The Mom I Want to Be

dried cranberries, marshmallows, sticks, hay, leaves, raisins, popcorn, leaves

Hard-plastic drinking cups (clear cocktail variety works best) Markers Towels Hammer Nail Aluminum foil Cookie sheet Yarn Small branches or wood sticks in a variety of shapes   Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.  Ask your child to predict what will happen when you put the plastic cups in the oven and what he thinks […]

Do you have a hula hoop, strings and some material? With just a few simple materials you could be the newest resident of a “Fairy House” Tie three sections of string to the hula hoop as shown, an equal distance apart. Tape the tops of the fabric strips around the hula hoop. Cut the bottoms […]

Carrot Tree   Lure the Easter Bunny to your house with this mini indoor tree bearing his favorite snack.   Several 12-inch orange bumpy pipe cleaners Several 4-inch lengths of green embroidery floss Newspaper Bare tree branch Small flowerpot Decorative stones or glass beads   To make one, first cut several 12-inch orange bumpy pipe […]

Hit the High Wire Choose one picture each month and mount it with previous selections along your child’s bedroom wall, timeline-style, to chart her artistic development. Design catalogs sell sleek steel wall-mounted cable systems 6 ($34, westelm.com) to which you can clip artwork and photos; DIYers can approximate these with yarn or wire and clothespins […]

  This simple clip-on device makes it a cinch to hang your child’s school drawings — and periodically replace them with her latest works.   Yardstick Binder clip Monofilament   First, attach a binder clip to the top of a wooden yardstick about 2 inches in from each end. Then tie the ends of a […]

    Tempera paint and paintbrushes 1 toilet paper tube 1 paper towel tube, cut into two different lengths Colored paper (for faces and mittens) Black marker and pink pencil Glue Sheet music (from a songbook or gift wrap) 3 child’s socks String or raffia   Paint the tubes and set them aside to dry. […]

The family refrigerator is happy to moonlight as an art gallery, but your in-house studio may be churning out more work than a couple of magnets can hold. Our kid-level display uses Velcro to make the most of a sticky situation: a small piece stuck to the back of the artwork means that it can […]