Kids art and crafts essentials

Today I have decided to post all about children's craft essentials I think it is important that parents know that it is not essential to spend a fortune so I will also provide a list of places where I buy the essentials from for less money.  I will now apologise for anyone outside of the UK who reads this post as I realise that the shops are different.  I would appreciate anyone who lives in other areas to make comments at the bottom as to where you purchase your children's craft items from.

These are all the items that we use frequently and that I feel are useful when we are being creative. Thank you to those followers on my facebook page that also helped with the compiling of this list.

I have tried to link many of the items to activities that we have done or linked to inspiration from others.

Glue stick and PVA most of our activities use these items

Double sided sticky tape

Sellotape 4 easy puppets 

Paints- The footprint paper , making animal tracks 

Pens

Pencils

Colouring pencils and crayons- Make your own crayons

Brushes we use all sorts of brushes all of which were brought from ASDA and I think they were £1.50 for 10

Sequins writing letters in , up-cycle milk bottles into magnets

googly eyes use with play dough to make portraits or monsters, not forgetting our up-cycled pig and 4 easy puppets 

roll of paper (We now buy wall paper lining from the pound shop this stuff is brilliant)making animal tracks , glove painting, painting with spray bottles and cars 

Butcher paper thank you to a facebook reader for recommending this I never realised that this is a cheap alternative to rolls of paper

Food colouring (yes I know this is odd but there is so much you can do) Making playdough , An amazing list at Momma's fun world 

Lollipop sticks we made our beach hut from these and our chairs.  You can do busy bag ideas like this craft stick puzzles from motherhood on a dime , or for making shapes a letters an idea from Tot treasures 

Feathers

Stickers making a wind chime, paper bag kite

Contact paper learn with play at home have great ideas about what to do with this! , Making a card for nanny 

Scissors and different types zig zag etc Making a card for nanny , practising using scissors 

Pom poms pom pom people, spoon and pom pom race , caterpillar counting activity , Making a bouquet of flowers

Straws-practising using scissors 

fun foam bath time fun , learning letters building

glitter- I am sure you have noticed that Little Boo LOVES glitter I buy glitter that has a shaker on the top thanks to this she can use the glitter independently and not too much comes out. Just check the lid is on properly before starting to shake :)

Silicon tray Make your own crayons, making Olympic medals chocolate and play dough ones. A facebook reader also mentioned that she used these as paint pots.  This is a great idea as they are so easy to wash and really cheap to buy.

Play dough sweet shop, practice using scissors 

Pipe cleaners pin less pin wheel, creating letters

Items to not throw away and use
toilet rolls love these ideas by saved by loves creations and do not forget our posts painting without brushes and making a rain maker.

card board boxes and card scraps, Making a postbox, Small world play make your own mat

junk mail- use it for practising cutting

sellotape reel make your own threading toy, make your own roll stamp just add stickers around the outside.

Used wrapping paper and magazines. practising using scissors , Homemade flower press, Making funny faces 

old sponges - use them for painting and as cheap board rubbers

bubblewrap textured letters and letter recognition

Places where we buy our essentials from
Pound shop
Pound world
Asda
Wilkinsons
scrap store
The Works

A piece of advise would also be to buy items after certain events have happened such as after Christmas or Easter or just after the "back to school" I find that many places place the arts and crafts materials on sale.

Since starting to do more arts and crafts with Little Boo I have been surprised at how much everyday items have become essential to our craft supply.  I hope that this list has been helpful needless to say there is probably something I have missed I hope not though.  I will look forward to the comments that people make as we may compile a larger list :) Watch this space!

learning the letter b

Today we have been learning the letter b in a very messy and fun way! I hope that you like some of the ideas.

We have been trying out masking tape resist painting.  This is basically where you place masking tape in an area where you do not want there to be paint. It works wonderfully as Little Boo could just go crazy with the paints and then like magic when the paint was dry a letter b appears when the tape is peeled off.

The letter b completed 

I also made a letter b template this was to draw around but Little Boo had other ideas and we used it as a stencil instead.

Recently we made salt dough letters using the play dough cutters so have painted some of these to place in the initial sounds tub.

