Space Arty Crafty Party

This week it's time to share all of your fun hands on Space themed activites, arts and crafts. Have you been studying astronauts or constructing 3D solar systems? Then please link them up below.

Please don't forget to familiarise yourself with the link up guidelines and go grab a button to share on your blog.

Also, a quick reminder that past link ups can be found here. I try to keep all the link ups open so you can come back and add your appropriate themed activities at any time.









 

Voting

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You can vote once a day every day between now and then, either by clicking on the Circle of Moms banner above or over there on the right or visit this link http://www.circleofmoms.com/top25/homeschooling-blogs and click on the organge thumb next the Our Worldwide Classroom banner.

Bambino Academy - What's In A Name

: : : Simple Ideas For Your Bambino : : :

~ C is 33 Months ~

Having loads of tactile fun painting experiences this year with C is something I have already mentioned. Apart from lots of fun with paint, learning to recognise his name is another item I had on the list for him to accomplish this year.

A few weeks back I printed in large font his name and stuck it to the wall above his little desk. So of course he can easily tell me what that says. But can he recognise his name in other places? No! There is no way on earth I want this to be a boring exercise for him and in fact learning to recognise his name in many ways is really just a by product of the creative fun we are having together.

I have lots of ideas stashed away for name recognition and we'll slowly work through some or maybe many of them depending on C and where he takes this.

For this name recognition craft you need a piece of card, pencil, PVA glue and coloured sand. Write your chosen name on the card. (for the sake of the blog we will always complete two of these, one for C and one with Mummy on it)

Paint PVA glue over the top of the written name and start sprinkling with loads of coloured sand. (I recommend to have your mummy do the glue painting for you so that each letter is recognisable, I'm just saying you know)

When you are certain that all of the glue has been covered with as many different colours as possible leave it to dry, whilst you go for your afternoon nap.

After a lovely refreshing nap, take your name art work outside and brush away any excess sand to reveal a beautiful rainbow coloured name. Hang your work of art on the wall, being very careful to place 4 small balls of blu tack exactly in each corner and then punch them as hard as you can just to make sure it is really stuck to the wall and stand back to admire your work.

Make sure that when your dad gets home from work you immediately grab his hand and show him your coloured sand name and explain the process in full detail to him, just in case he doesn't understand and wants to make his own name with coloured sand.

Linked To:

Tot Tuesday
It's Playtime 

Mulitcultural Art: German Easter Trees

Easter was the focus for the children's Multicultural Art Lessons this week. In fact Easter Egg Trees from Germany. I wasn't aware of this tradition so went a googling. I didn't find a great deal of information though, this article discusses the Easter Trees and another here has a little video.

These have been painted on a canvas and are now hanging on the wall with our Easter Garland they'll be fabulous to use year after year and we will continue to add to our display for Easter.

The background and trees are painted, the children then drew egg shapes on construction paper, painted them and glued them to their trees.

Past Multicultural Art Posts:

Chinese Dragons

Aboriginal Dot Paintings

Easter Fun - Hand Decorated Candy Eggs

Mummies turn for a bit of Easter Decorating Fun! Remember when we did the Honeycomb Christmas Trees last year? So we decided that we had to do this regularly. lol! Regularly being twice a year, Christmas and Easter but still it is such a nice way to spend some time with other homeschoolimg mamma's.

Candied Easter Eggs, yum yum, I adore these. I think because of childhood memories more than anything else because let's face it, nothing today tastes as it once did. Due to the nature of these we didn't make the entire egg, but did do all of the joining and decorating.

We were shown how to make the egg, however they need 3 days drying time for them to harden enough to join and decorate.

It certainly looked like a very scary project to tackle, but it wasn't that difficult and it was really very fun. You just need to be be super carfeul not to touch your newly piped and joined edges otherwise you'll squish them, like I did in my yellow flowery egg up there.

Here are all the works of art waiting to be given to someone beautiful on Easter morning, if they can last that long.

Bambino Academy - Fun With Paint

Experience with paint was one thing high on my list for C this year. Not just your regular brush, paint and easel experience though. Painting with everything and anything on things of various shapes, textures and sizes.

Today he had buckets of sensory fun on his little toes. All of that paint squishing between them, he was giggling with delight, whilst trying not to slip over in the bucket of paint that is!

Whilst we set up his feet painting experience he was asking lots of questions about the various items as I laid them out on the grass. I hadn't told him what we doing, except that it was painting. Finally, after we were ready to get started he looked around and asked, "But what I am going to paint with mum?" "Your feet, darling" I said, with a big grin .... sheer delight was written all over his face!

One colour at a time, he dipped, squished and wriggled and then walked along the paper sheets to the bucket of water at the other end. When that colour was empty we rinsed the bucket and changed colours.

Of course you simply cannot set up a fun painting experience like this and expect that the bigger kids will simply stand by and watch. Oh no, they all had their turns and loved it.

We used poster paint, which is thinner and runnier so our foot prints didn't show up as well as they could have, but we now have a colourful footprint mural gracing the hall.

I plan sharing lots more fun painting experiences with C over the coming weeks and months.



This post is linked at

Easter Fun - An Arty Crafty Party

It's time to share all of the Easter Fun you have been having with your children.

Crafts, activities, printables anything hands on, fun and related to Easter.

Please don't forget to familiarise yourself with the link up guidelines and go grab a button to share on your blog.

There will be no new Arty Crafty Party link ups until after Easter, this one will remain open throughout Easter so please continue to add your links below.

Don't forget that you can continue to add to past Arty Crafty Links Ups, as they remain open.

