How to make an Aircraft Carrier

 

Inspired by a picture in Little One's all time favourite book, I thought it couldn't be too hard to make an Aircraft Carrier and I knew Little One would love the idea! This little man is C.R.A.Z.Y about all forms of military transportation.

I grabbed a big cardboard box (and cut off the lid), a big juice box and some smaller boxes we've been collecting. Using the book mentioned (My Big Book of Cars, Ships and Planes) as a guideline, I cut out the top of the aircraft carrier, after marking the lines in pencil.

That little hand you see in the picture was just there to help my camera focus on my blank cardboard canvas. :) If I had a bigger piece of cardboard available, I would have cut the Carrier a bit longer in shape. 

Then we got to decorating the top of the Ship, using a black marker, some white masking  tape (painter's tape) and a yellow highlighter.

Jerry Palotta's, The Boat Alphabet Book, is another one of Little One's favourites and this inspired our tower buildings.

I used my glue gun to glue it all together. Only thing to be aware of before you glue it, is that the top piece of board must be balanced correctly on top of the juice box, as the tower buildings make it heavier on one side.

And there you have it. Have fun!

S is for The Very Busy Spider

When I planned these "S" activities, I completely forgot about this post in my archives. Do go have a look if you want some more spider ideas. :)

Do you know the book The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle? It's a great book with lovely illustrations.  In the hard cover version, the spider web is raised, so it's fun to feel how it gets bigger and bigger in the story. It's a very simple story line, so it's an ideal book for a young child. 

I've seen so many lollipop spiders on the internet and this inspired our very busy spider lollipop . For the head you need one green pipe cleaner. For the legs cut two orange pipe cleaners in half. Simply wrap the pipe cleaners around the lollipop stick to make the spider.  The eyes and mouth were cut out from felt and glued on.

Our very busy spider also got her own real life web. Little one punched some holes in a paper plate and was then supposed to thread the string through the holes to make the web. I was told, however,  quite emphatically, that he doesn't like threading, so I did end up doing it myself. If you can get your little one to do the threading, it's really a great fine motor activity. 

We also found some Very Busy Spider activities at Making Learning Fun.

I thought it would be fun to build a "S'" with little spiders. The "S" we used was printed from Confessions of a Homeschooler. If you go to this link and look for a-z lowercase worksheets, you will find all the letters of the alphabet ready to print. Thank you Heather!

Our last bit of spider fun was a small spider building station (Idea via Fantastic Fun and Learning). To make the play dough, I used my favourite recipe - no stove required! Here it is:

1 cup flour
2 Tbs cream of tarter
1 Tbs vegetable oil
1/2 cup of granulated salt

Add some essence for a nice aroma (orange, almond, peppermint)

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl and then add a cup of boiling water. Stir until combined and turn it out onto a floured board and knead until smooth. Colour can be added to the boiling water or at the kneading stage. Just a tip - wear gloves when kneading - the food colouring does stain your skin and it isn't very easy to clean off. Store your dough in an airtight container. 

To make black play dough, I combined blue, green and red food colouring. I kept adding and mixing it until I was happy with the colour. 

Here are some more fun Spider crafts on the blog:

Bottle Top Crafts

Spider Party

Till next time, have fun.

PS. Linking to The Weekly Kids Co-Op, For the Kids Fridays @ Sun Scholars and Kids Activities Blog.

Fun with Humpty Dumpty

There are a lot of eggs around at the moment - have you noticed ;) - which got me thinking, who's the coolest EGG around? 

Humpty Dumpty of course. 

With that in mind we have been having some Humpty Dumpty fun over here...

 A bottle top Humpty.

Build a wall by matching the number to the dots. 

Little One loved this activity.

Our favourite Book about the famous Egg. 

All the King's horses and all the King's men...

(Peg craft inspired by the amazingly creative lilla a)

Shortbread Soldiers.

(Plain biscuits from Woolworths)

Capital H activity from Making Learning Fun.

Finger Puppet Humptys.

I have plans for these - you will have to wait and see. :)

More Easter fun to come. Till next time.

Air Show

A nice way to spend an afternoon is to have your own "Air Show".  The boys (well Big One really) made a whole fleet of aeroplanes and they put on an Air Show for me and the Dad. We then had to rate each plane, based on design, flight etc. The winner was surprisingly this strange round-shaped plane...

Want to see a real Air Show? Last year August we took a visit to the Stellenbosch Flying Club,  where we watched small aeroplanes taking off and landing in the most beautiful setting. With snow-capped mountains in the far distance, we listened to air traffic control and had a yummy meal while doing it. It was  a super way to spend an afternoon.

 

Then more recently we took our US cousins to the airport (Cape Town International) and we spent the morning watching the aeroplanes arrive and depart - exciting stuff! I can highly recommend both of these outings if you have some aeroplane fans in your home.

Cool dude Little One watching an aeroplane being refueled.

Till next time...

Lego catalogue ideas {and a Giveaway winner}

Lego catalogues... they are loved in my home. They are read and re-read until they completely fall apart, but you dare not throw them away.

Big One has always loved lego.  Little One has been playing with the bigger lego blocks since he was very young, but it was about a month before his fourth birthday that the "mini lego switch" went on in his brain. He now plays with the mini-figurines day in and day out. I have felt quite sorry for the cars and construction vehicles that have been so loved up until now. It reminds me to enjoy every stage and phase - it doesn't last forever.

