Nail Polish Rocks and Leaves

I know my blog posts have been very inconsistent lately.  I think I am finally catching up on things around here so maybe, just maybe, I can start blogging again.  Today we enjoyed an outdoor nature craft using rocks, leaves and nail polish.  My little girl loves nail polish - the sparkles and the shine.  We decided to use the nail polish on some rocks and leaves we found outdoors.  The end results are quite nice.  Obviously, be careful with the nail polish and little ones.  You may want to at least put on a smock (we know this from experience of ruining a cute shirt today).

Miniature Landscapes

Head outdoors and create some miniature landscapes or terrariums.  This activity is definitely about the process and not the end result.  Each child used a container to create a small landscape using mud, moss, grass or whatever they could find.  The end result was meant for them to use with their play figures but they all just enjoyed creating versus playing with it.  When I was a child, we would collect samples for our own terrariums as we hiked through the woods.   

Mixing up some mud to use in her container.

Getting dirty while packing in the mud.

One of the finished products!

Rock and Roll

Here is a fun activity combining the outdoors, crafting and gaming! Oh yeah and it incorporates a holiday theme - Valentine's Day. You could change it up by changing what you paint to match any holiday. You can read or watch the video for how to make the game.

Head outdoors and gather up 10 smooth, flat stones about 1/2" to 1 " in diameter.

 

Paint one side of each of the stones. For this example, we painted hearts on the ten stones.

We painted a coat of clear nail polish over each of the stones to give them a nice, shiny finish.

Put the ten stones in your hand. Roll them onto the ground or floor like you would dice or jax. Count the stones that are face up (heart side showing). The first player to get 30 stones face up is the winner. Each person gets one roll per turn. If you are playing by yourself, count how many rolls it takes you to get to 30. Prefer the watch the video?