sure everything stays inside.
2. Put the ice into the gallon-sized resealable bag.
3. Use the thermometer to check the temperature of the ice in the bag. Record the temperature.
4. Add the salt to the gallon-sized resealable bag with ice.
5. Place the quart-sized bag inside the gallon-sized bag and seal the gallon bag.
6. Put on the oven mitts and shake the bag gently for five minutes. Pass the time with “Ice Cream Song”!
7. Measure the temperature of the ice with the salt and observe any changes to the ice cream solution.
8. Reseal both bags and shake the bag gently until the solution solidifies into ice cream.
9. Scoop out the ice cream, add toppings and enjoy!

Teachable Moments:

After measuring the temperature of the ice before and after adding salt, it should be apparent that the temperature of the ice dropped after adding salt. Ask your kids about what they observed and why they think the temperature dropped. After hearing their ideas, explain the science behind the experiment. Here are some quick bullet points to summarize what is happening:

• Salt lowers the freezing temperature of water.
• When salt is added to the ice cubes, it allows the water to reach a temperature lower than 32 degrees.
• The salt dissolves into the melted ice water and lowers the temperature of the entire ice bag. Ice water with salt can reach temperatures as low as 0 degrees Fahrenheit!
• The lower temperature of the icy saltwater allows the ice cream mixture to freeze at a much faster rate.

Share With Us!

Did you enjoy trying this homemade ice cream activity? Share your thoughts and creations with us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter using #mothergooseclub!

Encouraging kids to eat their vegetables can be quite the challenge, but here are five tips I’ve found to be quite effective when dealing with a stubborn eater!

Tip 1: Mix vegetables with foods they already love

Instead of regular pizza, I make a deep-dish pan pizza for my nephews and niece. The sauce is rather thick so I’m able to chop up a whole green pepper and stir it into the sauce. Because each serving is as dense as a piece of pie, they don’t even notice the extra serving of greens they’re eating!

Or, next time you make spaghetti, try adding small portions of zucchini pasta along with their favorite noodles. And throw in some small pieces of cauliflower with the next serving of orange chicken. They likely won’t complain and may even grow to like the veggie versions of their favorite foods.

Tip 2: Experiment with different presentations

Even if your kids have resisted eating certain veggies, changing up how they are presented can make a big difference. They may turn their nose at salads, but it’s harder to turn down shredded lettuce and diced tomatoes on top of delicious-looking tacos. One of my nephews intensely dislikes carrots and broccoli, but gobbled them up when I cut them both into half-inch pieces and mixed them into garlic noodles!

Tip 3: Get kids involved in the cooking

I’ve found that kids are much more willing to eat dishes they helped make, even if that dish contains vegetables they’ve considered their mortal enemy! There’s something about them getting hands-on with their food that becomes an effective form of persuasion. So let them brush a little olive oil on grilled eggplant slices, and ask for their help tossing some greens in a large bowl.

Tip 4: Tell them how important vegetables are for growth

Vegetables contain nutrients and antioxidants that are extremely beneficial for growth. Young children usually want to grow bigger as fast as possible! Remind them that if they want to become as tall as their sibling, as fast as their favorite professional athlete, or as strong as a superhero, then they need to eat their veggies!

While there are endless ideas on this topic, the important thing is to keep trying. I’d also highly recommend directly asking kids what might encourage them to eat more veggies – you might learn from what they tell you!

Summer is the perfect time to ditch the norm and get creative, so we reinvented the wheel when it comes to serving up fruit! Rainbow fruit snacks are a terrific way to learn about colors, practice counting, improve patterning skills and strengthen finger muscles, all while enjoying some healthy and refreshing treats!

On top of that, this a simple and easy activity the family can do together – a perfect way spend a summer afternoon!

Materials:

• Wooden Skewers
• Plates and one large tray
• Fruit!

Try to use one type of fruit for each color of the rainbow, referencing our video. Or get creative with different patterns, depending on the fruit you choose!

Steps:

1. Start making your skewers – use your fingers to push the fruit up. The skewers are pointy, so be careful!
2. Repeat with each color. When finished with a skewer, lay it on your tray.
3. Try different patterns of colors, or try using two pieces of each fruit to double the size of your rainbow!
4. When you’ve finished making your skewers, fan them out on your tray to make the shape of the rainbow.

Share With Us!

We hope you had a blast making this refreshing and colorful summer snack. Snap a few pictures before digging in! We’d love to see your finished creations. Share with us on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter using #mothergooseclub.

Rachel

Rachel is a Mother Goose Club producer and former teacher based in Las Vegas, Nevada. She enjoys hosting celebrations for all ages centered around crafts and activities. Rachel is excited to share her favorite things with you, and hopes to inspire your family to get creative!

Happy Easter, everyone! As a Mother Goose Club producer, I can’t help but be inspired by the colorful characters, stripes and playful designs I spend so much time with every day, and so – I decided to do a MGC themed Easter basket this year! The designs work almost too well on an egg shape. I hope your family will enjoy my take on an MGC Easter basket and get inspired to create some MGC Easter eggs of your own! I’ve included a few tips and tricks below. Share your designs on social media using #mothergooseclub!

