Cinco De Mayo Crafts

I love to celebrate different holidays from around the world. It gives me the opportunity to teach the kids about other cultures and to make it exciting and fun for them. With May just a couple of days away we headed to the library for a few books on Cinco De Mayo. Marco's Cinco De Mayo was a great one for G to understand and Em to enjoy as well.
After we talked a bit about the holiday we made a few fun crafts.

 This is a paper bag sombrero. We made it by rolling a grocery paper bag down until it formed a nice hat shape. Next, we used paint and pom-poms to give it the vibrant colorful look of a real sombrero. Check out more details on my bonnet post.

 Em was more into our sombrero drawing art. She sketched a simple sombrero with a black marker and filled it in with oil pastels followed by paint. Once it was dry she added sequins to her creation.

We cut our colorful hat drawings out and used a glue stick to place them on a black back-drop. 

 This is one I would like to do with Em's class and I can not wait to see all of the different colors and patterns the kids come up with. Just lovely.

Finally, we definitely need a set of maracas for Cinco De Mayo. This is a pretty traditional way to craft maracas in the "art mom blogging world." Just a plastic egg (so happy to reuse those!) filled with rice and placed between two plastic spoons and secured with masking tape. The kids decorated them with permanent markers.

Happy Cinco De Mayo!

Ribbon Mobile

 The sun was out today in our rainy city and all we wanted to do was to be outside and make pretty things. We painted shells and made nature puzzles, but what I adore most from our afternoon is this ribbon mobile. So many colors and textures, it is simple, but stunning and I made it with my two favorite people.

 Materials:

embroidery hoop

ribbon

twine

 We collected scraps of ribbon from our ribbon drawer and Em cut different lengths using her trusty safety scissors! The more patterns, colors and different lengths--the better!

 We tied them all around the embroidery hoop and watched it slowly become a magical tree ornament for our yard.

We used twine to hang our new yard decor right in our backyard. It makes me happy to look out our kitchen window and see our creation.

I shared this at Kiwi Crate. Head there for more fun family crafts.