Making a Hat

The other day E wanted to make a crown. It had to be purple and it had to be sparkly.

 

I found some purple card and measured it to the size of E's head. The only sparkly things I found were one pipe-cleaner (which I bent into a bow shape) and a little loose tinsel. E got to work decorating her crown using markers and stickers, pasting on coloured paper shapes, and using coloured tape to attach the sparkly things. She sang the "Making a Hat" song from Play School as she worked. When it was done, I stapled it together for her. I think she was quite proud of her creation.

The next day the crown became a boat for E's Jemima doll, with a wooden spatula for the mast and an empty playing-card box for the sail.

-Polly

A Farmer and his Tractor

Another activity that E worked on this week was this tractor picture:

I got the idea from here, although I didn't use their printout (we don't have a working printer, so I didn't even look at it). I just cut out the shapes myself. It was good practice for E in identifying colours, shapes and sizes, as well as a little bit of counting. It was all pretty easy for her, though.

The farmer and speech bubbles were hand-drawn by me and were to reinforce our latest Latin lessons.

-Polly

D is for Ducks

E's latest letter focus was the letter D. She did a Dd 'dot' painting that I'd drawn up for her and made a collage of things beginning with D. We made a dice using a wooden cube and a permanent marker. We did some dancing. And we did this duck craft:

To make your own ducks, you will need:

• 2 cardboard tubes (empty toilet paper rolls)
• yellow crepe paper
• glue (we used a simple homemade paste)
• orange card
• white card
• pencil
• black marker
• clear sticky tape

Here's how to do it:

• Cut one of the tubes in half so that you'll have one tall duck and 2 shorter ones.
• Smother the outside of each tube in glue.
• Paste on some yellow crepe paper.
• Cut some smaller pieces of crepe paper and glue a few to each duck for tail feathers.
• Let the paste dry.
• On the orange card, draw 3 pairs of feet and 3 duck bills.
• Cut them out and draw some nostrils with the black marker.
• Tape feet and bills onto your ducks.
• On the white card, draw 3 pairs of eyes (using black marker).
• Cut them out and glue them onto your ducks.
• On the white card, draw 3 pairs of wings.
• Cut them out and tape them onto your ducks.

All done!

E enjoyed this craft. She loves gluing things and she loves ducks. She even got to practice cutting with scissors. She later drew a pond for her ducks to play in.

-Polly

Animal Masks

E loves getting mail. :) Recently she received a package from her grandma that contained a book of masks to colour and wear. They have now been coloured with crayons, paint, pencils and glitter and are ready for play.
Here's E as a chimpanzee:

And as a bear:

 Peek-a-boo!

-Polly

Learning Letters

Here's just some of the activities that E has been doing lately to learn the alphabet and letter sounds.

We bought these flash cards a while ago and E loves them. Sometimes we'll play memory or other matching games. Sometimes she'll make up her own games. Sometimes we use them as a reference for other letter activities.

You may remember the alphabet drawings we did together last year (I shared some *here* and *here*). Over the last few weeks we have started a new series of alphabet pictures. First, E will paint dots on letters like these, although I have been drawing my own for her. When it's dry (usually the following day) I'll cut around the letters and we'll use them as part of a letter collage like this:

We collect pictures starting with the correct letter from catalogues (junk-mail is good for something) and draw and colour some more of our own. They're all cut out and collected together to make each collage and I write the words on little pieces of paper to be stuck on, too. We use A3 size paper, often that's already been painted, such as this one for the letter C that E painted using a carrot instead of a brush.

Another series that we have started is making animal pictures for each letter. Generally, I'll draw an outline of an animal and E will use some creative method to decorate it. So far we've done an alpaca with a cotton-wool fleece, a manatee with crepe-paper skin (and googly eyes), a tortoise with an egg-shell shell and a cockatoo made of paper pieces with a hand-print crest.

We'll then choose a name for our animal starting with the letter we're working on. I'll write it on a piece of paper to be displayed with the picture, writing the key letter (however many times it occurs) in a different colour for emphasis.

E has also been practising her pre-writing skills with her collection of dry-erase tracing books and had a go at using her finger to write letters in a sand-tray.

There's always her giant, foam alphabet floor puzzle and alphabet fridge magnets to play with, too.

-Polly

Easter Chicks

Happy Easter to those who celebrate and a good long-weekend for the rest of you. :)

This time of year, whether you celebrate Easter or not, is full of eggs, bunnies and chicks. We couldn't resist trying this cute chick craft found at 'a little delightful'.

I drew the template myself, although Bianca offers one at 'a little delightful' if you'd like. We used foam shapes for the eyes and beaks and pipe-cleaners for the legs and feet.

