Archive for May 2011
This craft can be adapted to almost any ability, as your child is able do less of the steps for them. Obviously my almost 11 month old had limited participation but letting her loose with the marker was the highlight of her day. She kept squealing so loudly I thought the neighbor’s dog would start howling. To say she was happy was a huge understatement and that is the point of activities with such young children, happy experiences, exploration and play. No need to turn it into a bee if you want to keep their masterpiece the way it is but let little ones explore ( with you in arms reach for safety).
- Gather your materials. You will need some yellow construction paper or card stock, some ribbon, black construction paper, scissors , pipe cleaner, a black marker and painters tape.
- Start by taping down the yellow paper with painter’s tape. This is a must with toddlers.
- Hand the marker to your child. My daughter was sorta like… hmmmm what is this ? So my son jumped in to demonstrate.
- She got it all over her hands
and started making prints, which works fine too!
- Next fold the colored paper in two. So it’s colored on both sides. Cut into the shape of a bee.
- Make a slit in the bee’s back.
- Make a rectangle of black paper and fan fold it.
- Using some of the extra black make a triangle for a stinger.
- Using double stick tape ( or glue) put the bee together with the stinger on the bum.
- Thread the fan folded paper through the slit. Trim if needed.
- Draw a face .I don’t use googly eyes with baby/toddler crafts usually but if you are doing this for older kids feel free.
- Poke a hole for the antenna and thread the pipe cleaner through, poke a hole and thread the ribbon through.
- Hang up!
Great Book About Bees
Buzz
I love fine art. I love museums and I kinda like taking my kids there. Ok I love exposing them to art but honestly I wish I could take them to museums for a quick zip through then send them off with their dad to get ice cream while I soak it all in at my speed ( which is normally fast but in an art museum I am a turtle, a lethargic one at that). Luckily one way to expose kids to fine art day to day is through books. We have a coffee table book that we flip through daily and we all have our favorites. The other day I caught my son pretending to shoot at this painting by Jasper Johns. I suggested we make our own and he skipped off to the kitchen to do just that.
- Gather your materials. You will need some white paper, red paper and if you want another sheet of card stock to make it sturdy enough to throw things at. Also some round objects like jar lids to make the rings if you aren’t talented enough to make them free hand ( I am most certainly not, even with the lids I did it twice), blue and yellow markers, glue and scissors.
- Start by making the target using the lids to trace. Kids or adults can do this. I wanted this project to focus on cutting for my son so I chose this step and he did all the cutting ( which you’ll see later on) but there is not reason it needs to be perfect if wee ones want to do it , go for it.
- Next add the bulls eye.
- Time to color. This was a lesson in being careful, I didn’t tell him to stay in the lines but he naturally wanted to. I am not big on asking kids while doing art to stay in the lines but practicing control while drawing/writing is a good skill once they are working on printing letters.
- Time to cut. I wasn’t sure how far he’d get so I had adult and children’s scissors ready.
- He did it all himself – hooray. Cutting is another wonderful fine motor skill and important for writing as well.
- Add glue to the red paper. He was dropping “glue bombs” here… what can I say ?
- Pop the target on .
- Add more glue to the card stock add the target and let dry.
Fine Art Books by Bob Raczka
Artful Reading (Bob Raczka’s Art Adventures)
Here’s Looking at Me: How Artists See Themselves (Bob Raczka’s Art Adventures)
No One Saw 
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by Kim
This activity is a great one to keep tucked away for rainy days. You can use things from your craft stash and some regular household items.
What you will need are stickers or self adhesive craft foam pieces, chenille stems, and an empty box (we used a facial tissue box and a sandwich bag box).
This part is the easiest. Have your child cover the box with stickers and craft foam pieces.
While they are having fun you can make fun little appendages for your monster. We bent the chenille stems in zig zags and wrapped them around pencils to get a neat corkscrew look.
I simply poked small holes with a pencil and threaded the stems into the holes and bent the tip to keep them from coming out.
