Thursday 26 August 2010

lollipops

Saw some fabulous lollipops on bird crafts blog, and
had a most wonderful evening attempting to recreate. Rather an unsuitable activity to do with little ones but they could decorate afterwards or you could make for parties, if you are ok about sugar overload. I'm just really excited about how they turned out, rather a mess not perfect circles like bird crafts but we did get better and I'm happy with the results.
"School is like a lollipop it sucks until it is finished"
Anon

Thursday 19 August 2010

Peg Colour Match

What to do with a left over spring roll container? I can't be the only one who sees a piece of "rubbish" and thinks that may be useful, then has nothing to do with it? I had to think of something quick otherwise this "useful" piece of trash was going in the recycle bin for melting. So...

Place coloured card (you could also use patterned scrap book paper, I regretted not doing this) into each of the compartments.
Collect a peg for each of the interior walls. Stick a piece of card to each side of the pegs corresponding to the two adjacent coloured compartments of the wall that the peg is attached to e.g. the peg on the bottom right of this picture would have a purple and a green side.
This is a complex twist on basic colour matching, of course you could use the compartments for basic sorting also. I have made the card removable so that the can be taken out a put back into the correct places to ensure all pegs can be matched to colours, of course this is for extreme complex problem solving.

"There are no big problems, there are just a lot of little problems." Henry Ford

Monday 9 August 2010

Paper and Magnet Construction

This ingenious construction is made using a collection of tins and jars with metal lids. The paper is stuck to each tin with a magnet. Creating a fabulous construction with lots of additional possibilities.

A great idea for developing fine motor skills for cutting and problem solving with lots of opportunities to discuss mathematical concepts such as lengths, angles and directions. The opportunity to identify magnetic and non magnetic items, cannot be missed either this is how all these items were collected and to be honest by the end of the construction I had no idea we had that many magnetic items. Great for those children who are really into linking schema. I'm thinking that next time we get the pens out to decorate the paper too.

"Life is "trying things to see if they work"." Ray Bradbury

Sunday 8 August 2010

Creative Blogs


I simply have not had the time to post a blog this weekend, as every time I begin I am distracted by someone elses blog and subsequently have ended up being inspired to make something! So thought I'd post this weekend's blog discoveries, a bit of a creative theme going down, enjoy...
  • Paper and String: A crafting blog full wonderful ideas.
  • It's a Fiddle Fart: Another fabulous blog with loads of creative crafts.
  • I'm a Teacher Get Me Outside of Here: Some really inspirational outdoor learning/ creative projects, including some story stones very similar to mine.
  • Mama Rokas: A Wonderful blog with so many amazing craft projects to make for little ones. The site is in Latvian, but if you scroll down on the left their is a translator option which does an ok translation, but even without that well worth it simply for photos.
"It never ceases to amaze me how many ideas can stem from a single seed of inspiration." Bea

Thursday 5 August 2010

Painting with porcupine balls

Had a genius moment today (can't reach the kids paintbrushes in the cupboard, there's been a landslide so came up with this idea). Using porcupine mini porcupine balls attached to clothes pegs as printers/ paintbrushes, worked very well although the pegs were a bit temperamental holding onto the balls I would probably not use the pegs in future.
We usually use these balls for a colour posting game, so thought that it may be fun to paint by choosing colours using the dice from the game. This worked well and think it would be a fabulous idea to encourage children with autism to use a range of colours.

We then squirted paint onto paper in a tray, popped a ball in. After lots of tilting and some unpredictable ball movements we had a paper full of little dots. Would be lovely with white paint on black paper for snow!!! (shame I didn't photograph the end result)
"Enthusiasm is excitement with inspiration, motivation and a pinch of creativity." Bo Bennett

Tuesday 3 August 2010

Child Friendly Recipes

I always attempt to allow children to be as independent as possible and when going shopping or making cakes I think independence and learning is optimised if children are fully involved through the use of pictorial lists and recipes. I usually draw these but occasionally collect photos or draw on computer for printing (usually for times I need to impress!!).

The above recipe is just perfect for a single child to make with very little adult input, making four cup cakes. I used a chocolate cake mix in this recipe but as long as it is this ratio of dry versus liquid it should work. When you use the microwave for cooking cakes is works best if you put paper cases into silicone cases to help the cakes hold their shape. Also microwaves vary and this is an average time (don't have on highest setting in a 700watt oven).

This is particularly good for pre/ emerging readers especially those with special needs, as it is clear, gives sense of achievement and is motivating. Have pictorial recipes in role play area too.

Some other pictorial recipes I have created are availible from TES resources section (you will need to register=free)

"Omit and substitute! That's how recipes should be written. Please don't ever get so hung up on published recipes that you forget that you can omit and substitute." Jeff Smith


Monday 2 August 2010

More Story Stones


Have been rather enjoying painting these stones, think I may have started a new obsession. My favourite is this little baby that I actually copied from an image about an amazing story of a man who left these all over his town at Christmas to remind people of the real message, I am inspired. I think I may make a little stone nativity too.
"A little child
a shining star
a stable rude,
the door ajar.
Yet in that place
so crude, forlorn,
The Hope of all
the world was born."

--Anonymous

Sunday 1 August 2010

Story Stones



I saw this wonderful idea for story stones on Red Bird Crafts blog. I immediately set to work, making these stones but I used acrylic paint rather than fabric. I think they will be such a lovely resource for a quite fill in time activity with children taking it in turns pulling the stones out of a bag and using them as inspiration for creating a story.

"Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today." Robert McAfee Brown