'E' is for Ears

We are up to 'E' on our sounds wall this week, and our activity today was a matching one. Bubble enjoyed it and had fun swapping the ears around before gluing them in the right places - quite hilarious :-)
There was also a lot of incidental learning going on - which animal had the biggest ears, what kind of animal they were (zoo, farm etc...), what their ears were used for (eg: the elephant uses his ears to cool down and display the way he is feeling as well as hear with).

WE USED:

* paper
* textas/pencils
* scissors
* felt sheets (you could just use paper or card instead though)

I cut our animal ears from felt, but you could easily use paper or card instead.

For our worksheet I drew animal faces and omitted the ears. You could also use net images and print them out, then cut the ears from the sheet.

Bubble matching and gluing her animal ears.

Spitball Painting

I know, sorry, not a very glamorous name but not sure what else to call this activity!

WE USED:

* wide straws
(thickshake straws seemed to work really well)
* watered down washable paint
* tissues
* apron or art shirt (this activity is messy!)

Tear your tissue into pieces and roll into compact balls.

Push tissue into the end of the straw until it is wedged in firmly, but not too far up inside that it cant be dislodged.

Soak the tissue in watered down paint until it is nice and soggy (as all spitballs should be :-D).

Position your straw over paper and get blowing!
Bubble actually found this tricky to start with, although she can blow bubbles, candles etc... this action is different because you have to seal the straw with your mouth and blow in a sustained way that she had never had to do before. It took her a few tries, but it was kind of like learning to whistle - once she figured out the right technique she was off and racing :-)

We tried this activity with different types of straws, some worked better than others. The wider and shorter ones seemed most effective for Bubble to use.

Story Bags

This activity has been great for encouraging Bubble's story telling and language skills. You dont have to use objects, you could also use pictures or a mixture of both.

WE USED:

* large bag (thick enough not to be see through)
* various objects for telling a story - it can be anything really!

The idea is very simple - place your objects in to the 'story telling bag' and take it in turns to take things out one at a time. Whatever you draw from the bag has to be incorporated into the story, making it up as you go along. At first your child could watch while you draw things from the bag and create a story to go with them, before encouraging them to join in.
The stories can be silly and not make sense in the slightest, it will still be encouraging language and imagination.
You could also just lay the items on the ground and take turns to choose whichever item you like, rather than drawing them from the bag randomly.

One of our story bags from this afternoon.
Try using a real variety of objects and include a few categories like food, transport, places etc...
In our story a man climbed the apple tree with a ladder to catch an apple in a spoon. Then the windmill blew him into the sky and he dropped it, but he found an orange in his pocket. Luckily he landed on a lounge and didnt squash his orange. A giraffe caught the apple and ate it all up! Then the giraffe caught a train to the circus because he wanted a job and he stopped to ask a bird where the painting things were. The bird didn't know but gave the giraffe his racing car since he couldn't reach the pedals, and the giraffe gave the bird a banana to say 'thankyou'.
Utter nonsense but so much fun :-D

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.

Ice Bowling

Ok, I wasn't sure if this was going to work, but it turned out fantastically (is that a word?) and the girls had so much fun with it!

WE USED:

* balloons
* freezer
* empty bottles
* food colouring (optional)

I filled some balloons with water and put them in the freezer a few days ago, they took a little while to freeze and I wanted to make sure they were solid before bringing them out to play with. I added food colouring to each one, but please be aware that the colouring will get on hands, clothes etc... when the ice is melting, so if you want minimal mess then just use plain water.

I had no idea if hanging the balloons or sitting them on the bottom of the freezer would work better, so I made some using both techniques to see how they turned out. I just used pegs to secure the hanging ones to a freezer shelf.

The water balloon that was sitting made the best bowling ball - almost perfectly round!

Get some empty bottles to use as bowling pins, fill them with ice cubes (or rice/dried beans etc...) for a great sound effect when they are knocked over!

If bowling on carpet you may want to lay down a long drop sheet (we used a waterproof tablecloth), especially if you used colouring as it will stain. Alternatively you could leave the balloon on instead of cutting it off, then there will be no mess at all :-)

We cut away our balloon and admired our pretty blue ice bowling ball :-)

The girls played ice bowling for aaagggeess, I loved watching Bubble teaching Squeak how to roll and throw the ball xx

Strike!

The ice ball went outside for a jump on the trampoline.

It ended in tears for the bowling ball, but the girls thought the broken ice was even more fascinating :-D

The other two balloons froze in a tear drop shape (no good for bowling!) so they went into the bath instead.

