Pipe Cleaner Worms

Last week I took my children to a play group and we had a fabulous time. Here are two slithery worms that we made. I was rather taken with this activity. The children were given a pile of squares with a tiny hole in the middle that they had to thread a pipe cleaner through. The end of the pipe cleaner was bent to form a nose and the eyes were glued on. It was a simple activity that we all enjoyed, and it gave my children practice with threading - something they ordinarily won't do.

Pasta Angel

When I was younger ... a lot younger ... I made pasta angels to give my friends and family for Christmas. I always intended to make more each year and then wouldn't get around to it. Since I have a few extra sets of hands this year I am determined to make them again.

The first materials that we need are a few different types of pasta. Rigatoni pasta makes a good body, while the bowtie pasta forms the wings.

My boys glued the wings to the body with PVA glue and left them to dry overnight. 

Next we used macaroni pasta to form the arms. These were slightly trickier to glue on, but we found that if we rested the arms on the wings then it would stay long enough to dry. Again, we left the arms to dry overnight.

Being slightly forgetful, I didn't photograph the next few steps. We found a plastic bunch of grapes at Spotlight and pulled it apart. Each grape was the right size to form a head for our little angels. We glued the grapes on to the bodies. Then we dipped the angels into a tin of enamel paint and used the stems to hang them to dry on a coat hanger. I made sure that this was over a piece of plastic so that the drips wouldn't fall onto the concrete.

Once the heads were dry we glued tiny star pasta on to form the hair.

Once all the glue was dry then we painted the hair  and the tips of the wings gold and drew on two black eyes. 

And here is one of the finished angels.

Tube Man

James asked me to draw a shirt on his tube man. I like the personality of this little man - he now keeps me company in the kitchen while I am cooking

A Friendly Echidna

We collected some leaves while we were out today and decided to use them to make an echidna. First I drew an outline of the echidna.

Then I gave the children the leaves and some glue to finish making their little echidnas. I had thought that the gum leaves would create fantastic spines...and so they did, only the spines the children wanted to make were lying down because the echidna is our friend.

Fossils - how to make them when you can't find them

James loves dinosaurs. He loves digging. Imagine his delight when he discovered that there are real jobs that involve both of his passions. His current ambition is to be an archaeologist when he isn't in space. We have been reading a lot of books about archaeology recently and James asked me to take him somewhere so he could find his own dinosaurs. I was slightly dismayed since the only place I could think of nearby is heritage listed - meaning we are not allowed to dig or remove the fossils there. 

Since we couldn't dig real fossils up, I thought digging up some pretend fossils would be the next best thing.

We took some clay and put it in the bottom of a plastic container. We tried to keep the surface of the clay as smooth and even as possible.

Okay, so the surface isn't as even as it could be. My three helpers were having a little too much fun poking the clay and making holes before they patched them up again. Next we found some plastic dinosaurs to press in to make the indent we will cast our fossils from. We pressed them in more than halfway so ensure there was plenty of space to pour the plaster in to.

We then made the plaster mix and poured it in to the container on top of the clay. Since I have recently had a few disasters making plaster mixes, I thought I would share that it is usually a 2:1 ratio of powdered plaster to water and it is best to add the water gradually in case you don't need all the water.

 We left the plaster for a few hours to set. Once it was hard to touch we tipped the entire block out of the container and peeled the clay away from the plaster. The clay is still good to use so we wrapped it tightly in cling wrap and put it away in the cupboard for another day.

Here is one of the fossils we made. 

I think next time I would like to try making animal tracks or a collection of footprints.

Tomorrow when the plaster is fully dry we will bury it in the sandpit and leave James to dig them up again.

Cardboard Roll Advent Calendar

I love counting down to Christmas, and now I have children it makes it even more exciting. I am not so keen on chocolate filled calendars since it really doesn't have all that much to do with the  meaning of Christmas - not that I need an excuse to make our own advent calendar. 

