The Art Box – 5/10/10

With 4 play dates last week (all were hosted at our house, I might add…  what was I thinking?) , and the rest of the time spent on errands, playing outside, etc., not much in the way of free art was done.  A couple of crafts for Mother’s Day made their way in to our busy week, but that was about all we had time for.  The Art Box was left untouched, except for this: (Mr. Grumpy was not happy about posing with it, but wouldn’t let go of it so I could take a picture of just the bag.)

It’s M’s new library book bag.  We take home anywhere from 20 to 40 books a week from our library and our old book bag was literally falling apart.  I bought some fabric markers and gave him his brand new bag.  He enjoyed drawing on it, and from what I was able to gather this isn’t anything in particular, just (very) abstract art. :) 

He always enjoys having something “different” to draw, paint, or color on.  I might let him add some embellishments later… we’ll see!

Have some children’s art you’d like to show off?  Link it up below (remember to link back here in your blog post)!

Have a beautiful day! :)

 

Science Experiment – Air Pressure / How Birds Fly

{I have been having the weirdest problems with scheduling posts lately.  You might have seen this post in your reader last week, and then had it disappear if you tried to look at it on the actual blog.  Too much mommy brain + too little coffee = crazy and incompetent.} 

As a final (whew!) bird-related activity, we did a little experiment to show how air pressure works using two balloons.

An experiment and balloons?  It doesn’t get much better than that if you are a 3 year old boy. :)

The way birds are shaped and the way they move their wings causes the air to move more quickly above them.  Quicker-moving air = less air pressure, so the air beneath them exerts the greater pressure and keeps them aloft!

To demonstrate that fast-moving air lowers air pressure, I blew up two small balloons, tied a length of yarn to each one and then hung them from our sofa table so they were level with one another.  You want them to be about 3 inches apart. 

Ask your child to think about what will happen to the balloons if he blows a straight line of air between the two of them.  When we blow directly on an object it moves away from the force of air, so it makes sense (sort of) that the balloons would move apart.  M was sure they would get “wider apart”, as he put it.

Here’s what happens:
They move toward each other and bump!  The still air on the sides of the balloons is exerting more pressure than the fast moving air between them, so it pushes them together! Pretty cool, huh?  ;)

You can do this with a strip of paper that you hold near your bottom lip – blow air directly over it and it should rise.  Or try two cardboard tubes on a table side by side with an inch of room between them; use a straw to blow air directly between them and watch them roll towards one another!

For more science fun with kids, go see Ticia’s Science Sunday posts!

Have a beautiful and blessed Mother’s Day! :)

Books of the Week – 5/8/10

Here are M’s favorites from the past week:

Edward and the Pirates, by David McPhail This was recommended to us by Kim at Educating Crumpet.  She thought M would enjoy it and she was right!  It has enough adventure and excitement (like Edward’s mom riding into his room on a white horse – really can a book get any more interesting or exciting than that?) without being frightening at all.  Edward can read and the pirates can’t, and this has sparked some sort of small flame in M – he is “reading” a lot lately (meaning books he’s memorized… I’m one of those moms that doesn't want my child to be reading on his own at 3, not that there’s anything wrong with that if you do. ;) ).  It’s a fun book and one I’m glad we got!

The Moon Might Be Milk, by Lisa Shulman This one was listed a week or two ago at Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns.  We found it at the library and M wants to read it at least a couple of times a day.  I’m not sure what is so fascinating about this book (it’s cute, but nowhere near the top of my list), but he really loves it!  The little girl and her animal friends are trying to decide what the moon is made of… flour? milk? sugar? butter? egg?   Turns out, it’s made of all these things when her Grandmother uses these ingredients to make moon cookies.  It gets my mouth watering every time and I think we’ll be trying the recipe that’s included sometime soon!

I’m linking this up to Mouse Grows, Mouse Learns, and to Feed Me Books Friday.

