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.

Rainbow Fan

It's been hot lately where we live so I thought we could make a paper fan as a craft activity this week. We already had the paper plates out after making the ring toss game so I cut the bottom off one of them to make a fan shape. Bubble decided it looked like a rainbow and the end result is very bright and colourful, as well as useful!

WE USED:

* paper plate
* scissors
* paint
* toilet roll tube
* coloured contact

To make the handle I covered the cardboard tube in contact and then cut two slits on each side at one end for the plate to slide into.

Paper Plate Ring Toss Game

Today we made our own take on the traditional ring toss game. Bubble enjoyed playing it and Squeak enjoyed pulling the rings on and off.
This game worked great for Bubble and Squeak who were throwing close range, but if you wanted the rings to be thrown from a decent distance I think the paper plates were not dense/heavy enough. In this case I'd probably either layer and glue several plates together or wrap them in something like string or twine to weight them.

WE USED:

* paper plates
* paint
* scissors
* long cardboard tube (from cling wrap, peper towel etc...)
* sticky tape

Cut the centre from some paper plates to use as your 'rings'.

To make the stand I just cut slits in the bottom of the cardboard tube and flattened the ends, then taped it to the reverse side of a plate so it would stand up.

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

Sticky Window Art

The other night I saw these two great activities while Blog hopping (Time For Play and Mom Tried It) and my brain kind of mashed them both together and we ended up with this sticky window activity (sorry to put 'mashed' and 'brain' in the same sentence but it's an accurate description, trust me).
I was pretty sure Bubble would be into it but I didnt anticipate how much. She was still playing with it for almost an hour after I'd lost interest and wandered away, and made me promise about a thousand times (I wish I was exaggerating!) before she went to bed that I wouldn't take it down. I think I'll leave it up until the sticky is gone because there are countless possibilities with this activity.

WE USED:

* clear contact
* scissors
* sticky tape
* a window
* anything you like to decorate with
(we used coloured matchsticks, bottle tops and pattypans)

Cut a large square of clear contact and tape it to your window with the sticky side out.

I put tape in each corner and halfway along each side so it wouldn't move or bunch up when we pulled things off.

Your matchsticks (or whatever you have chosen to work with) will stick to the adhesive and allow you to build pictures. We were able to reposition even the delicate patty pans without tearing them.

We started with a house and sang the Play School song "There's A House With A Wall" while we made each part.

An aeroplane.

Bubble sticking on a pattypan sun.

Next we made a tree and a little bottle lid man.

Bubble decided he was playing soccer and added another lid as his ball.

Fear not, our little matchstick man doesn't have two heads. He is a (soccer playing) cowboy apparently and the second bottletop is his hat :-D.

A windmill.

Bubble announced "it's raining now!" and stuck on lots of little matchstick raindrops. She also discovered she could draw on the contact by etching it with the end of her matchsticks (clever cookie) and drew lots of flowers, a moon, a rocket and a river (they don't show up in the photos very well unfortunately).

When Mr Bubble&Squeak bought the newspaper today we recieved a free suction Woody toy inside which Bubble incorporated into her play scene.

Building Woody a boat (to go on the river she had etched into the contact).

Bubble played with this activity for AGES, we might need a permanent sticky window display.

Woody hanging out at his new pad (looks a bit overwhelmed, doesn't he).

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

Milk Bottle Jumping Frogs

Ok, so I'm pretty excited that this idea actually worked! I thought maybe I'd been staring at milk bottles too long but not only do these jumping frogs do exactly what I was hoping (namely jump), Bubble also thought they were hugely fun :-)
This idea could easily be adapted to make spiders, rabbits - anything you like really.

WE USED:

* empty milk bottle (plastic)
* scissors
* googly eyes
* green and red paper
* glue/blutack
* pencil

Cut the base from an empty milk bottle or other bottle made of flexible plastic (juice etc...) about halfway down the bottle. Cut the base as shown in the photos above and below, leaving four 'legs'.

Bend the end of each 'leg' section at the end so that the tab faces outwards.

You can decorate your frog however you like (paint, glitter, stickers, contact) but we just glued green circles cut from construction paper to the top.

To make a tongue for your frog cut a strip of red paper and wind it firmly around a pencil.

Using blutac attach your frogs eyes and tongue.

To make your frog jump you simply press and flick on the back end (as you would with toy jumping frogs).

The best mid air action shot I managed to get of our jumping frogs!

Bubble had a stack of fun doing this activity, we'll be making more and decorating them in different ways for outside play at the park.

I cut a lilypad from another sheet of construction paper and we took turns to see if we could jump our frog onto it from varying distances.
You could make numbered lilypads and use them as a counting game, jumping the right number of frogs onto each, or just one frog onto correct answers.

Bubble insisted that her frogs needed water, so a sheet of blue paper and we had ourselves a pond :-D

This idea has been shared on ABC and 123 Show & Tell Blog Hop.

Toddler Gluing Activity

Squeak isn't too interested in either painting or drawing, but loves experimenting with glue. We use a childsafe glue in case of those taste testing moments (Clag or homemade with flour and water) and she loves squishing and smearing the glue as much as she loves sticking things to it. She is 18 months old and it does get very messy, especially when the paper tears and gets saturated in one place.
To fix this problem I've started giving her a newspaper to glue her bits and pieces onto, there are so many layers that it doesn't matter how soggy it gets and she finds the pictures and patterns interesting as well. I also try and find lots of things of different textures for her to glue, her favourites so far being;

felt offcuts
textured or corrugated papers/cardboard
flattened patty pans
popsticks
matchsticks
cellophane (very messy though!)
lolly/chocolate wrappers

Please note : Clag + Newspaper can = stained hands and other things! I always put down a waterproof tablecloth and keep a washer close by :-)

F is for Friends

This afternoon we made another sound wall activity for the letter 'F'. While Bubble was at preschool I cut some felt shapes so that we could make some toilet roll people when she got home. I based the hair colours/styles on a couple of her little friends at school and she thought it was the best thing ever making miniature versions of her mates! :-D
The superhero toilet roll dude was just for fun, I got a bit carried away with my felt cutting...

WE USED:

* felt (fabric, coloured paper, ribbons etc...)
* toilet rolls
* textas/markers
* 'googly' eyes
* glue/blutack
* scissors

I precut some felt hair and clothes.

Bubble got busy gluing it all together. She found positioning the felt tricky at first but got better and better as we went along. We ended up using blutack to attach the eyes instead of glue as it didnt stick all that well (and Bubble enjoyed moving their eyes around :-D).

Bubble's mini friends :-)

A mini superhero - isnt he cute!

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