We cut 24 cardboard rolls to the same size and painted them green. Then we set them out in the shape of a Christmas tree and glued them together. I found that we needed to hold them together with pegs until the glue dried. When the glue was completely set we removed the pegs and glued the cardboard tree to a big piece of stiff card. The children used stencils to paint the word 'Advent' onto the cardboard backing. On standing back to admire our tree, we were dismayed to realise that the tree looked maroon, not green. We poked green tissue paper into each little hole and solved that problem.

Now the hard part is done, all that is left is to work out what we are going to put in each hole. I think we will write a nice thing we can do for someone else for each day and put it in the little holes.

Stained Glass Houses

This is a really simple craft idea. First I printed out an outline of a house and then cut the house out, leaving the house shape. Bigger children can cut out their own shapes, but since I am planning on taking this one to my mothers group, I thought it was simpler if I prepared the outlines beforehand. 

Then I covered the sheet of paper with contact. I saved the paper  from the contact so I could stick it behind the paper to keep the contact sticky and dust free until we were ready to do the activity.

The next step was to set James up with a container and ask him to tear tissue paper into small pieces, along with a few pieces of cellophane. Here is one of the containers he prepared for me.

Then it is simply a case of peeling the backing off the contact again and letting the little artists decorate their houses. One they finished, I covered the back with contact and stuck them on our window for decoration.

They immediately wanted to make something else so we cut out rocket shapes and butterfly shapes to work on as well. A successful activity for us, I think!

Crayon Rubbings - Leaves

We were walking through the school grounds today when we noticed this clump of leaves. James, of course, had to stop and pick it up. He wanted to know what I thought we could make with it so I suggested we try crayon rubbings. These leaves are perfect for it since they have very pronounced veins and an interesting shape.

Here are our tools

James did one complete rubbing and then thought the paper around the edge was in need of decoration too, so we have a collection of partial rubbings.

The other children didn't want to be left out and tried different colour crayons. We found that the oil based pastels made the best rubbings for little fingers. The ordinary crayons needed a little extra force as well as a steady hand to stop the leaf slipping under the paper.

Blue Flowers anyone?

I needed to prune the roses outside my dining room as they have grown into a rather peculiar shape. Sadly this means I ended up cutting a number of flowers from the plant. Rather than put the roses into a vase to decorate the table (boring!) we thought it was the perfect time to try a mini science experiment with the flowers.

 First we took a glass of water and put food colouring in to make a dark blue mixture. The we put two cut roses into the glass and sat back to watch. A few moments watching the colour change when I remembered that I was planning on taking before and after photos. Oh well - this is a minute or two after the rose and blue water met for the first time. There is already a very faint tinge of blue on the petals.

 This is our rose after 5 minutes. The veins inside the rose are now very clear and we can see the path the water takes as the flower sucks it up. I am rather surprised at how fast the colour  changed with the rose. I wonder if it would do anything to a pink rose - I am sure my pink rose bush wouldn't mind me taking a few roses for the kids to play with.

And here is a photo 6 hours later.

Plaster Ornaments

First we had a slow afternoon where the children were bored. Then we had these ornaments that had been sitting on the kitchen bench since we made them. Combine the two and we have a busy house with the children painting the ornaments and when they ran out of ornaments we had a big pile of paper they could use.

Here we have my 2 year old painting a little heart. She does quite well with one colour at a time

And here we have the finished collection. The ones with ribbons have been put on cupboard handles in the kitchen to liven up the whiteness of it all. The ones without ribbons have had magnets glued to the back and are on the magnet board in the bedroom.

Using up the paint to make an abstract card :-)

The Toy Collection Agency

I have been getting very frustrated with my kids when it comes time to tidy up and leave the house. I like to tidy the house before I go out so that if I am tired when we come back there is nothing I need to do. My  children love pulling all their toys out and playing with them. They are even reasonably happy to pack up in a desultory way. The thing that really bothers me is how they pack up. There will always be one or two things that are left behind - trains left out of the train box, cars left lying in the middle of the floor, pencils that have rolled under the table and have been left behind. I end up spending my day putting away all the odd toys that have been forgotten

I had a talk to the boys about why this was happening and what we can do to make mornings easier for us all. Kit thought that we should have an op-shop bag that all the toys left out are put in. James thought that he should be able to get the toys back after a few days.

