Paper Christmas Trees

We were playing with shapes today when Imogen decided that this one was a tree. This tree then needed to be decorated.

So I found some small tubes of puffy paint. It dries in a 3D blob, so would stand out from the card. I also found an odd assortment of sequins, beads and buttons to use.

Here is a little forest of trees

We decided to stick them to the cards with sticky dots (removable, reusable stickers) so that the tree can be detached from the card and placed on a mantle or shelf as a decoration.

Coffee Filter Butterfly Wings

Cut the sides of the coffee filter and fold open like this:

Take different coloured inks and drip onto the coffee filter. 

Once we were happy with the arrangement of spots, James squirted water into the centre of each ink spot. This spread the ink and caused the colours to bleed together and make a beautiful pattern for the butterfly!

Now we need to make the body!

Nativity Card

Here we have a fingerprint family (and since I am typing on the computer you can safely deduce that the fingers were not mine). The house is made of sticks and glue and hopefully it will hold together better than the little pig stick house did! I am unsure as to whether I should risk posting these ones due to the wonky nature of the sticks. 

Animal Shapes

Today we have a couple of animal shapes that Imogen decorated while I had a cup of tea. Now we have a sheep and a unicorn to begin a poster farm with. I wonder what other animals will join them over the weekend...

Christmas Cards with Clay Ornaments

Anyone with a child at school will understand the volume of cards required before Christmas. And when you have a child that wants to make every single card himself, then you will understand why we start making them early.

Here are our latest efforts using the clay ornaments we made earlier in the year.

Creepy Crawly Kit for something fast

The Ladybirds sparked an insect and creepy crawly hunt through our garden this afternoon. After making our own ladybirds, the children wanted to make other crawling insects. Since I was halfway through pruning one of the trees out the front of my house, I was keen to get back to work.  

I remembered that I had a tiny insect kit from Clever Patch and let the little ones loose with them. These are the four insects that were sitting on the bench for me when I came back inside:

Mr Blue Back Spider

Sparkly Miss Ladybird

Flower Fly

Miss Violet Ant

Ladybirds to help in the garden

It is the time of year for me to get out into the garden and do some weeding and pruning. The children like to come out and explore the insects we can find. Today we were lucky enough to spot some orange and red ladybirds keeping our plants healthy by eating the aphids and scale - always a problem in our garden with all our roses and citrus trees. There seem to be more ladybirds this year, so perhaps there will be less scale for me to worry about...

Here are some of the ladybirds we made this afternoon.

First we found some red and black cardboard. Then we cut out two circles roughly the same size.

We cut the red circle in half and used a hole punch to put a few holes in the red cardboard and glued them onto the black circle leaving a space at the top for the head. Black marker works just as well to create the spots on the ladybird. We then glued some googly eyes onto the lady bird. 

Once we finished making our ladybird James decided he wanted to make it into a magnet. So we found a peg and an old magnet from the fridge to stick on the back (one of the advertising magnets that frequently turn up in our letterbox). Then it was simply a matter of glueing the ladybirds onto the peg. 

Once these are dry we will be able to use them to hold up the school notes on the fridge with style!

Gingerbread House

Here we have our Christmas gingerbread house. Last year I decided to just buy a gingerbread house kit from the supermarket (seen above). This year we are planning on making our own to give friends as presents, so hopefully I'll be able to post it before Christmas as well as this one. We  made some royal icing to glue the lollies on to the house as decorations. This icing dries really quickly, so it is ideal for small children to use as glue! I found that this recipe made enough icing for two houses. 

Royal Icing Recipe

2 cups of sifted icing sugar

2 egg whites

1 lemon

1. Whisk the egg whites to stiff peaks 

2. Gradually add the sugar with a squeeze of lemon juice.

Gingerbread Christmas Trees

This is an easy recipe for gingerbread that can be transformed into a variety of gifts. James is very fond of making gingerbread Christmas trees. This consists of cutting out 2 stars in each size and sticking them together with melted chocolate. James then tipped the rest of the chocolate over the top as snow. I then package up in cellophane and ribbons for a present.

