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Kids Fun, Art and Healthy Wellbeing

Open ended modelling activities for young children

Written by Julia Gorham and Heather Step

 

During our Holiday Crafts programme, the children made pinch pots with homemade clay. They loved rolling the clay between the palms of their hands and pushing down hard with their thumbs in the middle to make pinch pots. 

 

Sensory interaction between child and materials are foremost. The goal should be as much direct contact with the hands and materials as possible.

 

Impressions: Give your child objects with interesting textures to press into the dough or clay. For example: Plastic forks, lids, keys, coins  potato mashers and other washable items.

Stick sculptures: Use a lump of clay or dough as a base in which to insert materials such as sticks, toothpicks, pipe cleaners, straws, buttons and we also use natural items from our nature walks with pine cones, acorns, twigs, dried grass etc.

Playdough with colour: Let you child colour their own playdough by dropping a small drop of food colouring or liquid paint onto the homemade playdough and allow them to mix it.

 Geometric shapes: clay on the table and then moulding it. This is a great Montessori extension with the Montessori geometric solids. Older children can use clay to make forms such as cubes, spheres, prisms etc. by tapping the clay on the table and then moulding it. This is a great Montessori extension  for the Montessori geometric solids.

Pinch pots: Get your child to make a ball, press his thumb in the middle of the ball and then pinch the clay or playdough gently between his fingers and thumb to make a pinch pot. Making sure that your child widens the centre and thins the sides equally. Your child can then roll small dough eggs to place inside the pinch pot.

 

Clay recipe:

This recipe is taken from Family Education

Modeling Clay

Materials

 

  • 2 cups salt
  • Two thirds of a cup water
  • Saucepan
  • 1 cup cornstarch
  • 1/2 cup cold water

Directions

  1. Stir salt and water in a saucepan over heat 4-5 minutes.
  2. Remove from heat; add cornstarch and cold water.
  3. Stir until smooth; return to heat and cook until thick.
  4. Allow the clay to cool, then shape as desired.
  5. When dry, decorate with paint, markers, glitter, and so on.
  6. If you like, finish with clear acrylic spray or clear nail polish.
  7. Store unused clay in a Ziploc bag.

Note that it is better to use the clay immediately as it doesn’t keep well, even in a Ziplock bag. 

We painted the clay and also sprinkled glitter on it.   I used cupcake liners to contain them. 

Other people have created beautiful pinch pots with thinner sides – check out this other stunning picture to the right. It really shows that there is a lot you can do with this idea. 

 

 

 

 

Nature Mobiles

One of the things I love about this school is that it is set in a park. At the Fields Montessori Pre-School and Playgroup in Parkmore Sandton we enjoy many nature walks. This craft combines the nature walk with a keepsafe of the occasion. 

Armed with plastic bags, the children descended on the park to look for objects they could use for their mobile.

We collected

-sticks

-bark

-pinecones

-cork

-leaves

Each were chosen for a specific reason. We found some lovely bark that had pieces of red in them. Some sticks almost looked like seeds themselves and had interesting shapes. Of course we had to have pinecones, as that is something in abundance in the area. 

The mobile was contracted with two main thick sticks joined together with string, and then the objects were hung with fishing gut. It’s better to hold them up first to find that centre of gravity before you distribute different weighted objects. The pinecones were quite heavy so those were on opposite ends. 

The nature mobile is a lovely reminder for children of their time outdoors and also provides a sensory experience as they feel the different textures.  

Mother’s Day card and crafts for kids

It’s nice to create something heartfelt from a young child to give to their mother on Mother’s Day, so we’ve come up with some ideas you could use to create a nice card or art work for her. 

For very young kids, such as toddlers, using body parts makes a really personal gift. These can be in the form of handprints, footprints or fingerprints. 

I did a really nice card two years ago using fingerprints: multiple colours around a central yellow circle for a flower, and green ones for leaves. You can write this poem inside: 

I made you a flower

With my finger and thumb

So you will have these memories

For all the years to come

Happy Mother’s Day!

 

You can also use handprints and even footprints to create flowers too. In this one particular picture you can see that the print of long green fingers were used for leaves too. 

mothers daymothers day

A stunning gift for mom would be to use salt dough.

salt dough handprint, mothers day

We did this at for the end of last year gift for the parents and it came out really well.

Another cute idea is to use recycling object to make flowers. 

Using cardboard, egg cartons, pom poms and straws you can make flowers on top of hearts.

Using a cooldrink bottle and skewer stick you can create these beautiful colourful flowers. 

 

Check out more ideas on our Pinterest Board. 

What art ideas do you have for Mother’s Day?

Mark Art Part of Your Child’s Daily Routine

By Julia Gorham

Incorporate art-making into your child’s playtime at home.

