Play and Learn Every Day

Making Little Clay Bowls

14:00

We are big fans of using salt dough to make all sorts of different gifts and keepsakes, but today we decided to give my good friend Emma from Adventures of Adam's recipe for fantastic clay a try when making these cute little bowls!

What you'll need:

corn flour / corn starch
white glue
food colouring
glitter glue
mixing bowl
stampers
greaseproof paper

We started by following the recipe for clay on Adventure's of Adam, the only change that we made was that we didn't add all of the glue at once, we saved a little bit back to mix together with a few drops of red food colouring and some silver glitter glue. We then added this to the rest of the mix and kneaded the dough.

First I let the kids play with the clay, it's such a fantastic consistency, the corn flour gives it that intriguing changing of state and the glue makes it super stretchy. The kids happily gave it a good squeeze for ages and could have happily played with it as it was all day long. We'll definitely be playing with this recipe to form other fun play materials.

Then I asked them if they could make little bowl shapes for me, and this is where it got tricky. Unlike other clay or salt dough this clay does not want to keep it's shape if you want it to go up. This clay is still moving and want to go with gravity! So I just had the kids play with the stampers instead, making all sorts of patterns on their circles.

We also tried using some cookie cutters to make shapes, this was much more successful and we made a few very thick hearts which we were then able to press down with our fingers to make indents.

For the bowls which didn't want to turn up I decided to have gravity do the work for us by turning them upside down. So once the one side had started to dry we placed the bowls on different objects (like the stamper or a small lid) to have the edges go down.

Now we've got a selection of very different little bowls that would make lovely gifts for Mother's Day, Valentine's Day or any other occasion to give a loved one.

This post is part of the Kindergarten Blog Hop, this month we're all covering different activities that would fill a whole unit on Mother's Day.

Mother’s Day Finger Painting by Kidz Activities

Making Mom a Bead Necklace - Homeschool Preschool

Free Printable Mom’s Day Card - Our Whimsical Days

Making Little Clay Bowls - Play & Learn Every Day

Kids in the Kitchen: Making Mother's Day Cupcakes - Crafty Mama in ME

Mother's Day You are Tea-Riffic Card - Sugar Aunts

Mother's Day Book List- Something 2 Offer

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2 years old

Ladybug Spot Counting Activity

13:01

4 1/2 years old

Where the Wild Things Are Small World Play

08:30

Ethan loves the story of Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, he even dressed up as Max for World Book Day! So it seemed the perfect book to choose as inspiration for a craft project!

What you'll need:

wooden pegs
markers
pipe cleaners
yarn
felt
glue
box
paint
paint brush
tissue paper
play dough
egg carton
washi tape
anything else your little ones imagination decides that they need!

I had started out this project planning making out some little peg dolls of the wild things and Max from the story. However, shortly after we started Ethan started saying that he wanted to make trees and a world for them to play in, so we ended up making a whole story scene completely inspired by Ethan's ideas!

We started by making peg dolls for Max and 3 wild things. Ethan and Ivy used markers to draw faces on the pegs and then used the pipe cleaners, yarn and felt to make tails, horns, fur and whatever else they could come up with. This activity was completely open for them to explore and I only helped when they asked for my help.

Then Ethan painted a box green to be their world, as there are mostly trees we thought that green everywhere would be easiest. Of course you could add more colours and paint a blue sky or maybe water for the boat to sail in.

Next we made some trees. As I hadn't planned this part at all, I asked Ethan what he would like to use to make trees and straight away he said pipe cleaners. Then I suggested that we use some tissue paper, and he thought that was perfect. He ripped off strips of tissue and crumpled them up, then wrapped the pipe cleaner around it to secure it.

We then put a few balls of play dough in the bottom of the box to plant the trees into so that they would stand up straight. Ethan then looked at the book to decide what else he wanted to make, and decided that he needed a boat! So we used one small egg carton section and Ethan made the sails for it using washi tape.

Then it was ready to play in! Ethan was so excited that he had made his own small world for the characters to play and have a wild rumpus! I think there might be a lot more of this sort of activity in our future!

This post is part of the Read It - Make It series on Emma Owl, take a look at all the fantastic crafts that you can make based on books!

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2 years old

Letter Writing Basket

08:30

Ethan has been really into drawing lately, he's drawing us new pictures every day and it's fantastic! I wanted to extend this love to include a bit of writing, so I made a little invitation to play for him and Ivy with a very simple letter writing basket, inspired by both of their loves of envelopes! (What kid doesn't love envelopes?)

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What you'll need:

This is so simple to set up, but I can't even begin to tell you how much of a success it has been in our house. It is now permanently on the kids table for them to go and play with whenever they like (and that's at least a few times a day!) I put everything in the basket and before I could even get it set up they were both right in there ready to start.

I have already seen a different in Ethan's writing because of it, and I have now put up a letter chart above the table for him to refer to. His is writing more confidently and more consistently writing in a line and fitting his letters on a page. He is asking to write a larger variety of words and interested in learning how to write addresses as well.

The envelopes and postcards are the most popular items with Ethan, he loves that these are things that people really use to send post, and after writing me a letter he insists on going outside and posting it through the letterbox. Even Ivy gets in on the fun mark making on sheets of paper and stuffing them into envelopes, then covering the envelope in stickers and stamps.

This letter writing basket has been a real saviour in our house, it keeps the kids busy and exploring independently and it's even encouraged them to write more letters. Thank you letters and birthday cards will be much easier to make the next time around!

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