Homemade gift for Grandma

         

Gifts do not always have to be expensive. In fact, I prefer a homemade gift because you know a lot of thought, time and effort has gone into it. I love to receive gifts from my children that they have made themselves and they also enjoy making gifts for family members too. A few weeks ago it was my Mum's birthday and the children made her these lovely flower pictures. As today is Mother's Day, I thought these pictures would also make a wonderful Mother's Day gift.

Supplies

A4 card or paper

small pieces of tissue paper

PVA glue

         

First, get some PVA glue and tissue paper. We used a pack of tissue paper that came cut up into small squares, but you can also use large sheets of tissue paper that you can cut up or rip into smaller pieces yourself.

                   

Next, draw a picture on some card or paper. The children chose this bright yellow card for their pictures.

               

Then, the children can screw up the pieces of tissue paper and stick them on the card to build up a beautiful, colourful picutre.

        

Here they are getting stuck in!

              

R loves using glue to stick things. He really enjoyed screwing up the tissue paper too.

               

Here is D's finished picture. She has a great attention span now so was able to complete the picture.

              

R's masterpiece.

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Play dough and buttons

       

Play dough is such a wonderful play material. It can be used in so many ways. The children often like to roll it and cut it out with cookie cutters or stuff it into silicone cupcake cases to make their own cupcakes. Today, however, I decided to add some buttons to the invitation to play. I have written about their love of buttons before in this post where we used them for numeracy activities. Buttons are such a brilliant, inexpensive resource.

Today I gave the children the choice of coloured buttons or black and white. They chose the black and white to work with. I gave them each some play dough and told them they could roll it out and use it as a canvas for the beads to stick to.

       

They soon discovered that the buttons left lovely prints in the play dough and they had fun exploring this for some time. 

       

R used buttons to create marks all over his play dough.

     

D then started to print the marks in the shape of letters. Here is a capital 'I'.

      

D rolled out her play dough again and used the edge of the buttons to draw letters, numbers and a girl. I love how she had thought of using the edge of a button to do this.

      

R began to place buttons on the play dough and make a picture.

      

      

D started to make some flowers, one white, one black and one black and white.

      

The finished picture.

      

I love the way she placed black buttons on top of the white ones and vice versa to create an interesting effect.

      

R decided he wanted to make a sausage so he rolled up his play dough. Then, he stuck buttons all the way down in a line. I used this as an opportunity for some counting practice. I asked him if he could count them and he could! This is the first time I have heard him count to 10 in the right order, usually he skips a few. After we had practiced counting in English, we then practiced in Turkish. He needed more help with this, but practice makes perfect!

       

Finally, he got bored with the lay dough and started stacking the buttons instead. This is a great way of developing fine motor skills and balancing. He managed to stack about 8 before the stack toppled over. He enjoyed trying this over and over again, trying to build the tower higher each time. So much concentration on his face.

Do your children enjoy play dough?

Language learning - colour wheel

       

As you may know, we are a multilingual family so I try to integrate language learning activities into our homeschool. Today, I decided to focus on colours. We are learning Turkish so I did it in this language but you can do any language your children are learning. If you are not learning another language you can always do this activity for your native language aswell.

       

First, I got a paper plate and divided it into 10 sections. 

       

Then I took different coloured pens and wrote 10 different colours on the plate, one in each section.

               

Then, I gave the plate to D to colour in. I asked her to say the words as she coloured to try and aid memorisation. Below, is the finished product.

       

After, she had finished, I tested her by pointing to colours and asking her what the Turkish word was. We can now use our colour wheel over and over again as a learning resource. It's great to make your own resources.

Monster tea party

           

I had some baking soda dough left over from this activity so decided to get it out and put it to use. I thought it would be fun to set up a monster tea party! I placed the tablecloth on the floor and set up some tea party things; teacups, saucers, plates and teapots. The aim was for the baking soda dough to be spooned into teacups and the vinegar to be poured on top, making fizzing, foaming, monster tea.

