Ways to display children's artwork

I feel that it is really important to display children's artwork wherever possible in the house.  Little Boo loves it when I put her artwork up for everyone to see.  Today I am going to share a few ways that I display or keep Little Boos artwork.  There are a few that are repeated from a previous post but I feel that it is always good to recap some posts so they can be seen again.

Hang pictures up 

Make a canvas 

Make a scrapbook

Do a power-point presentation

I know that some art work is difficult to keep especially if it is really big! therefore it may be a good idea to take pictures of some of the items and make this into a power point presentation or a video.  The great thing about this is that it does not take up a lot of room and you can really make it special adding in text and music.  You could always make this together as well.

Frame it!

Having a few picture frames in the house that are saved for children's art work I feel is a great idea.  The good thing about this is that it can be changed throughout the year. Box frames are really good as you can put in 3D items and collages.

Make a calender

This year we decided to make a calender from Little Boos artwork this is so simple to do and saves money as well.

If there are any other ways that you use to display children's artwork please comment below.  I would love to read about new ideas.

Learning Shapes- Decorating a felt Easter Egg

I thought that I would share this with you a great way to learn shapes and decorate an Easter Egg at the same time.  It is so simple to make just cut out some felt eggs and shapes then all is left is to decorate! We talked about the shapes that Little Boo was using and the colours that they are.  We have the big, medium and little egg so this meant there was lots of discussion about their sizes.  I asked Boo to put different amounts of the shapes onto the eggs so this meant she was practising counting as well. I decided to add in some wool and scissors so Boo could cut up some wool to use as well. Lots of potential with this simple activity.

The ABC cafe

I found this wonderful printable called ABC Cafe  it is fantastic Little Boo spent ages playing.  The idea is that the customers make their orders by all having letters which represent the food they want to order.  The printable then has foods which begin with each letter of the alphabet so all you do is match the correct food to the letter of their order or vice versa. Little Boo wrote down their orders, then had fun finding the correct food.

To help her I placed a choice of three foods for her to match as having all the foods was a bit overwhelming. As you can see from the picture we used Little Boo's Dolls to play but the printable does provide customers as well! We had about three tables in the end.  Hope that you find this idea fun.  I love it when I find something for free.

Numbers and Letters Box

A few months ago we sorted out all Little Boos toys and placed them into categories. Sad, I know but this has really helped me with our day to day activities. I know if she wants to play at fancy dress that the box is ready and waiting we also have ones for sticker/colouring books, play food and dolly things .  I just wish that all my stuff was this organised! Anyway, I wanted to share with you what we have in the Numbers and Letters box.  This is used to inspire Little Boo with numbers, letters and colours.

In the box we have things that we have collected over time such as free toys from magazines.  These we use as a matching activity or to count.

Buttons can be used for a multitude of things counting, sorting the biggest from the smallest, sorting into colours, making patterns or counting out a set amount. More ideas are on The Activity Mom .

Pebbles these we have used to count and to place around letters. I am also going to paint/collage a few with Little Boo and place letters on them so she can spell out her name.

We have a leap frog fridge magnet alphabet set . Little Boo has had this since she was really Little in the old house we had it on our fridge and she used to play with it loads and often dance to the tune.  Unfortunately this seems out of stock at the moment but leap frog also do a Letter Factory which looks really good and the same sort of concept.

There is a large tub of colour animal counters which I got from the education show last year at a very good price.  These have been great to sort into colours and group or count them.  There is also a tub of play animals that Little Boo likes to match up and place in groups then count them.

There are some animal dominoes in the box which Little Boo is getting really good at playing. This is great to learn matching and also learning to take turns whilst playing games. The musical instruments are included as very often we play a beat then Little Boo tries to copy what I have just done.

The wooden fruits are a fantastic threading set that I brought from the education show a few years ago (again at a much cheaper price) when Little Boo was just learning to thread.  They are lovely to use and are made for younger children to practice threading we also use them to make patterns with now.

The bus is a laminated sheet from twinkle where we count the people onto the bus. I have printed some flash cards with different amounts of pennies on them as well from Twinkle.

The most important thing is to make it all FUN! and keep adding things to it as your child progresses. 

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!

s is for...

I have decided to start creating initial sounds tubs for Little Boo.  The idea is that each tub contains items that begin with the initial sound.  We will be sharing these tubs with you every week and our progress on learning the alphabet.  I really want learning the alphabet to be a fun and interesting activity for Little Boo so I think that this will really help.

I am hoping that this can be a joint venture as creating the tubs will hopefully be really interesting as well. Today we are starting with the letter s for seaside.  I also wanted to start learning the alphabet firstly covering all the letters in Little Boos name.  Even though I am not a preschool teacher I use a lot of sensory activities at work to teach the alphabet as I find that this is very effective when working with adults with severe learning difficulties.  The ability to be able to feel and handle a 3D letter is more engaging.  Being dyslexic myself I also think of ways that I would of liked to have been taught the alphabet basically we need to have fun!

We first of all decided to make pretty the letter s that I made ages ago.  I have been waiting to decorate this the idea is at the end we will have a full set of our own alphabet.  I realise that I have not detailed very well how I made these so will revisit this post and take more pictures. I made my own purely for the fact that I wanted lower case letters and wanted them in a suitable typeface.

The letter s had loads of stars stuck to it and it looked very sparkly by the time it was finished!

