Christmas Crafts @ Love and Lollipops

I love this time of the year, don't you? So on the eve of December 1st (YAY!), I thought I'd dig into the archives and share these with you. Just to get you in the mood ;).

Milk Bottle Santas

Imagine a Santa Ten Pin bowling game with these...

Christmas Cards

It sure is special receiving a homemade Christmas Card. I didn't last year, but I really do want to make some this year.

Bottle Top Snowmen 

Have some fun making bottle top snow people.

Teddy Bear Ornament

Make a teddy bear ornament from two pipe cleaners. I have included a nice tutorial in the post. 

Coffee Filter Christmas Trees

Pretty for some Christmas art work or cards. 

Christmas Tree (Tennis) Biscuits

Easy to make and yummy to eat...mmm

Sock Snowmen

These make for sweet little gifts that the children can make for their friends.

Matchbox Advent Calender

You have one night left to make this :)

A Christmas Sensory Box 

A sensory box filled with Christmassy goodness. 

Christmas Eye-Spy Bottle

I never posted about the bottle seen here, but if you go to the link, I share how I made another Eye-Spy Bottle. This is great fun for the really little ones.

Little Town of Bethlehem Craft (from toilet rolls!)

My favourite Christmas craft of all...this precious little town of Bethlehem. I love how this one turned out...who would have thought that toilet rolls could be turned into something so special?

Have fun preparing for the BIG DAY, but remember it's a season...Enjoy it all :)

Bottle Top Turkey

Happy (Belated) Thanksgiving!

...to all my friends and family in the US :)

Cloud Dough

I've seen around the net that this is called "Cloud Dough", but I actually think that this is closer to the real store-bought Moon Sand than the recipe I shared here.  Either way, you can't go wrong. It's a whole lot of fun.

This "dough" isn't really doughy at all. It's fluffy and light and mold-able. Little One enjoys playing with it with spoons and small containers. It does make quite a mess, so I prefer that we only play with this outdoors.

So the recipe is simple:

8 cups of flour

1 cup of oil (baby oil or vegetable oil)
Please note: Baby oil shouldn't be eaten, so supervise if you use the baby oil option :)

Mix it all up and P L A Y !

I cannot recall where I saw this super recipe for the first time, but there's a nice post with some extra links to what other Mommy's have done with Cloud Dough at Learn with Play at home.com.

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.

S is for Spiders {and a Giveaway}

Where have I been this month of October you are wondering?

Well, I have had two tummy bugs - really awful!

Both boys have had it too - more of the awful.

Not a great month in the healthy department, but we have all survived and are better. And now, speaking of bugs...

S is for Spiders... and Spooky and Scary and... Sensory box! 

When I saw these plastic glow-in-the dark spiders in the store, I knew a sensory box was to be made - a scary spider sensory box. I dyed some rice with red and blue food colouring, added the spiders and presented it to the boys in the dark - before bedtime - I know, it doesn't sound right? Well thankfully, they loved it. I think the only one who was "scared" was me - I actually jumped (and gave a squeamish yelp) when one of the spiders landed on my hand. Really. Big One's response to the sensory box was "It's brilliant" - to get that reaction from a ten year old is pretty cool I think.

A few days later I took the box out again - in daylight this time. I added some string (pretend web), snakes and the letter "s" from my alphabet set. It was great to see the boys enjoying the box again. I also added tweezers and a magnifying glass. We compared sizes; we counted; we took the string and made "s" shapes - all in all a great activity :). 

 

Oh yeah, would you like to win a fabulous 26 piece lowercase alphabet (like the one I used here)? This fantastic product is South African born and bred and made by Little People's Products.

If you would like to win, this is what you must do: Please head on over to their website and come back and tell me which product you really like. For a second entry, pop on on over to their Facebook page and "like" them and then come back here and tell me you did. And for a third entry, share this competition on your Facebook page if you have one. Please leave a separate comment for each entry and some contact details. The competition is open world wide and the closing date is Monday the 5th of November. Good luck!