So seeing all these poor falling apart lego catalogues, I decided to give myself a whole lot of work and make longer lasting lego books. To make, I used nice A4 sized coloured cardboard and Flip Files. I cut down the double lego pages and pasted it onto the card and popped it into the book. Now hopefully these special catalogues can last for a bit longer.

After I had made these, I realised the wonderful opportunity that this book provides for language enrichment. Any lego-loving child, who struggles with language, would enjoy looking at these action-packed pages, and it then provides a nice tool for speech therapists to use to engage a child and talk about the picture. You can also use the different scenes to "find things" on the pages. 

And one more idea... I have also converted some of the pictures into puzzles. 

I wonder what else I could do with a lego catalogue?

One last exciting thing before I leave you - I recently had a giveaway and I do have a winner for you! Thank you to my international readers who try as they might couldn't access the Little People's Products Facebook page. I gave you the extra entry for your effort. And the winner...Briana Richardson :). Congrats Briana...I'll be in touch with you shortly. 

Till next time...have fun.

Robot Fun {Felt Robots}

Time for another mini theme - Oh how I do love a theme!

My boys have been enjoying the movie Robots and a favourite new book from the library, called Wendel's Workshop, so I thought it perfect timing to have some robot fun.

Felt robots are the easiest to make. No sewing required and you don't even need a felt board, simply a nice big piece of felt for the children to make their designs on. Little One wasn't keen on the activity, but Big One made some amazing robots - so much better than mine.

Mine's the middle orange one. I love the detail in Big One's designs. Yes, even a pirate and exploding robot - so cool.

This last one is a birthday card that I made for a little friend. I stuck a piece of felt to card stock and added this sweet girly robot. I didn't glue the robot pieces on and I also made some extra pieces so that she can make another robot if she wants to. This is a modified version of an awesome felt card I saw here at The Mucky Macbook.

Some more Robot Fun coming up. Stay tuned.

PS. A felt robot set makes for a great gift, don't you think?

Sharing this at:
Show and Tell @ ABC and 123 
For the Kids Friday @ Sun Scholars 

Silly Valentines

Oh I can be silly - it's one of those things I like about myself - I think my children like it too. 

So I had great fun and giggles thinking up silly Valentines. The kiddos joined me. Big One with his own ideas (as always) and Little One enjoyed punching out little hearts... everywhere... he loves my punches.

Big One's... 

My Inspiration:  

My Heart Is Like a Zoo

A delightful book by Michael Hall - twenty animals all made from heart shapes. And the best part, twenty different emotions and behaviours for you to chat about with your child. It's a super book that can easily be used in play therapy too. Do click on the link above and grab the kids for a super little trailer of the book. Really cute.

Heart Zoo (from Katherine Marie's Happy Hearts Theme of the Week)

My dear friend Katherine inspires me so and makes me look at every piece of pretty or interesting paper in a new fun visually creative light. If you do go visit over there, I know I've probably lost you for now, but that's okay - I won't blame you. :)

Happy Valentine's day!

Fingerprint Fun

                                                                                  

 I remember seeing an Ed Emberley Fingerprint Drawing Book a number of years ago and it immediately piqued my interest. I looked high and low for these locally, but couldn't find any in stores or at the library. So I was very excited to find out that Ed has a terrific website and that I could easily order his books (at great prices too) online.

In the spirit of our Doctor Doctor fun and checking out the human skeleton, I was tickled to find a cute fingerprint tutorial of  
Mr. Boney Parts on the website.

Big One's version...

Using the super Melissa and Doug Ink Pad, Big one and I spent some time creating fingerprint art. I won't tell you who made what, but I will say this -  my creations are definitely "cute", whereas Big One's are "cool".

 

Could you tell who made who?..I'm sure you could :)
 

Let's Play "Doctor Doctor"

"For children to 'play out' their experiences and feelings is the most natural, dynamic and self-healing process in which children can engage." Garry Landreth

Little One has spent a fair amount of time around hospitals and Doctors in the past few months, having undergone two operations in the short space of three months. He has had blood drawn, injections, hep-locks in his hand - there have been a lot of needles involved!

After our first hospital stay, the impact of these events on his play was immediately evident. Suddenly he was playing "Doctor Doctor" every chance he got and the main story line of each little scenario was needles and injections - he and I swopping the patient/doctor role countless times. 

I share this because it's such a good example of the natural healing and therapeutic value that play has. We as adults can talk about our trauma and in so doing work through feelings like fear, anxiety and powerlessness, but children don't have these words, or ability to express them. These emotional experiences that are important to a child or have significantly impacted on them, will often show up as repeated behaviour in their play (Garry Landreth: Play Therapy. The Art of the Relationship). In play therapy, we refer to these as themes.

 (It's okay little dinosaur. It's all over. - Even a T-rex deserves top class medical care :))

After reading How Do Dinosaurs Get Well Soon? (Jane Yolen and Mark Teague), we added dinosaurs to the game and Little One has enjoyed treating the sick dinosaurs in hospital too. Recently I have noticed a marked decrease in his request for "Mommy, you're sick and I'm the Doctor". This probably means that he has sorted out some of his feelings about these experiences and is emotionally ready to move on. The healing power of play at work! :)

Stay tuned. Some more doctor-related fun coming up.