Count Down Calendar #2

This is our second Count Down Calendar, the one with all the goodies in it :-D (link to the first one is here). Bubble has been helping me make it over the last three days at craft time, I thought she'd get bored with the repetition of the same thing 24 times but she really got into it. We also now have about 100 left over paper doilies that she's been delighting in painting and drawing all over!

WE USED:

* brown paper bags
* glue
* christmas themed serviettes
* scissors
* paper doilies
* white paper patty pans
* marker/texta
* paper clips
* twine
* white card (to write daily activities on)
* items to go in your bags
* holepunch
* sticky tape

I bought a pack of Christmas serviettes very cheaply to use as the backing paper, but wrapping paper would work just as well.

I cut the serviettes into four before gluing them to the front of the brown paper bags.

Then we glued paper doilies over the top of the serviettes.

We used a red Sharpie to write our numbers on, but stickers or stamps would look great.

I had some white patty pans there which I had originally planned to use instead of the doilies and Bubble was very excited about squashing them so we included a few of those too! :-)

Then I put a piece of tape in each top left hand corner, folding it over both sides.

And punched a hole through the centre of the tape using a mini hole punch.
The tape reinforces the hole in the paper bag so it's less likely to rip (I hope).

I tied knots along some twine and used 3M hooks to string it along the wall, then attached these hooks made from bent paper clips.

In each bag I put; a white card with a different Christmas activity on it and a small treat. Every third bag has something edible (white Darrel Lea jellybeans) and the other contain things like self inking stamps, foam aeroplanes, Christmas stickers, whistles, bouncy balls, craft supplies etc...
It doesn't have to be expensive to be fun, all up the things for our calendar cost $15.

More and Less - Beach Scene Game

Bubble has been harping at me for the last few days about going to the beach but unfortunately the weather hasn't been exactly ideal. Yesterday we made our own beach in her room instead using beach towels and blankets and played some beach themed games. This quantity activity was great for teaching the concept of 'less and more', something Bubble is still getting the hang of.

WE USED:

* felt sheets (yellow and blue).
You could also use paper or any other coloured surface such as fabric, cutting boards, clothing etc...
* seashells

We laid our felt sheets down next to each other to make our 'beach'.

Then we took it in turns placing the shells so the other person could count and work out which side had more and which had less ( the sand or the water).

Wiggles Activity Bags

It's no secret we love The Wiggles magazine in our household (and no, we're not being bribed in any way to say that :-D). The activities are great and Bubble looks forward to picking it up every month. We sit down together and do the craft projects and she loves to 'read' the pictures and do the mazes herself. After it has been read cover to cover and all interesting things have been coloured in and drawn on by both girls we often use the pictures to make collages or other crafty type things.
This week though I went through it after the girls were done and cut out all of the little gluing activities and made some 'project bags'. All the little bits are contained inside the paper bag and they can then be glued to the front when the activity is being done. I've packed some into our pram 'play' bag for when we are out and about, put some in our rainy day activities box and we also did a few of them today - lots of fun :-)

WE USED:

* children's magazine
* paper bags
* scissors
* sticky tape
* glue

Other ideas: These puzzles and activities would work well laminated so they could be used over and over again.

I put the pieces for each activity inside the paper bags, then taped the activity headings to the front as labels. There are puzzles, matching games, interesting pictures for making collages, eye spy games, number and counting activities - anything I could cut up basically :-)

Bubble completing a puzzle bag today.

Some of the other bags Bubble did today - the top one is an eyespy game that I also cut into pieces to make a puzzle from, and the other is a silhouettes matching game.

Plastacine Writing Tray

I remember in primary school having a plastacine tray that we practiced writing in, and I tried to recreate one today for Bubble to use but it didn't turn out so good. If anyone knows the 'right' way to make these can you please let me know as I'd love to make one.
The one we had at school had brightly coloured plastacine underneath and a layer of black plastacine over the top, we would then use popsticks to practice our letters and the colours would show through the black (kind of like these black crayon scratch pictures but with plastacine). Then you just smoothed over the black plastacine and started again.
Bubble still really enjoyed the tray I made for her and played with it quite happily, it worked in that it showed up her marks and lines when she drew but the colours underneath didn't show through at all (maybe the black layer was too thick?).

WE USED:

* shallow tray/dish
* plastacine
* mini skewer or chopstick

It was a disaster to begin with lol, I ran out of black so had to use the next darkest colour to finish the top layer - brown :-D

Bubble's drawings still showed up well, just not in rainbow like I was expecting!

Eventually we flipped our plastacine over and drew on the colourful side as well, which worked pretty nicely too.