Stock up your stand and get ready for some customers! We let grown-ups and siblings browse at a farmer’s market full bursting with fresh veggies, flowers, and artisanal cheeses (which, coincidentally, look a lot like foam beads).
We read Farmers’ Market Day, written by Shanda Trent and illustrated by Jane Dippold (Tiger Tales, 2013). It’s Saturday! It’s Market Day! A little girl eagerly searches for the perfect thing to buy with her piggy bank money. Cherries, flowers, pie, herbs, spices, hats, jars of honey, canvas bags – everything is so tempting! Finally, she spots exactly what she wants. A pink watering can, just her size.
You’ll need:
- 1 large box (ours was 4.5” X 4.5” x 9” – a large tissue box works too)
- Some pieces of brown poster board or tagboard for your farm stand’s counters
- A selection of patterned tape
- 1 corrugated cardboard base (we used a 9.75″ x 13.75″ cake pad)
- 2 jumbo craft sticks (our were 8″ long)
- A 4.5″ x 10.5″ card stock awning
- 2 small clear plastic cups (ours were 1oz)
- 2 foam beads (orange and yellow)
- 2 mini pom-poms
- 2 green pipe cleaners
- 2 toilet paper tubes
- Scissors and tape for construction
- Markers for decorating
- Hot glue
We’ll start with the farm stand’s slanted counter. First, I’ll show you how we did it with brown craft boxes, then I’ll show you how to replicate it with a large tissue box. With the lid of the box raised, cut slants in both sides of the box. The slants are cut downward, towards the lid.
Now make 2 folds. Fold the lid over the lower edge of the counter. Then fold the lid upwards (a.k.a. a valley fold) so it rests on the higher end of the counter. Your counter will now look like this:
See the part of the lid that extends past the counter? Push that back down towards the lower end of the counter, then tuck it inside the higher end of the counter. You now have slanted bins that are sunken in the counter.
Make a pair of folded tagboard bin dividers, but don’t attach them just yet!
To make a tissue box version of the counter, flip a large tissue box over and use scissors to cut the bottom of the box into a lid. Then, follow the same steps above. Cut slanted sides in the box…
Fold the lid over the lower edge, then upwards to the higher edge. But instead of tucking the end of the lid into the box, just tape it to the higher edge.
Finish with a pair of tagboard bin dividers.
Use markers and patterned tape to decorate the counter, then hot glue it to the cardboard base. Now for the awning! Hot glue (or tape) 2 jumbo craft sticks to both ends of the counter. Fold a 4.5″ x 10.5″ piece of card stock in half and decorate it with markers. Put generous globs of hot glue on the ends of the jumbo sticks, then gently press the card stock awning in place.
Color and cut the produce bin backdrops from the farmers market stand template and slide them into the bins. Once you’re sure everything fits, hot glue (or tape) your tagboard bin divider in place.
You’ll notice that there are 2 sets of produce bins on the template. One set is for the background. The other set is for you to individually cut, drop in the bins, and sell at market!
To create the cheese table, cut a toilet paper tube in half and hot glue the halves to a piece of poster board or tagboard. Place a pair of foam bead “cheeses” on the table, then cover them with a clear plastic cup. Hot glue a mini pom-pom handle to the top of each cup, and finish with a cheese sign attached to a craft stick or wooden coffee stirrer.
To make the flowers, cut 2 pipe cleaners into thirds, then color and cut 6 flowers from the farmers market flowers template. Tape the flowers to the pipe cleaners, and tuck the stems into half a toilet paper tube (we made a green tissue paper shrub for the other half of the toilet paper tube, but that’s optional!). I’d recommend hot gluing the cheese table and flower vases to the base – they can get a little tippy.
A few more touches. Behind the flowers you’ll see a “Today’s Specials” sandwich board (it’s on the farm stand template). On the front of the stand are “Shop Local” and “Jersey Fresh” signs, courtesy of Google images. Add some cute little flower stickers, and you’re done!
