We have a White Oak tree in our backyard that produces hundreds, thousands, millions of acorns. They produce huge quantities every year but every other year it is a MASSIVE amount.
We have always tried to find things to do with them. We found these cool ideas a few years ago before we even lived here and decided to ‘revisit’ them this week.
The first craft requires:
- acorn caps
- Markers in bright colors
- Elmer’s glue
Color the inside of each cap with colored markers. The amount of marker you use, will determine the shade the capís inside will become. We like the bright colors and those seemed to turn out best. After coloring inside the cap squirt the glue in all the way to the top while the marker is still ‘wet’. Allow the caps to dry overnight. Keilee wants to use some of these in her fairy houses. She thinks the fairies will LOVE them and I agree, don’t you?
The next thing we did was make ‘acorn people’. Actually the first time we did this Keilee made them all orange and pumpkin like. This year she decided to bling them.
You will need:
- Acorns with caps
- Paint/paintbrushes
- Markers
- Glitter
Just use your imagination! We painted them first and even spray painted a couple with silver chrome paint. Keilee had more paint on her than on the acorns but she always paints that way. We had a blast doing this although Keilee did 99% of it and I just took a few pictures.
They turned out very cute and we had such fun doing them.
She also decided to paint a leaf and make a leaf print.† It was beautiful too. Our leaves haven’t turned yet so she decided to ‘turn’ them herself.
We had a great time doing these. We got to be outside together on a beautiful cool fall day, laugh and create and talk for hours. We live very close to the high school and we can hear the bells ringing changing classes. We felt very lucky to be at home doing something fun together instead of Keilee being in school all day. We are so blessed.
Homeschooling Rocks,
Karen
“From little acorns mighty oaks do grow” ~American Proverb
Linking up with HipHomeschoolMoms @ HipHomeschoolHop
This looks like so much fun! I’ll definitely share your post with my girls.
Here from the Look What We Did-link-up.
That looks like a lot of fun! I think my daughter (she is the same age as yours) would enjoy making acorn people too!
Have a great week,
Sherry
Oh, Karen! I love these crafts! We too see a lot of acorns – I’m definitely going to try the marker idea. Very cool that the glue dries the marker color! My girls love anything to do with painting so I’m stealing the leaf printing idea too 🙂
Awesome job girls!! I love all of these crafts 🙂 I’ll be pinning this and showing my girls!
Love this, Karen and Kei…especially all the bright colors! The acorn people are too cute:)
If I send you postage will you send me some acorns?
Pretty please?
And here’s my idea. Take the cap off. Turn the acorn upside down. Paint it to look like a pumpkin. Face if you want, or just little fall arrangement. Cute cute!!
@ Karen:
Oh my gosh, I was envisioning a box of slightly moldy acorns, not a box of MAGGOTS!
Am now traumatized.
What great ideas! Just love them. I know I’m going to be “borrowing” these ideas for my kids. 🙂 Looks like SO much fun.
@ Deb:
First of all I did read that some of them have weevils in them! They say if you bake them it will kill them. Just don’t burn the acorns. The whole weevil thing kinda freaked me out. 🙂 As for keeping them look at this site. http://phytosphere.com/oakplanting/acorns.htm I would love to see your Christmas ornaments when you do them!
Oh good! I’m glad you wrote about this, because I have an acorn-related question: Can you paint an acorn and then it will stay good for a long time? Or will it eventually rot? Because we collected a whole bunch, and I’d like to make Christmas ornaments out of them, bit not if it’s going to be an unpleasant surprise when I unwrap them a year later. Do you know how long they keep?
Oh thank you for an idea! Our yard is covered in acorns too. Now I can do something with them. Sassy will thank you!