Home » Art and Craft » All Crafts » Page 32

Train-inspired art and maths shape pictures

by 3 Comments

When you’re nurturing children I think you should always start with them – what they’re interested in and want to explore. At the moment my youngest is really enjoying playing trains, so I’ve been using this as a way to incorporate some ideas about shapes and colours.

Yesterday we made a ride-on train from a cardboard box, which has given us lots of role playing fun. We’ve been talking about what happens at a train station, where you might go on a train and how trains work. This  lead us on to talking about trains going underground, so we looked up a picture of the London Underground map. And wow! She was captured by all the lines and colours, and wanted to know the names of all the stations. She was tracing her finger along the different lines (which is great hand-eye co-ordination practice) and I thought she might like her own map which she could drive her wooden trains along. This turned out to be a great idea as she really enjoyed making her version of the map.


We used a long roll of paper and it was great for her to have the space to really extend her painting. And she knew the names of all the colours too.

Once it was dried we brought over her train set to bring her map to life.

Another way we explored the theme of trains was to make pictures using felt shapes. This gave us the opportunity to name the different shapes, count their sides and trace our fingers around their outlines. We looked at our wooden train to see what shapes it was made up of and then used the felt shapes to re-create the train in our picture – comparing the 3D object with our two dimensional picutre.

I’ve got a couple more train-inspired play ideas coming in the next post too. One helps with pre-reading skills and another is good for maths. Hope you’ll come back and see them.

Cardboard box ride-on train tutuorial

by 6 Comments

Got a long cardboard box? Here’s how to transform it into a train, for lots of role playing fun.

We used: a rectangular cardboard box, a Pringles tube, a panettone box, some coloured paper, sticky tape, scissors, a craft knife, a small plate, a felt tip pen

Wrap the tube in coloured paper. We used sticky tape throughout for all out sticking. You could use glue and could also paint the train instead, but then you’re going to have to wait for it to dry – and 3 year olds need instant gratification!

Place the tube where you want your chimney to be and draw round the bottom with your felt pen. Then cut the circle out with a craft knife (grown-ups only, of course).

Poke the tube through the hole and you have your chimney.

Cut your other box into the shape of the cab, wrap in coloured paper and stick onto the train with sticky tape

Using the craft knife cut out a square flap to make a carriage for storing cargo and passengers. make sure you leave enough room between the carriage and the cab for the driver to sit. (We discovered later that my daughter fits inside this carriage nicely!)

Now draw round a small late and cut out some circles from  coloured paper.

Stick these along the sodes of the train to make the wheels. Count tham as you go along and talk about what shape they are.

Adding spokes onto the wheels is a good opportunity to practice pencil skills.

Link up the wheels with a different coloured strip of paper . Talk about how this rectangle shape is different to the wheels.

All aboard! Ready to roll! Choo choo!

Add some props to extend the play possibilities – a drivers hat, some passengers, some parcels to deliver.

You can introduce some letters and numbers into the play by making signs for the stations you visit. How about making a train timetable and some tickets too?

We’ve been doing some train inspired art and maths play too – come back and see the next post to have a look.

Happily shared with Today’s Creative Blog.

and

Make a model house

by 2 Comments

a cardboard mansion

a cardboard mansion

My 3 year old has been asking lots of questions about houses recently: what’s under the floor? which room is on top of this one? how many families live in a block of flats? I’m also keen to encourage her to pick up a pencil and do some mark making and drawing, as this isn’t an activity she tends to choose for herself but obviously is a skill she needs to develop. I always like to take the individual child as a starting point for any activity I’m planning – what are they interested in and what skills are they currently developing?- so with all this in mind we decided to make some model houses.

We used some cardboard boxes which we opened up flat. This gave us a clear side to draw on and it was much easier using a flat surface rather than a 3D one. We cut out a door to start with and coloured it and the roof in with wax crayons. We talked about what shapes windows are and had a look at the ones in our house. I helped my daughter cut out some rectangles from some paper and she used a glue stick to stick them on by herself.  She used a crayon to put crosses on each of the windows to make them look like the ones we have at home.  I was really pleased to see she carefully held the crayon in a palmar grip and placed the crosses right in the centre of each window – she’s improving her pencil control. She also added some beautiful flowers, which gave the opportunity to try making vertical and circular marks. Every front door needs a house number so she checked our number line and decided on a ‘3’. We then folded it all back up again and fastened it with stickytape – very simple but I think it looks great and she’s really pleased with it.

So that’s fine motor skills, mark making, decision making, numeracy, three dimensional modeling, shapes, colours, art, collage, and some ‘Mummy and me’ time – all from her current interest in houses. Amazing how many skills you can nurture in one simple activity.

straight lines and circles - developing pencil control

straight lines and circles - developing pencil control

Make your own bookmarks

by Leave a Comment

Make your own bookmark presents

Make your own bookmark presents

We’re giving some books as birthday presents to friends in my daughter’s class so we decided to personalise the gifts by making a bookmark for each child.

Three easy steps:

1. Cut out a rectangle of card and use pens and pencils to draw a design. We wrote the birthday child’s name one one side and ‘love from …’ on the back.

2. Laminate or cover in sticky backed plastic.

(You can find laminating machines for under £20 on eBay or Amazon – they are useful for other children’s activities and crafts)

3. Punch out a hole and thread a ribbon through.

A nice gift for grandparents’ birthdays and for Christmas too.

A homemade birthday present

A homemade birthday present

Build your own toy town and road system

by 3 Comments

Two pounds wisely invested in the local charity shop this morning means we are the pleased owners of a bag of trucks and cars. Raiding the craft box we had an abundance of cardboard packaging from mail order books, so we got busy creating our own town. Do you like it? The kids are most impressed with the flyover bridge system (although it’s a little precarious despite being reinforced with some extra cardboard underneath). I like the car wash. There was a bit of confusion with the traffic lights as I wasn’t sure if the red or green light went on top – you can tell I can’t drive – but kids assured me we’d got it right. Using the fold out book packaging turned out really well as it folds back down for storage at the end of the day. I think we’ll be adding extra buildings over the next few weeks. Why don’t you try making your own town?

If your child enjoys making this they might like to try a castle too.

NurtureStore