kid craft|Sparkles and Sprinkles

Saint Patrick’s Day Holy Trinity Craft

by sparkle | Mar 9, 2022 | Craft Tutorials

Children of all ages can enjoy making this shamrock Holy Trinity craft, reminding us of how Saint Patrick explained the Holy Trinity to the Irish people.

1. Gather your supplies: free printable Holy Trinity pages, white cardstock or printer paper (3 sheets: 2 for printing, and 1 as a background), markers or colored pencils, scissors, glue

2. Color the printable pages. (There is an option for printing the shamrock hearts and stem in green, but we found our children enjoyed coloring the hearts and stem too.)

3. Cut out the heart leaves, stem, images of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and titles.

4. Glue the shamrock heart leaves and stem onto your paper (or cardstock), then glue on the Holy Trinity images and titles.

Are you looking for more Saint Patrick’s Day ideas?

Check out our Saint Patrick’s Prayer garland by clicking here.

Click on the image below to get our free shamrock Holy Trinity printable:

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!

Growing in Lent

by sparkle | Mar 8, 2022 | Craft Tutorials

We are starting a new Lenten tradition this year… growing our own Easter grass!

“Behold, I make all things new.”

I had the chance to talk with some dear friends the other day about Lenten traditions. I shared that one of our favorite things to do is the Lenten Path from Catholic Icing. It is a beautiful way to visualize the days of Lent and also to think of special sacrifices and prayers for each day.

We are planning to do the Lenten Path this year again, but we are also excited to add a new tradition… growing our own Easter grass in an Easter basket. My friend who shared this fun idea said that she and her family plant the seeds on Ash Wednesday, and by Easter time the grass should be nicely growing. I’m not a very prompt person, so luckily, from what I have read, even if you start the seeds at least a couple weeks before Easter, you should still have some beautiful Easter grass by Easter.

Not only is planting grass seeds in an Easter basket a super fun activity, it can also be a beautiful symbol of how the purpose of Lent is really to help us to grow in God’s love.

We created this free printable for you with tags you can attatch to your grass growing baskets. Each tag has a beautiful scripture passage about growing and seeds. There is also a blank tag if you want to add your own phrase (like “Grow in God’s love!”) or perhaps the name of your child.

We took advantage of some unseasonably warm weather over the weekend and planted our seeds in Easter baskets outside.

We lined our baskets with waxed paper* (as suggested on a blog we read, but you can also use a plant saucer that fits your basket). Then we filled the baskets with about an inch of soil, sprinkled the seeds, covered the seeds with a bit more soil, and watered the seeds.

*Update: We wondered if waxed paper would really hold up. For us, it held up for about 2 weeks, then it started to leak when we watered the grass. We would not recommend using waxed paper, unless you are going to have the grass in the basket for fewer than 2 weeks. When we noticed the leaking, we ended up transferring the grass and soil to plastic take-out containers that happened to fit nicely into our baskets (we painted the containers with acrylic paint, so they would match the baskets).

Watering the seeds can be a great opportunity to talk about how God showers us with His graces to help us to grow in His love.

After only a week of growing the grass inside a sunny room in our home, our grass is about 5 inches high. (It can be trimmed if it gets too long before Easter.)

Update: The waxed paper liner only held up for about 2 weeks. We transferred our grass and soil to a plastic take-out container (painted with acrylic paint to match) to avoid leaking.

We are not experts on the details of how to plant and care for this Easter grass, so we followed the suggestions from these two blogs:

Do you want to explore more about seeds and growing? We’ve enjoyed these two books…

We are currently studying the early AD times, and enjoying this book: Who is Jesus? His Life, His Land, His Time. We recently read a passage about the mustard seed… and that the mustard plant can grow to about 10 feet tall! We are thinking we might plant a mustard seed this summer… what a great way to bring Scripture to life!

If you are looking for a simple book about seeds, we love this beautifully illustrated book about seeds: Plant Secrets by Emily Goodman.

Have you grown Easter grass before? Or are you going to give it try this year? We would love it if you want to share your ideas! Please submit a comment in the form below.

May God bless you and your family on your Lenten journey!

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Other links may or may not be affiliate links. We provide links because we have found these products or services beneficial, and we think you might too.

Knit a doll hat! Yes you really CAN!

by sparkle | Mar 5, 2022 | Craft Tutorials

Does knitting a hat sound daunting? Normally it would have to us too… but not anymore! I don’t really know how to knit, but I have tried to teach myself at times and to teach my children. We have never gotten too far and have a number of half-knit projects in our knitting supply bin.

