Meet the Artists Curriculum Review

I am a very creative person so I love to do arts and crafts with my children but one thing that was missing from my own education was an appreciation and knowledge of great works of art. I know of a few artists, but not many, and I don't know much about their lives and inspiration. Because of my lack of knowledge, I wasn't sure how to start teaching my own children about this subject. Therefore, I was delighted to be sent a copy of this brand new art curriculum, Meet the Artists, to review.

Bilingual Language Activity - Finger Painting Wildlife

As you may know, we are a multicultural, multilingual family with quite a few different languages being spoken in our surroundings. As the children's father is from Turkey, Turkish is the main language we are teaching the children. It can be very difficult to teach the children a non-native language, and even more difficult to maintain it. Therefore, I am always on the look out for new ideas or thinking up creative ways to make language learning fun.

The weather has been glorious lately so we have been spending a lot of time outdoors. I try to encourage my children to participate in outdoor play activities as much as possible and prompt them to observe the environment around them. When we go out and about, I point out the flowers and wildlife that we encounter and encourage them to talk about their own observations. I thought it would be a good idea to start learning some more wildlife vocabulary in Turkish so we can use it on our outings, or even just in the garden

Learning about the Stone Age

We have spent the last couple of weeks learning about the Stone Age. We are following the 'Story of the World' curriculum for history, which is the only curriculum we follow (apart from maths). I really like the 'Story of the World' curriculum. It comes with two books; a reading book and an activity book. 

Ramadan Calendar Tutorial

Here I will show you how I made a Ramadan calendar for my children. A Ramadan calendar works like an advent calendar but instead of counting down the days til Christmas, it counts down the days of Ramadan til Eid day.

During Ramadan Muslims must fast from dawn to dusk. This means that they must not eat or drink anything during daylight hours. The length of time of the fast varies each day as the days either lengthen or shorten throughout the month. At the end of the month, we celebrate Eid.

Indoor Fun Review

The second of the review posts I am doing will give you an idea of all the indoor fun we have had over the last two years. Yes, two years is a very long time but I will try my best to sum it up.

Making necklaces with beads

                  

Threading beads is a great activity that helps your child develop fine motor skills. I purchased some pony beads in a myriad of colours which the children could not resist getting their hands on! I have some plastic needles suitable for young children which I thought would be a good way for the children to use for threading the beads onto the wool.

                            

D loved picking out her favourite beads and threading them onto the wool. She made an extremely long necklace which she often wears.



                            

R surprised me by also being very good at threading the beads onto the wool using the needle. However, with his short attention span he got bored after a while so did not manage to finish his project. I left it in the bead box and he goes back to it from time to time to add more beads.

Mosque sponge painting

           

Recently I have not been blogging as much as I would like to. I guess having a newborn as well as two older children does not give me much time for blogging at the moment. However, I now have a bit of a backlog of things to post about so I'd better get started!

This is an activity we did months ago. A lovely craft activity we found on a wonderful blog called Karima's crafts. We used homemade stencils to sponge paint onto black card to create this scene of a mosque at night. The original post can be found here.

               

I drew a mosque outline onto some card and then cut it out to create a stencil. I did the same for the stars and moon. Then I stuck the stencils onto some black card as I knew R wouldn't be able to hold it still on the paper.

                 

Using grey paint, R painted the mosque onto the card using a sponge brush.

         

I found some glow-in-the-dark paint for him to use to paint the stars and moon so that they would glow at night like the stars outside.

Five pillars of Islam craft

        

A few days ago Ramadan began, the month of fasting for Muslims all over the world. During this month, Muslims must fast from sunrise to sunset. During daylight hours, no food or drink will enter their mouths. Once the sun begins to set, Muslims will break their fast, normally with dates and a glass of water, followed by a delicious meal. 

Why do we fast? Because it has been prescribed for us. It is one of the five pillars of Islam. The pillars are the fundamentals of the faith, the five things we must do as Muslims. The first is shahada or testimony of faith. It is the belief in Allah, one God, and belief that Muhammed pbuh was his messenger. The second is salat, or prayer. As Muslims we have to pray five times a day. The third pillar is zakat, or charity. Muslims should give a certain percentage of their income to charity each year. The fourth pillar is sawn, or fasting and the fifth pillar is hajj. Hajj is the pilgrimage that Muslims should complete once in their lifetime. 

Not only is Ramadan the month of fasting, it is also a time when Muslims spend more time in prayer and reflection, read the Quran and do as many good deeds as possible whilst trying not to do wrong. Of course, we should try to do these things all through the year but we are human, we forget and Ramadan acts as a reminder for us.

        

During Ramadan, I like to do as many religious-themed crafts and activities with the children as possible. Here is a simple craft activity to teach children about the five pillars of Islam. You will need cardboard tubes, paint and alphabet stickers or a pen to write on the tubes.

                 

First, paint the cardboard tubes. We painted each tube a different colour.

        

Next stick (or write) the five pillars of Islam on the tubes, one on each, and write 'Islam' along the longest tube at the top. When you are doing this you can explain to your children what each pillar means. I think this craft looks lovely displayed in the home.

Paper plate rabbit ears

                

We have been reading Beatrix Potter books a lot recently. They are some of my favourite children's books. I think we began to read Beatrix Potter when D was about 3 years old and they are still on the bookshelves and get pulled out from time to time. The stories are so imaginative and the pictures are a joy to look at. Now, there is even a TV show based on the Peter Rabbit story as well.

We enjoy painting pictures of Peter Rabbit and his friends but I thought we could do some rabbit crafts. Here is our first one; rabbit ears.

