Archive for April 2009
I can’t even remember what inspired this, I know my son thought of it but I can’t remember now what preceded me saying ” How about making animal tracks?”. All I remember is that he bounded to the table, which is not always the case . This is a fast project, to stretch it out introduce new paint colors and more paper one at a time.
- Gather your materials. You will need some fun toy animals, a plate, paper,markers and paint.
- If you want you or your child can draw some scenery.
- Spread some paint on your plate and dip your animal in.
- Start making some tracks.
- Add the next paint color and more paper if you want and keep going.
Books !
“Is Your Mama a Llama? “ by Deborah Guarino is a classroom favorite, I don’t know many preschool teachers who can’t recite most of this book . Readers follow Lloyd the llama as he riddles his way through a bunch of animals until he find the one he calls mom. I like the mix of animals in this book, a little different than your average zoo or farm collection.
- Gather your materials. You will need some cereal boxes, and smaller boxes ( like mac and cheese, or cracker boxes), scissors, markers, and tape. You will need a box and a half for each building. Don’t forget your recycling truck!
- Start by talking with your child and deciding what to draw, I drew our buildings but if your child wants to , go for it! My son decided on a church, fire station and the aquarium. Make as many or as few buildings as you wish.
- Open up the cereal boxes and draw inside.
- Have your child color the buildings if you drew them.
- While they color, draw some roadway.
- Hand them the road way when they are done with the buildings and let them at it !
- Cut out the buildings and roadway.
- Tape store fronts to the full boxes.
- PLAY!
Song!
My Backyard!
Don’t throw your junk in my backyard,
my backyard,
my backyard ,
Don’t throw your junk in my backyard,
my back yard’s full!
Rocks and trees and butterflies
butterflies,
butterflies,
Rocks and trees and butterflies
Dirt and leaves and bugs!’
Don’t throw your junk in my backyard,
my backyard,
my backyard,
Don’t throw your junk in my backyard ,
my backyard’s full!
” The Whole Green World” by Tony Johnston is a celebration of the Earth and it’s beauty. The text is short enough to hold young children’s attention and the illustrations by Elisa Kleven are bright and so detailed you will fall in love! I think it’s important to teach our children to see the beauty of the Earth, especially when we are teaching them to conserve it!
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- Gather your materials. You will need many crayons of various colors, something to melt the crayons in ( I use aluminum cup liners in a ratty old cake pan- the wax does leak through some times) , some popsicle sticks for stirring, a recycled jar and a candle wick.
- Start by setting your oven to 220-265 I am impatient and melt them at 265 but many people have said that that is too hot and they had smoking, so my suggestion is to start low and adjust accordingly.
- Peel the paper off the crayons and break into small pieces. I used 7-10 crayons of each color for my candle.
- Melt.
- Put the wick in the jar and hold onto it as you pour the melted crayon into the jar.
If I had had a longer wick I would have wrapped it around a popsicle stick and laid the stick across the jar to keep it in place.
- Let the wax set before adding the next color.
- This is what happened when I didn’t wait long enough.
- Keep adding and letting the color set.
- Trim the wick when all colors are added and set.
My son has been talking a lot about tigers lately, so it was no shock to me when I asked him what he wanted to make for art and he replied “Tiger?”. He loved making this and even though we didn’t cut eyes out, he has been playing with it like a mask , pretending to be a ferocious tiger!
- Gather your materials. You will need some orange and black paper, a paper plate, some orange paint ( or mix red and yellow like we did), scissors, googley eyes, and glue.
- Start by mixing your orange paint
- Paint your plate- we started out with the dainty brush,
but finished with hands.
- While our child is painting, cut a nose and mouth.
- As well as some black stripes – we used 8
- And ears out of the orange paper.
- Add the stripes on either side by first adding glue
- Then the paper.
- Next add the mouth and nose.
- My son was begging to add the eyes before we finished the stripes, so we did it before we did the head stripes, it doesn’t really matter what order you do the gluing in.
- Add the stripes on the top of the head too.
- Next up, the ears, add two stripes on each ear.
- Glue the ears on and let everything dry.
“If You See A Tiger” by Richard Powell is a cute book for babies and young toddlers. It’s a lift the flap book that encourages your child to do what the book suggests if you come across various animals. My son really liked this book when we read it a year ago when he was 18 months old.
“The Loudest Roar” by Thomas Taylor was given to me at my baby shower, recommended by a friend who’s son loved it. Sure enough my son does too, especially if I roar really really loudly along with Clovis the little tiger with the loudest roar of all. It’s a good book when toddlers are learning about when we can be loud and when we should be quiet.
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- Gather your materials. You will need 1-2 full size pieces of construction paper ( two if you want to mount the finished seahorse on some paper), water colors, paintbrush, some water, glue, sparkles, scissors, a googley eye and some scrap paper.
- Start by drawing an S on your paper, I used the seahorse on “Mister Seahorse” below as a guide, but a regular upper case S would do the trick.
- Hand the letter over to your child to paint with water colors.
- While they paint cut the scrap paper into little fin shapes, we did some triangle and some trapezoids.
- Set the S aside to dry and hand your child some glitter to use on the shapes
. Let dry
- Glue the googley eye on .
- Glue the shapes onto the S
- When everything is dry cut the S out and glue onto a 2nd piece of construction paper.
Books !
“Mister Seahorse” by Eric Carle is a story about the more involved fish fathers in the sea. Mister seahorse isn’t the only fish that takes care of his eggs until they hatch , in the book we meet other dads that do too. I didn’t realize how many people don’t like this book until I read some reviews on amazon when ordering the book a few months ago. Many parents are off put by the father fish who announces he is “babysitting” his own baby fish. It never really bugged me even though when a parent says that in real life it irks me. All the positive daddy fish outweighs that one comment for me.
