Easter Egg Snap Cards

Sprog has recently become rather obsessed with some cards that I got him where he matches 2 cards together, they have rhymes on them for when he’s older but for now he loves finding the animals.  His favourites seem to be the mole (in a hole), the cat (on a mat), the kittens (in their mittens?!) and the top choice is the bear (eating a pear).  All of these come accompanied by an appropriate noise or word; “teddy”, “mmmmaaaaoow” or “mole”.

I then spotted something when out and about where my teacher brain kicked in. I’m always very conscious of trying to support his understanding of the seemingly random festivities throughout the year.  It must seem very odd as you first discover Easter… lots of eggs, some are chocolate, some mention of chicks and sheep and the occasional mention of some guy dying on a cross! We will obviously tackle the Christian story of Easter at another time but I wanted an activity where I could start to introduce these ideas to him.

So I created the Egg Snap Cards!

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Materials

Various pieces of coloured card/foam shapes (although these aren’t necessary)

Glue

Scissors

1. Either cut some different coloured card into egg shapes or get your foam shapes ready. I got ours from The Range.

2. Stick the egg shapes on top of different pieces of card. I used my trusty pack of A5 card again.  Think about the colour combinations, some colours are easier to distinguish between than others. For example, yellow against blue is easy to distinguish but for more challenge a pale yellow card against a deeper yellow makes the task more difficult.

3. You can make the game more complicated by drawing patterns on the eggs.  I used a felt pin on some and glitter glue.  The glitter glue strips are meant to be quite challenging for Sprog to choose between as they are very similar, just horizontal in different directions.

 

4. Once everything is dry, cut the cards in half, snuffle and explain the game to your toddler.

I found that first time around, after I’d explained and modelled an example to Sprog, he actually just wanted to play with the cards by collecting them all up and laying them back out continually.  Eventually though he did start to match up the cards.  I only give him 4 sets to start with but I have 12 sets tucked away. Some are more difficult to introduce later on, some are just for back up in case he eats them!

  

Monthly Monday Melfie March 2015

Good morning,

I had a whole host of melfies with Sprog that I could have used this month, one of the benefits of having half term off work. I chose this one based on the fact that it shows us painting and messing around which is something that I’ve been dying to do for ages but we don’t seem to have time on a normal day.

I love the fact that Sprog smiles for the camera now. Sometimes it’s more of a purposeful gurn than a smile, but this one is definitely a total smile!

 I’m on a Dechox for the British Heart Foundation during March

Toilet roll hearts!

As I said the other day, I love the fact that I can find time to get my craft on with Sprog during the holidays and this time around I am loving sharing the ideas that I came discovered with you.

Now this design may be a little bit late for Valentine’s Day but bear with me. We’ve actually used this to create an engagement card for Sprog’s godparents who got engaged on Valentine’s Day and if you were feeling a bit romantic at another time of year it’s a dead simple thing to do when you already have the paints out as a little treat for your other half or for grandparents (they always love a bit of grandchild art don’t they?!)

It starts off very simple and just gets easier so let me take you through the steps.

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Materials

Toilet roll

Sticky tape

Paint

Card

1. Save a toilet roll from the recycling bin and squish (this is my technical term) it into a heart shape.

2. To make it stay heart shaped, stick a couple of bits of tape over the round bits of the heart and it won’t bounce out of shape.

3. Put some red paint (or another colour of your choice) on to a plate or painting palette. I found it easier if I spread it out a little for Sprog.

4. Dip the tube in the paint and go crazy on your piece of card.  Now the teacher in me needs to say that this might be a weird concept to your little person if they haven’t done it before so show them once as an example and model how you dip the tube and put it on the card. After that they should be good to go!

 

So go crazy! I’d love to see any examples that you make or just let me know how you tweak it to make non-Valentines crafts.

Easter sheep cards

This crafting opportunity came to me after considering whether at 18 months old, it is a great idea to be using PVA glue and cotton wool with Sprog.  I decided that I might wait until the summer when I can just hose him off in the garden if I need to!

So I adapted an idea to give Sprog a new texture to play with, cue the chalks! He did have a good play with, taste of and bash of the chalks on the page but found it difficult to transform it into a mark making material at this point in time so I compromised and pulled over the paint that was close at hand to help us out.

Follow this guide and you should get something reasonably presentable as Easter cards!

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Materials

Black card

Chalk

White paint

A small piece of card

Pen

Scissors

Glue

Coloured card

1. Take sheets of black card and just go for it to create white marks on the page.  We used a combination of chalk, white paint, and a bit of gold glitter glue because it was on the corner of the table. If your little ones are a bit older than Sprog, you can include sticking cotton wool on.

  

2. Use your random small piece of card (grab a bit from the recycling box, cereal packets would be ideal) and draw a cloud shape.  Cut this out and draw around it onto the dry sheets of black paper.

 

3. Cut out your black and white clouds.

4. Trim another stencil from your piece of card to make a head shape. An egg shape worked really well.

5. Fold your coloured card in half (I used A5 coloured card) and stick the bits into sheep shapes.

6. Write witty/loving comments or get the little person in your life to scrawl inside the cards and you are ready to spread some Easter love!

I’d love to hear if you came up with any different animal shapes. I think that using orange card and yellow paint, you could make a great chick shape.

Toddler graffiti

I have been giddy with excitement (and exhaustion) about half term as I am determined to really make the most out of it with Sprog. We haven’t had very much quality together recently as work has been incredibly busy so I was excited to see what we could do this week.

Here’s the first of at least 3 crafty posts from our half term week!

This is a complete trial as Pinterest assured me this should be pretty easy and turns out that it really was!

1. Prepare your piece of paper by sticking down masking tape in whatever shape or lettering you wish to be left untouched.

2. Let the kids go crazy with the paints! Sprog did this whole picture with blue, red and yellow paints and then a touch of red glitter glue to finish it off.

 

3. Leave the paint to dry, far away from the children. Out of grabbing distance.  If you fail in this step, expect to see much paint spread everywhere when you think you’ve already finished cleaning everything away.

4.  Once dry, remove the masking tape! It really is that simple.

I really love this as a way of create some graffiti from the kids.  It could form some art work for their rooms, a birthday/father’s day/mother’s day card, or be just because you want a bit of fun!  It’s easy enough that even my very uncreative and clean freak husband could do it with Sprog if he so desired!