The kids lined up their fantastic stands, and the Farmer’s Market was officially open!
We gave grown-ups and little siblings magic bucks and paper sandwich bags. They browsed the stands, checking out the wares. We made a rule that you had to visit at least three stands and chat with three vendors.
Customers seemed particularly enamored with the foam cheeses. And really, who wouldn’t be? Just keep an eye out to make sure the littlest shoppers don’t enthusiastically sample the wares!
Boldly enter a haunted house armed with your wits and your handy Haunted House Preparedness Kit! Trap a spider, catch a mouse with some cheese, deter a ghost with ghost spray, and use your skeleton key to exit through a secret door. There’s nothing you can’t handle!
The final item in the kit is a piece of cheese, which we made out of yellow card stock. Draw holes on the cheese with black marker and hot glue a button magnet to its tip.
The next round of items are the things you’ll be catching inside the haunted house – a spider, a ghost, and a mouse. First, the spider. Color a wooden bead with black marker and hot glue a wiggle eye on the front. Cut 2 pipe cleaners in half, then thread the 4 pieces through the hole in the bead. Bend the pipe cleaners to create wiggly spider legs.
To make the ghost, wad up a facial tissue and fold 2 facial tissues over the wad. Tie the end of a 24″ string around the wad to create the neck of the ghost. Make sure to leave plenty of string free to dangle your ghost later! Use a maker to add eyes and a mouth.
Finally, color and cut the mouse from the template. Tape a jumbo paper clip to the underside of its mouth. Later, this paperclip will attach to the magnet on the cheese.
That’s everything you need for your adventures in the haunted house…now you just need the house! It doesn’t have to be fancy. Drape some sheets over the shelves in your stacks, or drape a tablecloth over a table and have kids crawl under it. But if you have a giant box, 2 smaller boxes, and a black light handy, go for it! Here’s the front of out house (plus a photobomb by Marissa).
I love the lanterns by the door. They’re LED candles inside plastic cups, which are attached to the box with black poster board. There’s a little poster board flourish hot glued to the bottom of the cup too.
Here’s a shot of the house’s interior, as seen from the front door. There are LED wall sconces, a mirror, a bookcase, old-fashioned portraits, a clock, and a fireplace that leads to the black light room. And there were also 4 activities for the kids…coaxing a mouse out of the mouse hole, catching a spider, spraying a ghost with “Bye-Bye Boo” spray, and using a skeleton key to exit through a secret door.
At the very back of the house was a secret door, which was covered with tagboard strips made to look like wooden planks. The interior of the secret door box with lined with gray felt. To give it an underground kind of feel, I used a thick black marker to draw outlines of stones on the felt.
Here’s a shot of the haunted house from the right side. Everything was was held together with lots of hot glue and packing tape.
The left side of the house had the mouse hole, which we covered with black felt to keep light from leaking in. My kids did all the exterior decoration. Like the dead flower garden on the lower right?
So! Here’s how it went! Kids lined up outside the house. When it was their turn, they handed us their spiders, mice, and ghosts. Then they entered the house with their kits.
Once inside, they listened for the mouse squeaking in the mouse hole (this was literally Marissa saying “Squeak squeak!” and wiggling the nose of the mouse outside the hole). Kids stuck the magnet end of the cheese into hole and “caught” the mouse. Into the kit it went!
Next, kids reached into the black light room, grabbed their spider, and put it in their collection jar. By this time, I had opened the trap door in the roof and dangled their wailing ghost in (I followed Marissa’s lead, enthusiastically saying “Wooo wooo!”). The kids doused the ghost with a ghost spray, causing it to drop to the floor of the house. Into the kit the ghost went.
The final task was for kids to shimmy into the secret room and use the skeleton key to unlock the door. We wouldn’t lift the door until we saw a key in the key hole!
Kids could go through the house as many times as they wanted, and we kept story time going 20 minutes past our end time to accommodate repeat explorations. It was…wait for it…a total scream! Awwww.
The portraits are a nod to the day we spent sipping Victorian tea at 
