Christmas is upon us once again and so it is time to get on with the decorations! How about making a Christmas Tree from scrap bits of paper, not only is it lovely to look at but it is also a great way to recycle paper and card that is too small to use for anyhting else. This is how we made it:

1.

• Collect scrap bits of paper
• scissors
• glue
• 2 pieces of card/paper (eg: A4 size)

2.

• Cut out lots of square shapes from the scrap pieces of paper.
• Glue them onto a piece of card/paper – I used A4 sized card here.

3.

• With help from an adult if necessary, draw a Christmas tree shape on the back.
• Cut out the Christmas Tree shape.
• Add a trunk shape from scrap paper.
• Add a bucket shape
• Stick them all to the A4 sized background piece of card or paper.

Mosaic Christmas Tree

This lovely activity will definately light up your home. Can you make a whole forest? Imagine the variety of trees you could make using different pieces of scrap for each one.

The knowledge and skills developed in this learning activity are:

• fine motor skills – through manipulating a pair of scissors and cutting out big and small shapes (which my 6 year old left-handed daughter finds very tricky)
• shapes – recognising a square, counting 4 sides
• recycling – this is always an important lesson, can you reuse something rather than throw it away?

If you enjoy mosaic activities, here is another: Mosaic Egg Card

As a teacher I used to ask the children to engage in many activities. It really helps if you remind yourself about what you are asking of them. On a course once, all the teachers were asked to decipher some text from another language. The point was that this is what we sometimes expect of young children to magically be able to do straight away. Writing stories is no different. We ask the class to write a story and expect them to be able to do this straight away, (imaging being asked to do this and you are just not in the mood). Certain things are needed to provide a creative environment:

• props – eg: a bag of mystery objects
• word prompts – eg: a selection of random word cards of people, places, animals and objects
• picture prompts - eg: photos from a magazine
• events that may have recently happened – eg: an earthquake

and so on…

Recently to challenge myself, I have joined PiBoIdMo. Here is what it is all about:

“PiBoIdMo is the picture book writer’s alternative to NaNoWriMo and encourages picture book writers to create one new picture book idea a day for 30 days.”

(Quote from Tara Lazar of Writing for kids while raising them.)

I am learning so much on this writing journey and it’s not all easy!

Things I have to consider that may also be relevant to guiding a child inn their story writing:

• A catchy title – that gives some indication of what the story is about
• The protagonist (the main character)
• Story arc – beginning, middle, end
• Story Challenge – problem and resolution
• Synopsis – can you write a paragraph about what your story is about, a bit like the blurb on the back of the book which children are taught about.

Writing a picture book for children is not as easy as it looks – can you write a story under 500 words – think concise and catchy!

This week is National Recycling Week. To find out more about it click the following link: National Recycling Week. I like to be involved in and encourage recycling as much as I can to my children. One of their chores is to sort the rubbish in to the correct recycling bins each week. This is a great way to teach them the different types of materials products are made with too.

Recycling is a topic that I feel is very important for children to learn about. Not only because you are teaching them to be resourceful and not wasteful, but having your children entertained or entertaining themselves for free is an extra bonus, especially in these hard financial times.

I have written about recycled Art activities before on this blog under Reduce, reuse, recycle. Also, this week the neighbours moved house and gave me lots of packing cardboard they no longer needed. They knew we were quite an arty household and would be able to make use of it rather than just throw it away. This is what me and my 6 and 7 year old made together:

Semi detached houses made from cardboard squares.

At first we were just going to make a home with a couple of rooms. But my son decided he wanted to join in so we built two homes side by side. The children have had great fun decorating the inside and personalising it to make it their own. Tonight they want to sleep in their new living quarters!

The side view - with windows and homemade curtains from scrap material.

So to join in and celebrate recycling for National Recycling Week, here are some great fun and learning activities you can do:

Boxes & Bears

Making a cubby house for your child or their toys is an activity which will bring joy and hours of fun all for free! What more can you ask for!

Cardboard Castles

This activity was so popular that visiting friends went home to copy it. The castle is now a year old and the children still play with it. It’s lasted longer than some shop bought toys!

Candle Holders

This activity is always popular when celebrating Earth Hour each year, we have quite a collection of recycled candle holders now.

Note: Adult supervision is needed for these activities as they require some help with the making and creating,plus fire is involved in the candleholder activity.

A mummy rising from the grave!

It is nearly Halloween and we have started to think about ways to decorate the house for the occasion. Last year my children and I created a Nativity Scene in Lego for Christmas and thought that we could do the same for Halloween.

A graveyard scene made from Lego

Now that there is so much variety in Lego you can create any scenario you want. The characters are great, they came from the mini packets you can buy that have one figure in them. My kids buy these with their pocket money they have earned. It’s a bit of a lucky dip what you get in the packet but that is part of the fun.

Here is how you can decorate your food table with nibbles for guests: Halloween

One of the first words a child learns to read is their name, so it only makes sense that this is one of the first words that they learn to write.

Recently, a lovely reader made a request for me to make her two ‘My name is…‘ Activity Books for her children which I was pleased to do. Here they are:

My name is…Angad

My name is…Eugenia

If you want to see if I have made a booklet with your child’s name on check here: My name is…‘.

