It is always fun to see which posts were the most popular at the end of the year!   This year I changed the focus of the blog a bit, leaning more towards kids crafts and learning activities than ever before.   Not surprisingly, almost all of the top 10 posts written in 2014 were in those categories.

 
Top 10 Posts of 2014:

1.  20 Sea Animal Crafts

This post is a round up full of awesome sea animal crafts from some very talented mom bloggers.

2.  30 Kids Halloween Party Ideas 

This round up post was originally written for a big giveaway and has tons of ideas for throwing a Halloween party the kids are sure to remember!

3.  25 Dr. Seuss Activities for Kids 

This is another round up post, full of fun Dr. Seuss activities for kids of all ages.

4.  Social Anxiety on the Playground 

This post is on a more personal level.  In it I shared some of the ways I have helped my youngest deal with social anxiety issues related to sensory integration disorder.

5.  Heart Sensory Bin

Sensory bins aren’t just for toddlers!  This was a bin both the preschooler and kindergartner had fun exploring.

6.  How to Make a Calm Down Bottle

Does your child have trouble calming down when they get angry or upset?  A calm down bottle my help!  This post shows you the easy steps for making your own calm down bottles.

7.  Sight Word Bang!  

Flashcards aren’t the only way to work on identifying sight words.  We had lots of fun taking our learning outside with this game.

8.  Egg Carton Sculptures

This post shows how we recycled egg cartons into works of art.

9.  Easy to Make Apple Scented Bubble Dough

Bubble dough is a super fun sensory dough that is easy to make, and making it apple scented was perfect for our fall apple unit!

10.  Simple Craft Stick Catapults  

Some of the best crafts are the ones you get to play with afterwards!  We had a blast playing with these catapults once they were built.

Check out more posts from other Kid Blogger Network members in the link ups below!  To make it easier to find what interests you, the links have been divided into crafts, education, and parenting posts.

You can also click the image below to be taken directly to the Pinterest board, with all these awesome posts in one place!

The post Top Posts of 2014 first appeared on There's Just One Mommy.

Do you have a little girl in your life?  Does she love hair accessories?

Then I bet she’d love to make her own Flower Headband!

Materials for DIY Flower Headband

For each headband you will need:

• 1 plain elastic headband
• 2 pipe cleaners
• strip of fabric measuring 2″ x 20″
• hot glue
• 2 felt circles approximately 1 1/2″ in diameter

Directions for Flower Headband

1. Take the 2 pipe cleaners and overlap their ends about 2″.  Twist them together to make one large pipe cleaner.
2. Lay the twisted together pipe cleaners in the center of your fabric strip.  
   
3. Fold over the top edge of the fabric and glue it to the bottom edge.
4. Starting at one end of the pipe cleaner and fabric, start rolling.  (Kind of like a cinnamon bun!)
5. Once it is rolled, hot glue the bottom of your “flower” to one circle of felt.  (You may want to use felt that matches your fabric, we chose not to.)  Kind of squish your flower down onto the felt.
6. Hot glue this felt to the plain headband.  Then you will hot glue your second felt circle on top to cover it.
   
7. Once it is dry you can trim the felt if desired.

Now you have your very own, one of a kind, flower headband to wear!

Looking for a frugal way to organize all those hair supplies?

Check out our DIY hair accessories organizer!

The post DIY Flower Headband first appeared on There's Just One Mommy.

With the Easter decorations coming down, the windows needed a little something…and a sun catcher sounded just right!

Over the years we’ve made quite a few sun catchers, like our simple fish sun catcher and the Valentine’s sun catcher with plenty of hearts, just to name a couple.  To make my vehicle-loving son happy, this time around we came up with hot air balloon sun catchers!

To start, I cut a very simple hot air balloon shape out of construction paper, cutting the middle portion out for decorating.  Then I covered one side with strips of clear packing tape. ( I was out of clear contact paper, and the tape worked in a pinch!)

My daughter did her balloon first, using pieces of ripped up tissue paper to cover the clear tape and decorate the balloon.  A second layer of tape on the other side, and a marker to create lines on the basket and the project was ready to hang in the window.

Because my youngest doesn’t like to touch sticky things, we did his sun catcher a little differently.   He wanted the hot air balloon to be blue, so we laid a large piece of tissue paper on the table, with the balloon shape on top.  Then I had him place the ripped up tissue paper pieces where he wanted them inside the balloon shape.

