Little had a blast with this today! Following on from ‘w is for wool‘ in our touchy-feely sensory alphabet, today we made…
d is for dandelion
Our walk to school is peppered with dandelion clocks at the moment which Little especially loves to blow. Do you play ‘What’s the time Mr. Wolf?’, counting the puffs until all the seeds have gone? We decided to see if we could get some of the seedheads home without all the seeds blowing away, to make the next letter for our alphabet – and Little had to practise great self-control not to puff them all away before we got back.
I started off by drawing out a ‘d’ on yellow paper. Little applied the glue, practising her hand-eye co-ordination to try and stay within the lines.
And then the real fun began!
Once our ‘d’ was dry we cut it out and stuck it on to a piece of card. It turned out great and feels very soft and fluffy.
Our sunflowers have now moved outside to our little greenhouse to enjoy the Spring sunshine and get them used to being outside. We’ve been out enjoying the garden too. Little has been especially interested to see creatures out there. She will stop in her tracks and peer at her feet, watching an ant running around. Big is interested to know which animals are goodies (that would include worms and ladybirds) or badies (which definitely includes slugs and snails). So we have decided so survey what animals we have sharing our garden with us by playing… Garden Bingo!
First we talked about what animals we might expect to see. (Sorry Little, but no elephants are likely to be found.) Then we drew pictures of them. Everyone can join in with this, no matter how young or artisically challenged they might be. Little did a great worm, ladybird and spider – with carefully counted legs. Big’s cat is very characterful and her butterfly is perfectly symmetrical. I was able to muster some greenfly and wowed everyone with my woodpigeon.
Then we stuck our animal pictures on to our bingo card and wrote their names underneath, along with a tick box for each one. Each time we spot an animal in the garden we’re going to tick them off our card. Take time to have a good look at each animal as you see them. Look at their shape, colour and patterns and count their legs (or note their lack off). Talk about their role in the garden ecosystem and decide if they are goodies or badies.
If you like a competition you could make each person a slightly different bingo card to see who can spot all their creatures first to get a ‘full house’. We like to promote harmony in our garden so we have one big bingo card to complete all together.
If you’re out in the garden and growing things with your children, come and join in with our Sunflower Club to get a Spring and Summer full of activities all linked to growing and gardening.
I think Spring has finally, definitely sprung. These tissue paper flowers are a pretty craft to welcome Spring into your home. Easy to make, you need just three ingredients: green sugarpaper, tissuepaper squares in your favourite petal colours and sticky tape – that’s all!
First take a sheet of green sugarpaper and roll up to make a tube.
Next, use sticky tape to hold your paper tube together. This is your stem.
Take two tissue paper squares and lay them as shown in the picture below.
Then use your finger and thumb to scrunch the squares together in the centre and give them a little twist. This makes your petals.
Use some stickytape to fasten your petals onto your stem.
Make a few more, using your favourite colours, and you have a beautiful Spring bouquet.
And if you have an empty toilet roll tube in your making box you can make a vase to display them in.
And if you love flowers you might also like to make these daffodil windmills.
Happily shared with Tired Need Sleep and Today’s Creative Blog
We make these Egg Heads every year because the kids think they’re so funny. If you get them ready in the next day or two they will have grown a full head of hair ready for the Easter weekend – which you can then snip off to enjoy with an egg sandwich. Although the egg shells are delicate my 3-year-old managed this craft by herself without any cracks.
You will need: empty egg shells (try to just break off the top to empty them, so you have a good size shell left to use), felt pens, stick-on wobbly eyes (optional), cotton wool, crees seeds, an empty egg box.
To make them:
1. Wash out the egg shells and sit them in the egg box to keep them steady (on a cotton wool cushion to raise them up a bit if you need to).
2. Draw on some crazy faces, using the goggly eyes if you’ve got some. You could do self-portraits or funny faces (or maybe that’s one and the same thing?)