Inside there are the following activities:

• initial letters to colour in
• things that begin with the first letter of their name
• writing their name inside a name guide
• reading comprehension with alliteration
• and 3 lovely name labels to colour in and decorate!

And finally I leave you with this great quote from Bill Crosby:

Always end the name of your child with a vowel, so that when you yell the name will carry!
Bill Cosby

Deck of cards, flamingos, clocks, cakes and a mouse in a teapot - perfect for a teaparty!

During the holidays my daughter had her 6th birthday. Every year we choose a theme together for her party. This year we chose the theme Alice In Wonderland. We had recently seen the Alice In Wonderland movie version by Tim Burton, but both my children preferred the Disney animation and the music in it.

The party was going to be at home and due to the shy nature of my daughter we treat it as more of a playdate and invited just a handful of her friends she had recently bonded with in her Kindergarten class. I dressed up as the Queen of Hearts which lead to great role playing with all the children who had also dressed up for the occasion. I thoroughly enjoyed my role as the Queen of Hearts as I was able to shout out ‘off with your head’ everytime a sneaky hand tried to steal one of the home made heart biscuits.

Home made heart biscuits.

This became a great learning activity, because my daughter was involved in a lot of the planning of the teaparty. She wrote party food lists, the invitations, the ‘Thank you cards after the party, she helped bake the heart biscuits, decorate the party bags and label the ‘drink me’ bottle and ‘eat me’ foods. It was alot of writing for her but she enjoyed it because it all had a purpose, which is great for her fine motor control and understanding that we write for real events.

It is very difficult to find party plates, cups and napkins with Alice on them, I did look ay many party websites and didn’t find anything. Yet the beauty about having an Alice themed Tea Party is that nothing has to match! So this is what I collected and displayed for my daughters party:

Decorations:

The table set for a tea party.

• 6 strings of suits (Spade, club, diamonds and hearts
• variety of teapots (some plastic toy ones, some from charity shop)
• toy mouse to put in teapot
• clocks
• small deck of cards to scatter on table
• bottle labelled  ’drink me’
• flamingos (very difficult to find, luckily one came free in a fast food children’s meal)
• real china teacups and saucers (children enjoy using real china, it makes them feel very grown up)
• napkins (we luckily found these at the last minute during a 2 day trip to the Blue Mountains. I had won a 2 night stay at a house in Katoomba. The prize was provided by Eden through Digital Parents – an online community for blogging mums and dads. On the way back from our stay we visited the Norman Lindsay Gallery & Museum which was lovely. In their little shop we found the perfect napkins – covered in teacups and teapots!

Teapot & teacup covered napkins.

Games:

pass the parcel – the children sit in a circle and pass a parcel around. When the music stops at a particular child she may take off one layer of paper and retrieve her prize hidden.

hunt the cards lucky dip – each child had to find 6 cards from the deck of cards that had been hidden around the house. Once they had found 6 (the age of the birthday girl) they could then take out a prize from the lucky dip bag.

Pin the grin on the chesire cat - draw a large cat face and a separate cat’s grin for this activity. The children have to try and pin the grin in the correct place on the cats face whilst blindfolded. Lots of fun!

Party Bag:

We decorated our own party bags with hearts to represent the Queen of Hearts and Blue bags in keeping with the colour of Alice's dress.

Useful resourses:

http://www.alice-in-wonderland.net/

http://www.creativelittlestars.com.au/page14.htm

http://www.theinspiredwoman.net.au/community/showthread.php?22558-Alice-In-Wonderland-Mad-Hatters-Tea-Party-Theme/page2

This theme would really suit any age and if you type in Alice In Wonderland into google images you will find a whole load of great images to help give you more ideas!

Recently a mum in the playground mentioned a learning activity her school aged children had enjoyed using on the computer. I am always keen to try out new educational games on the internet if they are appropriate and fun. The site is Wordle.

My Kindy daughter has been going on it every day this week. She loves words and reading and this is just another way to encourage her eagerness to learn. She enjoys the physical aspect of typing on the keyboard as well as choosing her favourite words (and usually ones she can spell) to create word clouds.

My daughter's favourite choice of words

The more she types in a particular word, the bigger it will be in the word cloud. As you can see in the screen shot above, her name is of course one of the larger words as this is one of the first words she learnt to read and write. She also enjoyed pressing the ‘randomize’ button which would rearrange the words and change the font and colour, until she found her favourite combination. A great way to develop spelling, word recognitinon and fine motor skills through using the keyboard.

It even lets you type in your url for your blog/website to create a cloud, here’s mine:

I got  my son to try Wordle as a fresh way to practice spelling his words of the week, he did it but much more begrudgingly!

The Arctic - created by using toy animals, a blue blanket and polystyrene recycled from a computer box.

Every now and then I set up a mini world for my children to play with. This might be while they are asleep at night  or it might be while they are at school. The objective is:

1. to give them a surprise, and renew their interest in a toy that has not been out or played with for a while.
2. create a scene that will promote imaginative play and is a great learning activity
3. and create a point of conversation. ‘What kind of animals live in cold weather climates? What would they eat? Which animals are the predators and which animals are preyed upon?