Have a beautiful day! :)

All About Birds

As we’ve been having our little bird theme, I’ve seen M’s love and understanding of nature blossom.  He has been spending every spare second outside… enjoying being a kid.  He’s gotten more baths in the past 3 weeks than he has in his entire life.  Ok, that’s an exaggeration, but that’s pretty much how it has seemed to me. :)

The first thing he does each morning is look out his window to see if any bunnies or squirrels or maybe even deer are having breakfast:and he can recognize the songs of cardinals, robins, blue jays, chipping sparrows, and chickadees.  He even does a good imitation of them!  He’s picked up the names of many flowers and trees just by… osmosis I guess?  Sometimes I just don’t know how he knows so much!

So – on to our bird activities…

Math Skills:

I found a cute little game here.  The birds are made by taping pennies onto the playing pieces, and there are 3 dice to choose from – easy, medium, and difficult.  We used the medium one which made us go back one space and/or lose a turn once in a while.  The first birdie to hop along all the clouds and make his way to the tree wins. :)

Visual Discrimination:

I put out this bird matching game from Homeschool Share (it’s supposed to be a file folder game, but I just made it into mats).  M loves this and was very interested since he hadn’t seen it in a while.
Here’s a better picture; you match up cards with enlarged details to the correct bird:

Language Skills:

I made a set of bird picture cards of birds we have near our home.  I printed two sets, then cut the name off of one set.  We used these like Montessori 3-part cards. 
M matched up the pictures first, then found the correct name for each bird too.  This was the first time we’ve tried something like this and it went really well.  Some were easier than others, like Mallard Duck and Canada Goose since they have two words in their names.  He usually looked for the first letter, then decided if the rest of the word looked correct.  I divided these up into smaller groups for him (there are 25 in all which would’ve been a bit overwhelming). I made an online list of these birds at enature.com so we could listen to their songs and sounds.  You can read more about the cards, as well as find the link for the enature list in this post.  M really enjoyed listening to the birds on the computer!


Science:

We looked through some old encyclopedias – old, as in I had them as a child and have kept them for some reason.  M was fascinated with all the exotic birds pictured.
We also looked at some egg pictures and I pointed out the ones for “our” birds:
The encyclopedia also did a great job of covering the various types of beaks and feet that birds have.  
We made these pipecleaner bird feet… the one on the left has three toes in front and one in back.  Songbirds curl their toes around branches (M did this on his finger, and really liked it), and even sleep this way!  Birds of prey (eagles, hawks, owls) also have three toes in front and one in back like this, but they have very, very sharp claws on them (the better to catch mice with – yum!).   The foot on the right is like a woodpecker’s foot – two toes in front and two in back.  They use their toes to dig into a tree’s wood as they climb.

We also took a look at some information I found at the Fernbank Science Center website.  We learned more about bird feet and beaks and did the activity sheets pictured below…

Match the foot to the correct type of bird:
And match the beak to the type of food it’s meant for:
I was searching for ideas to make this a more hands-on learning experience for M, and the next time we do a bird theme, I will definitely use two great activities from The Adventures of Bear.  First, a great hands-on beak activity here, and a bird diagram puzzle here.

Other Bird Activities:

M cut yarn into small lengths (about 4") and we put it out on our doorstep for the birds to use in their nests:
Last summer he planted some gourds, specifically meant for wren houses.  Daddy drilled a hole in one, cleaned it out, and hung it up to dry all winter.  This spring M painted and glazed it and we hung it in a tree.  It looks like a cozy home, and we are waiting for you to move in, little wrens! 
We did some super-fun bird crafts; click on the photos below to go to the post about each one…

Birdhouse Suncatcher:
Shapes Bird:

Paper Bag Bird’s Nest:
To see a list of good children’s books we used during our little bird unit, see this post.
We learned some new songs too!

And we finished it all up with a science experiment about air pressure.

For more preschool posts, check out Preschool Corner and Weekly Wrap-Up!