Finally, I used the tape to capture it all in place.  (The tricky part was not letting the tissue paper pieces blow away before I got the tape on the balloon!)

All I had to do then was trim the large piece of tissue paper and it was ready to hang!

Now our back window is full of color with some of the prettiest hot air balloon’s this mommy has ever seen!

What have you decorated the windows with lately?

Linked up with some of these great blogs.

The post Hot Air Balloon Craft first appeared on There's Just One Mommy.

Woo-hoo!

I’m so excited!  The Facebook Fan Page for There’s Just One Mommy just hit 375 likes, and I’m celebrating with a little giveaway for my wonderful readers.

What’s up for grabs?

A pair of felt dolls, designed especially for the winner, complete with plenty of spare clothes, of course!

Here’s the ones we took to entertain the kids in the car while traveling.

How do you enter?

I’m so glad you asked!

Make sure you’ve liked There’s Just One Mommy on FB.  Then leave me a comment here on the blog telling me who you would give the felt dolls to.  Daughter? Son? Grandchild? Niece/Nephew? A friend’s child?

The winner will be chosen via Random Number Generator on Tuesday, March 26 at noon E.S.T.

I will contact the winner by email.

Super easy giveaway for some super awesome readers!

 This giveaway is now over.

The winner was Karen Dawkins of Family Travels on a Budget.

The post Celebrating with a Giveaway first appeared on There's Just One Mommy.

If you read my post on the Most Loved Monster book activities, you might recall that I was planning to give each of the kids a heart with a brief “I love you because…” message every day through Valentine’s Day.

They have loved getting their special hearts every morning and have been displaying them for all to see.  (My son loved the one that said, “I love you because you like fishing with Papaw.”)

I’m thinking it may just become a Valentine’s tradition for our family.

***

Looking for a fun Valentine’s Day craft of activity to share with your own Valentines this week?

Here are some of our favorites:

• Heart Animals
• Chocolate Kiss Mice
• Valentine’s Sun Catcher
• Heart Creatures
• Love Bugs
• Driving over Hearts

As always, have fun crafting with the kids!

The post Valentine’s Day Crafts first appeared on There's Just One Mommy.

Each year, since my daughter’s first Christmas, I have gotten an ornament for the tree to represent something special for each of the kids.  As babies a “baby’s first Christmas” ornament worked out… But as they have gotten older, it has been fun looking for just the right ornament.

Last year it was Lightning McQueen for my car-obsessed son and a Tinkerbell ornament for my daughter to remind her of her first trip to DIsney World.  The year before that it was a Tonka dump truck (the back even tips!) and a beautiful princess dress on a hanger for my little girl who loves dressing up.

I knew just what I wanted to find this year:  Spiderman (Monkey is just starting to get into superheroes) and something in cheetah print (check out my little cheetah from Halloween this year).  While I was having no trouble finding Spiderman, they were all ones that could easily break, not ideal for a 3 year-old.  And there wasn’t a cheetah print ornament to be found anywhere.

Thankfully inspiration hit when I least expected it — in the form of cheetah print tissues.  I was just leaving the craft store when I spotted them next to the cash register.  I had already seen the plastic bulbs that you can fill to create your own ornaments, but at that point I had been trying to figure out if I could find a small enough Spiderman or cheetah to stick in them.  The tissues gave me a whole new idea.

I picked up a pack,  a pack of fabric flowers with a few cheetah print ones in it, and 2 plastic bulbs.

Once home I cut strips from the tissues and used a chopstick to push the strips all the way into the bulb.  Then I used the hot glue gun to apply the flowers on the outside and tied a black ribbon on for a hanger.

As for Spiderman, I grabbed some blue and red tissue paper from the craft box, cut it into strips to fill the bulb and applied some flashy hologram Spiderman stickers to it.  A red ribbon completed the ornament.

My daughter was thrilled with her cheetah ornament, and little guy was all excited when he realized he had a special ornament, too.  Not bad for something so simple and under $4.

Do you do something similar for your kids?  What kinds of ornaments have they gotten over the years?

Shared on A Vision to Remember, Be Different Act Normal, Ladybug Blessings

The post Christmas Tradition first appeared on There's Just One Mommy.