How to make a pompom robin.

You can use this robin as a Christmas decoration or make a family of them to play with. It’s probably better suited to children aged 6 plus (my 4 year old hasn’t got the patience to make it, but my 7 year old loves them) . . . → Read More: Pompom robin]]>

How to make a pompom robin.

You can use this robin as a Christmas decoration or make a family of them to play with. It’s probably better suited to children aged 6 plus (my 4 year old hasn’t got the patience to make it, but my 7 year old loves them) and is a nice craft to do an a cold winter’s day as you sit on the sofa and chat.

You will need: card to make two rings, scissors, red yarn, brown yarn, glue, card to make eyes and a beak

1. Cut two circles from a piece of card. We made ours about 7cm in diameter.

2. Cut an inner circle in both the circles. The bigger you make this circle, the longer it will take you to complete your pompom. We made ours around 3 cm in diameter.

3. Start by making the red breast. Take 75cm lengths of yarn and wind them around the ring. Keep them close together, just where you want the red breast to be.

4. Use 75cm lengths of brown yarn to wind around the remaining section of the ring. Keep adding in lengths of yarn until your ring is full and there is no space left in the centre to thread any more yarn – but remember to just keep the red yarn to one section.

5. Use some scissors to cut around the outer edge of the ring, so the yarn fills out to create a ball.

6. Take another length of yarn and tie round, inside the two rings of card. Knot tightly to hold all the threads of yarn in place. If you’re making a decoration you can use the long lengths of yarn to hang it up, otherwise you can trim them.

7. Tear off the rings of card and fluff out your pompom.

8. Add eyes and a beak and you have a fluffy little robin.

Why not make some smaller ones to create a family?

You can find lots more Christmas crafting inspiration in our Christmas play archive.

happily shared with thrifty Christmas

This craft was meant to be. We’ve wanted to have a go at spinning art  for a while, so last week I went out to try and buy a salad spinner. As we were intending to get it covered in paint I didn’t want to spend a fortune on one but in . . . → Read More: Salad spinner painting]]>

This craft was meant to be. We’ve wanted to have a go at spinning art  for a while, so last week I went out to try and buy a salad spinner. As we were intending to get it covered in paint I didn’t want to spend a fortune on one but in any case fate intervened. As I walked passed a charity shop, guess what I spied on the shelf inside? One salad spinner! Sold.

Salad Spinner Painting.

You will need: a salad spinner, paper plates or circles of paper/card to fit in the spinner, runny paint, glitter is optional

You can use one big circle of card which fills the whole of the base of the spinner, or you can put several smaller circles of card in the base and put paint on each one. These smaller ones are good if you’re making gift tags.

1. Check if your salad spinner has drainage holes in the botton and if it does, sit it on a plate or tray to catch any paint.

2. Place your paper plate or circle of paper / card in the bottom of the salad spinner basket. It’s a good idea to hold it in place with a piece of Bluetac.

3. Put some blobs of the runny paint on the plate / paper / card.

4. Replace the lid of the spinner and get spinning.

5. Take off the lid to check your design. Do you want to spin again? Add some different colours? Sprinkle some glitter on while the paint is still wet?

We’re going to use our designs to make Christmas decorations and gift tags, by punching a hole and adding some ribbon.

This spinning technique is also great for trying out colour mixing – add a blob of blue and yellow and spin to make shades of green.

You could make a fantastic mobile from your paper plates, or turn them into planets to make a space scene.

Have you tried salad spinner painting? How did you use your designs?

happily shared with Tot Tuesday and ABC and 123

Do you have a nativity scene your children can play with? Advent begins today and I know my girls will spend December dressing up as kings, reading Christmas story picture books and generally bursting into a round of Away In A Manger at any opportunity.  We have a beautiful nativity scene which . . . → Read More: Junk model nativity]]>

Do you have a nativity scene your children can play with? Advent begins today and I know my girls will spend December dressing up as kings, reading Christmas story picture books and generally bursting into a round of Away In A Manger at any opportunity.  We have a beautiful nativity scene which decorates our sitting room each year but it is too delicate for the girls to play with, so this year we decided to make a version the girls can use.  And you’ll probably guess what are figures are made of: toilet roll tubes (which does seem rather inapproriate for such holy characters but I hope we don’t offend.)

The figures were made by wrapping fabric and card around the tubes and glueing into place: a very simple design the girls can make with just a little adult help, and giving them their own nativity to play with to their hearts content.

Carnival of Junk Play

Don’t forget, if you’re fans of junk modeling we are hosting a Carnival of Junk Play this Friday 3rd December. We’re hoping to gather together a store of all our junk play ideas, ready for us all to use when we need some inspiration. Any type of junk play goes: inside, outside, dens, construction, models, crafting, anything you like so long as it’s using some kind of junk material. Old posts are very welcome too. Come and join us on Friday and share an idea with our Play Academy community.

happily shared with making the world cuter and ABC and 123 and Tot Tuesday and Kids Get Crafty and Childhood 101 and Up-cycled Awesome

Did you see the marble painting we did yesterday? It was great roly-poly fun and we decided that instead of just adding to our picture gallery we would use the designs to make a shape garland.

We had lots of chat about which shapes we would use and decided to stick with circles, . . . → Read More: Shape garland]]>

Did you see the marble painting we did yesterday? It was great roly-poly fun and we decided that instead of just adding to our picture gallery we would use the designs to make a shape garland.

We had lots of chat about which shapes we would use and decided to stick with circles, squares and triangles, as the children would find them fairly easy to cut out themselves.

We went on a shape hunt to find objects the right shape and size to draw round and then we cut them out.

We used our fingers to trace round the outside of the shapes and count how many sides they had.

We did some shape sorting, making piles of circles, triangles and squares.

We talked about size and lined each shape up from biggest to smallest.

Then we used sticky tape to fasten our shapes onto thread and hung up our garland to decorate our room. The mobile looks beautiful as it twirls around.

That’s a lot of fun learning from one simple activity. How do you teach shapes to your children?

happily shared with Making Monday Marvellous and Math Monday and Childhood 101 and ABC and 123 and Tots Tuesday

We love marble painting. We love the crazy patterns you can make, we love the roly-poly fun and we love how vibrant the final paintings are. Marble painting is a good craft activity to try with children who usually prefer action play to something artistic – you might just find that this . . . → Read More: Marble painting]]>

We love marble painting. We love the crazy patterns you can make, we love the roly-poly fun and we love how vibrant the final paintings are. Marble painting is a good craft activity to try with children who usually prefer action play to something artistic – you might just find that this rolling-action appeals, when normal painting or drawing doesn’t.

If you have a group of children you can try this on a grand scale: go outside and have the children sit around a huge piece of paper.  Add some blobs of paint around the perimeter of the paper and give the children some marbles. They can roll the marbles to each other across the paper and make a collaborative design.

For a smaller scale version at home, we find a roasting tray is a good size to fit an A4 piece of paper, and of course the raised edges of the tin help to contain the marble. Add a blob of paint and practise your co-ordination as you tilt the tray to roll the marble through the paint. What patterns can you make if you add different colours of paint, or roll 2 or 3 marbles at once?

This is a fun, creative activity to try just for the pleasure of crafting but it creates wonderful pictures you can use to make into something else too: bookmarks, greetings cards and postcards, gift tags? Come back tomorrow and see how we transformed our marble paintings into a mathematical display.

And for lots more messy play ideas, click on the button on the right hand column.