Chinese New Year Art

Chinese New Year 14 January this year!

A quick dragon cut out of cardboard, coloured in and crepe paper tail added. Honeycomb added as fire from his mouth and red paper to his head. Add a stick and Happy New Year!

Good bye winter

Penguins go to a happy haven that is the recycling bin and up popped the lil chickies and daffodils!

These moody looking fellows are meant to be daffodils but someone was feeling very sombre when I asked them to draw a smiley face on them! Cut out a flower shape and a circle, draw a face on the circle and cut a slit into one side of it. Fold into a cone and staple on. They give a nice depth to any wall art I think.

Australia Day

Using the Australia folder as a guide, we drew a picture for each child to colour in about Australia like animals such as sharks, fish, kangeroos, Australian flag, people surfing, map of Australia, Aborigines etc.
For art we made digeridos (sp!) out of old wool holders we got in the resource centre in Castlebar which is well worth joining up to for the paper and recycling materials you can get for art and montessori materials, you just need to be creative in your thinking how to use it!
Painted the wool holder and let dry, put strips of paper on it and some sparkly circles. Painted the kids faces using white paint and sent home a tribe of aborigines!

Environment Cards

We have a few children who are ready to move further in the pink series but not quite there yet so we are trying to incorporate lots of reading work. 3 letter phonic words are written on a piece of paper, let the child read it and place it on the object.Words like:
bin
cup
tin
pig
tap
pig
tag
pen
hat

The room is covered in phonic words but it's good to see :)

Traffic Lights

Used boxes I got in the resource centre and made some traffic lights out of collage paper. Using this poem we taught the children the colours of the lights:

I ride my little bicycle
I ride it to the shop and
when I see the big red light
I know I have to STOP

I ride my little bicycle
I ride it to the gate and
when I see the amber light
I know I have to WAIT

I ride my little bicycle
I ride it to the show and
when I see the big green light
I know that I can GO

The messier the better

Can't beat the sieving flour exercise to have the children waiting for the next person to finish with it! Previously had lentils in it but they kept popping out of the sieve whenever the spoon was rubbed over them, I wanted to use some coloured pasta so you could definitely see it so will have to put that on my shopping list

Safety pin exercise

Sorry a bad picture but we were using these pieces of material as our matching cloths but they were not very popular. By adding the safety pins, the children enjoy pinning all the matching cloths together. After I showed them the sharp point, they have a great respect for the safety pin and are so careful with them.

Dropper Exercise

We previously had 2 bowls and a large turkey baster so we changed it today for the smaller dropper and 3 cups. The children have to fill the first cup and move the water into the next cup and then into the last.

Hair Bobble Excercise

Got this idea from another blog, so easy I don't know why I didn't think of it before. A jam jar (running low on them, time for another jam shopping spree!) filled with hair bobbles (or whatever you call them). Control of error in this case is the jar is ridged at the bottom and the bobbles can't come off, it's tight but not too tight to put them on, gives the children a bit of a challenge and with one little boy today it took him 40 minutes of pure determination to get them on. And another 5 to take them off while he smiled to himself :)

Threading exercise

A cute basket I picked up and the smallest beads we have used this year, the older children like it and the younger ones like the basket.. win win :)

Pouring onto spoon excercise

I got a great haul in the local charity shop and came across 4 chinese bowls and matching spoons. This tin jug was too cute not to include in the exercise and the child has to pour the beads onto the spoon and sort the beads out. Still trial and error but I think at the minute their fine motor skills aren't the best and may just get them to pour a few beads at a time onto the spoon and then sort into each bowl as pouring one bead is proving very difficult

Spooning exercise

Our class at the minute are not too into spooning so by using pretty glass beads and a little spoon I hope it might catch their interest. I got the bowl which I think is one for Indian sauces in a charity shop and then extended the excercise by adding number tiles so the child can count the beads and number each pot. When I took it out this morning, I got a very impressed "Ohhhhhh shiny", so lets see how that goes!

Christmas Crafts

I know a big late but maybe a reminder for myself for next year! I had been collecting jam jars all year and was running out of room in my press so decided to make snow globes as a Christmas present with the kids. I superglued a decoration (water proof if possible) to the lid of the jar and made sure the jar went over it! We made a mixture up of 3/4 water to glycerine and the children added 1 teasoon of chunky glitter. They poured the liquid in but if any gets on the outside it's impossible to decorate as the glycerine is very oily. Add a ribbon and give a shake!


Scrunched up piece of paper covered in cotton wool, facial features added and the poem. Children really enjoyed this :)

We made these one day as part of practical life. 3 pipe cleaners criss crossed and then beads threaded on and the ends folded back on themselves made the cutest Christmas tree decorations