Ingredients:

125g margarine

1/2 cup of Caster Sugar

1 egg yolk

2 cups of plain flour

3 teaspoons of ground ginger

1 teaspoon of bi-carb soda

1/4 cup of golden syrup warmed for 20 seconds in the microwave

3 different sized star biscuit cutters

white chocolate melts

hundreds and thousands

-beat butter and sugar until creamy

-add egg yolk and mix thoroughly

- sift flour, ginger and bi-carb soda together and then add to the butter mixture along with the golden syrup. This should bring the dough together into a thick sticky ball of dough - if it is too sticky then add a little extra flour

- knead dough on lightly floured surface and roll out to a 1/2cm thickness

- cut out equal amounts of stars from each sized cutter

- bake for 15 minutes or until golden

- remove biscuits from the oven and cool on biscuit racks

- melt white chocolate and use to stick the star biscuits together. Each tree consists of 2 large, 2 medium and 2 small biscuits. Drizzle remaining chocolate on top of the biscuits and sprinkle hundreds and thousands on top.

Christmas Puddings

One of my favourite times of year is the lead up to Christmas (okay, getting started early...). I love trying to think up new and exciting ways to involve the children in preparing gifts for our families and friends.

This is one treat that the boys like to make for their friends (usually I manage not to eat all the lollies before we make them!!). Faux Christmas Puddings.

We start out with a packet of Chocolate Royals, mint leaves, white chocolate melts and jaffas. Melt the chocolate, cool it a little and dribble it onto the chocolate royals. this forms the glue to hold the jaffas and mint leaves in place. I usually cut the mint leaf in half most of the way and then wedge it around the jaffa. That way I can balance everything on top and let it set in the fridge. Otherwise I'd be waiting around for the chocolate to nearly set before I could place the lollies on top.

Mmmmm.... all the puddings need now is some cellophane and ribbons to make a tasty present for someone special. That is, if they last that long.

Candle Making

Today I wanted to do something a little different. The children are very keen on painting but it is not one of my favourite activities. Since I know that they were painting this morning, I was determined to find something else to do. I came across some wax pellets and wicks in the cupboard for candle making. 

I'm sure you all know that candle making involves heating up the wax until it melts so are probably wondering why I  am crazy enough to try this with the children around. Well, I set the children up on the other side of the kitchen bench and had them measure out the wicks and cut them to size (the reason why all the wicks are different sizes!). They then had to work out how to hang them over the little glasses. With these two they have used a paint brush. 

James decided that we needed a heat mat (good idea - not sure why I didn't think of it first!)

Then all that was left was for me to melt the wax in the microwave for 4 minutes, add the colour and scented oil and pour it in.

 There are a few dips in the top of the candle - curious fingers testing if the candle was ready to use. Although I don't advocate poking fingers into setting candles, it does give it that extra something that says 'I made this just for you'

Pipe Cleaner Dinosaurs

James was given these twist-its for a birthday present and we have only just managed to get around to making them. It turned out to be a lot of fun. Basically all we had to do was twist one giant pipe cleaner around one of my ladle handles for the body and thread another one through the body for the head. The legs were made from two pipe cleaners folded in half and both ends wrapped around a pencil to make little legs.

Then we just cut the eyes and spikes out of the box.

Screen Splatter Painting

I have fond memories of screen splatter painting from when I was small so I finally managed to get around to trying it with my children.

My Dad quickly nailed together a frame for me and I used some fly wire from the shed to staple onto the frame.

We then propped the frame up on two bricks and set the piece of paper underneath (must remember not to take photos of my foot next time!). To make it a little more interesting the children picked some leaves from my jasmine vine and put them on top of the paper. We mixed acrylic paint with water to make it easier to splatter. We used old toothbrushes to dip in the paint and run across the screen and it created our splatter picture. 

We had a quick look to see if there was enough paint on the picture before we removed the leaves.

Now we have to wait for the paintings to dry before we hang them up in the house.

I did find that acrylic paints clogged up the screen, so next time we'll try water colours or inks and see how that goes.

Fruit Faces

We went to Floriade today and the children made fruit faces at the Yellow Van activity tent. The best part of it was eating the faces when we finished!

Brighton Beach Houses

The one thing I really miss is living near the beach. It is not just a place for swimming - I love walking along the beach in all seasons with all the sights, smells and sounds. I try to go and visit the beach at every opportunity, usually when I visit family in Melbourne, so that my children can experience a little of the beach life I took for granted growing up.

On a recent trip to Melbourne we went to look at the Brighton Beach houses. I quite like the colourful row of tiny little houses on the beach, especially on a wet and windy day like this one. We decided to see if we could make one of our own to go with the interesting collection of shells and rocks we found.

We folded 2 A4 pieces of cardboard in half (folding the short side in half). Then we glued paddle pop sticks on as the weather boards. Once the glue was dry we then used masking tape to stick the two pieces of cardboard together to form the 4 walls.

The roof is made from a long piece of corrugated cardboard and two triangles. Once all the building was complete the children were free to decorate their houses. James wanted lots of windows on his one.