 

 Make an art-zone if you want to isolate the mess.

 Tape down paper for them to draw on and spill on, and make a smock out of old clothes.

 Taping paper on a table can help a small child focus on the motion of drawing, without having to hold down and adjust the drawing paper.

 

Children will begin their drawing by scribbling.

 Around 2 years of age, the scribbles will become more controlled and repetitive, and children may begin to grip crayons and markers between their thumb and pointer finger for more control.

 

  • Offer a variety of art materials at this age. (Thick crayons, thin crayons, pencil crayons, stencils etc.)
  • Don’t focus only on drawing with tools: children can draw by tracing pictures in sand, or shaping clay or play dough. Buy washable paints, nontoxic clay, chalk, child-safe scissors, and many kinds of paper, and store in an easy to access spot.
  • Don’t teach.Children develop basic motor skills with every scribble. They also develop creativity, invention, and self-expression.
  • Talk with them about their art, but do not attempt to teach.
  • Avoid the impulse to correct.
  • Small children may paint purple grass, floating people, and babies the size of houses. If you correct them you will damage their self-confidence and interrupt their natural learning progress.
  • Ask open-ended questions.Avoid asking “what is it?” when presented with a drawing. Instead, ask “A child this young needs no instructions, only appreciation. Sit with children when they draw, talk can you tell me about your drawing?”
  • If a child is excited to talk about their drawing, ask more questions. A child may begin to add more details when you ask questions. When a child is drawing representational work, they will often imagine a story that goes with the work. Asking them to tell you more details of their story will encourage them to draw more details.
  • If you ask “What does the girl smell,” for example, they are more likely to add a nose. If you ask “Is the dog lonely at night?” they may draw more animals. This kind of exchange encourages imagination, story-telling abilities, and drawing skills.
  • Make art part of emotional processing.If a child is experiencing a strong emotion, offer them paper and markers, or some clay. Art can help children process intense emotions that may be too complex for them to put in words. Giving a child a creative activity over which they have sovereignty can help them gain a sense of control.
  • Display and save their drawings.Putting children’s art up is a way of letting them know their work is interesting and important. Rather than praising every individual drawing, display it. You do not have to put up every piece of art: ask each child what they would like displayed, or create a rotating “gallery” that changes weekly or monthly. Keep a portfolio of each child’s drawings so they can observe their process.
  • It is more important that a child’s practice is affirmed than that their art products are displayed. Displaying final products is no replacement for encouraging the development of their drawing.
  • Focus on one medium at a time.Offer children the chance to practice with different media. Children between 4-8 yrs. old may be open to drawing with pencils, which will allow them to focus on shading and contour. Show children different materials and allow them to experiment. Suggest phases: First we will draw with a pencil, then with watercolours.

 

Cork sailing boats from cork tiles

What do you do when you don’t have enough corks to make sailing boats for a “cork sailing boats” art activity that is coming up? Look for alternatives, of course! After visiting a hardware store and sharing my dilemma of finding corks, a helpful assistant suggested cork tiles. And from there an idea was born to make sailing boats from cork tiles. 

 

You’ll need:

  • One cork tile per boat
  • Two skewer sticks per boat
  • Paper sail

    Sail template

  • Sticky tape
  • Wax crayons
  • Food colouring mixed with water for the colour wash
  • Sponge
  • Paint for the boat

Method:

1.Cork tiles are pretty thin, so I decided to layer them. From one cork tile I cut four boat shapes using a curvilinear triangle for the boat head.

2. Skewer sticks were used to join the layers together. My initial idea was to have two sails.

My five year old son had some other design ideas, however. He bent one of the sticks over to create a triangle which would support one sail. This looked much better. 

 

3. The children coloured the sails with wax crayon.  We then used a sponge to colour wash over the wax with a mixture of water and food colouring. 

4. The children painted the boats and sticks.

5. After the boats and sails had dried we put them together.

6. We went outside and had fun sailing them in water.

To make the boat more water proof use acrylic paint and layer thick sticky tape around the sail. 

Bats and Spiders Halloween crafts

These art activities make use of a striking colour contrast: between luminous oranges and yellows against black, silver glitter against black and white against black. It’s a fun educational theme to teach all about spiders and bats as well as giving your home some Halloween decor at this time of year. 

-White bat outline against black paper: There are a couple of things you can do with this idea. My original plan was to spray paint white paint around the white template. However the paint wasn’t the right consistency and got a bit stuck in the nozzle and what I probably should have done was splatter paint. Some of the kids had fun just pouring the white paint over the bat which was a fun process art too. Either way the white makes an excellent contrast against the black.

 

–Handprint spider. This is a cute keepsafe of a spider on a web with a touching message. You could use this as a card as well. I used a cheerful bright colour for the spider but you could also use black.

