Giant Paper Poppy

We really enjoyed making these Giant Paper Poppy Flower Decorations. This is where we found the template and watched a video of how it's done. The video is really quick though. So I took some photos to show you some of the steps.

I decided to print the template out at half
the original size so that we only needed
two sheets of paper for each flower.

We used chopsticks to help us form the folds. This is quite
tricky for little fingers. But Ruth did a great job of
cutting her petals out. Excellent fine motor and scissor practice.

Use a glue gun to make a cup with three of the petals and then add the remaining 4 around the outside.

Add the middle and a stem and there you have it.

Decorating paper with coloured bubbles

Mix some paint powder with a small amount of water.
Add dish washing liquid.
Add enough water to fill the container about a quarter.
Mix well.
Blow to form coloured bubbles.
Quickly place your paper on top of the bubbles (quickly because they do pop).
Repeat with other colours.
The result: Lovely home made wrapping paper.

It's also fun to use just the primary colours (yellow, red and blue) and see what colours you can create with the tiny bit of mixing that happens.

Autumn trees

We have had so much fun watching the trees change and it was great to make a poster to remind us of it.

First we used white crayon to draw some wispy clouds.

Then use blue paint for the sky (lovely for the children to magically see their previously invisible white clouds).

Use fingers for the branches. Biggest fingers first and then smaller and smaller.

Keep those fingers still when you do the print.

Lovely trees ready to be decorated.

Glue some sand on the ground and then start gluing on your leaves. Start with the green tree and work your way down, talking about how the leaves have changed and how different the trees look.

Autumn place mats

The children will love making their own place mats and perhaps a few extra to give as gifts.

Dry the leaves in a flower press for a few days to make sure they are nice and dry and flat.

Give each child a laminating pocket and show them the one side they need to put their leaves on. They can decorate it any way they like. Just try not to have too many overlapping as it gets too thick and also leave a little space around the edges.

Laminate and see their excitement at using them at the next meal.

Melting coloured ice

Use some food colouring to make some ice in the 3 primary colours.

We had our three primary colours a little bit back and then the 3 glasses in between where we mixed two primary colours. This helped to show the colours of the rainbow. On the far right we put all three primary colours in to see if we could get brown.

Enjoy watching them melt and mix.
Our final colours. The orange and purple looked better with more light behind them.

We created our own colour wheel. Sorry about the shine of the flash though.

House item flowers

We started off with basic flowers made from coloured lolly pop sticks and cup cakes. But then the creative juices started going. How can we spice it up with things around the house.
Green coloured pasta could work nicely for the grass.

We glued small yellow cupcake shells to the top of milk bottle lids and added those to the centre of the flower.

I then cut up some tins and we created some pretty butterflies. I used a glitter glue in my glue gun to make their bodies and poked small pieces of wire in while wet for the feelers. Some blobs of glue and glitter on the wings where the final touches.

A good lesson on looking around you and noticing all the different colours and shapes that you will find.

Spring leaves

The texture that was created by using the sponge to paint the sky was really great.

Then the girls picked some long grass to use as their "brush" to pain the grass.

We started with a really thick brush for the trunk of the tree.

And worked our way through the different size brushes to create all the branches.

The next day I made a small leaf potato stamp and we added just a few small leaves.

It helps having more than one stamp if you have more than one child wanting to paint.

We also headed outside to look up close at the small leaves starting to grow on the trees.

The next day we made a bigger leaf stamp and added just a few more leaves.

The next day we made our green paint thicker by adding some finger paint. We used a brush to put the paint onto the potato each time....

and got some lovely dark stamps.

We had a great time watching our tree go through it's spring change.

Our inspiration was watching the wonderful transformation on some of the trees in our garden.

Just beautiful to see how these leaves start out, all folded up and then open out and grow so big.

Blossom hand trees

Day 1 - Use old toothbrushes and spray blue paint for the sky.

(Optional extra: When you tell Dad that you pained with toothbrushes today, tease him and tell him you used his. :D)

Day 2 - Paint brown paint onto the child's hand and a little way up their arm. Ask them to open their fingers wide and make a print for your tree.
Use a paintbrush to touch them up.

Day 3 - Place some green paint on a small plate and use their toes to make prints for grass.

Day 4 - Make pink popcorn and glue onto your trees.
I added some pink food colouring to the melted butter which I flicked onto the popcorn using my pastry brush. This way you get to eat the left overs. :D

Lovely trees full of blossoms.

Flower art

Today the girls decided to pick some of the weeds that were growing in the lawn and decorate the garden chairs.
This is great for fine motor development for younger children as they try and get the flower the right way around so the stem can go through the holes. It just takes a few seconds to point out the different colours they have used (or point out some different colour in the garden that they could use).
A fun activity giving them opportunity to be independently creative.