Then just a few simple games to reuse those cd cases! I made these up in a few minutes and they were a hit! I was unsure about the finding the letter s one but Little Boo did really well. I am going to get a box set up of these all ready to play with.

I managed to pick up these lovely pebbles from a local shop to be honest we love the noise they make but they were also great for placing on the letter s.  We later placed glow in the dark stars in the shape of the letter s and looked at this in our den, great fun.

We have made a start on our letters book.  For this I have used a sandpaper and bubble wrap letter s in the centre. The idea with this is that Little Boo can feel the letters with her hands and feet.

There was a selection of images that Little Boo could choose from which all begin with s.

Very keen to feel the letters 

After all of this we then had fun choosing what to put in the initial sounds tub

A while ago I posed about sparkly letters this activity could also be done to help write the letters.

When it came to bed time I asked Little Boo to spot the s in the book she did really well.

Whilst doing the crafts today we listened to music and it really helped Little Boos concentration. Why have I not thought of this sooner?

We have also now done letter a activities as well  hope that you enjoy this as well.  The letters are now a Weekly feature so be sure to check back whilst we share a letter a week.

How we plan for the summer holidays

I am getting ready for the summer holidays. Due to working in education this means I have ten weeks that we are together. I really look forward to this time but realise that not everyone does. It can be challenging to keep loads of children entertained. Here is how we plan for the summer holidays.

First I search for FREE activities that are happening local to me. Using websites listed

http://www.netmums.com
http://www.mumsnet.com

I will also use the local libraries and galleries websites for inspiration. Many of the galleries round by us also have frisky bags which contain activities centred around the gallery exhibits. Often it is also good to look for leaflets or ask the librarians or receptionists in the galleries for information. Our local "Whats on" magazines are really helpful as well these magazines list all the activities for children in one of the sections.

Whilst searching I will put on my calender the activities that I think will be suitable for us to attend. If you are planning for a pre-schooler very often activities in the summer (I find) are geared towards school aged children so please check what the small print says about the age of the children who can go. Once, I did not look and was actually turned away from an activity as they said Little Boo was too young? I was so annoyed as we had travelled to get to the activity!

If I am looking for somewhere different to go I will go to http://www.dayoutwiththekids.co.uk/ this is a search engine for the UK which details all the child friendly days out.

After this I have been to our local tourist information and picked up loads of leaflets it was quite funny actually as Little Boo picked up some good leaflets as well.

During the holidays I am planning for the first time to have a theme for each week. This I thought would be a fun idea as I can prepare activities to do before hand.

week one- people
week two-wildlife
week three- Olympics
week four-Weather
week five-The seaside
week six- Under the sea
week seven- Paralympics
week eight- My family
week nine- me
week ten- Making marks

Myself and Little Boo have also made a scrapbook which is ready to put loads of pictures of our summer holidays inside. I very often create a summer book as we look at it for months afterwards. We have already filled in a few pages as we have been to watch the Olympic torch the other week this was a fantastic day.

Peg out the Alphabet

Whilst doing our Bear Hunt activity I thought about using the washing line for an alphabet theme. Little Boo loved pegging out the letters. At first we just pegged out the letters then I thought we could add items that began with the letters.

I went into the kitchen and emerged with an apple, banana and Little Boos Crocs! Little Boo did well and may even be able to match them herself after a while. We only did up to d (as I happened to spot Dogger in the living room). To do the activity I just printed out some letters (comic sans is probably best font to use due to formation of the letter a) placed them in the plastic wallets (with a little help from Boo, it also makes it easier to peg them on) placed two of our dining chairs in the living room then used wool around them to make the line.  I stayed with Little Boo the whole time we did the activity for safety as well at to help her complete it. Hope this has given you some inspiration it is a really simple activity.

Our completed line

Improving Fine Motor skills using pegs.

Book review and fun activities - "Hug" by Jez Alborough

This evening as promised I am sharing with you the book "Hug" my daughter LOVES! this book.  It is actually quite surprising as there are hardly any words.   I feel that this adds to the appeal as we can interpret the story the way we want to.  The book prompts a lot of questioning and assists learning new words especially when Bobo moves around the elephant sitting on his head, trunk and the funny one, his bottom! (she always laughs at that).

The emotions displayed in the book are easy for Little Boo to recognise as she often comments on how Bobo looks "sad" on one of the pages.  The array of animals that are in the book assists with teaching Little Boo all her different animals in a fun way. The book has been given excellent reviews on Goodreads and scored 4.11 out of 5.  I like that we have the board book as this has meant that Little Boo has been able to grow up with the book from a young age and it is still suitable and enjoyed now.

We visited the Jez Alborough site which was amazing for resources as we joined their club for free and managed to get a colour in image of Bobo which Little Boo loved colouring in.  We then scanned it and made it into a little stick puppet.

We also made a Monkey Mask from foam sheets. Here is the template if anyone wants to make one.  We made one together then I was asked "where is the Mummy one" so for that I used the same template just made it slightly bigger.







We then got the toys ready to start the story.

Little elephant and Mommy elephant were hugging

There was tickling

and wiping of tears!

After all of that we played find Mommy Monkey.  Little Boo pretended to be Bobo looking for a Hug.

Little Boo then used the masks like they were stencils very clever I thought.

Hope that this has given you all some inspiration of how to share "Hug" next Wednesday will be Dogger by Shirley Hughes a old favourite of mine that Little Boo loves as well.