Chocolate Pudding Painting

It is nearly Easter!!

CHOCOLATE PUDDING PAINTING

Who doesn't love chocolate? This painting, not only feels fantastic, smells delicious but when you are finished you can lick your fingers. This is the perfect Easter activity for little ones and would be  sensational at and Easter Party.

Mix the pudding according to the packet instructions.

Spoon it out onto a tray.

Begin the chocolate fun!

Cut your paper into any shapes you like. Place the paper on top of the chocolate finger painting to take a print.

Once dry, the finished bunnies and eggs continue to smell fantastic. 

The proof is in the pudding!! (Boom boom)

EASTER BUNNY EARS

Painting with cotton wool and pegs to make bunny ears to wear while we hunt for our Easter eggs. I am also going to paint the children's noses pink.

Happy Easter! See you next Tuesday.

Don't eat too many chocolates... 

Easter Fun

I had fun making some cute nature inspired birds for our front door at home. 

Last week the children painted Easter Eggs using dye and fine paint brushes. They did an amazing job creating patterns and pictures on their eggs.

This week we did some threading around our amazing eggs.

I got given some plastic egg cake toppers which I thought would be fabulous on the light table with the playdough.

See you soon...

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Like Mama ~ Like Daughter

Paper Bag Nests

I think I love the lead up to Easter as much as Christmas as it is soo much more relaxed and usually means a cool change in the weather. This week, as I had brown paper bags left over from last week I made some little nests. I think they are so cute I thought I would share. They would be great to put little Easter Eggs or biscuits in as well. Here is how I made them...

Roll the top of the bag down and then glue twigs and string around the opening.

I attached some leaves to pegs so that they could be pegged onto the nests. 

The table looked soo beautiful - the children could explore a variety of materials such as nests, grass, chicks, eggs, rice and green shredded paper.

I encouraged the children to count the chicks and put them in the corresponding nests but that was only one aspect of this activity. This Easter activity promoted all sorts of learning from colour recognition, matching colours, recognising the shape 'oval' and the fine motor skill of correcty assembling the egg. Of course there was counting and number recognition as well as lots and lots of language. Not only maths language like 'full' and 'empty', 'half' and 'whole' but language in all the various role playing scenarios.

I loved hearing the children talking, sharing and helping each other. Apart from quite a bit of rice on the floor it was a great activity loved by all!!

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Paper Bag Shark

One of the simplest sea themed craft activities I do, is a paper bag shark puppet. It is an all time favourite every year with the 3 year olds. I don't usually like to repeat activities but this one is always soo popular that I don't mind.

The children painted a paper bag with black and white paint which mixes together to give shades of grey. (I like to do this because it provides a mini lesson on mixing paint) You could paint or print with anything but we used our kitchen sponges on handles. The children need to paint both sides of the bag.

When it is dry cut out the mouth and use the triangle and use the triangle for it's fin. Staple around the mouth so that when you put your hand in the bag, your fingers don't come through the opening for the mouth. Add rows of sharp teeth, paint the eye and the shark puppet is complete and ready to play with.

Sand playdough

Add 1 cup of white sand to the usual playdough recipe to give a lovely texture to the playdough. The children used different shells to make prints and mini beach scenes.

Pirates and Mermaids

Weekly readers of An Idea on Tuesday would know that we have had a long hot summer here in Australia and that many of the activities recently have revolved around the theme of summer. At school I have been looking at summer, sun safe behaviour, the beach, sea creatures, summer activities and the list goes on... 

We read the book 'Magic Beach' by Alison Lester and I decided to set up a pirate and mermaid discovery scene on the light table. You can set this scene anywhere of course, but the light table is my favourite resource. 

As usual, I made these peg people last night and fortunately they took no time at all. I just used whatever I had (It would have been better if the mermaids hair matched the clothes for colour sorting and extending the activity). The children loved them and it was very popular in the classroom however EVERY girl wanted the pink mermaid!!

Have a go at making some peg pirates and mermaids!

Niccola

Fun with Fish

Last night I bought some inexpensive fresh fish from the fishmonger for the children to touch, hold, poke, feel, examine and smell of course! The children then painted the fish and made prints. They looked amazing! They LOVED this experience and all were very keen to participate. A fabulous hands-on activity that provided soo much great learning and language.

 I covered the light table with a cheap green plastic semi-transparent table cloth to create and underwater backdrop which was extremely effective. I then placed a small tray with tiny shells and some larger shells with the numbers 1 to 10 written on them. Small plastic cups with numbers were included on the tray so the children could put the correct shell in the corresponding cup. (I saw the alphabet written on shells on The Imagination Tree and thought that numbers would also be a great idea.)

LIGHT ON

 LIGHT OFF

I really appreciate your comments. Thanks soo much and have a super Tuesday!!