These two chicks are currently displayed on our fridge.

-Polly

There's a Wocket in my Pocket

"There's a Wocket in my Pocket" is one of E's favourite Dr Seuss books. It's often requested and rarely read just once in a sitting. She already understands the nonsense of it.
"Did you ever have the feeling there's a WASKET in your BASKET?"
E's standard response is "No"

Here's some activities that we did to tie in with "There's a Wocket in my Pocket".

The first was a toy for E. I drew a wocket on a piece of cardboard and cut around it. E coloured it with pencils while I sewed the pocket from an old pair of jeans onto a fabric-covered, cardboard page. We then added a stick to the wocket so that it could play "peek-a-boo" in the pocket.

I got the idea for our second "wocket" activity from "Make and Takes". I collected some photographs of objects that we have around the house and E made little collage and drawn creatures that might live on, in or behind the objects. She glued each onto a separate page and we made up names for all the creatures. I wrote in the words and stapled the pages together into a little book. E loved reading her own version of "There's a Wocket in my Pocket" over and over.
Here's the pages before I wrote on them:

There's a ZIANO on the PIANO and a FLOBE behind the GLOBE. There's a MIN in the BIN and a NENT in my TENT. There's a DOASTER on the TOASTER and a WATH in the BATH.

What's your favourite Dr Seuss book?
-Polly

The Cat in the Hat

I read somewhere that today is World Book Day. Perhaps E knew that, as for the last couple of days we seem to have been reading non-stop. It's a good thing that she loves books so much.

Last week, as part of our "Dr Seuss" theme, we read "The Cat in the Hat" and then made some cat-inspired hats. We had previously painted some cardboard rolls red, so we used those and glued on some strips of white paper. At first, E wanted to cover the whole cardboard roll in paper, but she soon got the hang of leaving gaps to form the ABAB pattern of the cat's hat.

We taped on circles (or, more accurately, doughnut-shapes) of white card to form the brims and they were ready to be modelled - on our own heads and on those of various toys. (See also the skeleton in the first photograph).

Then we read "The Cat in the Hat Comes Back" and made some hat-inspired desserts. Our desserts were simply raspberries and vanilla ice-cream layered in tall glasses. We made paper coasters to look like the brim of a hat.

As we ate them, the ice-cream turned pink - just like the "cat-ring" and the snow in the story. :)

-Polly

Corn

Here is some sweet-corn that we grew in our garden this year:

Yesterday we had a "corn" themed day. Some of our corn was left until it was dry and I set these out on a tray for E to explore, with the cobs, husks and silk all separated.

She discovered that she could pull the dried kernels off of the cob.

I introduced her to dry polenta (ground corn) and we made some cornbread using a recipe from "The Joy of Vegan Baking".

E made some corn collages using little squares of crepe paper.

We glued on some real corn husks to finish them.

Some of the husks were also used to make this paper flower:

I thought this might be a good theme for the beginning of Autumn (according to the calendar). According to the weather outside, it's still very much Summer.

-Polly

Chinese New Year

February 10, 2013, began the Chinese year of the snake. Leading up to this festival season, I thought would be a good time for a "China" theme. We did some Chinese New Year themed colouring pages and quite a few themed crafts. E learnt how to find China on her globe and how to say "Ni Hao". We made a few paper decorations, like the "fu" banner to the left.

We learnt a bit about some Chinese inventions, including the abacus. E had lots of practice counting on her's. I also made a cardboard tangram puzzle for her to try and she has been having fun with it ever since. She also did a simple Chinese flag puzzle, but that wasn't nearly as fun. We made (and ate) some Chinese style foods including spring rolls, noodles, and a sweet & sour stir-fry.

Thanks to an idea from lightly enchanted, we made some goldfish kites (see right) to hang up around the house. E loved this craft and wanted to make more and more!

Lastly, we made some dragon puppets to dance around with. For these I simply printed the dragon head and tail pieces to colour in. Then we cut them out and glued them together with a long piece of folded paper in the middle and taped on a couple of pop-sticks to hold.

-Polly

Hearts and Crafts

Did everyone have a good valentine's day? It's not something we celebrate around here, but I couldn't resist a few love-heart crafts.
First I collected up some craft supplies in shades of pink and red and set them out on E's table:

I included some papers, foam shapes, shredded crepe paper, cardboard hearts, pipe-cleaners, pom-poms, wrapping paper, tulle, felt, pencils and crayons. E was excited for all the pink. It's been a while since we've done a colour theme.

E used the wrapping paper to wrap and unwrap imaginary presents. She thought it was a fun game. The rest of the supplies were used for collages and ornaments.

