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!