St Patrick's Day Trinity Treasure Hunt

Last night for our Awana Sparks club I put together a treasure hunt for each of the four teams to go on once they were finished reciting their verses.  Since we are celebrating St. Patrick's day I wanted to focus on shamrocks and the Trinity so all the clues are themed around that as well as memorizing Scripture.
It seemed like the kids REALLY liked it!  Since I had four teams of about ten kids each, plus Leaders, I wanted to make sure they weren't all going to the same places at the same time, so I made a very simple map with the path for each team to take.  It was ideal for a large group of kids.
The basic places can be customized for almost any location.  They were: rocks, kitchen, water (fountain), hiding spot, reception desk (or just a specifically placed person), and our club room.
Here are the printables for you to use with your Sunday School, Awana group, or family!  Pretty much anything can be used as prizes - I used St. Patrick's Day shamrock pencils, punching balloons, gold coins, and shamrock stickers from the dollar tree in individual bags for each child and tied with shamrock ribbon.

Map of Treasure Hunt

Here is the Yellow Team's Clues

And the Red Team

And the Blue Team's Clues

And the Green Team's Clues

I also made this Trinity coloring page for kids to color while they were waiting to recite their verses.  I hope these help you in teaching your kids about the Trinity and celebrating St. Patrick's Day too!

I Had a Little Turtle Quiet Book Page

Here is another fun kid song that I thought would make a good quiet book page.  I REALLY loved putting this one together.

The turtle is a finger puppet in the bathtub pocket.  The soap is attached with a ribbon so it won't get lost.  And there are sequins in the bubbles.  So much fun!

  

I started by arranging all the pieces on the page so I could make sure it all lined up correctly.  Then I stitched a line on the bathtub front piece only to distinguish the tub lip and keep it from stretching too much with play.  I stitched down the tub back and the water piece.  Then you want to make the soap.  I just used pink embroidery floss to stitch the word "soap" and a dashed outline around the front piece and then hot glued the front and back together sandwiching a piece of ribbon between.  Tuck the ribbon under the bottom of the tub and stitch the tub front onto the page.  Don't worry if some ribbon sticks out of the bottom - you can cut it off pretty closely after it's stitched and the tub foot should cover the rest.  I just hot glued on the tub feet and spout.  The bubbles are white backgrounds with sequins sandwiched between vinyl.  I hand stitched around the vinyl with tiny tiny stitches to attach it.

This is the back of the turtle so you can see how I did the puppet part.  Basically, I did the turtle front first and stitched on the green shell and round shell decorations.  I also stitched on little white round eyes with a black french knot in the middle.  Then I put the turtle front and back together and cut the third turtle piece right above and below the legs to create a tunnel for a finger.  Hopefully the picture above helps clarify!  I stitched around the outline of the turtle with a blanket stitch.

This page is pretty simple, and only took me about an hour to complete.  Great naptime project!

As always, if you make it, I would LOVE to see your version.

Update: Here is the pattern :)

A Peanut Sat on a Railroad Track Quiet Book Page

Have you ever heard this kid's song?  It was on the "Wee Sing Silly Songs" cassette tape I used to listen to as a kid.  Except in our version it was "down the line came number nine" which rather works better for a quiet page.
I used the train ornament pattern from Imagine Our Life.  I just left two holes on each end to run the ribbon through so the train stays on the track.  The track rails are very simple: two pieces of thin brown ribbon sewn to each diagonal end of the page.  The track pieces are dark brown (or gray) rectangles that I hot glued on evenly spaced down the diagonal.  I also stitched on a green pocket the same color as the page.

For the peanut, I stitched random black lines to give the look of a shell on the front, plus an "o" shaped mouth and two little white circles attached with black french knots.  Then I stitched the front and back together with a blanket stitch.  I did the same blanket stitch around the front and back of the peanut butter.

Here is the pattern for the peanut and peanut butter.

5 Little Monkeys Two Page Spread

I made the Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed Page from Imagine Our Life for my nephew, but he mixes up the song with the Five Little Monkeys Swinging in a Tree so I designed the accompanying page to go along with the monkeys.  I love that the alligator can "snap" the monkeys :)
I didn't draw up the patterns for this yet, but comment and let me know if you would like one and I'll try to get it to you asap.

 

I changed the "mommy called the doctor" to "daddy called the doctor", so daddy monkey is in a Batman shirt and camo shorts.

 

The alligator's teeth are actually diamond shaped that I machine showed on as pictured.  Then I used hot glue to attach the two sides to make them stiffer.  Worked great!

I also hot glued on his googly eyes.  I LOVE how he turned out!

All ready to snap monkeys!

Dinosaur Travel Playset

I LOVED LOVED LOVED the dinosaur playmat that Fun at Home with Kids made.  I made one just like it for our big dinosaurs, but I wanted a smaller version for traveling or church.  So far I have made two of these travel sized playsets.  The first was in one of those tins that you get cookies in at Christmas.  That was for my second cousin.  Then I wanted to make one for my nephew, but the traveling he does is mostly flying and I figured the TSA would have a FIT with a metal container :p  So I got one of those pencil cases for 97 cents at Target.  It was a little smaller but it worked great!
I got the dinosaurs from Amazon but one of those Safari toobs of dinosaurs will work too.
I don't have any patterns or anything - I basically just made it up as I went along.  I used the same basic ideas as Fun at Home with Kids though.  LOTS of hot glue :)  But it was totally worth it and it really holds up well to little boy play!

Here it is by itself

Here is with about ten dinosaurs (I will use the rest for gifts & prize box awards)

Here is a different angle and action shot as my son is closing the lid!

And this is closed.  I covered the box in a sheet of duct tape so you couldn't see the hot glue through the clear plastic.