Imaginative Play Stick Fairy Wand

With the sticks we collected on a countryside walk we made some fairy wands for some creative play and fairy magic in the garden.

Simply sticks and glitter star stickers and you're ready to be a fairy.

  We re-enacted Cinderella, then the girls created their own games of fairies and Chick did some story telling about what the fairies were up to.  

They also spent lots of time turning their baby brother into a frog then into a prince then back into a frog!

He meanwhile just enjoyed playing with the sticks!

A great accessory for sparking off loads of imaginative and creative play.  Since making them they've now been added to their dressing up box and are often got out with the fairy outfits and wings.

Outdoor Play: Mud & Water Play Kitchen

The girls have requested somewhere they can cook their tea when they are living in their tent!  A simple set up of bricks and off-cuts of wooden planks in our garden creates a great place for cooking with mud, water, petals, leaves and herbs.  Loads of space for imaginative and creative play outdoors, exploring the natural elements found in the garden.



Stirring the pans.



Adding ingredients



And doing the dishes

They spent lots of time disappearing off to go to bed in their tent and one of them being sent to prepare breakfast.

Previously we've made a cardboard box play kitchen, but this is great for leaving out in all weather (particularly with the rain that we seem to have plenty of, here in the south west).  I think this will be a very popular area of the garden over the summer as we spend more time outside.

With the girls it seems to be all about the pink camelia petals, water and herbs, so am wondering if Baby Boo will be into these or whether he'll be straight for the mud when he gets playing in the kitchen - so far he's definitely a mud boy!

Cinderella Treasure Hunt

We did this treasure hunt game at Chick's Princess Birthday celebration with a couple of friends and it seemed to go down well.  It's also a nice alternative to pass the parcel as there is no winner and everybody gets to join in. I found ten items that link to the story of Cinderella and wrapped them all up and numbered them. 

 

I then hid them around the garden and got the kids to go treasure hunting but not to unwrap them yet but bring them back to the middle of the lawn.  They looked all around the garden and found lots of the clues and everyone got a chocolate for being such good treasure hunters. 

We then attempted to unwrap the items in order trying to guess what the story could be (although I don't think it really matters if they all get unwrapped at once)

 

Little Chick unwrapping the butternut squash - alas no pumpkins at this time of year!

We then briefly went through the story of Cinderella putting all the bits into the story.

Literacy and Writing Travel Workstation

A travel workstation, to keep all the pens and paper in one place and great for travelling too.  A free creative station to draw, scribble, write, create, log and record.  A great way to encourage writing practice too.  This is something that Chick suggested making, she's been really intrigued as to what Daddy does at work and has taking to playing going to work and requested to have a work station.

We used an old laptop box and I got her to find all the right stickers for her name and workstation, I then suggested an alphabet chart for reference which she made with all the capitals and small letters.

As we were going away to visit family I stocked it up as a surprise for her.

I included:

Pen sock and Pencil Sock

Pencil sharpener

Letter Stickers

Glue Stickers

Our Alphabet counters

Notebook

Envelopes

Post-it notes

Various sizes and coloured sheets of paper

All packed ready to go (obviously it doesn't look this neat now!)

I then glued on sheets of pretty paper, just to make it look pretty. 

Someone is very keen on it and the bonus is that with Baby Boo who is now on the move, it's great to be able to fold away the pens and bits of paper before he gets his little hands on them!

Bottle Top Alphabet

Simple to make, using old plastic bottle tops and foam letter stickers, these alphabet counters have been really useful as Chick learns her letters and their sounds. 

So far we've used them for finding the letter games, phonics games and matching up lower case letters and their corresponding capital.  They can also be used with printing inks as stamps, and I'm sure there are lots of other ideas you can use them for too.

A great set of reference letters and they cost very little.

Princess Crowns

We had a great time making Princess crowns as part of Chick's 5th birthday party.  Fun and easy, we made similar flower fairy crowns at Shoeshine's 2nd birthday party last year.