Easter Egg Garland

When I saw this egg garland  I knew it was something that we could quickly and easily recreate. And it was so very simple. A few pieces of recycled card, tin foil and some paint.

We didn't have cotton buds, must add that to my list when restocking the craft supplies, so we just used a rolled up cotton swab.

All three children handled this one easily, with the older two doing their own tin foil wrapping of the eggs. B is just coming into the age where cutesy little themed crafts just don't inspire him so much anymore,  :( that's when it hits me that my baby is really growing up. Never the less he completed a few eggs anyway, cause he's nice like that ;-) K on the other hand could happily get down and crafty all day long!

Now we just need to continue adding to our Easter wall to brighten it up some. We have a couple more things waiting to be hung so they will help. :-)

Don't forget to add your Easter Fun to the Arty Crafty Party link here.

Mulitcultural Art: Australian Aboriginal Dot Painting For Kids

Our Multicultural Art Lessons this week had a focus on Australia and Aboriginal Dot Paintings.

These are so much fun. Relatively easy for kids of most ages to do, they also offer great results for those that perservere.

We have done some Aboriginal Dot Painting in the past and this post shows the process in slightly more detail for anyone wanting to give it a go.

It's quite a theraputic process too, something to do with the kids and not just watch them do it.

A 1 hour lesson wasn't quite enough for B to finish his. He ended up spending quite a bit of time at home on this piece.

K's adorable little echnida looks like he should be in a picture book story.

As always we are loving our Art classes.

Past Multicultural Art Posts:

Chinese Dragons

Hopping Into Easter

 Easter already!?!

I think we have started a tradition with our home schooling friends.

Easter and Christmas Cake decorating.

Whilst it's not always technically cake decorating, the workshops are run by a cake decorator (one of our lovely Grandmothers) so it's just easier if we always refer to these group activities as cake decorating.

We never know what the children will be creating, the surprise is half the fun and the grand reveal this time around was definitely worth the wait.

Decorated Easter Egg Bunnies.

Aren't they just adorable! Loads of fine motor work and creative finesse involved. And let's not forget the eating component now shall we.

Past Cake Decorating Activities

Christmas Cake Toppers
Dogs, Cats, Pirates & Bonnets

A Homeschooling Mothers Dilemma

Do you draw three children away from their play to ensure you do some 'real learning' ahem?

They all worked cooperatively on this parking garage, come road mat. All 3 of them together, it was a lovely to sit back and listen and to sneak a peek every now and then.

What would you do?

Declutter, Plan & Prepare: March 2011

oops! Sorry about February totally forgot, actually not sure anything much got done in the delcuttering department during Feb anyway. Even this month I was only able to tackle a few small areas of decluttering, but every bit helps.

Third draw down in the kitchen, does everyone have one of these lol! A mess of kitchen odds and ends and way too many birthday cake candles.

Much better. Containers are from Howards Storage World, love that store.

Our games cupboard is a bugbear. It simply never stays tidy. Every six or so months I find myself having to reorganise this space. I keep seeing bloggers that have ditched the boxes from the games and are now storing them in ziplock bags, placed inside a container of some description.

The end result is always a clean, clutter free space. This makes me panicky, ridiculous I know, but cutting and throwing away the boxes of the games does; even though I have considered doing this for a couple of years now I have never been able to take the plunge.

This month I bit the bullet and headed out to KMart to pick up some baskets and large ziplock bags. I have a loooong way to go on this project.

Our top draw in the ensuite, another embarrassment, but one that was quickly remedied.

Yet again containers from Howards Storage World. These ones clip together but they don't stay together and often come apart, however they were alot less expensive than the ones I used in the kitchen draw.

That's it for this month of decluttering around the home. I've been working hard on upcoming units for the kids, finding resources etc.

I personally am just finishing off a seven day internal cleanse/juice fast and definitely feel a whole lot better for it.

What about you? Done any decluttering this past month?

Past decluttering posts:

The Impetus

January

Spring Fling - An Arty Crafty Party

For many of you Spring has arrived on your doorstep and I have seen some gorgeous spring crafts around of late so I felt it was only fitting for this week's theme to be - Spring!

Whilst a new theme is posted weekly all of the previous linky themes will remain open so you can always go back and add to them whenever you choose.

To find past Arty Crafty Party posts simply click on the button in the sidebar or visit this link. Which also has the button code for you to grab and the guidelines for participating in An Arty Crafty Party.

Looking forward to seeing all of those gorgeous spring time creations.

Multicultural Art: Chinese Dragons

We have a multicultural theme happening with our Art Classes currently, it's fabulous!

There are so many wonderful ideas and variations within the art experience, just by looking further afield.

So much to be learnt through a simple piece of art.

This week it was China and Chinese Dragons.

The artwork chosen to complete varies depending on the age group of the class so B and K's are very different, but both inspiring.

Upper primary: 8 - 12 years, hand drew theirs, outline with oil pastels and finished off with water colour.

Lower primary group created Chinese Dragon Egg Carton puppets. So simple but they look great and the kids can run around flying them through the air, like the dragons they have seen at during Chinese New Year celebrations.

Click on the image to enlarge and you should be able to figure it out if you wish to recreate. But basically it is half an egg carton, you place your hands in the cut open end for the puppet. The dragon's eyes are two egg holders cut from the carton and attached towards the back of the puppet.

His nose and flames/beard are hand drawn and cut from construction paper. In the example the flames were attached so they were flowing backwards but K wanted hers to head up.

The dragons' tale is simply a piece of tissue paper, cut to size and rounded at the end. With Oil Pastels draw scales and glue to the back of the carton. You place your hand under the tail and into the carton to use the puppet.

Once again, we are in for another great year of LHEN Art Classes.