Paper plate puppets

There are some many things you can do with paper plates and a little imagination, but here's a very simple craft to do. 

M asked if she could draw on the paper plate instead of paper, so obviously I wasn't going too stop her, she sat quietly with her plate and pencil case and concentrated on her drawing, once she had finished she looked up and said "look Louise it's you!" 

She then held it to her face and pretended to talk like me. Then she said "I need a stick...." As she ran off to the art box for a rummage around, she came back with a packet of large lolly sticks. "Can I use these?" she's asked I helped her to stick it onto the back of the paper plate. 

M's brother J found it very funny listening to M pretending to me and instantly wanted to do one for himself, so we all sat there drawing different people and questing who was drawing who, before long We had everyone, M, J, Me, Mummy, Daddy, Granny, Grandad and Big brother O. 

I then explained that we could use them to make a puppet show, I set a small childrens table up on its side and wrote a "puppet show" sign on the white board which I placed at the front, we then arranged chairs, teddies and dolls up in front of the "theatre"

I told M and J they could tell their own stories and I would watch with my teddy and doll friends. They took turns to tell each part of their story which they made up as they went along, Bouncing ideas off each other for the next part of the story. 

For the rest of the afternoon many more stories were told with us all having a go at being the story teller and all being the audience. I loved the way they got to talk about different scenarios and talked about different emotions such as happy, excited miserable and grumpy. 

A great social and communication activity to get children talking and using their imaginations. 

Dinosaur eggs

Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs! 

 

One of my current charges favourite things at the moment is Dinosaurs! If you need to know anything about dinosaurs such as Who eats meat?,  Who eats plants?,  How did dinosaurs die?, Which dinosaur is the biggest? Etc etc then J is the little man to ask ( warning he will become a friend for life if you ask too many questions though!) 

There's only so much dinosaurs stomping roaring and hatching from an egg I can take, So I needed to find something which would not only keep J interested but was also going to let his twins sister M and I move away and do something different. 

M and J have started school this year so time for arts and crafts and other such activities has become limited, that's when I decided we would do something which could be done in stages. 

Paper mâché is one of my pet hates - I can't stand the stuff it's boring, sticky and takes forever! 

But every child has to experience it at some point in their lives, so now was the time to use it to create Dinosaur eggs. 

As it was the first time for J and M, I kept it small and went with the flow. I started by blowing up 3 small balloons, and cutting up large pieces of kitchen paper and set to work glueing the paper onto the balloon, I told them both they have to cover it until you couldn't see any of the colour from the balloons - this took about 3 layers and LOTS of glue. 

I would recommend a few more layers to make them stronger but attention span was fading (me just as much as the children) 

We then hung them up to dry over the weekend, I explained we needed to let the eggs "grow" and get stronger before they become real dinosaur eggs. (Just to add to the imagination they don't really grow but do become stronger as they dry) 

By the time I had returned on Monday they had dried and were harder, so we set about decorating the "eggs" with a bit of colour, I let J and M chose their own colours and we all painted them differently, once all painted again we hung them to dry overnight. 

Once the paint had dried it was time to find out if all our hard work was about to pay off or become a complete waste of time. 

I carefully popped the balloon and watched in anticipating as the "egg" held its shape! 

We have since been using our dinosaur eggs to add to the dinosaur world/islands and dinosaur figures for small world imaginative play. Because we all decided on different colours J says that this is because there are different dinosaurs inside each - Diplodocus, Triceritops, and T-Rex to name a few. 

3D modelling

I've been collecting alot of resources lately so we could do some recycled model making, and have finally got round to finding the time to a larger project. 

I let the children freely design and make what they wanted to make and explained to them to ask if they needed help but otherwise they can do what ever they wanted. 

I set about making my own model so I could role model some skills to them. 

I spoke to the children about what they had chose to make and asked what they felt they needed. M made a pig out of an egg box and J made a volcano. ( I made a crocodile). 

At just turned 4years old there was a lot of the activity which the children could do themselves therefore only needing little bits of help to hold bits in place whilst they sourced the glue tape or other materials. 

Although they took a while to get going and keeping themselves engaged with the activity they finally achieved their creations and were very proud to take ownership of their models at the end. 

We used a large selection of resources but you could provide your child with as much or as little as you'd like, here's a few of the things we used... 

*various shapes and sizes of boxes 

*felt 

*glue (PVA, tacky glue and stick) 

*foam shapes 

*various papers or shapes, sizes, colours and textures

*scissors - both straight and patterned 

*sticky tape 

*coloured tape. 

There is some much that can be done with a few things that would have otherwise gone in the recycling bin or are laying in the back of the art cupboard for that special activity that your never do! 

Let your child's imagination run wild. 

Treasure maps

I'm sure a lot of us remember making treasure maps when we were younger. So when M was sat freely drawing her own treasure maps and drawing X marks the spot on her little green and blue "world", I knew now was a good time to share this classic craft activity with her. 

We had some paper plates in front of us so I thought we would use these as our base, I encouraged the children to draw their own maps on the paper plates with coloured pencils. We spoke about where the maps would lead to and they told me about how we need some water and some grass. We then discussed about how was need a big X to mark the spot of the treasure. 

Whilst they were all busy drawing their maps I set up a tray with a couple of tea bags and a few coffee grains I poured a little water over it to release the tea leafs. 

I then explained that we needed to use the tea bags to colour the "map" brown to make it look old as this is what treasure maps look like. 

I found it was easier to use the tea bag like a sponge to "paint" the map. Once the whole map with brown and finished we left them to dry. 

M later on found some pirate stickers in the craft box and stuck these on to give more detail to her map. The children have since been using their maps during their imaginative play and role playing pirates looking for treasure. 

Shape making activity cards

I wanted to organised an activity which met the needs of both of the children I care for, the children are 4 year old twins but have different interest and require different support with development. M is very creative and will sit for hours painting drawing and mark making. Where as J is easily distracted and quickly losses interest with such activities. I needed a new and different activity which could be structured enough to encourage M to be creative with different tools and skills yet free to create and do what J wanted to do for as long as he wished too. 

I printed and laminated some basic shapes with the name of each shape printed on it too. 

I then put them in a silver tin box along with some coloured craft sticks, lolly sticks and straws cut at different lengths, which made it seem like a completely new thing instead of just another craft activity. 

I then left the tin and activity cards out on the table and let them both discover it when they were ready too. (which wasn't long!) They both looked at the resources before asking "what have we got to do with these?" I replied with "what do you want to do with it?" By this point M had already taking one of the cards and started exploring the straws whilst J was rummaging in the tins pulling out all the lolly sticks. 

M then started to use the craft sticks to place over the top of the star shape to create a star. J was asking me to help in name the shapes, I took this opportunity to encourage some letter and phonics learning by getting him to help read the words and repeat the name of the shape to me afterwards. M then announced how she knows already which one she had and pointed to each letter making the phonetic sound before saying "star".  This has given them both new words such as pentagon and hexagon as well as learning about how a rectangle has two short sides and two long sides where as a square has four sides the same size. 

We then spoke about how many sides the shape have and counted how many straws or sticks we needed to make each shape. 

They both then sat and created the different shapes talking to each other about which ones they were doing and colours they've chosen to create it. J then used straws to create his own rectangle on the table with out the card. I asked him what he's made to which he replied "I made a rectangle, look its got two long sides and two short ones here, you see!?" 

M then created her own picture of a map with two "X marks the spots", blue sticks for water and green for grass. 

This simple and easy activity has enabled both children to develop their fine motor skills, numeracy and literacy skills, needed for starting school.