Play and Learn Every Day

Conker Monsters

11:23

Autumn is officially here and the children have been very excitedly collecting conkers everywhere we go! We always end up with a house full of conkers, they're in pockets and backpacks and all over the place, so we use conkers in as many ways as we possibly can! They're not always easy to make things out of because of their shiny surface, but today we've found a way to make monsters!

What you'll need to make Conker Monsters:

conkers
Bostik glu dots
Bostik foam pads
googly eyes
pom poms
pipe cleaners
foam shapes
other assorted craft supplies

These are so easy to make when you have the right materials. We have tried making things with conkers using regular glue before, but it's quite tricky to get things to stick. But by using glue dots and foam pads (double sided tape) we were able to get everything to stick on immediately, with no need to wait for things to dry (which we love!)

I set up the table with assorted craft materials, the conkers and the glue dots and foam pads, then just left the children to create as many different and interesting monsters as they could come up with. They loved this invitation to create freely without any specific instructions or ways that the monsters had to look.

Ivy loved piling on as many different things onto her conkers as she possibly could! She really got the hang of using the glue dots on her own and was happily sticking away. A great activity for increasing her fine motor control.

Ethan was a bit more specific in his designs and carefully thought out each of his monsters. He used a combination of foam pads and glue dots to make his creations stick together. Sometimes stacking a few conkers on top of each other and sometimes adding some larger pieces as tails and wings.

It's such a fun and easy way to get creative without much mess, and now we have quite the collection of conker monsters that will make great Halloween decorations!

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* This is a review post, we were sent a box of craft supplies from Bostik in order to make our craft, all opinions are our own.*

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1 year old

Cinnamon Salt Dough

07:30

I have made a very exciting discovery, a lovely smelling and warm feeling discovery for fantastic creations and keepsakes that I can't wait to share! I wanted to make some autumnal salt dough creations with the kids the other day, and I was getting out the ingredients for our regular salt dough recipe when I thought that I just wanted to add a little something extra. I wanted it to have a nice colour so we wouldn't necessarily have to paint our creations, and for an extra bonus I wanted it to smell autumnal, to smell like pumpkin pie and hot apple cider and other yummy treats. So I wondered if I just added a bit of cinnamon to our salt dough recipe if it would work, and it did!

Ingredients:

1 cup flour
1 cup salt
1/2 cup water
2 teaspoons cinnamon

We mixed all of the ingredients, the great thing about salt dough is that you can't really get it wrong, you can always add a bit more water or flour if the consistency doesn't feel quite right. A lot of times we end up with a lot on the floor so we need to add a bit extra! Once it was all mixed together we gave it a good squish and rolled it around a lot to make it nice and soft to use.

Then we rolled it out nice and flat ready to use in lots of different ways. As it's autumn I gave them a selection of different types of leaves that we had collected on an earlier walk (that I had washed) and some leaf shaped cookie cutters. I let them play for quite some time with salt dough, just like it's play dough, before making our final creations that we'll dry and save.

I wasn't sure how well the leaf printing would work, and that's one reason that I wanted a salt dough that wouldn't need to be painted. I didn't want the paint to fill in the fine lines of the leaf prints. They looked absolutely beautiful when the kids printed them, so perfect and delicate like the real leaves. The kids loved seeing the leaf shapes appear in their dough creations.

We decided after a few experiments that the most effective technique would be to use a leaf shaped cookie cutter first, and then use the leaf to make the print after. This made the most lasting print effect and looked most like a leaf when we finished.

Of course we couldn't help but do a few hand prints in our salt dough as well, we can never have too many! I use a straw to make a hole in the top of each one so that I can hand them up when they are finished. I then put them on baking paper on a tray in the oven at a very low temperature for a couple of hours, the smell from the oven was lovely! Then I leave them out overnight to dry out further.

They turned out incredibly well! They don't need any painting or further decoration at all, they look fantastic and you can see every little detail. They still smell of cinnamon and will make lovely keepsakes for years to come.