Little Boo loves anything to do with threading so I quickly made this threading letter b. I was really pleased that she enjoyed it so much.  It was really simple to make I just used mount card and my crop-a-dile to make the holes. Little Boo is using some shoe laces for threading which Nanny picked up from the £1 shop. This could be a brilliant busy bag idea I think.

Little Boo did a great job after showing off her handy work to Daddy she had to show him how she did it. 

I found loads of inspiration through Pinterest (which I am addicted to).  Firstly thank you to Hands on as we grow for this wonderful alphabet maze idea .  We just tweaked the idea slightly as Little Boo has not yet learnt all the alphabet.  We used the idea but used only the letters we have covered (those in her name) and set it up like a bus stop idea where the bus had to "go to letter a" then it had to go to letter s etc. It worked more as a letter recognition game this way.  My worry dolls also made great passengers that were counted on the bus.

From Pinterest I found  DIY letter blocks idea from Simply Real Moms  this shows the uppercase  letter building but after a bit of searching I found the lowercase letter templates on Tired, need sleep thank you so much for this great template as it saved me so much time!  These templates took minutes to print and cut out.  I decided to cut them out of fun foam as they can then be used in the bath or on windows around the house.

Thought I may mention again the alphabet game which was on our No more odd socks post.  This is a game whereby the child throws a ball or in our case the odd sock balls we had made at the letter that is shouted out.

Learning letters the letters are written in chalk on the slabs. 

Not forgetting our initial sound tub which this week consists of a bobble, the letter b (salt dough), a toy bear, toy bus, toy banana, small ball and a massive button donated from my Mom.

I have set up a Pinterest board all about learning letters please feel free to follow.  Hope that you all have a great weekend.

Playdough Olympic medals

Today we decided to make Playdough Olympic medals this is to celebrate the Paralympics which will be starting very soon :) We used Homemade play dough  which I made the night before using the recipe in our sweet shop post . To add the colours I used some metallic paint and loads of glitter that we had however I was not really happy with the results that the paint gave and am thinking that gold food colouring gel would of probably been better but probably costs a fortune so this is a good cheap alternative and Little Boo was impressed!

I am hoping that you can see the sparkle :) probably needed more glitter! 

First Little Boo helped to organise some gold and silver gems and items to decorate the medals.  We also had feathers as the Paralympic medals this year feature the Greek Goddess victory's wing.  Due to this I thought that using the feather would be quite effective.

All we did is press the gold, silver or bronze play dough into the cake tin placing some ribbon in between the layers.

Getting the feather impression on the playdough. This showed up very faintly. 

 Once this was pressed in it popped out easily and we added gems and sparkly things to make it look pretty.  We also used our new letter stamps the idea was to write on the medals Gold, Silver and Bronze but Little Boo just wanted to stamp away which was fine as she was enjoying herself.

This picture was taken before I had the cake tin idea.  This was cut using a plastic cup.

Little Boos favourite toy wearing the medal.

 

Playing a game Boccia

I have recently been lucky enough to have someone come into work and play Boccia here is some info about the game.  This game is usually played by athletes in wheelchairs with cerebral palsy or other related disabilities.  Boccia is explained more on the Paralympic website.  I thought that this would be an excellent game to share with Little Boo as it is fun.

First a jack must be thrown.  This is usually white but in our case was yellow (did not have a white ball) Then there are two teams which are either Blue or Red Little Boo chose Red then the game began!

We need three more. 

Sorting out the balls ready for play.
(I knew I would find a use for that subway platter box! )

Really the game should be played seated but
as long we are having fun 

Aim for a target 

When we were playing Boccia at work we also went over some of the ways that the players would learn and practice.  This was one of them the idea is that the athlete has to roll the ball into a designated area.  This was difficult Little Boo had to learn the art of rolling instead of just throwing it.

Hitting the target 

This game I have shared with you before on the No more odd socks posts.  The idea is that you have to knock the large ball out of the area using the other balls.  This is a good tactic to learn when the athletes need to knock an opponents ball out the way of the jack. 

When looking on the internet I found some great Paralympic resources

Colouring in sheets  
ability v ability great resources for schools and parents and where I found the link to explain the game at the start of the post.
GB Boccia - A link to all the GB Boccia Athletes
Paralympics website  all the official information and TV coverage.


I hope that you enjoy a game of Boccia! We certainly did and can not wait to see it on the television.