O is for Ostrich

Little One has been introduced to the alphabet via the Letterland program at his school this year - a super program that I like very much. I, on the other hand, haven't focused much on alphabet activities at home, but recently decided that we should. Added to that, Big One gets homework every day and Little One also wants to have homework, just like big brother. So I thought I'd prepare some things for him to do in the afternoon while Big One is busy. 

The first letter I chose to focus on was "o" - it's so easy to identify and it's a great first sound. 

Just by the way, here in South Africa we teach lower case letters first and we teach the phonetic sounds (as in "a" is for apple, not ape). 

I chose ostrich as our first "o" activity and we started with identifying the letter using our fantastic magnetic alphabet. (Available from Little People's Products)

I added some ostrich handouts from Carisa's  Tot School Printables @ 1+1+1+1. (If you don't know this site - it's amazing!) 

We did some colour recognition and colouring in.

Little one then cut out each ostrich (Each ostrich is in a square, which makes this a nice cutting activity).  He helped me staple all the little squares together to make a small book - a nice reminder of the activity.  I also added in some maths language, by asking him which picture he wanted in the book first, second, third, etc, as I put the small pages together, before we stapled it. 

I also made a copy of the "shapes" page and asked him to "show me the ostrich in the oval, triangle etc." He used his dot markers for this one. These were very kindly sent to us awhile back by Donette from The Journey. They are a favourite during homework time. These ostriches can also be cut out to make a book... or flash cards.

There are lots more ostrich pages available from 1+1+1=1. 

And a  bottle top ostrich craft...

The boys and I visited the National Geographic website to get some extra information about the ostrich and we watched a You Tube video of an ostrich running - something they do rather well. (We actually ran around like ostriches - using our "wings" to steer and make sharp turns - this got some giggles). And we learned that an ostrich can cover up to 5 metres in a single stride - that got us measuring and estimating - it's about the length of our kitchen!

Little One calls it "fun homework". This must mean I'm doing something right ;). 

Till next time - happy learning :)  

PS. Little One is 4.2 years.
PPS. Sharing this at It's Playtime.

Squeezy Art {A repost}

I have never done a repost of an old post on Love and Lollipops before, but after 2 and a half years of blogging, I know that there are some oldies, but goodies, in my archives. So for those of you who happen to remember this post - firstly, thank you for still reading (!) -  and secondly, I hope you won't mind the repeat. With a short spring break coming up here in South Africa, this struck me as a super way to spend a rainy afternoon - spring may be here, but it's still raining  :).

This art activity has been one of Big One's favourites for a long time.

To do this activity, you need some squeezy bottles filled with different paint colours. I found these bottles at my local plastic shop and filled them with acrylic paint, using a vaccine syringe. It is a bit time-consuming, but well worth the effort.

 

Once done, all that is required is some squeezing , folding and fun! First squeeze and then squeeze some more. Use as many colours as you please. Fold your page in half and then carefully open your page to reveal a colour surprise!  My son enjoys this process so much, that getting him to stop is usually the only problem.

We are always left with a great number of these interesting paint surprises, so I decided to use them to make some greeting cards. To create these, I cut them into small squares and arranged them onto pre-cut coloured cardstock. I really like the end result.

Have fun :)

PS. Shared at the Weekly Kid's Co-op.

A felt mat and an unexpected geography lesson

Who knew that making a felt play mat would lead me deeply into the world of the Artic, Antartica and the animals that live there? 

Let me share some facts.

The Artic is a sea, surrounded by pieces of land and it is in the Northern hemisphere. Antartica in contrast, is a piece of land, surrounded by sea in the Southern hemisphere. Animals found in the Artic include the polar bear, the Artic fox, seals, walrusses, the very interesting narwal whale, the snowy owl and reindeer (caribou). Penguins are found in Antartica... here in South Africa too :)... but they are not naturally found in the Northern hemisphere.  

So with this in mind, can you tell what's wrong with that top picture? Polar bears and penguins together are a no-no!

