Candy-making is a great family activity! Kids love the process, and adult supervision is definitely required. This goes double for Chocolate Frogs, since several parts of my process are frustrating for little fingers.

Age: 10+          Duration: 1 hour = 10 frogs          Supervision: high

Materials:

• 3-5 small plastic frog toys (try the toy or dollar store)
• food-safe silicone (Amazing Mold Putty is available at Hobby Lobby)
• candy-making hobby chocolate (a 2 pound bag makes around 25 frogs)
• a microwave-safe container
• microwave
• spoon
• zippy food bags, snack- or sandwich-size
• scissors
• paper plates or wax paper
• PATIENCE

Step 1:  Wash and dry the frog toys, just to make sure they’re clean.

Step 2: Follow the directions on your food-safe silicone to make molds of the frogs. If you’re using Amazing Mold Putty (which I really recommend!), follow the package directions to make a ball of mixed putty slightly smaller than a golf ball. Place the frog on a flat plate, start at the head and “roll” the putty down over the little froggy body until the putty is flush with the plate all the way around. (Make sure the entire frog is covered all in one go; you can always reinforce the thin spots later.) A package of AMP will make 5-10 frog molds, depending on the size of the toys.

Step 3: Let your molds cure for the amount of time recommended for your food-safe silicone (AMP will take 20 minutes).

Step 4: Gently peel the plastic frogs out of your new molds. The easiest way to do this should be to hold the mold with the flat open side facing away from you, and use your fingers to pull back the edges while your thumbs push against the bottom of the mold.

Step 5: Wash your molds with dish soap. Rinse and dry.

Step 6: Make sure your molds can stand level with the open side up. You can make “feet” for the bottom your molds out of leftover putty, or you can partially fill a casserole pan with flour, cover with cling wrap, and press the bottom of your molds down into the surface.

Step 7: Count out about 30 of the hobby chocolate wafers into a microwave-safe container. (No, you cannot use baking chocolate or chocolate bars. Trust me, the results are terrifying.)  To make peanut-butter-chocolate frogs, use 15 chocolate flavored wafers and 15 peanut flavored ones. Melt the wafers according to the directions on the package, making sure to stir between heatings. A few rounds of 30 seconds at 50% power should do it, but don’t overheat! The resulting pockets of crunchy burnt sugar taste really gross and will do funny things to your frogs.

Step 8: Spoon the melted chocolate into a zippy snack bag. Force all the air out of the bag and zip. Take a pair of scissors and snip off a tiny bit (seriously, like 1/16 of an inch) of the corner of the bag. Now you have a homemade pastry bag with enough chocolate to make 5 frogs.

Step 9: Squeeze some chocolate down into the deepest part of the frog mold (which is usually the nose). Tap the mold against a table to make sure the chocolate gets all the way in there. Then fill up the rest of the mold, using the squirting power of your bag to make sure you get chocolate in all the nooks and crannies of your frog. (Knees and elbows need special attention or they’ll get big air bubbles.)

Step 10: Repeat Step 9 until all your frog molds are full. If your bag of chocolate starts to harden before you’re done, pop it into the microwave for 10 seconds on 70% power, then continue squirting.

Step 11: Place all your filled molds on a plate (or in their flour-filled casserole dish) and put them in the freezer for 3-5 minutes. Do NOT leave them in the freezer for longer than 5 minutes; the mold will get stiff and the chocolate will get brittle, which reduces your chances of getting a frog out in one piece.

Step 12: Gently pull the edge of your mold back just far enough that you can see and hear (it will make a soft kissing noise) the mold separate from the chocolate leg of your frog. Do this around the entire edge of the mold to loosen the chocolate.

Step 13: Starting at the rear end of your frog, peel the mold away from the legs of your frog, then press against the bottom of the mold where the frog’s nose should be. Your frog will pop free from the mold.

Legs snap off and stay behind in the mold all the time. Just pop out the leg and “glue” it back to the body with some fresh melted chocolate. But with practice it is possible to pop out a whole frog with no missing limbs!

Step 14: Repeat Steps 6 – 13 until you have as many Chocolate Frogs as you want. They store nicely in a sandwich-size container in the fridge, and can be stacked up without sticking to each other (well, as long as they don’t get too warm) as soon as they leave their molds.

