Red, White & Blue It

While we were homebound this week recovering from strep, we steered our crafts towards the patriotic.  Dazzling July 4th crafts abound in magazines and on-line right now, but we kept ours simple, just by red-white-and-blue-ing some ordinary kid materials.

First, some fresh playdough, using the best recipe from LMNOP.

What’s more American than pizza and our flag (short a few stars and stripes)?

We’ve been meaning to make rainbow-swirl crayons out of melted broken crayons, so we tried a red, white and blue combo.

Just peel and crush or chop crayons into small pieces. We used a variety of kitchen tools (rolling pin, dough scraper, peeler, butter knife) and my son loved chipping away (a word: crayon wax can be challenging to remove from all of these items). Place in a muffin tin about an inch thick (we used a mini donut pan that may never be the same) and bake for 10-15 minutes at 250 degrees.  Let cool and then pop out of pan.

These projects were so low-key, I even managed to converse a bit with my older son about the significance of the holiday, with a little help from here (7 Ways to Teach Kids What July 4th Means, Grandparents.com) and here (Teaching Kids the Meaning of July 4th, The Seattle Times article).