E also did some painting and learned how to make pink by mixing red and white paint together. We painted her feet and made heart-shaped footprints:

When it was dry, I drew the heart around the footprints and cut it out for her. It was added to a painting/collage that included hand-prints, brush-painting, crayon drawing, the words "E Loves Daddy" and a photograph. E gave it to her Daddy as soon as he got home from work and she was very proud of it. She also spent all evening saying "I love you, Daddy," which was adorable.

I did set up one other 'heart' activity. E is currently learning to spell her name, so I cut out some more cardboard hearts and wrote one letter from her name on each heart. I then got a long strip of paper and traced around the right number of hearts as a template for where to place the letters. E had some fun with this. She loves finding the letter "E" everywhere.

-Polly

Australian Animals

As part of our "Australia" theme over the last week, we did a lot of animal themed activities. Australia does have a lot of unique animals.

E has a block-puzzle that has pictures of different Australian animals and we had fun putting the pictures together. E also likes to stack the blocks and find all the pieces with animal heads on them.

We did some arts and crafts, including a dot painting of a gecko:

and a paper-plate kangaroo with a joey:

I found some animal songs on youtube. This exercise song would have been better if the video showed children doing the actions instead of just pictures of the animals. Don Spencer sings many classic Australian animal songs. I used to listen to the "Feathers, Fur or Fins" album when I was young. The only ones I could find online were this video which includes "Please Don't Call Me a Koala Bear" and the Play School version of "Feathers, Fur or Fins".

E had plenty of fun pretending to be different animals. Her favourites were a bouncing kangaroo and a squawking, flying cockatoo.

We read some animal books, too. After reading "Koala Lou" by Mem Fox, E pretended to be a koala using a mask from Wildlife Fun 4 Kids:

Echidnas were made using play-dough and pop-sticks:

I knew that bag of pop-sticks would come in handy one day. :)
-Polly

Australia Day

Happy Australia Day (for yesterday) to all the Aussies out there!

For the last week, E has been doing a lot of "Australia" themed activities. Here's just some of them:

We looked at maps of Australia in our atlas and E learnt where on the map we, and other relatives, live. She also learned how to locate Australia on her new globe.

E did some Australia themed colouring pages and we read some Australia themed books including "A is for Australia", "Wattle Babies" and "Possum Magic". We, of course, ate Vegemite sandwiches and lamingtons. :)

I printed out a simple map of Australia that showed the state lines. E coloured it a little and then I gave her cut-outs of each state (on thin cardboard) that she could place on the map as a puzzle. This also helped her to start learning the names of each state and territory.

We did some activities based on the Australian flag. E made a paper flag using this puzzle from Lessons Learnt Journal and some glue. I also made a slightly more detailed flag puzzle using thin cardboard.

I printed a series of Australian flags in different sizes so that E could sort them from biggest to smallest or smallest to biggest. She found this activity fun, but easy.

Lovely Living do some great, free printables. They do ask that you donate to one of their preferred charities using links on their page. Together, E and I made their Australia Day Bunting and hung it in the window above E's desk.

Yesterday, which was actually Australia Day, we put on our Australia bucket hats (mine has a flag design and E's has lots of little Australia maps) and headed to a friend's place for a BBQ and a swim in the pool. We also painted our toenails in green and gold:

I printed this little Australia Day book to take along. E and another little girl coloured it together.

I hope all Australians are enjoying the long weekend.
-Polly

Things that make me Smile

Inspired by Kaylah's post over at The Dainty Squid, here's 10 things that are making me smile today (in no particular order).

1. The lovely, cool breeze that lets me have the house open for once.

2. This freshly-picked basket of parsnips from our vegetable garden.

3. E playing happily with her train set.

4. Actually, watching E play with any of her things. She's gaining so much coordination and language skills and all that stuff that kids do. And I'm so happy that she seems to be over her horrible tummy bug.

5. The marigolds that are flowering in our garden. They're so bright and cheerful!

6. Having watched E and her dad build a robot together. And then playing with it.

E did really well identifying gears and placing components. She'll be building robots on her own in no time. :) Her new saying is "That cool robot!"

7. Parcels in the mail. Doesn't E look so sweet in her new dress?

Thanks Maple :)

8. A letter from my sister.

9. This little one kicking me in the belly.

10. Finally getting around to making new bunting for the living room.

I used last year's local map-book. I usually make fabric flags, but this paper one was so easy and looks pretty, too. E was inspired to make a 'flag picture' where she pasted triangular pieces of wrapping paper onto a piece of card and drew in lines for the string.

Having not posted in a week, I certainly had a lot to share. What's making you smile today?

-Polly