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!

Using Photos to Make Cards

 

Using photos to make cards is probably one of the easiest and nicest ways to make a special card for somebody.

I really enjoy photographing natural elements and both my Mom and Mom-in-law's gardens offer plenty of opportunity to do this. To make a special and very personal collection of cards for each Mom, I used store-bought craft cards and I chose a selection of favourite photographs taken in their gardens. They both loved it. :)

More card making ideas:

Squeezy art cards - a fun arty way to make cards and Using your children's art to make cards.

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.

O is for Octopus

My alphabet posts are in no particular order. I'm going to do the letters that Little One has already covered at school. You can find letter "a" here.

A long while back we did some activities O is for Ostrich and not wanting to be boring, I decided this time around to focus on an Octopus. 

First off we did this awesome paint activity, which Little One loved. He was completely oblivious to the final idea I had in mind and simply enjoyed the process of it. I often remind myself that it's really the process and not the product that's most important. Us mommy bloggers tend to want a nice final product to photograph for our blog and we can forget that it's about these little people and the p.r.o.c.e.s.s. :)

To do this activity, I took acrylic paint, mixed it with some water so that it was runny, and gave him some syringes. As you can see from the picture, the activity was a hit. I then took some white paper and, with his permission, rubbed it over his paint creations. The result was some pretty paper to make an octopus from. 

 

I would love to tell you that he enjoyed cutting out the tentacles and sticking on the suckers... but he was not at all interested. So the final craft here was all my doing. I cannot lie. :)

He does like having the picture up in his room though, so I'm glad about that.

The next craft was this cute sock octopus - a Soctopus! I first saw this idea on Pinterest and I love sock softies. I've made a few before (a bunny, a cat, a caterpillar/butterfly and a snowman). You can see them here, if you like.

Follow the wonderful and easy directions for the octopus at The Gold Jellybean. (I just didn't do that last part, where Shaleah added pipe cleaners to the tentacles).

Till next time, have fun!

The Lego Movie Memory Game

 

So we have been having a super holiday and have spent a lot of time relaxing at home,  playing,  crafting, watching TV. 

We have also been to see The Lego Movie and my boys LOVED it. I managed to get through the movie without being thoroughly bored or agitated (been there!), so it's not too bad for grown-ups either. :)

We came home with the theme song "Everything is AWESOME" ringing in our heads and the boys were also super-psyched to play Lego. 

I had spoilt each of them to a minifigure after the movie and thought it would be fun to use the cute sheet of characters to make a Memory Game. Little One has just recently started playing Memory Match and really enjoys it, so my guess was that the game would be a winner.

Good call. The boys loved it.

To make this you will need two sheets of characters from inside The Lego Movie minifigure packets. Cut them out and paste them onto punched-out circles. If you don't have a circle punch, cut small squares of white cardboard. It will work just as well.

I knew that if they played with the cards as much I expected, the cards would get damaged quickly and they would also not be very easy to pick up from the table. To get around this, I stuck the circles onto bottle tops using Prestick (stick putty).

We all ended up playing the game - even the Dad. Easy Mommy-made Fun!

Have you checked out The Lego Movie website yet? Pretty cool. You can even create your own Lego movie character. Till next time, have fun!

PS. Have shared this at The Weekly Kids Co-Op Party.

Getting crafty with Shopping Bags

 

 

I really like Woolworths' re-usable shopping bags. Besides using them for shopping, I use mine as going-out bags to throw in extra clothes for the kids and I also love using them as beach/swimming bags. I have even made a few as Baby Shower gifts for friends, because with baby there is always so much stuff to carry around. And, I don't have a picture, but I once gave one as a teacher appreciation gift - I chose a black bag and added a nice red felt apple.

   

You can even decorate your bag to match a season or a special holiday.

All the designs here were cut out from felt (except for the bunting - I used an old pair of jeans for that one) and glued on with my glue gun. Really easy and fun to create. :)

Have you ever decorated or embellished a re-usable shopping bag? I'd love to see it. 

Till next time. 

PS. The Christmas tree template you can find here at Whimsy Couture Sewing Blog and the bunny here at Punkin Patterns.

A is for Astronaut

We recently moved and have been settling into our new life, so blogging and crafting with the children has definitely taken a back seat for awhile. But, I plan to be making a super-duper effort to get back into the swing of things here on the blog and of course with the kiddos. Going to join me?

My little one is now 5 years old (oops, I mean 5-and-a-half... he constantly reminds me!) and in his Grade R/Reception year at school. Here in South Africa our school year starts in January, so his first school term has just ended and we have a wonderful 2 week break coming up.  He has been very busy with a new letter of the alphabet every week at school and to consolidate what he's been up to in class, I want to do some extra alphabet activities at home. I plan on sharing these with you, as we tackle different letters of the alphabet. 

