Colour swatch ombre wrapping

 Colour swatches are AMAZING in so many ways! Beautiful to the eye, useful for so many activities and did i mention FREE!!

We picked these ones up at our local Bunnings and used our butterfly hole punch to make a stack of tiny coloured butterflies. Tara sorted the colours as best she could from lightest to darkest and glued them to a brown paper package for her cousin.

The latest OMBRE trend can even become a part of learning! Tara also discovered the remains of the colour swatches made great butterfly stencils to keep for a rainy day!



Animal pet rocks

 This was an inviation to play that i set one this morning for both kids to create Animal Pet Rocks, keeping with our letter of the week A.

Paint,glue,pom poms,eyes,gems,crepe paper and plenty of rocks. Needless to say our house is now FULL of families of pet rocks :)

Chalk Coloured Sand Artwork

Coloured sand can be used for many activities and this an easy way to make it and involve children. All you need is a child sized grater,sand and thick coloured chalk......
Start by putting those little finger muscles to work and grating the chalk into bowls keeping each colour separate

The end result will look like this, its fine and powdery

Add your sand into each container and mix thoroughly

Perfect coloured sand so much cheaper to make than buy from craft shops

We used our coloured sand to do sand art pictures. Drawing an outline of your object (Tara chose a sunflower for spring) then paste the inside of the object

Sprinkle on some coloured sand...

And shake off onto a tray..

Toilet Roll Designer Cuffs

I'm forever trying to come up with fun things to make with our mountain of toilet rolls so this was just one that kept us busy for an afternoon I set out a tray with paint,gems,stickers and glitter as well as a toilet roll cut in half length ways and sideways and Tara began to decorate......... Designer kids fashion cuffs ready to match to your next outfit!

Cereal box Mosaic

The amount of wastage that is in packaging these days its nice to use materials that lessen the impact on our environment. Instead of throwing out your boxes from cereal, cut them into strips then into squares. You will be amazed at the different colour varieties you get. For younger children draw up a sheet of paper with squares marked out already for them in which they can paste and place the cardboard squares into. For older children they will enjoy using their own template to make their own mosaic picture.

Tissue paper bowls

We had a very special person's birthday coming up and wanted to make a handmade pressie that she could keep and use forever so we decided on a handmade bowl.
Firstly Tara practiced her ripping with some different coloured tissue paper and we made up a batch of watered down PVA glue.
We tried using two bowls, one plastic and one glass and both seemed to work fine so just choose a nicely shaped bowl and spray with cooking oil and cover with cling wrap.

Use the paper and the glue to paper mache around the bowl.Keep layering to make the bowl nice and strong. Allow it to dry overnight.

And in the morning just slide your finger between the cling wrap and the bowl to lift out the masterpiece

You can either peel the cling wrap off for a more matt look and use scissors to even out the edge (see bigger bowl in pic) or just trim the cling wrap around the edge for a more rustic look (see smaller bowl)

Great for storing treats or treasures!

Super shape puzzles

Again if you haven't seen the American Nick jnr website, its great!
http://www.nickjr.com/printables/geo-super-shape-puzzles.jhtml?path=/printables/team-umizoomi/all-themes/all-ages/index.jhtml
The Umizoomi cut and paste activity gets the children to cut out the simple shapes. I cut out the surrounds of the shape then got Tara to follow the lines of the shape to finish it off. Then you match the shape to the picture and glue it on. Simple but great for shape awareness
Tara Approved!