Thursday, April 30, 2009

R is for Red Rainbow Rabbit

For the letter R, I drew and cut out a capital R on red paper. Next the children glued on the other colours of the rainbow that I had already pre-cut. (This part took a little coaching on my, they all did it together and I would tell them what the next colour of the rainbow was.) The strips of colour were too long so I cut the extra off to make it look like an R again. The ear, google eyes and pom pom tails were then glued on. The children drew their own noses and mouths and ta-da we have a rabbit!!!:0) The children liked the finished product but I found this art project was not very open-ended or in other words did not let the children use their imagination too much. I found I was doing a lot of the cutting and guiding with colours - oh well, onto the next letter....

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Fishing!!!

Materials needed: tubes from wrapping paper, ribbon, magnets, hole punch, coloured paper and felts. For the poles all I did was hole punch one end and tie some ribbon on. At the other end I covered a small magnet in paper and drew a worm on the paper then I hole punched that to the ribbon. I cut out fish shapes and let the children decorate them with felts. (In the past we have used glitter the make the fish sparkle but this time it was just felts.) I drew a 'lake' on a big piece of paper put the fish on top and voila - time to go fishing!!

They get so excited when they catch one!!!

Monday, April 27, 2009

Fun with Flour

It still amazes me how much the kiddo's love playing with flour. I had an old bag the was less than half full and I put it on some cookie sheets and let the kids go at it!! They played for a long long time!!! (Note to self - do this activity again!!!!!heehee)
This is one activity I only do outside as it can get pretty messy!! The kids were bringing over all sorts of toys to try out in the flour but today the big hit was the paint brushes. I bought some paint brushes at the dollar store and normally I give them a bucket of water and a paint brush and they love 'painting' all the outside toys and furniture!! Today it was a huge hit in the flour!!

As you can see by my son's face, clothes and hands the flour was lots of fun!!!:0)

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Q is for Queen

The children decorated the crowns first with a variety of stickers. (I tried to find stickers that were sparkly or looked like jewels) I then drew a Q on purple paper and the children added their crown, google eyes, and drew a face if they wanted. My oldest drew a necklace for her queen!

Monday, April 20, 2009

Sensory Table

I was not sure what to call this post, basically I have two plastic bins that I normally have water in and therefore I call it the "water table." For this post I wanted to show some other fun things that I have put in the bins for the children to play with. Also just as a warning - I own a Shop Vac!! Otherwise I think this table would be an outdoor only toy with some of the things I have put in it!!!:0)
Back in October we made coloured rice, let it dry then added a few cups to let the children scoop the rice with!!

I had an old opened package of pasta that I found in the back of my cupboard when I finally got around to spring cleaning and thought I don't want to feed it to my family so why not let the children play with it?!!! I added a few trucks to make a bumpy road then the children added their own cups and fry pans!

Yep that is what I did, I brought sand inside!! I have not done this very often as we do have a sandbox outside but it was for my daughters 'Little Mermaid' themed birthday. There is sand, shells and shovels. It can get very messy and I find it dusty too! (This sand was bought in a bag from Toys R Us). Of course the children had a great time but I think I will leave sand for outside play!!!:0)

This is what I call Puff Wheat Cereal! You can buy it in huge bags in the cereal isle! The 'puffs' are soft and squishy and the children loved to play with it!!!!! It does get everywhere but was very easy to vacuum up!
On those winter days when it was just too cold to go outside, I brought the snow inside!!! It was lots of fun and you can make it a science experiment too showing them the melted snow the next day!! One year I did this I had mittens for the kids to put on while they played but I found the mittens were a bit of a pain. I think children are not as sensitive to the cold as adults are and they had fun playing in it with their bare hands. I also had shovels and spoons for them to use!

Jesse made a few snow castles!!
This one I just did at Easter time. I put water with bubbles and a whole bunch of plastic Easter eggs!!


What do you put in your 'sensory' table? Or do you have any suggestions of other things I can put in for the children? If you have any other ideas for me I would love to hear them, just leave me a comment!!!:0)

Super Blog Award

Thank you, thank you, thank you Sandy at Just for Fun!! (Check out Sandy's blog - it is AMAZING and she always has such great ideas!!) You made my day!! I don't feel like my wee ity bity blog deserves an award, especially compared to all the creativity I have seen on other blogs!! I really am humbled!!
I am not going to follow directions as I should. I think ALL the blogs I read are SUPER so if you want to pass this award onto your blog - feel free!!

Friday, April 17, 2009

P is for Pig!

Once upon a time there were three little pigs.....
I drew a P on pink paper and let the children paint with brown paint using sponges. When the paint was dry they added google eyes, ears, piggy noses and pipe cleaner curly tails! As I post this I was thinking I should have let the children finger paint and get messy like pigs do - oh well maybe another time!!

Thursday, April 16, 2009

O is for Octopus

Materials needed for these guys are blue, yellow, red, white and black construction paper, glue and different colours of bingo dabbers. For the legs I cut strips of blue and folded them accordian style. Let the kids decorate and glue!

