A recycle robot

I am in the habit of collecting boxes and tubes for some future art project! So we put them to good use building a recycle robot!

I gave Henry all the things he could use on a table. Boxes, toilet rolls, paper plates and a flower pot and some wool and googly eyes! and asked him to design his robot.

Just be aware to have some very strong glue handy if you are going to stick tubes on as legs and arms.

We covered the cereal box body with plain paper so Henry could create whatever design on it he wanted. Henry asked me to help with the arms and legs, but after that he added everything else inc. hair and eyes.

In the end Henry gave the robot a name - "Stanley" and stuck some packing polystyrene bits to its tummy.

Stanley still stands proud in Henry's bedroom, even though we completed this activity months ago.

Creating with shapes

With one of Henry's friends coming over to play, I decided to create a little project to keep them both occupied for 10 minutes!

You will need some light weight card or paper of any colour. I had black already, so used this. Next, cut the card into shapes of any type. I tried to cut at least two of everything, so if Henry wanted to he could create a symmetrical piece of art.

You can make the shapes as large or as small as you want. I stuck with squares, rectangles and triangles, but circles and stars would be great too. I supplied a couple of googly eyes as well just for an interesting twist!

Provide your child with the shapes, any little extras such as the googly eyes or stickers, a blank piece of paper and a glue stick and suggest they create.......anything!

Henry started out by creating two trees in pots (symmetrical), using squares for the pots, long rectangles for the trunks and triangles for the tree tops. Then found the googly eyes and got creating a monster! It was great, because as he added shapes he told me what he was doing, its interesting to be in on the thought processes

some times!

We labelled the creation and attached it to the fridge........something so simple, kept two 5 year old boys occupied for about 20 minutes!

Name alien!

I found this great idea on another blog today by Allison McDonald. So simple, but a great idea.

First provide your child with a piece of paper (any colour goes), then ask them to fold in half long ways. This on its own is easier for some children than others.

Next, ask your child to write their name across the width of the paper. Try & encourage writing down to the fold. That way, the resulting alien

shape will be more fun to work with. Big letters are a lot of fun and actually quite challenging when kids have started to write small for school purposes.

When the name is written, draw a line roughly around each

letter so that your child has a guide to follow when they are cutting. Then off they go with the scissors. It really does not matter how neat the cutting is.

Next stage is to open out the paper & turn it over to the blank side....this is where the creating comes in. Supply your child with whatever you think they would like to embellish their alien with! Googly eyes, paints, glitter, feather, pipe cleaners, stickers...whatever works.

Henry had fun with this and requested 6 eyes for his alien...then added some hands, feet and general glittering!

Another great blog to follow

I have just found this great blog, which has some excellent ideas for simple craft type projects to do at home. Can't wait to try a few with Henry.

http://blogs.familyeducation.com/parenting/14452

Torch light sabres

I just found this link from a friend. Looks a great idea to try. I'll post pics when we do it!

http://filthwizardry.blogspot.com/2010/01/balloon-and-torch-lightsabres.html

The most wonderful egg in the world - Book

During our day of hen themed activities we read "The most wonderful egg in the world" written and illustrated by Helme Heine.

This is a story of three hens who want to become princesses. The king suggests that whoever lays the most wonderful egg will be crowned princess. The first lays a perfect egg, the second a huge egg

and the third....a colourful cube shaped egg! The king can not decide,

because they are all wonderful in their own way....and all the hens become princesses!

We have read this book so many time, so Henry knows the story off by heart. However we read it again, and then I suggested that Henry, Kevin and I all went to a different table and drew what we considered to be the most wonderful egg in the world.

Kevin got out the scissors and created an egg mobile! I created a colourful Easter egg. Henry got to work with his favourite colour - red and drew a rectangle red egg! Then labelled it.

We discussed how he would describe his egg - rectangle, red, sharp edges. He then described my egg in various ways.....even I was at a loss how to describe daddy's egg!

Henry does Hens!

At Christmas we became the proud owners of two brown hens - Henry took delivery of them on Xmas day from Santa! Named Henrietta and Peck Peck, they have become integral members of our family! As I write this blog however, I am recovering from finding one of said hens in the middle of the road near our house after she decided a re enactment of "chicken run" would be fun! Luckily I found her, caught her & delivered her back safely!

With a number of snow days in the last couple of weeks, I dedicated one day to lots

of activities with a "

hen" theme. I'll try & outline them all here, but in summary we had:

1. Create a piece of hen related art (painting, collage, drawing etc)
2. Words rhyming with "egg" and "hen" - thought of and written down by Henry.
3. Read some hen related stories (see another post).
4. Sight words bingo (with an egg theme)
5. Simple addition of how many eggs have the two hens layed!
6. Provide an egg shape and suggest that it be turned into a person/animal etc.
7. Create a story about Henry and his hens in simple words and read it.

I apologise for the long post, but we did quite a few activities!

1. Hen art

Henry's piece of hen art was a collage using tissue paper cut up and scrunched up. I drew the outline of the Hen, and provided the

squares of cut tissue paper. I did originally offer this in gold, orange and yellow, thinking Henry would use all colours for a multi coloured hen.....however he

stuck with gold and I cut adequate bits for him to finish in that colour. Peck Peck the collage hen was a great success!

2. Rhyming words

On the internet you can find images of

anything you want. A search for "eggs" brought me a great egg picture which I replicated loads of

times. For the rhyming words, Henry had the egg shapes to write each letter on to create the rhyming words.

3. Hen & egg stories

We have on our shelf - Coriander the contrary hen and The most wonderful egg in the world, which we read. We also did an activity with the latter title which I will post as a separate activity.

4. Simple words egg bingo

For Egg bingo I printed a page with 8 eggs on, and onto each of these eggs I wrote one of Henry's sight words. I then printed out a further 8 eggs that I cut out and wrote the same words on. I replicated each of these so I could play with Henry. We took it in turns to take eggs off the pile and read the words then cover the eggs. It was a bit more fun that simple squares with words in.

5.Egg addition eggsercise!

I found a picture of a hen on the internet & printed it out twice. I then printed about 10 eggs out. Under each hen I placed a number of eggs and we did simple addition with Henry recording the number of eggs layed next to a picture of his hen run.

6. Egg head

I provided Henry with a blank piece of paper and a cut out of an egg, and suggested he turn it into a face. I imagined he would add some hair, eyes, nose and mouth......I was wrong - he actually turned it into an egg person! Then when asked to name it...called it Henry Egg!

7. A story about Henry and his hens

This I prepared in advance. I created simple sentences that Henry knew the words or could sound out the words with some help. I then added a few images to help with the story recognition. Henry thought this was great, that he appeared in the story with his hens!