Info:

Edvard Munch lived from 1863 – 1944.  He grew up in Norway, but later lived in Paris and Berlin.  He went to school to be an engineer, but quit to be a painter.  He thought a lot of styles of painting were “too scientific” and decided to paint with emotion and color instead.

Salvador Dali lived from 1904 – 1989 in Spain. He was very good at drawing and painting realistically, but he liked everything (from his work to his clothes) to be as flashy and wild as possible.  Most of his work is Surrealism, which is kind of like painting dreams.

Age: 5+          Topic: art history          Duration: 1 hour          Supervision: low

Materials:

• 9” x 12” drawing paper
• pencil
• oil pastels

Step 1: Draw a weird surrealist picture in pencil.  An easy way to do this is to draw something really weird that might happen in a dream (like cats with bird feet or flying people), or to draw a person’s head where the hair turns into something (like The Three Sphinxes of Bikini).

Step 2: Decide how the picture makes you feel. Is it scary? Silly? Happy?  What colors go with those feelings?

Step 3: Use long loops and scribbles of your chosen colors to fill in your picture.  Add some long stokes of an opposite color (see color wheel) in each section of the picture.

Info:

Georgia O’Keefe lived from 1887 – 1986.  She taught elementary school for a few years between high school and the beginning of her art career.  She loved painting colorful, almost abstract pictures of flowers and landscapes inspired by living in Texas, and New Mexico.

Andy Warhol lived from 1928 – 1987.  He started out creating advertisements, and later became famous for his colorful repeating prints of famous American products and movie stars.  He helped pioneer the Pop Art movement and also made some strange movies.

Age: 5+          Topic: art history          Duration: 1 hour          Supervision: low

Materials:

• 12” x 12” drawing paper
• 6” x 6” piece of Styrofoam tray
• scissors
• pencil
• acrylic paints
• paintbrushes
• black felt-tip marker OR Sharpie

Step 1: Using a sharp pencil, draw a picture that takes up the entire Styrofoam sheet.  Georgia O’Keefe liked to draw large flowers, cow skulls, and Southwestern landscapes, so try to pick one of those things.

Step 2: Cut off or mash down the sections of the tray that you don’t want to print.  (The flat end of a marker is a good mashing tool.)

Step 3: Print your picture onto the square of drawing paper 4 different times, making sure to use a different color combination for each print.  If you use a wet paintbrush to spread the paint quickly onto the Styrofoam, it stays wet longer and prints better.  Let the paint dry.

Step 4: Outline your prints in black marker, and color in some of the white spaces.  Now you have a Georgia O’Keefe picture that looks like an Andy Warhol print.

In the 1800′s, people started using a character named Uncle Sam to represent the USA. (England has had a character called John Bull since the 1700′s, so we needed one too!) Uncle Sam’s top hat usually looks like an American flag.

Age: 5+*     Topic: holiday crafts   Duration: 1 hour     Supervision: high*

* Children under age 10 do better with this project if an adult completes or helps with Step 3 – 12  so that the base hat is already made.

Materials:

• large sheet of white watercolor paper or posterboard
• blue construction paper
• red construction paper
• silver paper or aluminum foil
• 8″ coffee filters
• 10″ dinner plate
• 6″ desert plate
• red and blue washable markers
• spray bottle (filled with water)
• ruler
• pencil
• scissors
• clear tape
• white glue or gluestick

Step 1: Use red and blue washable markers to make firework patterns on a couple of coffee filters.

Step 2: Have someone hold each coffee filter by the edges while you spritz it with water until the whole thing is damp. The marker will immediately start to bleed. Set the coffee filters aside to dry (on top of a piece of plastic or some blank printer paper!).

Step 3: Cut a strip of heavy paper that is exactly 7 inches wide and around 23 inches long.

Step 4: On the long sides of the strip, measure and draw a line half an inch in from the cut edges. Make a series of small slits from the edge to this line so that you have a fringe of tabs on both sides of the strip.

Step 5: Fold one set of tabs upwards. Fold the other set of tabs down.

Step 6: Trace around a large dinner plate to make a circle about 10″ across on heavy paper.  In the middle of this circle, trace around a small plate to make another circle about 6″ across.