3. Put some cotton wool inside the shells and dampen them with some water.
4. Sprinkle cress seeds all over the cotton wool – good coverage will give you a full head of hair.
5. Pop them on a windowsill and wait for the hair to sprout. It’ll only take a couple of days.
6. Add a little bit of water if the cotton wool dries out, but not too much.
You can also use grass seeds for this craft. This allows you to give the eggheads a haircut which will grow back ready for a restyle. However you can’t put the grass on your sandwiches.
Happily shared with Today’s Creative Blog and Mommymoment.
Today, less is more. Little made these two Easter cards to give to her best friends at pre-school. They are a very simple design but I think they’re prefect Easter cards for a little one to make, almost by themselves. You can just draw the basic outline and then let them take charge and make a unique card. So easy, you could make them this weekend to send to grandparents in time for the Easter holiday.
To make a Spring Lamb card you need: card, pencil, glue, white wool
Fold your card in half and draw the outline of a sheep’s body and head.
How many legs does a lamb have? Count them as your child draws them.
Cover the sheep’s body with glue.
Does your child know where wool comes from? Stick some on your sheep.
A lovely woolly lamb. And why not sing Baa, Baa, White Sheep while you’re at it?
To make a bunny rabbit card you need: card, pencils, glue and a ball of cotton wool.
I drew the outline and Little did the rest.I love the wibbly mouth!
Happily shared with Today’s Creative Blog & mommymoment.
Little is taking part in an Easter Parade at pre-school tomorrow and needs an Easter bonnet. She’s also crazy about chicks, ever since one of the kids at school brought some into class. So, what would suit her better than a bonnet full of chicks? These pompom chicks are really easy to make, and if you use a thick wool they’re quick too. Pre-schoolers will probably need some help in case they get in a tangle but Big can make them by herself with no problem.
You need: some wool (you can stick with one colour or mix a couple together depending on how you want your chick to look), scissors,2 rings per chick cut from cardboard, card to make eyes and a beak.
The size of the rings will determine how big your chicks will be.
All you need to do is follow the photos below:
Place the two cardboard rings together. Take a length of wool (say 75cm-ish) and start winding round the two rings. Keep winding! When you wool runs out, get another length and wind that in. Keep winding and adding more wool. Once the ring is full (fuller = fluffier chick), cut around the outer egde of the ring with your scissors. Take another length of wool and use it to tie a knot INSIDE the two cardboard rings. This is going to hold the chick together so make it a tight knot. Tear off the cardboard rings and your pompom is finished. Any bits of wool sticking out can be trimmed to size. You can trim off the extra length of wool which you used tie your knot, or leave it long so you can hang it up (or tie it on to your bonnet).
Glue on some eyes and a beak and your chick is ready. You can use this as an Easter decoration or play with it.
Or, make a family of them and tie them round your bonnet.
Happily shared with Today’s Creative Blog.
Sunflower Club: We have lift off!
I can’t tell you how excited we were to discover our baby seedlings have popped their heads above the soil. Big and Little were dancing! The plantlets are tiny at the moment but we have high hopes, and to monitor their progress we have made a Sunflower Height Chart.
We started by drawing a leaf for each member of the family, colouring them in and writing our names on them.
Then, using a roll of paper stuck to the side of the fridge, we drew a tall, tall sunflower stalk. We all stood against it to measure how tall we are, and used our leaf to mark our height. This gave us lots of chat about big, small, medium and so on. And about how children grow taller but grown-ups do not.
And then it was the sunflowers’ turn. Big measured them with a ruler and discovered they were 4cm tall already.
Over on the height chart we measured 4 cm up the stalk and coloured it in green. We’ll keep measuring and ‘growing’ our height chart stalk as the plants grow. Maybe the girls will grow over the Summer too. The children are especially excited about the sunflowers growing above their heads. And as Daddy is 6’4” the little seedings have a lot to beat.
This is part of our Sunflower Club project - and it’s never to late to join. There’s still plenty of time to get planting. And if you do and you blog about it, please link up with the MckLinky so we can all see how you’re getting on. Pop over for a look now to see themadhouse’s great idea for using eggshell planters.