“Come play at the Childhood 101 We Play link up”

Texture Garden

This is a great sensory craft activity which also gives the fine motor skills a work out. Our craft box was bursting at the seams with items of different textures so I wanted to find a way to put them to good use.

WE USED:

* giant popsticks
* playdough (could also use a foam florists block)
* blutac
* scissors
* something for your flowers to be 'planted' into - small box, vase, jar, cup, flower pot etc... We used a small bucket.
* craft items of different textures that can be cut into flower shapes.

For our flowers we used; twine, pipecleaners, carpet and lino squares (left over from dollshouse renovations), felt, thick fabric, bubble wrap, cardboard, alfoil, corrugated cardboard, pattypans.

Other ideas: sandpaper sheets, puff paint, satin fabric, tulle, muslin, hessian, wool, minky fabric, milk bottle tops glued to cardboard, tissue paper, cellophane.

Twine flower -
loops of twine secured with a cut pipecleaner.
Pattypan flower -
flattened patty pan cut around the edges to a flower shape.
Felt flower -
cut freehand from a sheet of felt (you could also use a template traced or printed from online)

Fabric flower -
our fabric was thick enough to support itself (uphostery fabric), if your fabrics are thinner they can be glued to card to reinforce them).
Alfoil flower -
cut thin cardboard (we used some from a cereal box) into your flower shape and then cover with alfoil.
Carpet flower -
this flower was cut from a carpet square left over from renovating the girls dollshouse. Carpet squares are quite cheap (around $4) from hardware stores.

Bubble wrap flower -
I just cut a circle then cut slits all the way around from the edge towards the centre. The middle is a small circle of felt.
Lino flower -
cut from a lino square left over from the dollshouse renovation. Lino squares can also be bought from hardware stores.
Corrugated cardboard flower -
cut from corrugated card bought from a craft shop.

Fill your chosen flower bed with playdough (or your foam florist block). We used the spice scented playdough from yesterdays volcano which had the double benefit of looking like soil and smelling wonderful!

Bubble putting blutac on a popstick ready to make a flower.

On goes the flower head.

Bubble 'planting' her garden.

They looked even better in real life, Bubble has been touching them, rearranging them and pulling them out to play with all day today.

Feeling all the different textures. Bubble said the carpet flower was her favourite and Squeak couldn't stay away from the shiny alfoil one.

“Come play at the Childhood 101 We Play link up”

Paper Pinwheels

It was really windy today so I made the girls a pin wheel before we headed out for the day. I made a few adjustments to the way they are usually done just to make it a bit safer for little fingers :-)
They were so excited to see it spinning madly in the breeze as we walked along and Bubble was very interested about why it would only turn when she held it in a certain direction. I had to laugh when there was a sudden lull in the wind and the pinwheel stopped turning, Bubble turned to me with a sad face and announced "oh no! Flat batteries!".

WE USED:

* thick scrapbook paper in a square shape
* scissors
* bead head pin
* thick cardboard tube (ours is from inside GladWrap)
* soft plastic lid (we used a milk bottle lid)
* needle nose (or craft/jewellery) pliers

Fold your paper diagonally in both directions to form an 'X' across it.
Using scissors cut along all four lines stopping about 4-5 cm from the centre point.
Using scissors cut the middle circle from the soft plastic in your bottle lid (as in cut off the rim of the lid so you are just left with the disc of soft plastic from the centre). Push your pin through it to make a hole in the middle, then remove pin and put the plastic disc to one side for a moment (you'll need it later).

Take one side of each triangle (the same side on each one) and bend it into the centre point. Use a pin the secure the corners to the centre of the pinwheel. It might help to use your pin to make holes in each corner before bending them in.

Push the pin into the side of the cardboard tube until it goes right through. Pinwheels are usually mounted on straws or wooden sticks, bit I wanted the pin well away from my girls fingers and to make it as secure as possible so it wouldn't be pulled out.

Slide the plastic disc that you cut from the bottle lid earlier onto the pin inside the tube. Then use your pliers to bend the end of the pin over so that it cannot be pulled free from the tube. Make sure you dont make the pin too short where the pinwheel is attached, you want it to be able to turn freely.

Our pinwheel was carted all over the place all day and still made it home in one piece :-)

If my instructions weren't very clear, here is a video tutorial for making pinwheels the traditional way:

WIKIHOW TUTORIAL FOR MAKING PINWHEELS