Frog Hand Puppet

I found a hand puppet making craft kit for my 3 year old to do. 

Here are all the parts.

Now she has glued them all onto the puppet and is ready to put on a puppet show for me.

Watermelon 'Sorbet'

I bought a whole watermelon a while ago and we were unable to finish it so I froze it rather than waste the delicious fruit. I had the vague idea I could use it to make watermelon slushies. When we were ready to make the slushies, I started blending...

When it started looking like this I thought it would be a shame to waste this on a slushie when it looked just like sorbet. So I put it in a glass instead and ate it.

Instructions:

To make Watermelon 'sorbet' freeze cubes of watermelon. Once they are frozen blend the cubes until it is a sorbet consistency and serve in a glass or ice-cream cone. I added maple syrup to this to make it extra sweet. Mmmm, delicious.

Autumn Trees

Grass Creatures

After a hot summer my lawn was looking rather patchy and in need of some TLC. With this in mind, I purchased a big box of grass seed the last time I was in the garden shop and sprinkled the seeds onto the prepared patches of lawn. There was still quite a large amount of seed left over so we decided to grow some grass men. 

We took some disposable cups from the cupboard, poked a few holes in the bottom and filled it with dirt. The children drew faces on the cups and then we sprinkled the seed on top.

For some reason, I don't have any photos of the cups before the grass started growing, so you will have to imagine peculiar white cups with faces and nothing else. I gave the children a spray bottle and explained that they would need to keep the seeds damp so that they could sprout. 

This is two days after we started growing the grass hair.

The hair has grown some more thanks to the diligent watering the children have been doing.

This little man is ready for a hair cut after 1 week. I wish my hair grew that quickly. 

It seems we picked a good week to try growing grass at home, since it turns out that the preschool started growing grass creatures at the same time!

Here we have our grass caterpillar. We used an old stocking, filled it with a seed/dirt mix and tied the end in a knot. Once it was secure, we used pipecleaners to twist around the stocking to create legs and segments of the caterpillar. We glued googly eyes on and then kept watering it until the grass grew. The grass here took much longer to grow - this is 1.5 weeks old.

Gingerbread houses 2012

This year we decided to change the recipe we used to make our gingerbread houses and make the gingerbread houses much smaller. We found that the bigger ones look prettier and can fit more decorations on them, but that the children just east all the lollies instead of eating the gingerbread. This recipe is one that the children like eating, so I was hopeful it would be more successful.

Ingredients:
125g margarine
1/2 cup of Caster Sugar
1 egg yolk
2 cups of plain flour
3 teaspoons of ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon white pepper
1 teaspoon of bi-carb soda
1/4 cup of golden syrup warmed for 20 seconds in the microwave

-beat butter and sugar until creamy

-add egg yolk and mix thoroughly

- sift flour, ginger, pepper 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 stick ball of dough

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

-cut the house pattern out of the dough and bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes or until golden brown.

Makes 1 house and a few tiny biscuits to taste test.

I used the computer to make house shapes to print out so I could use them as templates for cutting out my gingerbread house pieces.

It is a good thing that royal icing can make up for our wonky house pieces!

The children had a lovely time decorating the houses and then eating them.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

Clay Ornaments

At Majura Womens Group last year we had a session on making clay beads for necklaces. At the end of the session we took home the left over pieces of clay to finish making beads with. It just so happens that that day I was in a rush and my small packet of clay squares were hastily shoved into the cupboard when I came home and forgotten about until this week.

I wondered if it would be possible to roll out the clay and make little Christmas ornaments with them. So I set the boys to work rolling out the clay and cutting out shapes. Once the shapes were cut out the boys decorated them, using a toothpick to scratch drawings on to the clay. Then we simply popped them in the oven to cook for 20 minutes.

These ornaments are destined to decorate Christmas cards.