We cut out some white traingles and added some teeth.
What you have is one terrifyingly cute monster box.
Now your kids have a fun monster to play with. Our monsters ate random items and stored small toys.
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Kim is a contributing writer for No Time For Flash Cards, a mom to a toddler, a preschooler, and a foster parent, too. She juggles her day by trying out fun activities and crafts with the kids. After all, she is just a big kid herself. See what she has been up to over at Mom Tried It.
I was reading this article from the Huffington Post while nursing my daughter over the weekend. After she drifted off to sleep I laid there next to her thinking about how we as educators, parents and adults in general handle our boys and what they choose to read. This is a fresh topic at our house because my son has started reading independently; while he is far from fluent, he can read simple “I Can Read” books alone if they interest him.
How do we get our boys interested in books?
Read to them starting from birth.
That is the most basic answer, but it’s not a complete one. Some kids won’t sit for books, while some need to be moving when taking in the information. Some simply don’t want to read. It looks hard; it looks confusing; and it makes them feel dumb when they can’t figure it out.
You have to make them want to figure it out – to conquer that desire to give up with a stronger desire to find out how to read so they can read something really cool.
So how do we make books worth the effort?
Teaching boys to love books doesn’t start when they are learning to read in kindergarten. It starts at birth by making books a daily part of their play time, not just bed time. Here are some strategies we’ve used :
We did many book festivals when my son was a toddler. We’d pile up a ton of books, jump on the bed or couch, and read. I always gave him the power to choose the books we read, which gave him a sense of control and allowed him to develop favorites and his own opinions. I wrote a post about how we discovered this strategy and how it came from my son’s inability to sit stuck snuggled on my lap to read as a toddler.
Make going to the library a regular activity. My son hates story time at the library, not because of the librarian (whom he is actually quite fond of ) but because he doesn’t want to sit and listen to the books she chooses. He wants to listen to the books he chooses. So if your child dislikes storytime don’t give up on the library. Try other times; let them choose their own books, and don’t just show them the kids section, show them all the adults reading too.
Which brings us to the next strategy: role models. Boys need to see the men in their life reading. As a stay at home mom whose husband works long hours with a long commute, I end up doing most of the reading, but it’s still easy to create wonderful role models even if time together isn’t abundant. I got my son and husband a subscription to Sports Illustrated to share. They read the articles together and have some “man time” reading it together. It gives them special time together while also promoting reading.
Let them choose their books, but steer them to widen their horizons too. My son is all about Batman so we scour the library for these books, some of which I am not fond of. But he is so excited about reading I think it’s more important to keep building that foundation of books being cool and developing his view of himself as a reader that I enthusiastically pop them in our basket. Don’t be quick to say no to a type of book . What your child might hear is you saying no to reading.
Another strategy is to let kids “break the rules” with books. I am not advocating stealing books or any other real rule breaking; what I am talking about is letting kids stretch out bedtime with some reading time of their choice. We just started this with my son and it’s so thrilling to see him enjoying reading alone.
My last strategy is what I feel is my mission here at No Time For Flash Cards, which is to use books as the foundation for play. We go both ways, sometimes reading a book first and sometimes starting with play then finding the books to go along with it. When my son read this Babar book with me last week he immediately wanted to dress up like the soldiers, so we fashioned a costume , not just for the pretend play that followed but because it attached a positive association to reading, it reiterated to him that reading is part of play.The statistics are frightful but we aren’t powerless. There are things we can do to help make reading and books accessible to young kids (especially reluctant readers) and yet again it comes back around to play. Hopefully with a strong foundation of trust in the enjoyment books provide the less enjoyable side of reading will be worth the effort.
I know I say it almost every week but I am truly amazed by the creativity out there. If you have never participated in our weekly blog link up make this one your first. All you have to do is choose which of your completely rad posts you want to share. Next add a direct link to it (the post permalink- not your main url) and then check out some of the other links. I promise you you will learn something new. I can’t wait to check out these links!
