Footprint Earth

Bubble is at Kindy today so Squeak and I did an easy little painting project for Earth Day together. Ordinarily Squeak isn't overly interested in painting and drawing projects, but this one involving feet and paint was a big hit with her (and the results are so cute too).
I think this activity would look fantastic done on a larger scale with even more kids involved!

WE USED:

* blue and green paint
* tape
* scissors
* newspaper or drop cloth
* shallow dish or box for paint
* paper/cardboard to make a large circle

(we made our circle by taping together sheets of recycled office paper and then using this method of drawing a circle with string and a pencil. I just held the loose end in the centre of our paper rather than using a tack though).

After we had made our large paper circle using the method linked above we squirted blue paint all over it and used our hands to cover it all over. Squeak loved this part and squelched the paint gleefully through her fingers and even used her elbows to spread it across the paper.

We left the circle to dry (while Squeak had a bath!) and then squirted our green paint into a shallow casserole dish for the second part of our earth painting activity.
Squeak really enjoyed squishing around in the green paint with her feet and then running across our 'Earth' to make her little patterns.

She worked out how to slide her painty feet around and we got some even better effects!

Our finished Earth looks even better in real life and is a very colourful addition to the lounge room wall :-)

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

Things We Love About Earth

Earth Day is coming up on the 22nd of April so today we talked about the things that we like about our planet. Bubble is very much into the solar system so this activity was just about the highlight of her day :-) I loved hearing the sometimes obscure but all very sweet things she came up with!

WE USED:

* play dough (green and blue)
* pop sticks
* permanent marker

First we rolled a big ball with our blue dough then Bubble went to town with the green dough to create her own version of Earth.

We wrote all the things she loves about Earth on our pop sticks, my favourites would have to be "pears and blueberries to eat" (neither of which she actually likes to eat) and "ponds with fish in them" :-)

We are going to leave our Earth on display for the rest of the month and add to it after each day. It's been a great way to talk about things we enjoy and also explore different elements of our planet.

Playdough Eggs

When is an egg not an egg? When it's made of play dough!
This was an extension of our 'learning about eggs' activities and Bubble in particular really enjoyed it. I wanted a more interactive way of teaching the girls the parts of an egg without wasting a real one, and this project worked well.

WE USED:

* plastic eggs
* play dough (white and yellow)
* small laminated picture of a chick, or small plastic toy.
* child safe knife

To make our play dough eggs I took some white dough and made a well in the centre, then rolled some yellow dough to make a 'yolk' to go inside.

Then folded it over and gently rolled the whole thing into an egg shape. The play dough then went into a plastic egg.

I made quite a few for the girls to explore, all with yolks in the middle except for one with a chick inside. Before we cut open our play dough eggs we talked about how chicks develop and hatch.

Bubble loved cracking open her eggs,

and cutting them each in half to reveal the yellow yolk inside.

She was especially delighted to find the chick hidden inside one of the eggs!

Learning About Eggs

With Easter coming up there are eggs everywhere at the moment, so I thought now might be a good time to teach the girls about them. I kept the labels simple since they are both so young, but you could add in the more complex labels quite easily.

WE USED:

* felt (white, cream and yellow)
* scissors
* egg diagrams printed from the net
* laminator
* blu tac

I found a good diagram of an egg on the net and printed it out, then made a 2D version for the girls to assemble using felt.

Bubble especially loved this activity, naming each part (shell, albumen/egg white, yolk) as she put them in the correct order to build her 'egg'.

We talked about how chicks develop inside the egg using laminated pictures and charts (also sourced through Google).

A simple matching game of the life cycle of a chicken. Each loose piece has blutac on the back so it can be matched to the chart.

'E' is for Elephant

Well, elephant and egg carton which is what we made our little pachyderms from :-) The girls were pretty excited with these (more excited than they should have been actually, not sure if I should be worried :-D), and found a lot of different games to play with them.

WE USED:

* egg carton
* scissors
* blutack
* marker/texta

Cut a section from your egg carton as shown above.

Turn it over and cut a front panel for the trunk, and a little tail at the back if you want to. One set of 'legs' will be longer than the other two, just fold the ends over to make little feet and even up the height.

For the ears on one of our elephants we cut two more joined egg cup sections and trimmed the sides until they were quite shallow.

Using blutack we attached the ears and added a few details with our marker.

For elephant #2 we cut some ear shapes from the flat card on the egg carton lid. I liked these ones better because we could move them :-)

Two cute little egg carton elephants.

'E' is for Eggplant

Our next 'E' wall project was eggplant. We made our own paint colours using blueberries and spinach leaves - Bubble really loved using the mortar and pestle and was so excited to see our white paint changing colour.
This experiment worked so well that we'll be doing it again tomorrow using other foods to make different colours, it was a lot of fun!

WE USED:

* mortar and pestle
* white paint
* blueberries
* spinach leaves
* paintbrush
* cardboard (we used a side cut from a cereal box)
* black marker

We used a squirt of white paint and three blueberries to make our purple paint.

Bubble using the mortar and pestle to grind the berries and white paint.

Our purple blueberry paint turned out so well!

Our sheet of card with an outline of an eggplant drawn onto it, ready for painting. Eggplants come in every shape and size, you can't go wrong really! :-)

Bubble painting the body of the eggplant with the blueberry paint.

Spinach leaves in the mortar ready to be pounded into green paint.

It only took a few leaves to turn our white paint this lovely shade of green.

Our painted aggplant up on the sound wall.

'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.