Letter A:: Cut and Paste Collage

Free for download from Lawteedah. Capital letter only (unfortunately) but free is good!

Click here for a whole page of alligator activities and other general letter A stuff.

Related Pinterest Boards:
Homeschool
Alphabet
Scissor skills

Skeleton Cut and Paste

Another Halloween resource from Making Learning Fun.  This time a cut and paste skeleton to colour and cut.

Click here to download

Related Pinterest Boards:
Homeschool
Cut and Paste/ Scissor Practise
Halloween

Letter G: G is for Goose: Cut and paste

Free to download here from Making Learning Fun

Letter B:B is for butterfly:cut and paste

Free to download here from Making Learning Fun.

Letter S:S is for snake: cut and paste

Free to download here from Making Learning Fun

Letter G: G is for gorilla:cut and paste

Free to download from here at Making Learning Fun.

Letter P: P is for pig: cut and paste

Free to download here from Making Learning Fun.

Cutting and Sticking: Astrosaur Puppets:

If you have a boy between about 6 and 9 he will probably have heard of Astrosaurs.  They are the space- going action hero dinosaurs invented by author Steve Cole.  A downloaded these from the Steve Cole website and spent the afternoon practising his cutting skills and making these babies.

If your own Steve Cole fan would like to make his own versions you can donwload them from here.

stArt- Owl Babies

Owl Babies is a beautifully illustrated story about three baby owls who wake up one night to find their Mummy is gone.  It is a lovely gentle story about separation and how it is OK in the end.  It is not too wordy but has a repeating chant of "I want my Mummy said Bill" that the kids love to join in with.
This book has special place in my heart because when A was 3 it was his favourite book (aside from the Thomas the Tank Engine stories of course!). We bought it when he was having trouble being left at Nursery School in the hope that it would help him learn how to separate from me (it didn't, but that is a whole other story) and he requested it every night for months on end.  B was introduced to it once or twice but has only recently developed a long enough attention span for me to get past page 2 in any of our books!  This morning however B and I were woken up at 2 a.m. by A and could not get back to sleep right away so we crept downstairs to read a book or two to try to get B to sleep.  A meanwhile went straight back to sleep in B's bed - typical!  The book B chose was Owl Babies.  Not only did we have it in the early hours but throughout the morning he kept bringing it back to me again saying "Bill lose Mummy! Read it! Read it!" so we temporarily abandoned our plans for using valentines based stuff and switched to owls instead.
The first idea I had was to use a toilet roll and cover it with feathers and stick on eyes and beak for an owl face; I must have seen this somewhere at some point but I can't for the life of me think where... anyway, the feathers are conspicuous by their absence from the craft box so I decided that we would do some shape cutting and sticking instead.  Using the template from First School found here this is what we made.

Come to think of it this could fit in with a Valentines theme since it is made from heart shapes.  Ours is a night time picture because the story takes place at night and it is definitely Mummy Owl because she is flying.  B was OK about  putting the glue on the shapes but didn't want to make the picture, that's what happens when your big brother wakes you up at 2 a.m. I guess!  When we get a chance we will add more owl themed stuff (see trace make etc), until then this was just a quick morning project - hope you like it.

For more book inspired things to share head over to A Mommys Adventures.

Cutting and Sticking: mosiac

One nice thing about moving into a new house is it gives you the opportunity to rediscover all those books and toys which had been pushed to the back of the cupboard.  One such set was a "Crafty History" group of books that I bought in a sale a few years back, put into the cupboard and then overlooked completely.
R re-discovered them in our new house and was immediately taken by the Roman history one where they make their own mosaic with cut up bits of paper.
Ours is a group effort using coloured paper from our craft stash and the side of one of the bigger cardboard boxes from the move as the base.
First I drew a simple daisy's pattern and then the kids and I filled it in (R deserves the prize for most of the work).
We didn't have black paper for the bumblebee stripes so we used black paint and improvised a square stamp but it didn't really work too well so we switched to a brush and decided to use paint for the sky and grass as well.

Cutting and Sticking: Leaf Wreath

Paper plates make the perfect thing to stick objects on to make a wreath.  We made ours using leaves cut from paper but we could have used real leaves (Germany isn't big on the poop scoop as a result I am not big on using anything from where people walk their dogs! - parks and pavements included; we have already come a cropper in the three months we have been here -yuck!).  It also gave us the opportunity to practise scissor skills, something A as a left-hander needs.
I put together a page of leaf outlines (cut and paste from activityvillage.co.uk) and printed these on plain "autumn" coloured paper as well as white paper so the kids could do their own colours.  The yellow went down especially well with A for whom this has become an all time favourite colour ever since he found out it was the favourite colour of his best friend Rebekah.
All the kids had to do was cut them out and stick them on.

We made a chain of wreaths so they could all hang on the front door, that was infinitely more fair than banishing one wreath to the garage door and the other round the back of the house.

