Pizza base & bubble wrap Easter crafts

I originally posted this last year, but it's a great activity to visit again ...

Today we started some Easter crafts. First we printed using pizza bases.

Using a pencil, make your pattern on the base.

Cover your design in poster paint.

I cut out some egg shapes for printing.

Then we added bubble wrap into the mixture...

and coloured sand, and did more printing.

It's so therapeutic, moving the paint around and popping the bubbles.

Some of our printed eggs and pictures.

It's a great tactile experience; and if your child doesn't like getting paint on their hands, it's great fun to just put some bubble bath and water on the wrap and have a play - it feels so nice!

Recycling Christmas cards - literacy and maths ideas

What do you do with all the cards once Christmas is over?  

Here are some ideas - you can take them as far as you want!

 

We took a selection of cards and started by going through them one by one, looking at them as though they were books and giving each a title. This produced lots of laughs, turning out to be great fun as well as thought provoking.

I then asked the children to chose a card that appealed to them and give it a title, list the characters and outline the story.  The next day the girls used their story planning to write the story in full.

 Jemima chose this card and wrote a story about some abandoned puppies.

Using a card like the one above, with younger children, you could chat about what is happening as a starting point and soon a story will emerge.

Name the puppies.

What are they looking at?

We also made jigsaw puzzles.

 The older girls and I looked at the Christmas cards and we discussed which cards would make easy and difficult puzzles. You can simply cut up a card into a number of pieces that your child can manage, or do what we did ...

 

 First, we cut the card into four pieces.

 Then into eight and so on, each time putting the jigsaw back together. We kept on halving the pieces until we could no longer put the puzzle back together.

Patterned jigsaws are more tricky to put back together than picture cards.

Reuben loved the jigsaw made from this card.

Can you think of a good title for the book with this cover?

A church for birds

Rosanna made this church for birds,

 just before she put it outside she had a panic,

 there was no toilets in the church!

Zingzillas

I had a rare day out with the two youngest.

Off we went to Meadowhall to meet the Zingzillas.

Look what happens when I go out without my big girls...

eeekkkk...
and they're off away soon for a whole weekend, how will I cope?

Elmer the Elephant model

Today Rosanna made an Elmer the elephant puppet.

I cut the top off a milk container.

Add some small squares of coloured paper.

Add some eyes and leave to dry.

Rosanna placed her hand in the container and said 'I've made an Elmer puppet'

Lego cities and Outer Space.

We've not had lego out for ages, so I decided to put some out, the next thing I know we have a complete city out of lego.

Imogen has written a more interesting description of the lego city, on her blog

http://horseridersdiary.blogspot.com/2011/04/sky-scraper-building-and-singing-group.html

I suggested to the girls that they could make posters advertising the city. We discussed essential things that would need to go on the posters, e.g. what was there, where it was.
mmm, now let me see, is it stories or storeys?!?

The finished posters, anyone fancy organising a home ed visit there?



I set out the tent for Reuben and Rosanna to play in, I imagined they'd play a nice game of camping, setting up picnics with the play food etc etc.

But no-one wanted to camp. Instead a trip to Outer Space was planned. Reuben's friend came round to play, he'd recently visited the space center, so soon they were making rockets. They each had a banana box, which the covered in tin foil and decorated. P told Reuben that a dog had been sent into space, so they began taking different toy animals with them on their voyages.
A couple of days later the rocket came back out, a quick repair job with tin foil and it was ready for the final details.
Decorating the rocket with go faster buttons and powerful booster functions!
Rosanna added the essential CD player for long distance space journeys.
Now, which CD shall we play?
A pig and Tiger also went into outer space.
This is how I found the telephone! I'm still waiting for a phone call from ET!!