Step 7: Cut out the small circle. See if the hole fits your head.

*If the hole is too small, use a ruler to make marks half an inch from the edge of the circle all the way around the hole. Cut along these marks to make the hole 7″ wide instead. To make sure that the brim stays the same size now that the hole is bigger, measure half an inch out from the edge of the outside circle and sketch along those marks to make a new 11″ circle.

Step 8: Cut out the outside circle. You should have a ring of paper. This is the brim of your hat.  (Trace this ring on to some scrap paper and cut a second hat brim to use as a pattern for cutting out construction paper later.)

Step 9: Trace around the hole in your hat brim to make another circle on heavy paper. This will be the top of your hat, so cut it out.

Step 10: Roll up your long strip of paper small enough to fit inside the hole in your hat brim. Slide it inside the brim and let it unroll until the tube it makes fits perfectly inside the hole. Tape the inside and the outside of the tube.

Step 11: Your tube should have one set of tabs pointing inside the tube, and one set of tabs sticking out from the tube. Slide your hat brim down so that it sits on top of the tabs that stick out. Tape or glue (or both!) the tabs to the brim.

Step 12: Set your hat upright. Make sure that the tabs pointing inside the tube are parallel with the table, then tape or glue the top of your hat to the tabs.  (To make your hat really sturdy, flip the hat over and tape the tabs on the inside too.)

Step 13: Cut strips out of red construction paper that are about 2 inches wide and 6 inches long.  You’ll need 6 to 8 strips.  Glue these in a pattern around the tube of your hat to make red and white flag stripes.

Step 14: Cut a copy of your hat brim out of blue construction paper. (If your blue paper isn’t big enough for a full circle, just cut two ring halves out of two sheets of paper.) Cut a second ring if you want to cover the underside of the brim.  Glue these rings to the brim of your hat.

Step 15: Cut a blue circle the same size as the top of your hat. Glue it on.

Step 16: Cut some stars (or fireworks, or hearts, or dinosaurs!) out of silver paper or aluminum foil. Glue them to the blue parts of your hat.

Step 17: The coffee filters should be dry (or at least not as wet) by now. Pinch the center of each one and twist to make a “flower”. Tape these flowers to the brim of your hat.

Step 18: Grab a flag, put on your awesome Uncle Sam hat, and head out to go see some fireworks on Independence Day!

Info:

Edgar Degas lived from 1834 – 1917.  His father wanted him to be a lawyer, but he ended up studying art in France and Italy.  He was friends with a lot of Impressionists, but he preferred to paint indoor scenes—especially of ballerinas—using pastel colors.

Pablo Picasso lived from 1881 – 1973. He started drawing in childhood—apparently his first word was “pencil” in Spanish. In his twenties he switched to a new kind of painting called Cubism, where the artist draws the subject from lots of different angles at the same time.

Age: 5+          Topic: art history          Duration: 1 hour          Supervision: low

Materials:

• 9” x 12” drawing paper
• pencil
• chalk pastels (or colored pencils)
• spray fixative or hairspray
• optional: scissors & gluesticks
• optional: 9″ x 12″ colored construction paper

Step 1: Draw a ballerina, but draw her body parts as if they don’t go together.  (Cubism is all about drawing things from a bunch of different angles in the same picture.)  Put her feet on backwards, bend her legs the wrong way, maybe put both arms on the same side of her body–just have fun with it.  But make sure to draw her face from two different angles like in  Girl Before a Mirror (by Pablo Picasso).

*Step 1 (for younger children): Draw a ballerina really large on your paper.

Step 2: Draw a stage for your ballerina. Since Cubism ignores all the rules of perspective, draw everything “wrong.” Maybe the curtains are upside-down, or the stage is crooked.

Step 3: Color your picture using short, sketchy strokes of a chalk pastel (or colored pencil). Make small lines of two different colors right next to each other to “mix” a new color like the Impressionists did.

Step 4: Have an adult spray your drawing with fixative or hairspray. This will keep your drawing from smudging.

*Step 5 (for younger children): Cut your picture into at least 6 pieces. Glue them to a colored piece of paper, either crooked or in the wrong order!