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5 Awesome Crafts for Kids Using Dixie® Cups!
/Thank you Dixie® Cups for sponsoring this post. Check out how versatile these 5 oz. multi-purpose cups are!
Thank you Dixie® Cups for sponsoring this post. Check out how versatile these 5 oz. multi-purpose cups are!
With the kids home more often, so many parents are looking for ways to keep their kids entertained and busy! I’m sharing 5 fun arts & crafts activities that you can easily do with kids using Dixie® multi-purpose 5 oz. cups! We always have them in our home and I love how versatile they are. We use them as snack cups for the kids, water cups while we’re at the park, we make popsicles with them in the summer, and they can also be used for arts & crafts! They’re an easy way to prevent the spread of germs and, especially now, that’s definitely a priority for every parent!
They’re designed to last and perform, which comes as no surprise since they’ve been around for over 100 years, so they’re the perfect cup to use with kids! They’ll hold their shape, are the perfect size for their hands, they easily stack inside of each other to pack on-the-go, they won’t break when your toddler drops them on the floor, and they come in the most stylish colors and patterns!
I rounded up our 5 favorite crafts for kids using Dixie® multi-purpose 5 oz. cups that will promote fine motor skills, dexterity, counting, letter recognition, and more!
Counting Caterpillar
What you’ll need:
Pipe cleaner for the antennas
Eyes and a nose, or markers to draw them on
Long piece of string
Start by making the face of your caterpillar on a Dixie® cup with markers or pompoms, or any other items you have! With a pair of scissors, make 2 holes on the top and loop the antenna pipe cleaner through! Take a piece of tape and secure the thread inside the caterpillar’s head.
Now for the body! Take a marker and draw a number on the side of each Dixie® cup. We did numbers 1-10, but if your child is older, you can add more! With a pair of scissors, pierce a hole in the bottom of each Dixie® cup.
My son is only 3, so I did a lot of the prep work myself, but if your child is older, they can help write out the numbers and make the face on the caterpillar!
Now, it’s time for your child to practice their numbers! Give them the caterpillar’s head and string and ask them to add the cups in order, starting at #1, by pulling the string through the hole on the bottom of each Dixie® cup! This is an activity you can do over and over again. When they finish adding all the cups to the caterpillar’s body, you can take them off and store them away for another day.
Classic Telephone
This is one that I’m sure you all remember from when you were younger! Your kids will love decorating the cup and will be amazed that they can hear your voice through the Dixie® cup.
What you’ll need:
A long piece of string
Art supplies to decorate the Dixie® cups
Decorate your Dixie® cups to start. Pierce a hole in the bottom of each cup and insert your string through the hole and knot it so it won’t slip out. That’s it!
Music Shaker
What you’ll need:
Uncooked macaroni or penne
Tape
Art supplies to decorate the Dixie® cups
Decorate both cups with the art supplies that you have! Fill up one cup halfway with the uncooked macaroni. You can turn this into a counting game by asking your child to count how many they are putting in.
Tape another cup on top of the one with the macaroni and make sure they are well secured together.
Add some final decor to your shaker and you’re ready to dance!
Flower Pot
This craft is great for dexterity and fine motor skills. It seems like such a simple craft, but it will keep your kids busy and entertained!
What you’ll need:
Pipe cleaners
Art supplies to decorate the Dixie® cups
Start by making holes in the Dixie® multi-purpose 5 oz. cups with scissors or with a hole punch. You can do them only along the rim or all over the cup.
Decorate the Dixie® cup and then ask your child to take the pipe cleaners and weave them in and out of the holes that you made on the cup. This is a really great activity that will have them concentrating and practicing so many different skills. Once they’ve finished, you can make some flowers with pipe cleaners, or you can go outside and pick some real ones!
Alphabet Tower
What you’ll need:
Markers or paint for the letters
Start by asking your child to draw or paint a letter on each of the Dixie® multi-purpose 5 oz. cups. If they’re too young to write, then you can draw the letter! You can also decorate the cups if you’d like, but I find them so nice looking as is!
Next is the fun part. Build a tower, build a fort, or stack them one on top of the other — as long as they’re doing it in the order of the alphabet! This is a great way to make practicing the alphabet fun. You can do it with upper or lowercase letters, or a mix of both.
I hope your children love these crafts as much as mine do! We always make sure to have Dixie® multi-purpose 5 oz. cups at home for all our daily needs! Whether you’re doing a craft or using it to give snacks to your kids, they’re a simple and easy way to prevent germs from spreading so you can focus more on your family and worry less about keeping them safe. They will really give you peace of mind, which is something that we could all use a little more of.
Ricky Zoom and His Friends Make Chores FUN!
/This post was sponsored by eOne but all opinions, as always, are my own.
Just in time for National Clean Your Room Day, on May 10th, which also happens to be Mother’s Day, get your kids to start helping out around the house with a smile on their face thanks to Ricky Zoom’s chore chart!
If you haven’t heard of Ricky Zoom, then you can thank me after your kids fall in love with the show and start learning about teamwork, responsibility, friendship, community and helping others – all the core elements of Ricky Zoom! You can watch Ricky Zoom on Nick Jr - http://www.nickjr.com/ricky-zoom/ and catch all-new episodes May 18 to May 29th, from Monday to Friday at 5pm.
The Ricky Zoom chore chart is much different than the ones we’ve seen in the past. For starters, you can print it out at home and customize it or you can use one of their pre-colored ones. Because they’re easy to print and double as an arts & crafts activity, we printed a few and put them all over our home. In the basement, for example, we put up a Ricky Zoom chore chart that included: Put away your cars, turn off your iPad and wash your hands. In Zane’s room we have: make your bed, brush your teeth and put away your books.
The Ricky Zoom chore chart comes with some chore recommendations but also comes with blank tags so you can write in your own. We’re trying to teach our older son, Zane, to share with his younger brother so although “sharing” isn’t really a chore, we put it on the chart to remind him that it’s important and to encourage him to do it. My son is 3 years old and extremely motivated by reward, so we’ve found that having this chore chart has really made him enjoy helping out! He loves feeling grown up, he loves the praise that we give him when he’s completed a chore and he loves sticking the lightening bolts on the chart when he’s completed a chore!
For kids that are a little older, you can use the blank tags as a way to encourage them to make the decision about what chores they’ll do every week. And because it’s a printable, you can switch up the chores too every once and a while to keep things exciting!
I love Ricky Zoom for my kids because the show teaches him such important life lessons and values and with my son being out of school until at least September, I want to make sure he doesn’t forget all the valuable lessons that he’s learned at school about playing and sharing with others. Because of Ricky Zoom’s chore chart, my son feels like one of his bike buddies every time he finishes a chore and so it’s helped make the average boring chore (such a putting away his sippy cup) super exciting! Ricky Zoom offers so many amazing fun activities for your kids on their site such as toys, apps and free printables! Head to Rickyzoom.com to check them all out.