–Glitter spider web. I printed a black template of a spider web on black paper. We then put glue on the web and the kids poured glitter on top. Some orange food colouring was also added to give a bit of colour. Older kids could paint each part of the web with glue. Glitter is very messy but it’s also a lot of fun!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

–Toilet roll spiders. Stamping is fun! All you have to do is take a toilet roll and cut the bottom into eight legs. Place it in black paint and stamp away! I found you really had to press the legs firmly to get a print. 

 

 

 

 

 

–Luminous bats. Take bubble wrap and paint it luminous orange and yellow. Put it on the bat’s body and contrast it against black wings. 

Then you can place google eyes on, make a hole and hang it up with string.

 

This theme was also fun to learn about bats and spiders.

We had huge plastic spiders and we counted their eight legs. We talked about how their hairy legs were there to feel the insects. We talked about how bats are mammals and come out at night (nocturnal). 

A favourite song to sing with this theme is Incy Wincy Spider.  

Do you have any ideas for this theme?

Dinosaur themed art activities

All kids love dinosaurs! The prehistoric creatures are a curiosity and a lot of fun to learn about. Here are some ideas for doing some crafty art activities with dinosaurs. 

  • Handprint Dinosaur: A super fun activity for toddlers, because all they have to do is place their cute little paws all over the back of the dino to create scales. Print out a dinosaur and let them print their hands along his back (like a Stegasaurus). Another cute thing is to print some rocks underneath which we did with cork printing. 

 

  • Paper plate dinosaur: Cut a paper plate in half and colour wash it (I used red). Then let the kids print with shapes coloured yellow, red and orange. It doesn’t matter so much if they are younger and the colours mesh together – it creates an interesting effect. Dress up their creations with dinosaur templates I found here. 

 

 

 

 

 

  • Bubble print dinosaur. Another great one for toddlers because all they do is paint the bubble wrap and then you stick it over a dinosaur template. Cut them out and voila! Patterned dinos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • Shape dinosaurs. Cut a semicircle for the dinosaur’s body. Use foam to cut out his head (hexagon) and scales (triangles) and let the kid stick them on. Some kids stuck them in the middle which gave the dinosaur a cute angle from a different perspective. 
  • Technique on a dinosaur: I used marble art (where you take marbles, dip them in paint and let them roll over a template).

Some other things you can do for a dinosaur theme:

  • Dino books we read – about different kinds of dinosaurs. 
  • Plastic dino toys – great for them to learn the names of the different dinosaurs. 
  • Gross motor activities – I used a dice of different actions associated with various dinosaur. 
  • Songs: We sang “Dinosaur Stomp” which had some cool actions. 

 

Have you done any awesome dinosaur activities?

 

Tree Rubbings

By Julia Gorham

Tree rubbings are a great way to explore the garden or a park with your child, allowing them to experience the patterns of different textures from trees. The Fields Montessori children loved this nature activity.

 

You will need:

  • Pieces of white paper
  • Different coloured, long thick crayons, with crayon paper removed
  • Large trees

To do:

  • Take your child into your garden or for a special outing to the park
  • Place a piece of paper over the bark of the tree
  • Ask your child to rub the crayons vertically onto the paper, with long movements, left to right and up and down, until the paper is covered with a beautiful tee bark rubbings.
  • Your child can turn the paper at a different angles and use another colour to make it more interesting.
  • Continue with the next tree.
  • These special bark rubbings can be made into a special book as well as teaching your child the names of the different trees.
  • Your child can also make leaf rubbings from the trees as well.

What a fun, creative way to explore nature, hands on and learning the names of the trees too!

Fresh Flower Crowns

What a great way to celebrate spring with your children with fresh spring flowers !

 

 

                You will need:

  • 1 A4 white cardboard
  • – Crayons, or pastels
  • Fresh spring flowers
  • Stapler

To do:

  • Fold the A4 Cardboard and cut in half
  • Decorate the cardboard with bright crayons or pastels
  • Staple the 2 pieces of cardboard together
  • Measure the crown on your child’s head and staple together
  • Staple the fresh flowers with short stems around the top of the crown

 

Sewing card crafts

 

Threading is a great activity to strengthen your child’s fine motor skills!

You will need:

  • A picture printed on A4 cardboard
  • Scissors
  • Wool
  • A punch
  • Crayons, pencil crayons etc.

To do:

  • Print a template of your choice e.g. car, flowers, animal on A4 Carboard.
  • Cut out the template.
  • Punch holes evenly around the template.
  • Colour in the template.
  • Tie a knot at one end of the template with wool long enough for the template.
  • Thread the wool into each punched hole around the template and tie a knot at the end.