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

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.

We’ve had our People Book for a couple of years now and it’s loved by the babies and toddlers who read it. Very young children are naturally drawn to looking at faces, so why not capture their interest by making a book of their favourite faces for them.

Our book includes . . . → Read More: Faces book]]>

We’ve had our People Book for a couple of years now and it’s loved by the babies and toddlers who read it. Very young children are naturally drawn to looking at faces, so why not capture their interest by making a book of their favourite faces for them.

Our book includes lots of pictures of people the children know: themselves, family and friends. They just love it when they spot someone they recognise! It also provides lots of opportunity to chat and ask questions about what everyone looks like, and to play i-spy.

We’ve added in some pictures from magazines so we could include a whole range of people: different ages, sexes, hair and skin colours, wearing glasses, wearing headscarves, in wheelchairs, in different family groups. It’s a good way to introduce aspects of the world to your child – and if you’re working in an early years setting and wanting to provide multi-cultural resources, this is a great way to reflect your society. It can also be a useful way to link home and an childcare setting, as you can ask parents to send in some pictures from home for you to include.

You could also make a version that includes faces showing different emotions, and begin to talk about having different feelings.

We glued our faces onto coloured sugar paper, laminated them and then bound them together, which gave us a sturdy book which has lasted lots of toddler handing. If you don’t have access to a laminater, a photograph album or a scrapbook are good alternatives.

Do you make you own books with your children? Do they read them as much as other story books?

A thrifty tip for free toys: collect the lids off your milk bottles and jars. Wash them, dry them and give them to your children and see the creative ways they use them.  (Make sure you don’t give very small children lids so small they could be a choking hazard.) My girls . . . → Read More: Games using bottle tops]]>

A thrifty tip for free toys: collect the lids off your milk bottles and jars. Wash them, dry them and give them to your children and see the creative ways they use them.  (Make sure you don’t give very small children lids so small they could be a choking hazard.) My girls love them and come up with all sorts of ways to play with them.

1. Be artistic: what pictures can you make?

2. Try some maths: sort the tops into different sizes, working from smallest to largest in a long line.

3. Get classifying & talk about colours: sort the bottle tops into piles of each colour. L is always on the look out for any golden ones!

4. Add in some letters or shapes: Use a permanent marker pen to write letters or shapes onto the lids. Can you spot all the curved letters? Or find all the triangles?

5. Add numbers: and see if you can order the lids in numerical order, or use them to do sums.

6. Role play: Use the lids as money to play shop or as treasure for pirates to find.

Hand them over to you kids and see what they come up with – they always have the best ideas for play.

happily shared with teach mama We Play! at Childhood 101 and Show and Tell at ABC and 123