Kids Crafts

We moved into our new house in May and the only boxes I have yet to unpack are my craft supplies. I lost the closet space I had for them at my last house so I need to get a new cabinet to put them in. Until then we'll keep doing fun kids crafts with what we have out.

My ten year old niece, Madison, came to stay with us for the summer so we did all sorts of fun kids crafts.

We made bird feeders out of pine cones, peanut butter and bird seed. We buy the "colorful bird" assortment at Wal-Mart and do get a fun variety of birds showing up in our yard.
We made these "foamerators" I saw last summer in my Family Fun Magazine. They were easy and all the neighbor kids loved them.
We decorated sugar cookies for July 4th.
Then we invited the neighbor girls over to do cute finger and toe nails in red, white and blue.

We watched YouTube videos and learned how to make friendship bracelets.
Then we invited our neighbor over to teach us another version.
We made homemade ice cream with this insulated bag I bought on the Michael's clearance rack for $1.00. I was glad that's all I paid because the seams busted as we were shaking it. We've made it before in just a canvas bag or insulated lunch bag (something to shake it up without having to touch the cold bags inside) and they worked just fine.
We mixed up this cornstarch sidewalk paint I saw over at Pink and Green Mama's site. It worked great on my ugly blacktop driveway.
We made crafts in this craft recycling bus we found at one of the festivals. It was an old school bus full of every recylced piece of plastic, craft materials, glue, scissors, strings, stickers...anything you can think of. You could stay as long as you wanted and make whatever you wanted.

We decorated ocean cakes with graham cracker sand, gummy sharks and fish and candy seaweed after seeing dolphins, seals and stingrays at the zoo.
We celebrated Christmas in July with paper Christmas trees, cutting snowflakes, watching Christmas movies and listening to Christmas music and making quick, simple gingerbread houses out of graham crackers.
We also took advantage of stores around here who offer free kids crafts. We hit up Home Depot
Lowes (we got there a couple of hours late but asked if there were extra kits and they gave them to us to do at home)
and Michael's
They made these Home Depot boats at a local festival.
Then we brought them home and painted them.

What fun crafts did you do with your kids this summer?