Summertime Activities – Waxed Paper Sun-catchers

Since summer has now officially begun, it is now time for us to start doing some fun summertime activities to fill up the time!  I saw this adorable “Cool Summer Days” activity calendar and thought how fun it would be to make one for my kids.  The one that I saw was beautifully quilted and made with an really cute ice cream cone design.  However, I am not that much of a sewing kind of person (I can do it, but I’m not that great at it), so I decided to go with a simpler design using felt and hot glue :)

Each day has a little activity in it.  Or rather each day is supposed to have an activity in it.  Sometimes I don’t decide what the activity is going to be until the day before or the morning of and so just write it on the little slip of paper then and slide it into the calendar.  The kids have had a blast finding out each day what their activity is.

The activities are usually really simple, like reading a book and then making a food that goes along with the story.  For example, a cute book that we checked out from the library is “Pancakes for Supper” and so we made pancakes, but for lunch rather than supper :).  Some of the activities are field trips to the pool, story time at the library, or to the Museum of Science and History. 

One activity that they really enjoyed was making sun-catchers out of old crayons.  I found the activity online here.

You start by picking out all the broken crayons from the box, or in this case from our church bag of crayons.

Then using a grater, a knife, or scissors, you break the crayon into tiny pieces.

You cut out the shape of your sun-catchers (top and bottom) out of wax paper.

Then just place the different colors on the wax paper and then put the top piece on.

Using a warm iron, cover the wax paper layers with a paper towel to protect the iron, and then just move the iron over the sun-catcher to melt the crayons.

I think they turned out cute and the kids had a wonderful time.

I must admit though that it was a bit messy and cleaning the crayon off the grater wasn’t exactly easy, but worth it :)