Animals With Spots And Stripes

We have half a container of cotton buds to use in our craft projects after Squeak decorated the bathroom floor with them recently, so today we used some for painting with. We have used them for unstructured painting before but this time we did something a little more structured and talked about animals with stripes and spots.

WE USED:

* paper
* lead pencil
* black marker/texta
* paint
(we used orange, yellow, brown and black)
* cotton buds

To make the animal pictures minus their stripes and spots I found images on the net and then traced them straight off the screen onto my paper using a lead pencil (be careful not to press too hard against the screen). It was easy to trace what I needed onto my page and omit what I didn't need, then later I went over the pictures with black marker.

We used yellow, brown, orange and black paint to suit the animals we were using.

Some animals Bubble knew the colours and patterns of, but others like the Dalmatian dog weren't familiar to her so we looked them up on the Internet and chatted about what markings they had.

Paper Plate Stencils

Sorry for the long delays between posting, we are doing a lot of work on Bubble's ABA program which is taking up most (all really!) of our spare time. Both Bubble and Squeak are showing benefits from it though, so we're very excited about that :-)
This activity is one we have done a few times before using both ice cream container lids and paper plates. We find the paper plate versions last for quite a few uses and the the lids last indefinitely.

WE USED:

* paper plates
* scissors
* pen/texta
* paint
* paper
* paint brush

Draw your stencil designs directly onto the base of your plates (or lids).

Cut out carefully using scissors or a craft knife.

Happy Earth

For Earth Day yesterday we did a simple sorting activity similar to our "How Do I Feel" game. Since Bubble is so young I kept the concepts simple, such as; 'recycle and reuse', 'walking instead of driving our car' and 'planting trees' for some of our happy earth statements and 'wasting water', 'throwing our rubbish on the ground' and 'not taking care animals and wildlife' as some of our unhappy earth statements. For older children you could use more complex ideas or even focus on one topic such as pollution or looking after the ocean.
I wasn't sure if Bubble would be very into this activity but we've played it five times over since yesterday afternoon, so I think it was a success!

WE USED:

to make our earth faces:

* paper plates
* blue food colouring
* paint brush
* green paint
* permanent marker

For the game:

* paper plate earth faces
* blutack (or sticky tack)
* statement cards
(made by cutting up speech cards and writing statements that have a positive and negative impact on the Earth. We made seven for each but you could do as many as you like!

Our Earth faces were made by painting paper plates with blue food colouring to get a watery effect, then adding green paint after it was dry.

We then drew on our faces with permanent marker
and stuck them to the wardrobe door with blutack for our sorting activity, but this could easily be done on a table top or the floor too.

I read out our statements one by one and we talked about what each one meant and which side it should go on.
Some Bubble found easy, such as 'looking after animals and wildlife' and 'wasting our food'. Others were harder such as 'using lots of chemicals in our home' and 'conserving our water'. This game was such a great way to introduce lots of topics to Bubble that we had never discussed before without the whole thing being overwhelming or too confusing. She could identify with the Earth feeling 'happy' or 'sad'.

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”

Easter Egg Roller Painting

Today we put an Easter twist on marble painting using our plastic eggs, both girls really enjoyed this activity and made quite a stack of artwork!

WE USED:

* tray
* paper
* large marbles or rocks
* plastic eggs
* paint

hint: we put newspaper and wet paper towel nearby to make it easy to remove the eggs between paper changes.

We used large marbles inside our eggs to weight them, but you could use anything really - a few smaller marbles, stones, sand etc...).

The marbles fit inside perfectly and made the eggs roll better through the paint.

Bubble rolling and tipping her tray to make Easter egg paint patterns.

Squeak loved this activity, we had trouble getting the tray off of her to change her paper before the piece she already had disintegrated into a soggy mess! :-D

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

Cardboard Tube Car

Recently we came across some things called 'cable clips' at our local dollar shop and I knew exactly what I was going to use them for - making cars out of toilet rolls of course! This was really easy to do and the girls enjoyed playing with the finished product, if you cant find cable clips you could also use plastic wire or split head pins to hold your wheels on.

WE USED:

* cable clips (from the Dollar Shop)
* toilet roll tube
* scissors
* paint
* marker/texta
* 4 x soft plastic bottle lids
* sharp pointed craft knife/safety pin/thick needle/nail

First cut a flap in the side of your toilet roll. This will be where your dolls will sit so make it to size. Leave one end uncut and fold the cut section up so you have a little windshield.

Using your craft knife or needle pierce a hole in the centre of your bottle lids.

These are the 'cable clips' we used to attach our wheels to our cardboard tube car, you could also use pipe cleaners threaded through and folded over, plastic coated wire (the type used for gardening) or split head pins.

Our finished product - so cute!

Princess doll going for a ride in her new wheels.

Squeak got to play with this first while Bubble was at Kindy and enjoyed herself immensely. She was too little to be left unsupervised though in case she worked out how to remove the cable clips!

I love where the knight ended up...

Hehe :-D Luckily our car has a roomy boot.