Day 3 of “A Very Jewish Summer” | Camp Care Packages with Love

Posted on June 19, 2013 by Elaine

As our week of blogging for “A Very Jewish Summer” continues, please click though to Made by Mamaleh (http://madebymamaleh.com/), where Gaby creates a modern Jewish home, “one project at a time”! She’ll show you to put together the perfect camp care package! Her blog is fun and delightful, showcasing the homemade and how everything comes together. Her greeting cards are adorable! Enjoy her post and by all means, let her know what you think after you’ve visited her site!

Here’s a peak at some of the goodies to include!

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A Very Jewish Summer

Yenta Mamas is proud to participate in the first inaugural A Very Jewish Summer! Five bloggers from the United States and Israel are getting together to present stylish and clever ideas to inspire your summer. Each day from Monday, June 17 to Friday, June 21 a new post will be published by one of the bloggers on the topic of summertime, Jewish crafts, kosher food, and entertaining style. The blog roster features the leading emerging Jewish blogs today.

This year’s roster includes:

Flight of the Hummingbirds

Posted on April 11, 2012 by Elaine

So, sometimes my girls and I like to use pieces of nature in our art projects, in the past we’ve painted leaves or seeds or something like this, a tiny piece of the flower casing that drops to the ground after pollination. Yesterday, we set out to the neighborhood park in search of something we had painted before, this pod-shaped casing the girls say looks like a bat stingray, pictured below.

While at the park, we didn’t see any “stingrays”, but we did spy these curious flower pods. At first, the girls decided they looked like “butterfly or fairy wings” and planned to draw pictures of fairies, paint the wings and then glue them to their scenes. Once at home though, they turned the “wings” around and instantly shouted together, “They’re hummingbirds!” and got to painting them with a variety of acrylic paints I set out for them.

Once the birds were painted, they got to work on their landscapes. I used thick construction paper for this and let them paint several layers of acrylic on it, intended to make a nice, robust surface upon which to glue their birds later. See their handiwork below.

Lastly, we had fun using our “extra” birds to make a landscape the three of us together, even making some indoor planter decorations by putting some of our birds on wooden sticks! All in all, we had a fun hour or so painting in the backyard together! – April

A Girly 4 Year Old Monster Bash!

Posted on March 4, 2012 by Elaine

It all started with the song….”Calling all the Monsters” by China. My four year old has been in love with that song since Halloween, so when it came time for planning her birthday she said, “I want a Calling All the Monsters Birthday.” I had been imagining rainbows, but how could I resist cute girly monsters. We had a blast and the girls had fun getting things ready for the party! Here’s a sampling of the Monster Fun. I must confess that I love all the fun perfect parties I see all over pinterest and the web, but I do love when the girls can help make things too! My little one made a monster decoration out of a tissue box and the guests entered through the front door and were welcomed by this sign painted by the birthday girl!

The house was set-up with crafts and activities….first were monster headbands so each child could make their own. We hot glued the googly eyes to the pom-poms and pipe cleaners prior to the party. This was perfect for 4 year olds to wrap the pipe cleaner around the headbands! Even the adults thought it was fun.

It was photo booth fun after putting on your monster eyes! The mouths were painted on poster board, cut out and then hot glued to straws.The kids danced, played, and had a blast…..we made playdough monsters, colored and made some necklaces! Of course, we played “Pin the eye on the monster.”

I made the monster birthday cake! I thought it came out great! It was a two layer cake with chocolate covered mini cupcakes for the eyes. The eyelashes were made with semi-sweet chocolate which I piped on parchment and then attached with icing! The teeth were made with piped white chocolate as well.

It wouldn’t be a yenta mamas party without cookies! As a party favor I made monster tote bags and monster cookies! The cookies were made with a 3 inch scallop cutter. Then I piped the monster shape. This was really fun becuase you can’t mess up a monster! I used the Wilton pre-made eyes and piped on some party hats. The kids loved them.

As the kids were leaving they got to take home a monster tote bag. My aunt helped me sew these (maybe the instructions will be on a future blog post)! They had a space for crayons in the monsters mouth and each one was unique. The kids were super excited to take them home and they made a cute decoration. They filled them with some bubbles and cookie:)

We opened presents…hence the sock monkey hat….and enjoyed the cookies!

Hope you enjoy all monster fun as much as we did! -Elaine

Whatcha Feeling?

Posted on January 8, 2012 by Elaine

Art projects make wonderful gifts, especially for family … and even more especially so for great grandmothers! And of course, when kids’ art projects come to mind, Elaine and I would tell you, we automatically check on our favorite ‘art for kids’ blog, Deep Space Sparkle (http://www.deepspacesparkle.com/). If ever you need to find that perfect art lesson, complete with how-to instructions and photos, this lovely blog is the place to head.

For this particular gift, I was looking for something personal, but light in weight (as I planned to send the finished product to their great grandmother who lives in Israel). After some checking about with the girls, we decided on Emotion Portraits (link here:http://www.deepspacesparkle.com/2010/12/emotion-portraits/). We read through the lesson together and did a Google Image search for “color wheels”, talked about our feelings as they related to colors, where our discussion alone was simply wonderful. From there we followed the lesson, taking from it the information we needed. All in all, this was a wonderful project for the girls, aged 7 and 6 and took about an hour or so of time from start to finish. We loved the results and felt so good when Safta Yona received her special gift.

My older daughter decided she felt “peaceful” and drew herself at the age of 12, with earrings and bangs (two stylings she’s been interested in lately), along with blue eyes, to her brown, which was something she found funny later. My younger daughter was decidedly “happy”, she used her favorite color to convey her mood, complete with “swirls of happiness” surrounding her portrait. –April

Winter Art Project

Posted on December 18, 2011 by Elaine

I volunteer to teach art in my kids’ school for 1st and 3rd grade! This is the perfect volunteer job for me since I love getting messy and doing art projects. My new favorite blog is Deep Space Sparkle. Her website is truly amazing with the amount of lesson plans and information she provides. I know I can always find something to do with the kids on her website. I am going to have to send her a really nice thank you note. Here are some pictures of the really cool Cardinal project done by the third graders. –Elaine

Yenta Mamas

"A lot of baking, but mostly a lot of kibitzing.” {chatting}

Category Archives: kids art projects