To start off ... a is for astronaut.

An easy alphabet craft inspired by one I saw at totally tots. Little One blasts off to the Moon :).

We chatted about that very first landing on the moon and looked at some pictures on the internet. The paper we used was black mat paper from an old photo album. It was perfect for drawing on with chalk. The chalk led us outside and Little One continued writing on the paving. An easy fun way to practice letters.

Next project. Puffy paint. I have wanted to try this for ages, so this idea from Allison at  No time for Flash Cards was perfect. 

No lies, this was messy! 

The Recipe:

125ml/half-a-cup of white glue

375ml/one-and-a-half cups of shaving cream

A few drops of acrylic black paint

Mix it all together.

I cut open a cereal box (like Allison suggested) and Little One had great fun spreading this all over the cardboard. I was really surprised that he enjoyed the texture of it so much.

We made the moon craters with a bottle top. Go over these a few times while the paint is drying to get a nice effect. We left it to dry overnight before playing on the surface the next day.

Another very easy and fun astronaut craft is to make toilet roll astronauts. Cut and glue some white paper to a toilet roll and draw some astronauts (and aliens if that takes your fancy) . Both my boys enjoyed this activity.

Don't you love the vintage spaceman? (top picture) He is from my husband's childhood. :)

For more space ideas, check out my Pinterest Outer Space page.

Till next time.   

PS. Have shared this at The Weekly Kids Co-Op Party.

Missing In Action

I've been MISSING IN ACTION! 

In case you have been wondering why, the shortest version of the story is - We are moving. Not up the road; not elsewhere in our Province (which is similar to a State), but rather right across the country, to a place I visited last for a short holiday in 1991... hehe... that's nervous laughter. 

My husband moved up eight months back and I have been single parenting (sort-of) for all this time, with him commuting home about once a month. We are finally, thankfully, all together again as a family and moving to our new home in January. So I am afraid it will continue to be rather quiet here on the blog for a little while longer. 

I want to wish all of you a very BLESSED and PEACEFUL Christmas. I really appreciate you reading and following Love and Lollipops. I hope to be back blogging, playing, creating and sharing with you in the New Year.

Be safe till then, 

Georgia

Le Bonheur Crocodile Farm {and a craft}

 

Before November is over and out, I want to share this absolutely awesome family outing we went on a couple of months back. The Le Bonheur Crocodile Farm must be one of the Cape's best kept secrets. 

If you haven't been, you should go :). 

The venue is so pretty - they offer weddings and birthday parties. You can order a picnic basket, or like us, simply have lunch at the restaurant, where you will find Croc pie and Croc springrolls on the menu!

We went on the guided crocodile pond tour and learnt so much about the African Nile Crocodile. On tour you even get to touch a baby croc. The kids did this with ease. I, on the other hand, had the hibbie jibbies and couldn't wait to hand the croc back. (There's nothing cute about a baby crocodile!)

The pond tour was highly informative. Something we learnt was that one of the differences between an alligator and a crocodile, is that the crocodile's teeth are more visible than the alligators, when his jaw is closed.

 Another nice activity offered is catch and release fishing in the dam. All in all a super outing and very reasonably priced. 

Our outing was followed by a fun activity and craft. We made some simple crocodiles with pegs. Little One painted and I glued on teeth and eyes. Next time, I'd make the teeth smaller, as they got all bent when we opened the croc's mouth. 

 For Little World Play, we recreated the croc pond tour with blue rice, our peg crocs and duplo people. 

Till next time - Happy playing.

Spring time Kindness

Late Winter and Spring are truly beautiful in the Cape. With our wet Winter, there is simply an abundance of green and fields of wild flowers all over. I am in awe of God's incredible gifts to us in this beautiful place. 

I do the school run three times a day. Each drive takes me past our local garden Centre and they often have trays of flowers right on the road, encouraging the passersby to come in and shop. At this time of year it's usually Petunias and Pansies... I love Petunias and Pansies.

 

For this little project I collected as many small plastic pots as I could (people seem to be happy to part with these) and I painted them white. The boys and I planted Petunias and I then gave them to anybody that I thought would enjoy them - just as a random act of kindness. I mostly gave them to people I know well, but want to do this again and bless some unsuspecting neighbours. Just leave one on their doorstep with a sweet note. That would be fun to do with the children. :)

One six pack of Petunias is very inexpensive and can bring six smiles... six different smiles. :)

Is it Spring time where you live? What kind of Spring time fun do you get up to?