This flower craft for kids comes in four designs, making a beautiful mixed bouquet. It’s made from simple craft supplies, is easy to make, and lovey to give as a gift of have as a decoration to celebrate spring. Here’s how to make each type of flower.
Brought to you by Melitsa of Raising Playful Tots and Cathy of NurtureStore, along with some of our favourite bloggers and authors, the Spring Learning Through Play special offer is now open – but for April 8th to April 14th only.
We have put together a package worth over $130 – but available to you at a very special price – of e-books and resources, all based around Learning Through Play. This Spring Special Offer includes books, resources and an on-line course, and covers sensory play, outdoor play, art and crafts, positive parenting, learning to read and write, math and lots more. There’s so much in the bundle it will give you ideas to use with your children all spring and summer long. You’ll recognize the authors as the writers of some of your favorite blogs – check out the full details below to see who’s joining in.
Here’s a lovely eco art project that we’ve created as part of our Kids Art Explorers projects.
This month the Art Explorers are seeing what they can create using natural, outdoor materials. You can browse all the ideas already linked up below, and join in and make something with your own children, but first we’d like to introduce our puppets.
If you’ve been growing sunflowers with us as part of the Compton Hospice Sunflower Challenge you need to measure your sunflowers today. There are fabulous prizes on offer for the tallest bloom, so measure up and contact Compton with your vital statistics.
Our tallest is currently 1m 65cm. They got up to 2m 47cm last year, so there’s plenty more growing to be done. How tall are yours?
If you’ve been enjoying growing sunflowers (whether you’re joining in the official challenge or not) and have a sunflower-themed play idea to share with us – we would love to see them. Please add a link to the Linky at the end of this post. We’ve shared some ideas for art, science and math in our Sunflower Activities ebook, and here’s one more idea for sunflower fun.
Summer’s here, bringing with it blues skies, sunshine and the top priority: keeping kids cool.
We want our children to be enjoying themselves all summer long but hot and cranky kids aren’t much fun – for them or us!
So here, with the help of our wonderful Facebook community, are our favourite ways for keeping kids cool whilst still having lots of summer fun. (Thanks to Jules, Nichola, Gayla, Tina, Michele and Debi for sharing their tips) [Read more…]
Following on from yesterday’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar craft ideas for caterpillars, today we have a selection of butterfly crafts.
The designs are all very simple again, making them easy for very young children to try.
Working with the idea of butterflies gives the opportunity to talk about symmetry and with older children you might want to encourage them to focus on creating matching patterns, as part of a more mathematical activity.
With young children though I think the main purpose behind these crafts is to invite them to enjoy the colours and see what patterns they can make – so I wouldn’t worry about strict directions about making sure both sides match.
This idea is a childhood classic – painting on one side of a piece of paper, folding and squishing the paint, and then opening it up to reveal your butterfly.
I particularly love this technique because it’s open to all children – even babies. Everyone can join in: finger painting, smearing colour around, making hand prints, using brushes or sponges to apply the paint. And my kids really love the surprise reveal when the final pattern is peeled open and revealed.
Two tips I’d share:
1. It might be hard for the children to understand the idea of painting at first on one side of the paper only, and you won’t want to pester them all through the activity to stop painting on the other side. If you fold the paper over so the side to be kept clear is underneath and only the side that needs painting is presented to them (see above), then they can go for it, applying the paint wherever they like, without any restrictions. When they’ve finished you can fold it the other way to make your print.
2. I’d do a demonstration of the folding and squishing first before using their own art work – some children can be very upset if they think you’re spoiling their design, so best for them to be happy with the plan before you try it.
These twirling butterflies were inspired by an idea Amanda created for Make and Takes. Amanda’s children made ladybirds, but I think they’re also beautiful with a butterfly design, and the kids can paint, pattern or collage any design they choose.
Make and Takes has a step-by-step guide to assembling them.
A tip I’d add: if you laminate the pieces of card before assembling them they’ll withstand a little rain so you can have them twirling in the garden.
We used a wooden clothes peg to make a butterfly mobile: here’s our step-by-step guide showing how we made it.