         

The children couldn't wait to get started! They eagerly began to spoon the dough into cups.

          

Then they poured the vinegar into the teacups and watched the magic! It's not the first time we have experimented with baking soda and vinegar. We have done this activity a few times now and it is one of the children's favourites. It keeps them occupied for ages! 

They really loved this monster tea party, imaginative, invitation to play. It was wonderful to watch them role play and interact and amazing to see the wonder in their faces as they watched the magical reaction of baking soda and vinegar. I don't think they will ever tire of this!

Blueberry scone recipe

              

Scones are the ultimate British teatime snack. I love to eat them mid-morning or mid-afternoon along with a lovely cup of tea. They are really very easy and quick to make and you can adapt them to suit your own taste. I often add currants, which I prefer to raisins. I have also added chocolate chips in the past. This recipe calls for the addition of fresh blueberries which give a delicious fruitiness to the scone. When eating a fruit scone always spread some butter on it. Clotted cream and jam is reserved for plain scones. That's scone etiquette for you! For this recipe, I sprinkled the scones with brown sugar before baking but this is optional. You can leave them plain if you prefer.

Ingredients

2 oz/55g butter

1 lb/450g plain flour

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp baking powder

2 tbsp castor sugar

250 ml milk

100g fresh blueberries

                         

Sift the flour, salt and baking powder into a bowl. Rub the butter into the flour mixture until it is a breadcrumb consistency.

            

Add the milk and bring the mixture together to make a dough. Stir in the blueberries.

            

Roll out the dough to 1cm thickness and cut into circles using a cookie cutter or a glass. The amount of scones you make will depend on the size of the cutter. Brush with milk and sprinkle with brown sugar.

            

Bake in the oven at 220 degrees for 10-12 minutes, or until golden brown.

            

Enjoy your scones slathered with butter alongside a hot cup of tea.

Learning about teeth

         

One day D stated that she would like to learn about teeth! I was surprised but it is not the first time she has surprised me with her unusual (is it unusual or is it just me?) requests. Maybe it was the activities we did last week about the sense of taste when we learnt about the tongue that sparked this interest, who knows? But, as a firm believer in following the child's lead, I began to put together some learning activities based on this topic.

                     

The first activity we did was some finger painting! This is always good fun for young children as it is quite easy for them to do successfully. I cut a mouth out of red paper, then put some white paint in a pot for the children to use to paint the teeth.

                     

I think it looked quite effective!

                     

This is R's attempt, a good try.

         

Whilst the paint was out, I thought of another painting craft. I cut a paper plate in half and told D to paint some red lips round the edge. Then, she drew some teeth inside.

                   

Next, I asked D to think of some adjectives that describe teeth. Here are the words she thought of. 

         

She wrote them down herself. She loves writing.

                     

Next, we talked about ways we could look after our teeth. D had become a bit tired of writing by this stage so I wrote down what she said.

                   

Whilst we were doing the writing activities, R had some colouring in to do.

                      

Here's what he got up to.

Glass pebble number activity

          

I found mathematics quite boring as a child so I really want to make it more fun for my children. We have done a few creative maths activities before such as this one but I'm always trying to think of new ideas. Glass pebbles are a great resource. They are cheap and the children find them fun to play with. They are very versatile and can be used in many play activities in different ways.

This activity is simple to set up and uses few supplies. First, I cut 10 small rectangles out of card and wrote a number from 1 to 10 on each one. Next, I placed a tub of glass pebbles on the table next to an A4 piece of paper. I placed one of the number cards down and asked D to make the shape of the number with the pebbles on the paper. You can ask your child to chose the next number once they've finished the first one.

                       

Here they are getting stuck in to this activity.

                  

D creates a number 2.

                 

I gave R the number 1 to try and create as I thought it would be easy for him to copy a straight line.

             

Not entirely sure what R was trying to make here!




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