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.

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

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.

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.

Tissue Paper Flowers

I am enjoying the spring flowers all around the garden. The children decided to make me some paper ones for inside the house. Here we have some A4 pieces of tissue paper layered on top of each other. The children made little cuts all along the edges.

Then we wrapped a pipe cleaner around the middle of the flower and twisted it tightly together.

The tricky part was trying to gently separate the layers of tissue paper to create the flower. We ended up with a few little rips, but it is hardly noticeable once we put it in a vase with a few other flowers.

This vase is going to brighten up my white kitchen.

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!