We found a cute craft in FamilyFun Magazine this month: a Mermaid Wand. I have no idea why a mermaid would need a wand. But it’s a craft with shells and sand, so we made it!
Not only that it goes perfectly with the scripture we’re studying this week from Psalm 139:
God, your thoughts about me are priceless.
No one can possibly add them all up.
If I could count them,
they would be more than the grains of sand.
(verse 17 & 18, NIrV)
This has always been one of my favorite verses and I thought the whole chapter would be a good one for us to talk about and investigate a little.
As we started making our mermaid wands, I remembered that I wanted to take pictures so I could post a little tutorial for you. So, I asked Lydia to get my camera. Lo and behold, the battery is dead! And I thought about stopping the kids so I could charge my battery or plug in the camera. But I felt bad that we couldn’t even have a singular fun activity without me having to chronicle it for my blog! As if everything we do is really for Impress Your Kids and not really because I want to impress my kids!
I put SEO, traffic and comments out of my mind, set the camera down and just made a craft with the kids. So, now you’ll have to imagine the fun we had today, ok? I’ll give you some prompts to help out! (And you can look at the photo above…taken when the kids were napping today for help!)
[insert photo of me cutting cardboard with an xacto knife]
First we cut out shapes from cardboard. FamilyFun shows a star (and says you can use their template). I made my own template with my handy dandy cut-a-star-tutorial. Lydia wanted a heart on her wand.
[insert photo of Asa wiping glue on his shirt]
Then we spread glue (with our fingers) all over our cardboard shapes!
[insert photo of Lydia and Asa with both hands in the sandbox]
Next we poured sand all over our gluey cardboard. This was quite fun and very messy!
[insert photo of glue hearts and stars]
After we got the first layer of sand on our cardboard, we drew shapes with glue. Then poured more sand over that to make a 3d effect!
[insert photo of Lydia and Asa meticulously sorting through shells]
Then I fished out a bag of shells I bought for Asa’s pirate party but never used. We glued those to our shapes and left them to dry.
Now all we have to do is stick a dowel rod (or bamboo skewer) in the cardboard and we’re done!
[insert photo of Lydia counting sand grains on her finger]
While we made these we read Psalm 139:17-18 several times. We even tried to count all the grains of sand on our fingers. Then we discussed how much sand was in our little sand box–if God even thought about us as many times a day as there are grains of sand IN OUR SANDBOX it would be a lot! Much less the beach or the whole world!
It was a very fun activity that had a very tangible message. I pray my children always rest in, recognize and realize the great love and care God has for them!
Oh and one more photo…[insert photo of me plugging in my camera!]
ps–I’ve got another Psalm-139 centric post this week which includes a FUN giveaway!
awesome craft to go along with such an encouraging verse! my girls will love this!
I’d love to hear how they turned out! 🙂
The idea of even the grains of sand in a sandbox being a lot was encouraging to ME, and I’m an adult! Thank you for sharing this 🙂
So glad! 🙂
How fun it is to make a mermaid wand! Thank you for sharing it. And I totally love the verse.:)