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Book Review- Low-Mess Crafts for Kids: 72 Projects to Create Your Own Magical Worlds

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Messy crafts have met their match with these 72 creations that keep out the clutter and mess but pack in the fun and creativity

When craft time rolls around, parents usually cringe at the thought of a creativity storm’s aftermath. Glue, glitter, globs of paint?it all adds up to Mom and Dad assisting (let’s be honest, doing everything) with cleanup. But Debbie Chapman?the supermom behind One Little Project ?keeps that freshly cleaned kitchen table in mind with tips to keep these tutorials as mess-free as possible. With tricks like twisting pipe cleaners into fun shapes to avoid glue and using brightly colored cups and patterned paper to avoid paint, Debbie shows that keeping it simple doesn’t mean play time has to be less fun.

Low-Mess Crafts for Kids brings parents and caretakers solutions to the craft time conundrum. As well as being low-mess, all 72 of these awesome projects feature everyday items like pipe cleaners, pom poms and clothespins, which make playtime a cinch. And with step-by-step pictures, kids of any age can create something they can be proud of.

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Lesson Plans – Moss and Lichen Unit Study

I guess moss and lichen are more things that you see in the spring than in the summer, but there are some deep shady parts of our yard that stay mossy all year, and summer is a fine time to look for plants that like to live in shady, wet areas.

Raising Up Wild Things has a really pretty set of printables to use for a moss and lichen unit study.

And just in case you’re like me and don’t really know the difference, moss is a plant that grows in damp wooded areas, while lichen is a combination of fungus and algae that live together. Lichen can live in different environments but are often found in places where you would find moss, too.

The printable includes drawings of some common moss such as sphagnum moss and wood moss, as well as common lichen shapes (crusty, leafy and shrubby). There are good sized images you can print out and laminate to use to compare to specimens you find when you are exploring nature.

There’s also a forest floor coloring page and a printable journaling page where kids can write or draw their observations and there are a few questions older kids can answer.

You can use these when you go on a walk in the woods (or the back yard) to talk about what you are seeing, or combine them with other resources to talk about things that live in the forest. Check them out at Raising Up Wild Things.

This PDF from the Morton Arboretum has a bunch of pictures of different kinds of moss and where to find them, which could also be helpful in your studies. Learn more about lichen, including what they are and what they are not, in this article from the US Forest Service.

[Photo: Raising Up Wild Things]