If you are looking for an activity to re-use those eggs from the egg hunts… look no further.
I love my artsy friend Allie and all the ways she crafts with her kids. Keep reading because she inspired me to do this with my kids today and that is what The Mommy Teacher is all about:
“My girls, AvaKate (3) and Addie (2), absolutely love doing crafts. They would do them all day long if I let them. So, when we woke up this morning, they asked to paint.
We painted yesterday, so I wanted to do something a little different.
They had an Easter egg hunt at school yesterday and I wanted to reuse those annoying, oh I mean amazing, plastic eggs before I secretly threw them away, I mean put them back in their baskets (any Moms with me??).
I took them apart and let them dip it into finger paint (easier clean up) and it made circles on their paper. Addie is really into shapes so she got really excited to see the shapes on her paper. Very simple, but it was exciting for the girls to incorporate their eggs from their egg hunt.
You can also see in the picture little pieces of string and paper. My oldest, AvaKate is obsessed with decorating and making gifts… So those elements were her specific request.
I put some glue on their plate and gave them a paint brush and they “decorated” their art. They loved it! And I loved it because it was all stuff I had around the house and it kept them occupied while I nursed my six week old!”
In the spirit of Halloween, I wanted to do an art project with my 4-year-old while my 6-year-old was at school. My middle child loves and cherishes this one-on-one time with Mommy. Jess’ post on Monday inspired us to make our own Jack-O-Lanterns, but I had a different objective in mind.
I was also inspired by a “find the differences” book I was reading with Leyson that has two near-identical pictures side by side, but with subtle differences. Each page asks you to “find (x-amount of) differences” which may be as simple as the omission of an object in the picture or a change of color, shape, size or placement of an object.
The objective of our activity was for my son to be able to both point out and fix the differences between my picture and his picture to make them the same, and also to recreate the picture I created… in this case, a pumpkin.
Materials needed: construction paper, scissors, maybe some glue after the activity 🙂
Mommy Prep: Using orange construction paper, I cut out two large pumpkin shapes, and lots of different sized rectangles*, triangles, circles, squares and other various shapes with brown, yellow and black paper.
*I cut out 4 different types of rectangle stems to bring in some vocabulary to our activity: short, long, thick, thin
Leyson first had to close his eyes (or cover his face with a blanket because I learned that I can’t trust him to keep his eyes closed) and count to twenty while I arranged the different shapes to make a face on my pumpkin. Apparently, counting to twenty now means omitting numbers 14 and 19, so we will be working on that again soon.
I started off with a simple face. Two circles for eyes, a circle for a nose, a fat, brown rectangle and a U-shape for a smiley mouth.
When he got to 20, he pulled the blanket off of his face, he had to use the remaining shapes to make his pumpkin look just like my pumpkin.
To make the project more challenging in other rounds, I layered some of the shapes such as using smaller circles on top of larger circles for the eyes.
The most difficult part of the activity was when I used only triangles to make a face and he had to figure out which direction the triangles were facing. It’s harder than it looks!
We experimented with all the different things we could learn from making pumpkins:
Feelings/Emotions: We made happy pumpkins, and sad pumpkins, and angry pumpkins, and scared pumpkins… and talked about why each pumpkin was feeling the way they were feeling.
Counting/More or Less: Sometimes Mommy’s pumpkin had 4 teeth, sometimes it had more or less.
Compare and Contrast: “What is different about the nose on your pumpkin and the nose on my pumpkin?” “Do our pumpkins have the same shaped mouth?”
Vocabulary: Colors, shapes, sizes, parts of the face
Spacial Awareness: “Are the eyes close together or far apart?” “If you put the eyes in the middle of the pumpkin, can we fit a nose and a mouth too?”
Phonemic Awareness & Writing: We segmented the sounds in pumpkin /p/ /u/ /m/ /p/ /k/ /i/ /n/… which is pretty hard to do when your child pronounces it like “po’kin” but we wrote the real word on the back of our project.
When you are finished the activity, grab some glue so you can add some Halloween decor to your house!
Who needs to buy decorations from the store, when with a little glue and tape you can make your house ready for any holiday?!
I have a (semi) love-hate relationship with stickers. My kids peel them off and stick them all over the place and I am unsure what their purpose is at times other than leaving residue on things they stick to. Having said that, I have YOUNG children who don’t exactly keep track of small items or use things practically.
Sean Patrick got some cool toys at his birthday party this year, but I hid several of them because I wanted to use them sparingly. When I pulled out this sticky mosaics activity last week, it turned out to be a real gem.
There were 5 different vehicles made up of different colored shapes, and he picked the helicopter.
We decided early on to make it for his uncle who works for the US Aviation so it was really special to encourage him to finish so we could give it to his Uncle Nathan.
The best part is that we have been working on this a little every day ALL week and have only finished ONE vehicle template. I have been waiting until Mckayla falls asleep because she likes to destroy Sean Patrick’s art projects so it has been super fun one-on-one time working with him on this project.
This is what happens when the 19 month old is around the stickers.
And here are just some of the things he has been practicing with this activity:
Fine motor skills – Strengthening his control and coordination in his hands in order to peel the stickers off their backing and to stick them carefully onto the outline of the shape. Shape and Color identification – Identifying the shapes and colors needed in each part of the project. Spatial Awareness – Turning the sticker until it covers up the whole shape. Matching – Matching the accurate color and sticker to the individual outlines. Visual Discrimination – After selecting a sticker, trying to find that particular colored shape “hidden” in the page. Counting Practice -Counting how many more blue triangles you need to fill a space we were working on at the time. One-to-One Correspondence – Having manipulate one sticker to one outline at a time took lots of discipline as well.
Daddy helped with the very last part of the project to complete the tail of the helicopter. When he finished he was so proud and he asked “Now I get to work on another one?” Well, that was an easy one to answer.
So proud of himself for finishing 🙂
I seriously think I am going to order two more of these (one masculine and one feminine), stick them in the closet where I store my gift bags, and have a go-to present for the next birthday party we go to!
Here are the other ones they have on amazon:
I really love to hear from you…
Do dread having another sticker activity in your house?
Do you think your little one is at an age where he/she would enjoy this?
Do you know of any other sticker activities that are worth checking out?
A friend of mine is about to start mapping out plans for her new house they are going to have built. When she was telling me about it, her five year old ran to the next room to grab his precious simple sketch of his master plan for their new house with his big ideas in mind.
I loved everything about this moment….
I loved that he wanted to share his thoughts with me.
I loved that he had an idea of his dream house.
I loved that he wanted to be a part of the process.
I loved that I could picture a little architect in the making.
I couldn’t help but text his mom the other day and tell her that if she wanted to extend on this interest… one idea I use with my little ones in the classroom is simply:
1) To give the kiddos a basket of shapes (cut out on cardstock paper for sturdy-ness).
2. Have them trace their shapes on a big sheet of paper or poster.
3) Label their ideas for the items that could make up the room.
How adorable is the “roob” or “door” in the corner?
This idea can be used if you and your little one want to re-arrange the furniture in their room then they can be a part of the process for coming up with why a dresser might work best under the window, rather than by the door.
Or, this might be a great idea if you want to help them make a map of your neighborhood to display and they can label their friend’s house.
This could even be a great idea if you want to map out what equipment is in your backyard, and they can include new things that might fit, or include something to save for in the next year.
If you have another idea for this, geared to your child’s interest, then please COMMENT and share with us!
