Sensory Art - Painting with Feathers

The boys like to go to our craft box to check out our craft materials and specifically asked for paint. So, I did a painting activity with them using feathers.

What You Need:
Paper/Drawing Block
Paint
Feathers

First, I started choosing the paint colors that goes with the feather colors I have and I did a matching activity with them. They weren't keen as they were anxious to start painting.

They were free to do what they want with the feathers and paint.

K smiled at the camera! :)

K got a little frustrated as the feather is too soft to hold like a brush/pen.

I like to give them the freedom to do what they want with the materials provided. The basic rule is, they should not end up on the floor. I think they react differently when they were told right the begining of what to do and when I left it open. For crafts, I give instructions and will demostrate on what to do but with Art, I like to leave it open. It's interesting to see them exploring with the feathers and thinking what they should do with the feathers and paint. And actually, no explaination is required, they just paint. They tried to hold the feathers like a pen, they tried to brush the feathers over the paper, etc. I just love to see them explore.

Letter F Craft - Rice Covered Fish

This is an impromptu craft on a rainy afternoon. It's so easy to put together the materials.

What You Need:

• Contruction Paper
• Marker to draw the fish shape or you can also print out a fish shape
• Rice (White or Colored)
• Googly eyes
• A small box to do the pour the rice 
• Spoon or scoop
• Glue
• Brush to spread the glue (optional)

Method:

• Draw or print a fish shape on a piece of construction paper
• Apply glue on fish body and spread the glue with brush
• Put paper in box and pour the rice over the area with glue
• Shake off excess gently
• Glue the googly eyes on
• Let dry and you have a fish with rice scales.

Y, playing with the rice

Playschool @ Home - Letter F Activities

Letter of the Week: F 
Vocabulary: Fish, Frog, Flag, Flower, Feather, Farmer, Firemen, Fruit 

Poetry: Far Far Away
Nursery Rhyme: Once I Caught A Fish Alive
Field Trip: Fish Farm

We concentrated on letter recognition last week.

We did letter tracing (or rather scribbles) with crayon with the letter F template from First School.

Uppercase Letter F Craft - Pasted flower cut outs on Letter F cut out.

Lowercase Letter F Craft - Pasted feathers on Letter F.

At the end of these exercise, both Y&K can pronounce F.

Over the weekend, I did a mini test using magnet letters on a white board. K was able to identify the letter F, in upper and lowercase.

Today, I had a Rice sensory bin for them again with magnet letters and they picked up the letter F and said "F".

Other F related activities we did last week:

We colored a flower. Check out the one on the right by K. He was really coloring! I saw that he was trying his best to fill that area with Brown.

I gave them a blank fish shape and I drew the eyes, scales, etc together with them.

Our National Day is around the corner, I got them each a small Singapore flag and they had fun waving them.

We went to Qian Hu Fish Farm over the weekend for their field trip and they enjoyed it. But I didn't manage to take any photos as I brought my camera out without the memory card! When we came back from the field trip, they were able to say the word "fish"! 

Homemade Toys: Gone Fishing

What You Need:
Some papers or you can use your child’s masterpieces
Magnets
String/Ribbon
Stick (I used disposable chopsticks)
Scissors
Markers (to draw the sea animals)
Paper Clips (to attach to the sea animals)

Method:
Draw the sea animals on your children’s artwork or paper.

Cut out the shape of the sea animals with a scissors. Attach the magnet to the string/ribbon and tie the other end of the ribbon to the stick. Also clip the paper clips to the sea animals you have. Tata! You are ready to go fishing.

Cardboard Aquarium

Our outdoor plans were shelved on a stormy Saturday afternoon. To keep 2 active boys occupied, we have to come up with something interesting. I always try to reuse any packaging for our crafts and with a new toy ramp, we have 2 self standing cardboards that's very suitable to make an aquarium. We also have some scraps of foam left from a Foam Art pack that they received from my friend. Perfect!

Materials Needed:
Cardboards (any, I used whatever I have from the new toy packaging)
Foam sheets (keep the scraps from those foam art sets if you happen to make)
Colored Paper
Feathers
Glitter
Paint and Brush

These are just some ideas. I took whatever I can find from my craft shelve.

We started painting the cardboard. 

While waiting for the paint to dry, I cut out some fish shapes from the foam scraps and got them to use markers to draw the eyes. I cut more small black dots for them to paste on some of them as eyes too.  

Add glue and glitter to the fishes.

Paint is still wet and we did some tearing, great for fine motor skills

Finally, the paint dried and they started pasting. It wasn't as messy as the foam sheets were self adhesive. I love that though they really love glue more.

It slipped my mind that K's group in school was doing Fish as the theme for the term. He was going to the Underwater World at Sentosa for his field trip. He was so excited and brought his aquarium craft proudly to school on the excursion day for his teacher. Y, though in the other group was allowed to go along and he also brought his aquarium to school as he wanted to give it to his teacher who left.

My husband couldn't stop complaining about the ugly fish shapes I cut. Ok, I admit it was a sloppy job. But to be honest, for someone who is bad at Art, it's actually not too bad! But I like how imperfect the craft looks. The colors and placement were all the boys' own effort. When I see a perfect children's craft, I often wonder who did it.