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Shape garland

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Easy shape art activity for preschool and toddlers

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.

shape art for toddlers

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

Marble painting

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marble paining1

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?

 

marble paining

 

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.

Homemade selection boxes

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make your own selection box

These homemade selection boxes make great presents children can make and give to their siblings and friends as a Christmas gift. They’re also perfect as a school fundraising idea: all the children can make one and you can then sell them at your Christmas fair, which is what we’re doing with ours.

To make them: we filled a pint sized plastic beaker with some goodies: chocolate, sweets, stickers, small toys. We used a disc of cellophane to cover the top and held it in place with an elastic band.  Then you need to get creative and decorate them.

I wanted to let the children do as much of it as possible by themselves so L made a Christmas tree. I cut out two tree shapes from green card and she helped to fasten them around the beaker with staples. Then it was over to her to add the decorations – stickers, foil snowflakes and glitter put on with glue. She drew a fairy to sit on the top, added some extra glitter for good measure and wrapped gift-wrap ribbon around as tinsel.

homemade selection box

B made this beautiful angel. She used wrapping paper for the dress, fastened with sticky tape at the back and with some foil snowflake shapes and glitter to embellish. The face is drawn on white card with wool hair and the wings are made from a paper cake doily. She does look rather angelic, don’t you think?

The children at school had also come up with some wonderful designs:

– cover the beaker in cotton wool and make a snowman

– turn it into a chimney with Father Christmas’ feet poking out of the top

– lay the beaker on the side and make a cave for a polar bear to live in

I love these homemade selection boxes as a creative way for your children to make their own presents. If you come up with any other designs, do let us know!

 

Children’s self-portraits

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join art spark winter workshop

Fill your winter with colour!

Click here to get your Art Spark resources.

I’ll guide you through four weeks of beautiful and fun art projects that you can enjoy with your children. At home or at school, these process art projects will give you an interesting framework of activities that you can weave into your weeks, so your children are engaged, creating and enjoying themselves all through art. See more details of Art Spark here.

self portrait

Following on from our faces book, how about trying to draw self-portraits?

Drawing Self- Portraits

Sit your child in front of a mirror to let them have a really good look at themselves. With young children you can name the different parts of their face and have them pull funny faces. Encourage older children to look in much more detail – at the colours in their iris and the different shades in their hair. Is their face really a circle shape? Are both sides perfectly symmetrical? Do they look like someone else in the family?

Then get creating. You can draw with just one colour, or paint, or even make a collage with wool for hair. Younger children are likely to produce very simple portraits – but, having had a good look at eyebrows and eyelashes in the mirror, they may surprise you by adding in some new details to their picture.

It’s always good to lead the way and show how adults can be crafty too – so why not have a go at your own portrait alongside them?

Complete art lesson plans, exploring great artists

Marshmallow science

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toasting marshmallows

There are opportunities for scientific learning everywhere. When your children are tired and it’s cold and dark outside, you may think hot chocolate and toasted marshmallows are just for comfort – but no! Science in action! Let them discover a little about heat and solids. Pop a marshmallow onto a skewer, light a candle and get experimenting. How does a match light? What’s happening to the wax in the candle? Talk about the best place to hold the marshmallow and discover that heat rises. What’s happening to the surface of the marshmallow as it toasts? What happens to the inside of the marshmallow? Children are natural scientists, so take some time to observe and chat and see what discussions come up. Just don’t eat too many marshmallows.

happily shared with We Play and ABCand123 and Science Sunday

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