Today’s the day – we planted our Sunflower Club seeds! Sunflowers are hardy annuals so you can plant them straight outside from March onwards. We learnt last year however that slugs just love to much straight through juicy, new sunflower stems, felling all your plants and leaving you nothing to grow, so this time we’re starting them off indoors. If you haven’t planted yours yet there’s plenty of time to get them started. Here’s what we did:
We stared off by having a good look at the seeds and drawing them. We’re making a scrapbook to record all our sunflower fun so we recorded today’s date and Big wrote a diary entry to say we’d planted the seeds. We stuck the seed packet in and our seed drawings. Using the scrapbook will give us the opportunity to do lots of writing and drawing and will be a complete story of our growing, from seed through to tall flowers -hopefully!
Then we explored the soil. I asked the girls what it felt like and they said it was crumbly, warm, brown, messy, soft and tickly. We used a spoon to fill the seed tray with the compost – great hand-eye co-ordination practice for Little, who did a geat job and only spilt a bit.
We then put one seed in each cell – counting the seeds as we went along.
We wrote labels so we know what kinds of seeds we’d planted (we’re growing tomatoes and marigolds too). It’s great to let even very young children have a try at writing – you can see from the photo how Big and Little wrote their labels. For Little it’s good for her to try out holding a pencil and ‘writing’ and lovely to see she understands that the marks she’s making have a purpose.
But, what do seeds need to grow? Big thinks they need soil, water and sunshine. Little thinks they might need worms too. We decided to conduct an experiment to find out for sure what they need. Most of the seeds are in compost, on the windowsill and have been watered. We put a couple of the seeds in a dark cupboard to see if they’ll grow without light. A couple more are in compost by the window but we’re not giving them any water. And a couple more are on the windowsill in a glass of water, but no compost. We wonder what will happen to them all? They should germinate in 7-14 days so we’ll let you know.
Are you growing sunflowers too? If you’re blogging about them, please link up with the Linky below so we can all come and see how you’re getting on. And help yourself to the Sunflower Club button (on the left-hand column) to add to your blog page. If you haven’t got a blog we’d love you to leave a comment here or on the facebook page.
Happy planting!
To celebrate St. David’s Day or Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Sant we have been making daffodil windmills today. I think they look so cheery that they’d be great to make on any Spring day – and a vase of them would make a lovely Mothers’ Day gift. Here’s how we made them. You’ll need: yellow card (or card and yellow paint), green card, a egg box, a paper fastener, yellow and/or orange paint, a small paint brush, a stapler, a ruler, a pencil, a pair of scissors, (a craft knife – optional) Start by cutting a square from your yellow card. We only had white card in the house, but as Little is painting-crazy at the moment this wasn’t a problem as we did have some yellow paint. If you are going to paint you will need to paint both sides of the card. 
Cut out the cup part of the egg box – this is going to be the trumpet part of your daffodil. Paint it either yellow or orange, depending on what colour you would like in the centre of your flower. 
Once any paint is dry you need to cut lines into the yellow square of card as shown in the photo below. You can draw the lines using the pencil and ruler and then cut along them with the scissors. 
Now you need to fold in four of the edges, as shown below. Fasten them in place with a stapler. 
Make a stalk for the flower by rolling a piece of the green card in to a tube. Now you’re going to use the paper fastener to join the egg box trumpet, the daffodil and the stalk all together. You can poke the paper fastener straight through the card but you might find it easier to make a hole with either the pencil or craft knife first. You want the hole to be loose enough for the daffodil to twirl around to give you the windmill effect. 
And there you have it – a beautiful daffodil. You could make a few of them in different shades to make a lovely spring bouquet. 
Happily shared with Today’s Creative Blog Twinfatuation’s Make My Monday Making the World Cuter Skip to my Lou and Mom Tried It’s Try and Tell Tuesday