I was so delighted, though, this past month when my 7 year old daughter picked up a round knitting loom that we had in our bin and said she wanted to knit something. I happened to have the time to sit down with her and start knitting. She caught on really fast! It is so much easier than a pair of knitting needles!

The knitting looms (24 peg or 12 peg) we used came with directions. However, we found this tutorial from The Sweetest Journey to be very helpful to get started. We found chunky yarn worked well for this project and makes a nice cozy hat.

In this post we have measurement suggestions for you to make a baby doll hat and a hat for an American Girl size doll (or a larger baby doll). We have found that for younger children, or children with limited patience, starting with the smaller 12 peg loom project is better (it takes quite a bit less time, and children can quickly have the joy of completing a project!). We used a 12 peg loom for the hat that this sweet little baby doll is wearing.

To determine which loom size to use, you can measure the circumference of your doll’s head.

For an American Girl doll size (13 inch head circumference), we found a 24 peg round loom works well.

For a baby doll with a small head (10 inch circumference), we found a 12 peg loom works well.

This photo shows a 24 peg loom for American Girl doll size hat, and a 12 peg loom for small baby doll size hat.

After knitting a number of rows, you can periodically check the length of your knitting. Before taking the knitting off the loom, it should be 5 to 6 inches in length for American Girl doll size (or about 4 to 5 inches in length for small baby doll size). If you want to be able to roll the hat up at the bottom, choose the longer measurements (we chose the shorter measurements for the hats pictured here). Be sure to follow the directions in the tutorial suggested above on how to remove the knitting from the loom and secure the top of the hat.

You can add a pom pom to your hat once the hat is removed from the loom. You can find our easy DIY pom pom tutorial by clicking on the pom pom image above.

We suggest the following loom options (these also come with a knitting tool for taking the yarn over the pegs and a large yarn needle for finishing the hat):

12 peg Boye round loom (for a small doll)
24 peg Boye round loom (for a larger doll)
Boye round loom set (smallest loom is 24 peg, and the larger ones can be used to make hats for children and adults)

We think chunky yarn is nice for these hats. We used Bernat Softee Chunky for the hats pictured here. It comes in a nice variety of colors.

We found the tutorial at The Sweetest Journey to clearly show how to make a hat. You can find that tutorial by clicking here.

You will also need a pair of scissors to complete this project.

We’ve become big fans of Lita Judge books ever since taking a writers workshop class she led through Read Aloud Revival. We love how she described that writing and reading did not come easily to her as a child, but that did not stop her from becoming a great author and illustrator! When we read Red Hat the other day, we could not resist adding it to our doll hat knitting post.

Red Hat is probably even more meaningful and fun to read if read after reading Red Sled. It seems to take place in the spring, following the winter of Red Sled.

Both of these books are great for young children and/or children who may struggle to read. There are very few words, and a lot of room for imagination! Our 7 year old daughter even found a sweet lesson in the book: Don’t get discouraged if something upsetting happens, you can probably fix the problem and make things better.

Wishing you and your children a peaceful knitting time together! Enjoy!

Note: Some links on this page are Amazon Affiliate links. Sparkles and Sprinkles is a participant in the Amazon Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Other links may or may not be affiliate links. We provide links because we have found these products or services beneficial, and we think you might too.

Valentine “Love is…” Banner

by sparkle | Feb 4, 2022 | Craft Tutorials

The lector at Mass last Sunday unknowingly inspired this craft. She read the scipture passage from First Corinthians so slowly, peacefully and joyfully that I really kept thinking about it for the next few days… and soon enough it inspired this Valentine garland. It’s a project the whole family can work on together.

To make the banner, simply cut hearts out of colored cardstock. Then cut slightly smaller hearts out of white paper. Write the key words about love from 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 on each heart. Punch holes in the top corners of the colored hearts. Then string the hearts together with ribbon or yarn.

You can either write the words yourself, or if you would like, a digital download of all of the hearts is available for purchase on Etsy. (We also have a French version of the bannner.) Your purchase will help us to keep bringing you new craft and baking ideas.

Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, [love] is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury,

it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.

Parents and older children might need to do most of the work of cutting out the hearts. But the most fun part is letting even the youngest children decorate the hearts.

And at sparklesandsprinkles.blog, of course…

WE ADD GLITTER!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

P.S. If you would like to purchase the digital download of the scripture hearts, simply click here.

P.S.S. We also have a French version of the banner because we love French, and you might too.