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.

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.

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!

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!

Tissue Paper Butterflies

While we were playing around with the tissue paper flowers James decided that he wanted to have a butterfly. Every time we go outside to look at our flowers there seem to be butterflies flitting  around, so I could see the connection.

I was rather dubious about whether we could make the same process work for a butterfly, but there would be no harm in trying. These butterflies look like a cross between a flower and a butterfly. They are wonderful for the kids to fly around the room and still look good after chunks of paper tear off. Next time I'll use a few less sheets of paper.

Peg Ants

 We are back to insects again. This time using buttons and pegs. First we take a peg...

and paint it brown. Then we have to wait for it to dry.

The we find some black or brown buttons from my button collection and glue three of them on to the peg.

2 Googly eyes and 3 pipe cleaner legs later and we have our ant. Christopher wanted green legs and James liked the red fluffy ones. I think the fluffy ones look like they should belong to a nasty spider so I have to keep counting the legs to reassure myself!

The Hungry Little Caterpillar Card

We're going to a birthday party this afternoon and need to make a birthday card. I am not very good at remembering to write cards, make them or even turn up with a card. Usually it is not until the time comes to give someone the present we have lovingly wrapped up that I realise this lack.

So when I discovered this week that there is a theme of the Hungry Little Caterpillar I was determined not to forget again! We decided to make a card to match and started to prepare it early.

James has two thumbs. Just the right amount when we have two colours to use for the caterpillar. The left thumb had red paint and after he stamped the head we quickly wrapped it up in paper towel so that nothing else was turned red. The right thumb was dipped in the green paint and he had a lovely time making squelching sounds in time to his stamping of the caterpillars' body. I have to confess that this was our second attempt as the first time I forgot to show him what a caterpillar looked like and we had a trail of green dots all over the car.

Imogen wanted to join in, so I found a small round sponge for her to use as I couldn't bear the thought of finger painting in the house with a 2 year old. We had help from her big brother with the details after the paint dried. 

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Paper Plate Ladybird

Say hello to our friend Mrs Ladybird. This is a new addition to our insect collection. I am quite fond of the lopsided nature of this happy bug.

Grasshoppers

Grasshoppers.

Until today it had never occurred to me to wonder how they jump. We were making cardboard roll grasshoppers when one of my boys asked me how grasshoppers managed to jump with their legs on backwards. Hmmm, the only way to work it out was to try it ourselves. We tried lying down and jumping backwards. We tried using our legs to launch ourselves across the slippery floor.

Nope. 

It doesn't work for humans. It must be the little miracle that makes grasshoppers so very different to us.

After we had been trying this for while Paul found a video clip showing how grasshoppers jump and how the rear legs are designed to give extra power to their jump. Next time I'll be saving myself a lot of effort and sending the kids to ask Dad what the answer is.

Our grasshoppers were painted green. While we waited for the paint to dry we cut out two  big legs (the reason we ended up trying to jump horizontally) and 4 little legs. We did have to consult our 'How to Draw Insects' book for the correct shape of the legs...and then decided it was too tricky so made some carefully rounded legs for the small ones. The large legs were triangles with feet. 

The antennae was one pipe cleaner with curly tips. The wings were some scrap materials cut into wing shapes and glued on. 

I have to confess that after the children left the grasshoppers to dry I did sneak some strong glue to hold on the wings as I didn't think that the kids glue would hold it for much longer than it took to dry. I hope the kids didn't notice!

Egg Carton Critters - Butterflies and Caterpillars

Egg cartons seem to build up around here, and whenever they start falling out of the craft cupboard on opening the door I decide it is time to pull out the egg carton craft kit.

Our favourite egg carton craft is trying to come up with new, crazy little critters to play with.

Today we decided that our winter windows could do with some brightening up. 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' was the most recent book we had read together, so it served as inspiration for the resulting butterflies and caterpillars that the children made.

First we painted half an egg carton green

Then we added legs, googly eyes and a smily mouth

We didn't make a cocoon for the caterpillar because the children decided that was their jobs. They then wrapped themselves up in blankets to and went to sleep. Day two (today) resulted in the butterflies emerging from their box and having their wings attached.

Our butterflies ended up with red bodies

Imogen wanted to have green and blue wings

James wanted to have plain wings so he can decorate it with stickers.

Now to make sure the glue is dry before we trying hanging them in the window. Maybe tomorrow we should make some flowers for the butterflies to land on.