• Allow hard boiled eggs to cool and make sure they feel dry.
• I’ve found that Crayola crayons work best for egg dyeing projects – the wax sticks to the egg unlike some crayon brands I’ve tried.
• Set a towel down for kids to color on (pressing onto the table can break the egg).
• Dye will not stick to the crayon wax, so color where you want color and decide what color you want the white space to be.

• I purchased a Paas set and followed their recipe for vinegar, water and color tablets – you can supplement with food coloring and other containers to mix colors for variety.
• Test your colors – drop a plain white egg in each color and use a spoon to lift the egg out every few seconds to see how the color develops so you get the desired shade each time you dye (i.e. a sky blue will be ready before ocean blue).
• Dip and dye (with your egg carton or a plate with paper towel over it handy when they’re done)!

• I filled this basket with some bubble wrap and a plastic shopping bag, then covered it in paper grass and arranged the eggs.
• I made a jester hat for Humpty Dumpty with construction paper, crayons and scissors, then attached with hot glue.
• I made the Johnny Johnny monster’s ears by wrapping a corner of pink construction paper around the tip of a crayon, hot glued it closed, colored the stripes with purple crayon and hot glued each ear in place.

Spring is finally here! We hope the blooming gardens and chirping birds are beginning to show where you live. Liven up your garden or yard even more with this bird feeder craft. Get the kids involved in the crafting, and then observe the results together!

Materials:

All the materials you need are below. Most everything can be found around the house or at your local store. Get creative, improvise and let us know what works for you!

• 2 pine cones
• Peanut butter
• Seeds
• Plastic bowl
• Paint and paint brush
• Paper plate
• String
• Scissors

Step 1 – Design the Bowl:

Paint your bowl with some vibrant, spring colors. Get creative with your own design. We went with orange, white, red, yellow and sky blue colors.

Step 2 – Cut the Bowl:

Cut a small hole through the bottom of your bowl – you’ll pass the string through here.

Step 3 – Put It All Together!

Cover your pine cones in peanut butter and seeds. Then tie them to the string and pass the string through the bowl.

It’s all ready to hang up outside!

Share With Us!

What are your family’s plans for this spring? Did you try out this craft? Share your thoughts and creations with us on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter using #mothergooseclub. We love getting crafty and celebrating with Mother Goose Club families around the world!

And while you’re crafting and exploring, sing along to Mother Goose Club spring songs!

Clara Chung

Clara is a fan of Mother Goose Club and a contributing writer for our blog. She is a mother of two daughters and lives in New York City. She is passionate about food and loves to tinker with recipes to make it easy for busy moms. Her daughter, Beatrice, is often her sous-chef in the kitchen on weekends. She believes sharing the love of cooking with children can foster joy, connection, creativity and healthy eating habits.

It’s often challenging to get your kids to eat a variety of foods. One thing that has helped me is a face plate!

Check out the holiday plate I made with my daughter! She couldn’t wait to dig into her afternoon snack and Santa Claus never looked so delicious! I used homemade vanilla maple-cream frosting for Santa’s beard and eyebrows, and organic strawberries for his hat. Vanilla whipped cream is super easy to make with an electric mixer. I use my KitchenAid Mixer, but you can also use any handheld brand.

For some extra fun and creativity, I use Fred & Friends Food Plates, available on Amazon right below. I love using the Mrs. Fred plate to serve a variety of vegetables!

Fred MR. FOOD FACE Kids’ Ceramic Dinner Plate

Fred MRS. FOOD FACE Kids’ Ceramic Dinner Plate

To make your very own face plate with the family, see all of the ingredients and steps below!

Ingredients:

• 1 pint heavy whipping cream (I use Organic Valley)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons organic maple syrup
• Organic strawberries

Steps:

1. Start whipping the cream slowly in the mixer, gradually increasing the speed.

2. Once the cream starts to stiffen, mix in vanilla extract and maple syrup for flavor. If you don’t have time, you can use a store-bought whipped cream – I like the 365 Whole Foods brand. If you’re dairy-free, you can use whipped cream made with almond milk or coconut milk.

3. Cover Mr. or Mrs. Fred’s jawline and eyebrows with whipped cream, and the hairline with strawberries.

That’s it! So simple! Have fun decorating face plates using healthy (or not so healthy) ingredients – it’s a great opportunity to get creative and a little silly with the family!

Cheers to joyful eating,
Clara

For some inspiration, check out the fan creation below!

These fans took it a step further with their own Mother Goose Club-themed cakes!

You can do it too! Share your finished product with us on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter using #mothergooseclub! We love getting crafty and celebrating with Mother Goose Club families around the world!

Aside from being delicious and fun, DIY crafts like this one are terrific for developing problem-solving, fine motor skills, creativity, imagination, parent-child bonding and so much more. Allow your child to take the lead – don’t be afraid to get creative (and a little messy) with the process!

If you have ideas for other Mother Goose Club party supplies, let us know! We also have DIY costume instructions for dress-up occasions, and plush dolls, t-shirts and books that make for terrific gifts. Also check out our activities page and Pinterest for more crafty inspiration!