This time I stocked up on jewels, gems and stickers from the 99p store and also some left over fabric petals and some torn pieces of different coloured tissue paper.  We also had some coloured pens for any additional details.

I simply cut wavy strips of gold card and stuck two rows of double sided sticky tape and then they could decorate to their hearts content.  When they were finished I simply measured it on their heads and stapled the ends together.

The back as intensively decorated as the front! 

These will be sticking around our house for a good few months now as they get lots of outings for role play and dressing up games.

Kids Get Arty: Matisse Paper Cut Outs

Kid's Get Arty Link-up is a bi-monthly linky, all about exploring art and the great artists, having fun together and there are no right or wrongs - perfect!  It's hosted by some fabulous blogs Red Ted Art,and Mom 2 Posh Lil Divas,and we're very excited to be joining in. Do stop by some of these blogs and see some amazing and creative ideas linked up.

Shoeshine currently loves cutting with scissors so I thought it would be perfect for us to explore the 20th century artist Matisse and his technique of creating art with paper cutting, often described as "Drawing with scissors".  Although much of Matisse's great works were painting, his later life was marked by an enthusiasm for creating art with paper cut outs, instead of using a paintbrush or pencil he did his drawing with scissors.  He is also regarded as one of great artists of the twentieth century for his use of bold and vibrant colours.  He said; Instead of drawing the outline and putting the colour inside it... I draw straight into the colour'. The colours he used were so strong that he was advised by his doctor to wear dark glasses!


 

  

Matisse (top from left) La Gerbe (1953), The Sorrows of the King (1952).
(bottom from left) The The Snail (1953), Icarus (Jazz) (1947) and Snow Flowers (1951)

Together we had a look at some of his works of paper cutting, as Shoeshine is only 2 years 10 months we focussed on looking at mainly about different colours and shapes (currently we're working on not every colour being named pink!) Each picture he created was around a theme and interestingly Matisse usually worked with only 2 or 3 colours and used tints (white added) and shades (black added) of those colours to compose his pictures.  Also his use of both positive and negative shapes is notable, as Matisse often used both the cut out shape and the remaining scraps of paper for his collages.

I gave Shoeshine a selection of coloured paper, scissors and glue and she got busy creating a collage of cut outs.

Using scissors is a brilliant activity for developing their fine motor skills.

It's good to encourage them to put the glue on the back on the shapes rather than all over the paper.

Although I wasn't always listened too and sometimes!  We talked as she cut and glued about the colours and what other colours she might like to add. 

As Little Chick is older (4.5 years) we talked about using the same colours but different shades and tints and we looked at what some of his pictures were about, the snail and the snow flowers.  She found it really difficult to grasp that you could create a picture that didn't actually look like a real life version of what is was meant to be.  She also found it really hard to have a go at 'drawing with scissors', she wanted to draw with a pencil and then cut out, she also wanted to create exact copies of some of his works.  

To take a different angle I got our vase of tulips, as she particularly like Matisse's La Gerbe.   I don't usually go for still life stuff at this age, as they can freeze and feel that their picture doesn't look 'real' enough for them, so we mainly talked about the flowers, I encouraged her to look at their shapes and the colours and describe them to me to encourage her to create her own picture using her scissors.  I got some more shades of the colours she had chosen and sat with her doing a picture myself and talking as we did it together.  She started some cutting out some shapes but didn't really want to do it then, so we left it all out for her to come back to over the rest of the week.  Which she did and here's her picture of a vase with a tulip in a garden with butterflies and daffodils.  I left out the paper, glue and scissors on a small table so they could return to it any time they wanted and over the week there have also been numerous other paper and glue shapes and mini pictures produced as spin offs from this activity (and lots of bits of colured paper round the house!), as Chick and Shoeshine have incorporated some of the ideas into their play and art in their free play time.

And here is my attempt at paper cutting art of the tulips (after reading all about Matisse's art I couldn't resist having a go myself!)

Previously we've looked at Anthony Gormley, Kandinsky and Suerat and there are so many more great artist and works of art to explore!