Paper Crafts: Kung Fu Panda Wall Masks- update, link no longer valid :(

Our first playdate since moving to Northern Germany.  A is a decided Kung Fu Panda fan since we bought the DVD over the summer and when we collected his playmate he was clutching a cuddly Po so this seemed a brilliant rainy playdate activity.
The free downloadable patterns for these Kung Fu Panda 3-D wall masks are from the HP Activity Centre along with some other nice stuff.

We have made Po and Viper so far but there are five to choose from:  Mantis, Po, Monkey, Viper and Tigress.  The instructions and artwork are available to download separately for each character and work well with the ones we have made so far - although I have to admit we used sticky tape not glue (not as pretty a finish but more instant results).

So if you have a Kung Fu Panda fan in your home (or a fan coming for a playdate) why not give these a go.

Snow scene

R decided to make a snow scene entirely on her own this morning and she wanted to share it here.  It has a school, a hotel, a house and a person playing in the snow.

Letter A: A is for Ambulance

"B needs to learn his letters" I said to OH the other day. At 2 he is a little young but if he were in the UK he would be spending a couple of afternoons a week at our local nursery just like his brother and sister did. Where to start with learning letters? Some advocate doing it ABC order, some linking it with reading/phonics and so doing those letters that have the same sound whatever word they are in which roughly translated means vowels last. Jolly Phonics (which was taught to the Reception Class at my kids UK school) starts with the letter "S". I decided that reading can wait and stuck with alphabetical order so "A" it is.
For the first "A" activity I took a picture of an ambulance (I used the one from http://www.first-school.ws/) and dropped it into MSPaint. Then I painted out the wheels. Next I dropped the same picture in and painted out the bodywork instead. This left me with two sheets.

I then cut out the wheels and gave them to B along with the other sheet and (fanfare please!) a glue stick. You have never seen such a happy toddler because whenever we do gluing normally his sister interfers; I mean helps; and takes the glue stick away from him. Not only that but he could pull the wheels off and stick them down again several times - Wow! As you can see he got them pretty much spot on too. With an older preschool child they could cut the wheels out themselves.
He didn't feel like colouring today so it will get displayed au naturelle later in the week.

F is for Fish: submarine portholes

If you could explore the bottom of the sea in a submarine what would you see out of the window?

First we took a paper plate each and cut out the centre to give us a ring this is our porthole. R and A did this themselves once I had made an initial hole in the plate. Don't worry if the ring splits a little as you cut this will be stuck back together in a minute.

Then we took some clear sticky-backed plastic (aka book film or contact paper) and cut out two circles a little bigger than the hole in the plate

Then we took some coloured tissue paper and cut out some fish.

To assemble take one of the circles of sticky-backed plastic and stick it on the back of the paper plate. Turn the plate over so that the front of your "window" is sticky. Arrange the tissue paper fish on "window". Seal in with the other circle of sticky-backed plastic.

Display on a window so that the sun can shine through!

Easy!

B being only 2 did a basic one which I prepared for him but both R and A did all the cutting themselves. R decided to do her fish all kinds of sizes and added blue "waves". Make it as basic or complex as you want.


As an afterthought we decided that the pictures would look even better if they had a submarine silhouette as a "frame". We left our sub plain due to lack of time but we could have decorated it as well.


This kind of idea would also make a great bulletin board art display with pictures mounted in the windows of a sub, or boat, or car, or rocket ......Hmm I wonder what aliens you might see on Mars out of the window of your rocket....

Learning the alphabet:alphabet frieze

How many millions of alphabet friezes are there in the shops -all cute as can be and costing a pretty penny most of them too. This is an idea for a basic lowercase letters only frieze that you can add your own pictures to later as you introduce each letter to your child. Of course I couldn't resist using it as cutting with scissors and taping with sellotape practise too!

We took plain white A4 paper and divided each sheet into six squares. In each of the squares we wrote a letter of the alphabet (in a random order). Next time I intend to use a tracer font(wherethe letters are made of dots) and get my son to write them in himself but I just didn't think of this until too late!

For the background we stuck sheets of coloured A4 together with sticky tape to make a long strip.

Get child to cut the white paper squares out and place in alphabetical order. Tape onto the background using sellotape.

Fix to the wall.

As an ongoing project add pictures/photos of examples of things that start with the letter from magasines or the childs own drawings etc in a line under each letter.

Cutting and sticking:"Stained glass windows"

Age range: 2 and over with adult help
This one is an oldy but easy to adapt to a wide age range!
You will need:

Thick coloured paper or card (we used black and dark grey)
Cellophane or tissue paper
Scissors or craft knife
Pencil
Glue
First decide on the design for your window. We used our names (we are trying to get our youngest to recognise his written name) but it could be any pattern or theme. Draw the design on the paper making sure that there are "bridges" to stop areas like the inside of the capital "A" falling out. Older children can draw their own design or use stencils to create your pattern. Cut out the areas you want to be coloured, if it is a simple design you can get away with scissors but you may need to use a craft knife.
Turn the paper over.
Get your child to cut strips of cellophane or tissue paper using the scissors (doesn't have to be neat) for younger children tear tissue paper.
Glue the strips over the paper so that all the holes are covered.
Stick on a window and let the light shine in!