Frosty Paper Plates

Boy had a day at home on Wed and we decided not to waste the day.  He spent 1 1/2 hours decorating paper plates with a winter theme.  Girl joined in too, as did I.  I put a selection of cookie cutters in wintery shapes out along with blue and white paints, glitter paint, and some bubble wrap for printing with.

Girl enjoyed sploshing paint and glitter all over her plates.  Boy went for more sophisticated designs using the cutters.  He put down layers of blue paint and glitter and then used the cutters to put white shapes over the top.

Then he filled in the shapes with paint.

Some good painting and fine motor skills developing here.  The bubble wrap was fun to print with and made a lovely snowy effect against a blue background.

These would look lovely hung up somewhere as Christmas decorations.

As the activity went on we talked about wintery weather, ice and snow.  Later on we read 'The Gruffalo's Child' and boy read one of his reading books called 'The Snowman' from the Biff, Chip and Kipper series.  We played some more with our snow dough (will post about that at a later date).

Snow Dough and Stick Man

I have not posted for quite some time.  My time has been taken up with other things lately and the blog has fallen down my to do list somewhat.  In spite of that we have still been doing lots of things both at home and at nursery but I have just not got round to writing about them.

Anyway here is an activity I've prepared for our toddler group.  We have spent the past two weeks looking at the ever popular 'The Gruffalo' and 'The gruffalo's Child.'  This week is the turn of 'Stick Man.'  Tomorrow we will be reading the story with the children and I have made some 'snow dough' for them to play with.  I simply added white paint and some silver glitter to my usual dough recipe.  I must confess the dough has a slightly different texture to normal, more spongy but still workable.

I made some stick men using twigs.  I stuck googly eyes on them and painted a nose and mouth with paint.  Plenty of wintery cookie cutters and the children can create whatever they want to.

You could adapt this activity and get the children to make their own stick men for small world imaginary play.  This is one of Girl's favourite stories so I'm hoping she'll really enjoy what we have planned for tomorrow!

Holiday Diary Scrapbook

If you read our blog regularly you will know we recently went on a family holiday camping near Scarborough.  Both children kept things from the holiday to make scrapbooks to record what they did.  We finished them off this week after finally getting the photographs printed!  I bought a cheap pack of exercise books and used two of these.

We collected postcards, receipts, paper bags, leaflets, mini golf scorecards and took plenty of photos to stick in.  Both children took their books into nursery to show their friends and to talk about their holiday.

I wrote captions for some of the photos to add extra meaning.  I asked Boy to describe somethings and then recorded his own words.

This is a lovely thing to keep and look back on in years to come.  It was something to focus on whilst we were away, remembering to take pictures and collect things and stick them in.  It also provided a great opportunity for the children to talk to their friends and teachers about their home life.  Developing skills in literacy and speaking and listening too.

Eric Carle Birthday Artwork

Over at the fantastic An Amazing Child lots of people having been getting involved in celebrating the birthday of the children's author and illustrator Eric Carle.  He is most famous for 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' and his artwork is just beautiful and very appealing to children (and adults!)  This week at pre school we have created some paintings, prints and collages using Carle's techniques but this morning we decided to do something at home.

Armed with a selection of art and craft materials and some cake cases from the kitchen cupboard we set to work to make our own 3D collage of The Very Hungry Caterpillar.'

  We tore up some green, yellow and black tissue paper, cut up some green foam sheets and mixed some different shades of green paint.

Then boy painted the tops of the cake cases before using the other materials to decorate round the sides and top.

We used a circle of red foam sheet to make the face of the caterpillar.

Boy carefully stuck on the foam eyes and nose and had a little bit of help with the pipe cleaner feelers.

Then we used sticky tape to join all the cake cases together to make the caterpillar.

Finally we stuck him onto a sheet of white paper.  Looks lovely!

We had quite a bit of paint left over and Girl wanted to get involved so she came and did some Eric Carle style painting using the colours of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. 

Then she stated she wanted the tissue paper and she stuck bits of tissue over the painting to very good effect.

Pretty good piece of Eric Carle style work from a 20 month old.  Check out the other Eric Carle inspired posts and to find out more click here.