Paralympics- using our senses

We are really excited to think that the Paralympics is starting next week.  I sometimes feel like this event is rather miss looked and am pleased that this time around for the first time it will get full coverage on prime time television, so again we will have the opportunity to all be shouting, "go GB!"

This week we are exploring the Paralympic games in readiness for it to start on the 29th of August.  As you may be aware there are athletes within the Paralympics who are visually impaired, blind or Deaf. This is why today we have explored our senses with some games.  These are games that I used to play when I was at guides and we all loved them so it has been wonderful to share these games with Little Boo.

Fetch the key

For this game by keys where placed underneath Little Boos chair.  She was blind folded using a scarf.  The challenge was for me to then retrieve the keys without Little Boo pointing to where I was. The idea is that you can not rely on your sense of sight but have to really listen. I was surprised at how keen Little Boo was to play this but she loved it!

Guess the smell

This game was played with smelling and with tasting though:) Again Little Boo was blind folded and she had to try and guess the smell.  I only used items that I knew she liked and that I thought had quite a distinctive smell there are loads more items that could be suitable.  This game was really fun she enjoyed it even more when we could eat all the food afterwards! This was actually a really good game to encourage children to eat foods.  It was lovely that Little Boo was asking for more orange. 

Is it time for a picnic?

 Feely box 

I realise that I only shared this idea with you the other day but the possibilities are endless! We placed loads of food items in there from Little Boos Kitchen and she was able to name them. A fantastic way to learn words and relying on her sense of touch.

Here are some other posts that I have linked to the idea of senses

Anyone for ice cream - touching the play dough and the different fragrances used.
Making a wind chime   hearing the wind chime
Making a rain maker- hearing he rain maker
Our first expedience with water beads feeling the beads
ice cube art feeling he ice cubes
sweet shop  smelling the different scented play doughs.

I hope that you enjoy some of these activities and that it give you a chance to look back at some of the older posts.  Feel free to comment on the post if you have any games that you think would be fun to play.

Learning the letter a fun activities

Today we did activities all about the letter a.  It was great fun even though Little Boo said that it was not her favourite letter apparently her favourite is the letter w.  I have no idea why as it is not in her name I think it is because it is like a zigzag. Anyway back to the letter a.  We made up our initial sounds tub again which currently consists of an apple, aubergine. arrow and aeroplane.  We are going to add more as we find items.

Little Boo was having a bit of a book day where all she wanted to do was pretend to read to me.  Due to this we then went on to read a few of our books about animals that began with the letter a and alphabet books.  We have this fantastic book from the library where the animal images are life size

We have also had this alphabet train full of books since Little Boo was a baby they are a great set and what is even better is that she can trace the letter a with her finger on the back of the book. 

We are also very lucky as a very nice friend kindly donated the whole set of these Jane Belk Moncure books so we looked at the letter a book.  These books are really nice as the little letter a person goes along putting all the things beginning with letter a into a box.  These are really good books to go with the sensory tubs as it is the same concept.

We also had a game of popping the letter a thank you to the activity mom  for this fab idea we just changed it slightly and used lower case letters.  When we popped them we said the letter sound. 

 I quickly made this very easy jigsaw.  All I did was print out two letter a's backed one onto card and cut it out.  The other one is used  to help place it together.

Our letter a sheet today we used acetate that is smooth and fabric which was furry. Little Boo again picked what images that she wanted. 

This was the most fun though! fine motor alphabet fishing with the big tweezers.  

 Little Boo picked the letter

 Then matched it

She soon got bored of the tweezers though and wanted to get her hands in.  Who can blame her?

This is another little gem that I want to share with you the new Twinkl app for learning the letter sounds.  This app has been created by Twinkl and is amazing! It has been made with parents in mind.  I brought the full package at £4.99 as it covers all the phonics phases.  It is also great for me as it has helped me to learn the letter sounds properly.  

Included in the app is writing the letters when we do this we use the stylus that I brought for a few pounds on ebay.  This is great for learning how to write as the stylus has to be held like a pencil. 

 This is one of the games on there where you have to match the sounds.  This worked well as Little Boo would repeat the letter sound.

I hope that you like all the ideas do not forget to leave some comments if you like them would be great to see what people think.