So we have instituted the Toy Collection Agency to combine both ideas. Once the boys have tidied their room and invite me in to check, I will put anything that has been left out in a tub in the laundry. They have a week to do extra jobs so they can earn their toys back. 1 job = 1 toy. If they don't want to earn the toys back then we should give them to the op shop.

To make this easy, we painted a small box gold and placed a magnet on the back.

Then we printed out a list of jobs for the children to do. The criteria for the jobs is that they must be jobs that I wouldn't ordinarily ask them to do.  My boys had a lovely time coming up with jobs they think would be a help to me (and a few of them are jobs they really want to try).

Finally we wrote a reminder on the box for the children so that they remember what it is they need to do to earn their toys back. Now it lives on the fridge where it is easily accessible.

So far we haven't had any toys left out :-)

Finger Print Blossom Tree

This is a print out of a tree that was coloured in and decorated. Once all the colouring in was done, we used our fingers to dot white and pink flowers all over the branches ...and let ourselves get carried away by dotting flowers right down the trunk of the tree too. It is a unique tree that probably only exists in our imaginations. Once the paint was dry, the boys made a lot of little cuts in a strip of green paper and glued it on to look like grass.

Cotton Ball Sheep

My daughter loves to use glue, so I sat her down to happily stick the cotton balls all over this sheep shape I had sitting in my useful box. It kept her entertained for a good half hour while I was hanging the clothes on the line. 

Paper Plate Macaw

This Macaw was painted in parts and then assembled. 

Handprint Hedgehog

My son has been learning all about animals from around the world for the last 12 weeks at school. One of his homework activities is to teach his family something he had been doing at school. Today he decided to teach us how to make simple hedgehogs (and Macaws)

 First we took a small hand and traced around it - notice the little hands helping to trace the even smaller hands :-) Then we cut out the hand print in different coloured cardboard (paper is easier, but since we have heaps of old folder dividers in the cupboard we used those instead)

Then we take a paper plate. I finally managed to find paper plates at the Reject Shop just in time for this craft otherwise you would be seeing my attempt to cut out a circle. I assure you that that is not a pretty sight! 

Then we arranged the hand prints in rows along the plate. We cut out two eyes and coloured in the middle, and a rain drop shape for the nose. Here we have our hedgehog all ready to hang up.

And here we have the example that our 'teacher' made for us to work from.

3...2...1...Blast Off! The Adventures of the Cardboard Rocket

Today we are having a day exploring outer space. James wants to pretend he is an astronaut exploring new planets, finding aliens and collecting samples (this means lots of sand and rocks in his pockets as astronauts don't carry bags!). We have covered the couches with blankets to pretend they are planets. There is a big cushion on the floor as a moon. We have conscripted the soft toys to play the part of aliens. The only thing missing is a rocket to travel between these interesting places.

A quick rummage through the craft cupboard unearthed these boxes, a few pieces of cardboard and some wool. I am sure this will make an adequate rocket.

Since rockets have a pointy tip and wings, we started with cutting out two large triangles and one small one. We used masking tape to attach the smaller shoe box to the long box. Then we attached the wings and nose to the rocket. The small shoe box is perfect for the cabin of the rocket since the plastic lid opens easily. This means the astronauts can get out of the rocket to explore each planet.

James found some material and ribbon scraps to make the flames coming out of the engines.

Our two little men are made from a cardboard tube cut in half. The orange hair is a small ball of wool pushed inside the tube. The brown hair is a small pompom pushed inside the second tube. It turns out that the brown haired tubeman is afraid of heights and we drew his eyes open. Poor man. At least rockets are fast and he won't be in the air for long!