Supplies

Paper plate

scissors

pink card

glue

stapler

               

First take a paper plate and cut a line down the rim of the plate.

               

Next, cut round the rim on both sides of the slit leaving a bit at the top uncut. Cut a line through the middle of the inner circle to make the ears. Fold so that the ears stand up.

               

Round the ears off at the top to make them more of an oval shape.

                       

Next, cut out some smaller ovals from card and glue into the middle of the rabbit ears.

             

You should have something like this. The final step is to staple the back of the hat together depending on the size you want. Try it on your child first and adjust to the right size before stapling.


           

You can now wear your hat!

            

R looks very proud of his! Now it's time for some imaginative play!

Bilingual snowballs

       

   

I have written before about the importance of bilingualism and how you can nurture bilingualism in your children. It is something I am really passionate about. There are so many advantages to being able to communicate in more than one language, especially if you are part of a multilingual family. After all, it's important to be able to communicate with your family members or the wider community when you travel abroad. 

Bilingualism is something I try to promote in my own family. My husband speaks four languages and the majority of his family members cannot speak English, so it is really important that our children learn to communicate with them. When you know another language it can open your eyes to a whole other culture which will also give you a better understanding of each other. 

Getting your child to learn another language is always a worry for bilingual families. How can you go about facilitating that? One way is to incorporate bilingualism into play, crafts or other fun activities. When children are having fun they won't even realise they are learning. Also, when learning is enjoyable, they are more likely to take it in and remember it. 

              

This activity was very simple to do. We took some paper plates and wrote words to decsribe snowballs on them. D was able to think of both adjectives and verbs that we use when talking about snowballs. It is a great activity to develop literacy skills and the different kinds of words we use; adjectives, nouns,verbs, adverbs etc. Then she stuck cotton wool around the edge of the plate to make it look more like a snowball.

              

As we thought of the words we wrote them down in both English and Turkish. So afterwards one plate had all the English words on one plate and another plate had the same words in Turkish written on it. They are now proudly displayed on the wall to remind us all of the words.

We concentrated on adjectives and verbs only but if you have an older child you could ask them to write sentences down, or how about asking them to write a poem about the snow? Afterwards ask them to translate it into the other language.  

Additional articles of interest

How to supplement your child's language classes at home

Bilingual language activity - autumn

Bilingual language activity - learning colours with play dough

Bilingual language activity - finger painting wildlife

Bilingual language activity - my family

Learning Arabic on the beach

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More Winter Crafts

Here are some more winter crafts we did over the last month or so...

'Magic' invisible snowflakes

                  

Cut out some circles of white paper. Then, draw snowflakes onto the circles with white crayon. Finally, paint over the circles with a colour of your choice, we chose blue to look like the sky.

                    

These were so much fun to make. The children were in awe by the appearance of the snowflakes when they painted over the white paper circles. 'That's amazing! It's like magic!' cried D in wonder.

                    

Hand print reindeer

                    

Some children like getting their hands dirty, some don't. Either way, they might enjoy getting their hands painted and making hand prints on paper.

                   

Make some brown hand prints on paper using poster paint.

                    

Using clean fingers, add a red thumb print for the nose and red collar with yellow fingerprint bell.

Painted snow globes

                    

Cut out snow globe shapes from card.

                    

Use poster paints to paint a snowy picture. We used bubble wrap stuck to a toilet roll tube and dipped in white paint to paint the snowflakes. I helped R with his.

                     

This is D's creation. I love the houses and trees.

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Winter Crafts

Here is a round up of all the winter-themed art we have been creating over the last month or so. Creating seasonal artwork is a really good way of introducing your child to the seasons. We love doing arts and crafts based on the seasons, you just need to look out the window for some inspiration.

                              Paper plate snowmen

                   

I cut the rim off the edge of the plate and used this to make the hate and scarf. Then I cut out some circles from black paper to make the snowman's mouth and a triangle from orange paper to make the nose. Googly eyes were the finishing touch.

                   

D had to colour hers in pink as usual!

                                 Toilet roll snowmen

                  

This is a super easy craft using bits and bobs from around the house, toilet roll tubes, cotton wool and glue.

                       

Simply stick the cotton wool all over the cardboard tube. The children love this sort of thing.

                        

R showing off his snowman! Finally, add some googly eyes and any other features and accessories you chose.

                                Pipe cleaner snowflakes

                       

Grab some beads and some pipe cleaners to make this snowflake craft.

                           

                    

Join pipe cleaners together by wrapping them round each other. Then thread beads onto the pipe cleaners and you're done. I love crafts that only involve a few supplies!

                    

                    


D insisted on making a multicoloured snowflake!

                    

                        

R went for the more traditional colours; white, blue and clear. I think they look fab hanging up round the house. I love displaying the children's creations for us all to admire.

                                Snowman name craft

                        

I cut out some circles from white paper; one for  the face and one for each letter of the children's names to make up the snowmen's bodies. Then the children stuck them onto blue paper, drew on the snowman's face and wrote their names (well, I wrote R's name but D wrote hers.)

                        

I love how D has started drawing lovely long eye lashes on all her faces! She loves to practice writing her name and for some reason prefers the capital 'A' than the lower case 'a'. The children then stuck wintry sequins on to the paper to finish off their pictures.

                                  Egg carton igloos

               

You may have noticed a theme here with all the cotton wool, but it is just perfect for snowy, winter-themed crafts. For our final cotton wool craft we made igloos. Simply cover the egg carton with cotton wool and there you have it; an igloo. 

                    

This was quite an educational craft as I explained to the children what  igloos were and they asked lots of questions about them. I just love it when something fun can turn into an learning experience.

More of our winter crafts to follow soon!

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