Their surprised responses when they discover the mini world I have set up for them always make me feel it was worth the while. ‘Awesome’! ‘Wow, mummy what have you made?’ Sometimes I do this on playdate days, when my children are having a friend over to play. It works a treat. Dishes and house work can wait! It is whilst they are fully emerged in their play, that I can get on with all the jobs I should have been doing while setting the game up.

What gave me the idea of creating an Arctic world was the polystyrene shapes that came out of a computer box of a computer we had recently purchased. They make great icebergs, the children love placing their cold weather animals in all the variety of shapes and you have shown them how something can be recycled and reused in an imaginative way.

Penguins sitting on top of their iceberg.

The seals and walruses watch each other swim in and out of the deep dark Arctic sea.

The polar bear that likes to travel alone look down on the seals and ses it's next meal!

A pod of Killer whales swims between the icebergs looking for dinner.

To find out more about Arctic wildlife clink on the following link: Arctic Wildlife

Next week both my children go to school. One for the first time and the other will start year 1.  Both children will need some kind of preparation for the start of school. So this blog is just a few thoughts on how I can prepare them for the days ahead and the new expriences they will come across:

I will:

• hang their uniforms up in view so they can see that the preparations for school have started and the holidays are coming to an end.
• let them know that they can wear their new shoes at anytime, so that they can wear them in a little bit. This is mainly for my son who hates new clothes/shoes of any sort!
• place school bags  by the door, along with book bags, hats and suncream.
• discuss how excited I am that I will be able to come in twice now to help with readers or any other class activity.
• start making them go to bed at a more reasonable time and slowly enforce routine a little more. As it has been the ‘long holidays’ and we have done quite a bit of travelling, routine has gone by the way to allow for all the different time zones we travelled through, places we stayed at and cultures we experienced.

Schools will often hand out a booklet on ways you can help your child get ready for school. It usually includes such things as your child being able to go to the toilet unaided, dress themselves, ask for help, and some even imply that it would be useful if they can read or write their name (which I feel no parent should worry about if their child can’t, because that is what school is there for).

In the past I have written a few posts and learning activities which may help with the process of getting your child ready for school.

Posts on READING & WRITING:

Emergent Writing

Helping your child to learn to write

Name activities for young children

Reading Readiness

Other ideas:

• set up a school play area in your home somewhere where your child can ‘pretend and play’ at being at school. This is something that your child’s preschool may have already set up as an activity previously.
• visit your child’s new school as much as possible so they can get used to the environment. A new building can be very daunting, especially as your child will be left there without your company for the day/ morning. My son’s school has an Organic Market at the weekends which we purposely started to go to so he became familiar with the surroundings before he started.
• Walk around inside, look for the office, library, toilets, lost property area, etc…My daughter used to like looking for my sons lost hat in the lost property area and she is now quite familiar with the inside of the school building. Your child will more than likely have a ‘tour’ around the school when he or she starts, and if they can do this with a little confidence and familiarity then they will feel less overwhelmed by the whole experience.

Things to do if you can:

• label absolutely everything with sticky labels or a permanent marker.
• buy shoes with velcro fasteners rather than shoelaces. Unless your child is good at laces, you do not want them to get distressed by the fact that they are the last one getting dressed because they are struggling with their shoes.
• buy extra ’second-hand’ school uniform tops or bottoms for that day that you just haven’t been able to wash and dry everything in time. Some schools have their own second-hand school uniform shop. Maybe you can even help out at the shop once your child is settled in.

Apart from that enjoy the whole experience and don’t forget to take your camera!

Nativity scene made from little Lego bricks.

We are slowly starting to think about Christmas decorations and I was aware that we did not have a proper Nativity scene to set up on the mantle piece. As my son is constantly playing with his Lego bricks at the moment it occured to me that maybe we could build a Lego Nativity scene ourselves!

This turned out to be a really fun learning activity to do together. My son was delighted to have me join in and was giving me lots of constructive (and disapproving) criticism of my building skills. We discussed who was involved in the nativity scene, how we were going to make them and what colours we needed (we don’t have any brown or grey lego – possible ideas for Stocking presents!)

• We made the Manger – note that although Mary is in the right colours she is actually wearing dungarees – allow a lot of room for artistic license as you may not have all the right colours or right body pieces.

The Manger.

• We made the Angels – which are made from two astronauts from my husbands own Lego set when he was a child in the 1970’s. I thought the shooting arrows on their tops fitted in well! I cut out some  paper wings and stuck them on the angels backs with blu-tack.

The Angels.

• We made the Shepherd & his flock of sheep

The Shepherd & his flock of sheep by the fire.

• We made chickens!

The Rooster, the hen and baby chicks!

The great thing about this activity is that you can improvise with it.

Why not try and create other  lovely Christmas scenes, eg: Winter Wonderland, A  Christmas tree and carol singers, etc…

I am going to share this activity idea with Catherine’s ‘Sharing Christmas‘ blog at Adventures with kids. See what you can share!