Animals That Live Underground

Recently we've been reading the book Diary of a Wombat by Jackie French and Bubble has become intrigued by the fact that some animals live under the ground.
Last night I made her a simple diorama that hangs on the wall and we played a sorting game using animals that do and don't live underground.
Not only did Bubble enjoy it but so did Squeak, so we'll be leaving it up on the wall for awhile!

WE USED:

* scrap cardboard
* small shoebox with a hinged lid
(could also use an unhinged box but attach one side of the lid with tape. Or use no lid at all!)
* coloured paper (green and blue)
* glue
* paint (brown)
* wooden building blocks
* animal pictures
* tape/blutack

To create our animals I taped animal pictures to wooden building blocks.

The diorama was made using a side cut from a box. I glued a small shoebox at the base and then glued blue and green coloured paper to both to represent sky and grass.

To reveal the 'underground' area the girls just had to lift the lid on the shoebox.

I painted a burrow inside the box and we talked a lot about how the different underground animals dug their holes and why they might live there.

We'll be decorating the backgrounds over the next week and also adding 'animals that fly' to our diorama too.

The animals that live above ground stood on the box.

The animals that live underground went inside the box.

The girls played with this for a long time. I'm glad I hung it in their doll play area because I can see it becoming involved in their imaginary play in many other ways too.

Out Of Date Food Play

Every few months I sort through our pantry and collect all of the out of date dry foods to store in a big box in the laundry. I also keep an eye out at the supermarket and discount stores for clearance items that are 'close to expiry'.
Out of date food like flour, oats, spices etc... are great for some fun sensory play without being wasteful, our girls love to 'cook' their own creations using real ingredients. Most things can be reused and stored in containers for another time and anything that ends up on the ground is easily cleaned up.
We pulled out some of our stash for a play yesterday while the rain held off, the girls had a ball and so did the local bird life once they spotted the piles of oats!

Homemade Chalk Board Labels

I've wanted some chalkboard labels for the girls craft jars for ages now, but have never gotten around to ordering any. I've been tinkering with the idea of making my own using plain white label stickers and blackboard paint, so today I gave it a go.
It worked perfectly, the results were even better than I had hoped. The stickers dried quickly, remained pliable and wiped clean with no problems.
You could use any shape or size of sticker to create the label you want, you could even use sticker sheets and then cut your own designs from them. Tomorrow we're going to try painting a sheet of plain ordinary kids stickers to see if we can make some labels in fun shapes.
Apologies for the awful quality of the last two photos by the way, I should have waited until daylight tomorrow to take them, but I'm impatient like that ;-)

WE USED:

* plain white label stickers
(I think you could actually use any type of sticker)

* blackboard paint

The process was very simple, I just painted straight over the sticker sheet with blackboard paint using a wide brush. If your stickers are particularly shiny you could do an undercoat of all purpose primer, but we didn't bother.
I really recommend doing this outside if you can, blackboard paint reeks!

The labels came off the sheet cleanly and wiped clean with no problems at all. Perfect!

Prime & Paint - Object Canvases

So I was cruising Ohdeedoh last night when I came across this :
DIY Painted Jars
How. Cute. Are. They?! I really want to make some for the girls craft shelves but in the meantime it got me thinking about how fun objects would be as canvases.
Today we dug out the primer and some paint, collected some old toys that were no longer played with and created some beautiful works of art that the girls are very proud of.

WE USED:

* objects to paint (we used old toys)
* paint primer
* coloured paint (we used acrylics)
* paint brushes

Some old toys destined for greater things!

I painted them with primer while the girls ate lunch today but the kids could also do this step themselves. It only took a few minutes to give each object a coat.
Spraypaint primer would be even faster if you have some. Spraypaint and I aren't very good friends though so I just used a brush.

The girls chose their paint colours and got to work painting their object canvases however they liked.

We ended up with some very colourful masterpieces :-)

This was a very inexpensive (free for us since we already had primer and paint) and fun way to make beautiful things for display.




Red Ted Art's Blog - Get Crafty

Wobble & Shake Balloons

This was really really fun and really really simple, definitely something we will be doing again.
These balloons remind me of a toy my brothers and I had when we were younger, it was a rubber medium sized ball quarter filled with water that went in crazy directions when you threw or kicked it.
We had a similar result today but with the added fun of a rattly noise.

WE USED:

* balloons
(we used thick helium quality ones but any kind will work)

* funnel

* filler for balloons
(we used dry rice. Dry beans, birdseed, gravel etc... would work as well. You could even use water or flour if you didn't want the balloons to be noisy).

We placed our funnel in the top of the balloons and used rice from our sensory table to fill it up. We varied the amounts we put in to see what the different effects would be.

Once we had enough rice inside I removed the funnel, carefully blew up the balloons and tied them off.

They were so much fun to kick and throw around and the girls loved the rattly sound they made.
There is of course always the possibility of these balloons bursting so if you are worried about mess maybe make this an outside game!

Red Ted Art's Blog - Get Crafty

Baked Doughnuts

Please excuse any typos, but I have a doughnut in each hand.
I came across this recipe on the fabulous Frills In The Hills blog a while ago and it's been on my 'to do' list ever since.
Well, on my 'try to do' list anyway, I'm not exactly a Master Chef (or even a Junior Master Chef) but these were seriously easy - the perfect kind of recipe to make with the kids.
The end result is so delicious, definitely better eaten warm but still nice the next day too.

Baked Doughnuts Recipe - Frills In The Hills

FaceBook Page

A Little Learning For Two now has a page on FaceBook :-)

I hope you'll come over and join us, I'd love to see the wonderful activities you've been doing with your little ones and share some older activities from our archives.
I will add a link button to the sidebar soon, but until then I'm hoping this link will work:

A Little Learning For Two