As for those orcas (killer whales), they are found in the southern and northern seas. What I actually had in mind, putting them so close to the shore line, were the orcas of Peninsula Valdes, on the coast of Argentina. These particular orcas almost beach themselves to catch seals on the shore line and it's the only place in the world where orcas hunt in this way. If you want to see more, some amazing footage is available on You Tube.

Anyway, back to my mat. As you can now tell, I have not only mixed up the 'Artics', I went and threw in some (non-icy) Argentinian coast line too. (I write this smiling sheepishly) Geography in high school? No, I did History. Having said that, this is a great example of how one learns by making mistakes. (Well, that's my positive spin on it anyway). I also shared all my mistakes with the kiddos, so hopefully they will remember some of these rather important details.

Now onto the how-tos: To make the mat, cut two biggish pieces of felt, white and blue, and either sew or glue them together. I used my good friend the glue gun - the glue dries instantly, which is the best part for me  - I'm impatient that way. 

I added a picture to show you how I cut and glued the caves. I first glued the sides of the cave and then folded and glued the back part of it. 

To make the igloo, I used a plastic ball (those that you find in ball ponds) and firstly cut the top third of the ball off with a cutting knife (be extra careful when doing this). I then cut out the door with a strong pair of scissors (a kitchen one). To finish off, paint it white and glue on some felt squares. Sweet hey? I must just add that I also painted the inside white, but only after this photograph was taken.

We have quite a nice collection of realistic looking plastic animals, but unfortunately didn't have any polar bears. I really wanted some to add to this mat, so I purchased some black bears (from a local plastic shop), painted them with white acrylic paint and then added the eyes and nose details with a permanent black marker. I thought they turned out quite nicely.

And lastly to add some extra interest to the mat, I covered some white polystyrene pieces with white felt too. These pieces were cut from a nice deep dish that some strawberries had come in. You really don't have to cover them; you could just use as is. By stacking them, it provides some extra places for the animals to walk under or over.

I do hope that you like my (not the Artic/not the Antartic) icy felt mat. Have you ever made a felt mat? Let me know, I'd love to come and see. Till next time, happy playing.

PS. This mat was inspired by the awesome mats at Shady Tree Diary.  

PPS. Shared at It's Playtime.

Pom Pom Snowmen

So easy to make, these sweet little snowmen would be cute in a Winter sensory box. 

 

To make:

two pom poms (different sizes)

a nice fluffy pipe cleaner for the scarf (bent to make the scarf shape)

two small black beads for the eyes

a piece of orange felt for the nose

a coloured stick/toothpick for the arms  (cut in half and pushed in the sides)

No explanation required I think. Glue these together...just like in the picture.  

Till next time :)

PS. For more snowman fun, see our sock snowmen, and our bottle top snowmen (actually people).

A mini ice rink

It's been a really cold Winter...brrrrr. One of the coldest in a few years here in South Africa. It has snowed in places that don't see snow very often. And, on our distant mountains there have been snow covered peaks almost everyday.

Having said that - we never actually got to play in any snow. Little One has yet to experience it up close and personal. Hopefully next year we will head off to those mountains and go and play.

So with all this really chilly weather, wintery activities have been on my mind. I do realize that Spring has officially sprung, but I'm going to (quickly) share some of our Winter fun in the next few posts, before the cold weather is gone for good :).

So first up is a mini ice rink, with little ice skaters as you can see. This was inspired by a similar rink at the amazing Play Create Explore blog. 

To make the rink, I used a cookie tray, added water and let it set overnight in the deep freeze. To make the ski poles, I added some masking tape to toothpicks, so that they would fit into the little men's hands. Popsicle sticks cut in half became the skis and I attached them to the men with Prestick. I must add though, that as soon as the popsicle sticks got wet, the Prestick came off. But it was fun while it lasted. 

Both boys really enjoyed this activity and Little One was fascinated by the ice and asked me to immediately go and make some more. It made me think that we definitely need to do more "ice play" - perhaps that can be on our agenda for the long hot summer that is probably on its way :). 

PS. Sharing this at It's Playtime and For the Kids Friday @ Sun Scholars.