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

N is for Night!

A black paper N, some star stickers, cut out a yellow moon, some felts! Simple and fun!

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

M is for Mountains

Cut out letter M in green, glued it to blue paper. Gave the children some felts to colour with. Glued on triangle 'snow'!!

Monday, April 13, 2009

A Lovely Easter!

My three adorable bunnies - Abigail, Emma, and Jesse!
After the egg hunt we had bunny pancakes for breakfast! Banana ears, strawberry noses, blueberry eyes, I was going to do a blueberry mouth but it was Easter so we did chocolate chips for the mouth!! Added a little whip cream and of course a chocolate egg! Breakfast for champions!!heehee
Then the children decided to make their own creations!! Jesse said his was a shark!


Abby changed her bunny around! - notice the chocolate is the first thing gone:0)

Emma made a funny face!!

Later we made more marshmellow bunnies!!

and cupcakes for dessert!! Yummy!!

Sunday, April 12, 2009

L is for Leaves

I drew the letter L on a piece of paper and had the children pick out leaves and glue them on. We did the letter L back in the fall so we had a wonderful choice of colourful leaves. We collected leaves for several days from around our neighbourhood, the children loved it! I am amazed at how the leaves have stayed on the paper and not crumpled into little pieces!

Saturday, April 11, 2009

K is for Kitten

The girls wanted brown kittens so we used brown paper and they coloured with crayons. Then we cut out shapes for the nose, mouth, ears and wiskers and again used google eyes!

Friday, April 10, 2009

Letter J

J was a tough one for me, I could not decide what to have the children make for the letter J. Finally I decided on printing off pictures of J words, then had the children colour, cut and paste them. The pictures are of jelly beans, jelly fish, jaguar, and jack-in-the-box!

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Yummy Bunnies and Easter Crafts!

I will apologize now for some of the sideways pictures!! I take all my pictures the same way and I have no idea why when I load them, a few get turned the wrong way!!!!ARG!! If anyone knows what I am doing wrong or how I can turn them after they have been loaded, I would love to be able to correct it!!
Now onto my yummy bunnies!! Here is what I used: 2 big marsh mellows for the head and body, 11 small marsh mellows for the ears, hands, feet and one for the tail, mini m&m's for the eyes, a chocolate chip for the nose, licorice for the whiskers, and I had some red icing on hand so I used that for the mouth. The ears and tail I put on toothpicks and everything else I put on using icing.
Here is another picture showing one bunny's tail!
Another bunny eating a carrot!;0)

The 'carrots' in the picture are just cheese's in small sandwich bags tied together with green ribbon!!
The little chicks in the next picture turned out so cute (you just have to turn your head sideways - grrrrrrr!!) I cut out an egg shape for the body, orange for the beak and feet, google eyes, a feather and the wings are the child's hands attached with brads.

I believe I got this idea from Ramblings of a Crazy Woman. Paint the children's feet white to make bunny ears. The face is a decorated paper plate!
This idea was from No Time for Flashcards. The eggs are made out of a cereal box. I cut out an egg shape and had the children paint them. Let it dry, glue the chicks in with a feather and the crack in the egg is attached using a brad again!

These were tiny baskets that I printed off the Internet, the children coloured. I cut and glued.
Here is what they look like from the back!! Fuzzy little tails!!:0)
My three as well as the two little girls I look after all love to marble paint!!! Here are the bunnies they made and I loved how they turned out!! I cut bunnies out of yellow paper, put them in a shoe box with some marbles and pink and purple paint!!
They also made some Easter eggs with the marbles!!

Another sideways picture, this is a cute little card. The idea is from Ramblings of a Crazy Woman! The children coloured the egg on the front then you lift it up.......
.......to the Easter Bunny!!!!

I is for Ice cream

This sweet idea I also got from the blog No Time for Flashcards! Materials needed are tan and pink construction paper, cotton balls, hole punch circles, glue. Cut out the I shape and draw lines on it to look like a cone. Glue on pink 'ice cream' cotton balls and decorations. My daughter did not want cotton balls so she used tiny hearts to decorate her ice cream!

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

H is for Hearts

I cut out the letter H and many different sized hearts and let the children glue them on!

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Easter Art

I drew some large eggs on paper and put them on our art easels. I put out some 'spring' colours and ta da these are the beautiful eggs the children made!! I love simple art ideas!!:0)

This is an egg cut out of paper, let the children decorate, hole punch the top and put a ribbon through.
Another egg drawn on paper and I put out bingo dabbers!! For older children you could put out all sorts of materials for them to decorate with!


Here are our cute hand bunnies! I have seen these on several blogs but got this idea from Ramblings of a Crazy Woman. The carrots were made by a sponge that I have.



More sweet hand bunnies. To make these you just need to paint your child's hand, pointer finger and ring finger! The noses are the children's thumb prints. When the paint drys, add face.