Have a beautiful day! :)

Bookmarks – A Simple Mother’s Day Gift

   M made these sweet bookmarks for his grandmothers this  morning.  I have to admit, the main reason I wanted to make something like this is because I am in love with my new laminator. :)

I cut out some 2 1/2" x 8" rectangles with my scalloping scissors, gave him some crayons, and he drew pictures on one side of each bookmark.
I pressed some lilacs earlier in the week.  To do this, I simply picked a handful of small blooms, cut the pointy part on the back off, sandwiched them between two pieces of wax paper and put two heavy dictionaries on top.  (We tried dandelions, but they just didn’t work as well as the lilacs.)

On the other side of each bookmark, I put 5 or 6 tiny dots of glue and M carefully placed a flower on each one.If we do this again, I’ll use glue dots… the glue made the lilacs turn a little brown.

He drew stems for the flowers,then I inked his thumb and he made thumprints for the leaves.  :)

I laminated them and cut them out while he watched.  I think we are both in love with my new laminator. :)
They are so cute, I’m going to have him make one for me too. ;) 

Have a beautiful day! :)

Paper Plate May Flowers

This post is a bit late, but I think all of May is a good time for flower crafts, and these would make a cute Mother’s Day gift!

My niece, S, came over earlier this week and she is a crafty girly-girl, so I knew a flower craft would be perfect.  M is not afraid of a little pink either, so he got in on the action too. :)

The prep for this took some time, so I did it the previous evening.

Here’s what you’ll need:

• Scrapbook paper cut into 1/4 to 1/2 inch strips
• Paper plates with the center circle cut out.  Cut along the edge of the plate to create a flower shape, and do the same for the circle you cut out, making it a good inch smaller than it originally was (so there is space between it and the rest of the plate when you place it back in the center)
• Tape
• Glitter
• Glue
• Tissue paper cut into circles, about 1/2 inch bigger than the circle you cut out
• Paintbrushes
• A variety of items to use in making faces… we had pom-poms, buttons, craft eyes, and scrapbook paper cut into mouth shapes (half an oval)

Begin by taping the end of a strip of paper to the back of your paper plate rim.  Then wrap the strip around the plate, taping it again when you reach the other end. Do this again until your plate is wrapped as much as you like.  I set pieces of tape out for the kids so they could grab one when they needed it.  This part was definitely easier for the 5 year old than it was for the 3 year old.  But it was great practice for those fine motor skills!  (The idea for this part of our craft came from the May issue of High Five.)

Turn your wrapped flowers over and tape a tissue paper circle over the cut out center, so it looks like this from the front:   Then set it aside for later.

Next, mix your glitter and some of the glue together on a saucer.  Using the paintbrushes, brush the small flower with the glitter mixture until it is covered.  I put wax paper down for this part, so the flowers wouldn’t be glued to the table. 

Then, make your faces!   The glue already on the flowers should hold the buttons, etc, but if it doesn’t, just use a dot of glue where you need it.

Finally, tape your flower face to the tissue paper circle on the large flower.  We used double stick tape for this part.

Add some yarn to the back for hanging and  ta da:

Cute little flowers to hang in a window or wherever you need a little bit of happiness. :)

Have a beautiful day! :)

Homemade Foam Stamps

M loves those little capsules that have foam shapes in them.  I’m sure you know what I’m talking about – you put them in warm water and wait, oh, about an hour, for the capsule to dissolve and reveal what was all squished up inside.  They are a patience-practicing activity, although I’m not entirely convinced that the gratification of finally seeing *what it is* is really worth the amount of  patience spent, but I digress…

The truly irritating thing about these little guys is that once you know what they are… the fun is over.  They lie around the house making me crazy with their purposelessness.

The million or so peanut butter jar lids that I have don’t make me crazy, because I know sooner or later they will have a purpose. :)  

I tried gluing these little foam guys onto our saved lids with regular craft glue, but after it dried it peeled right off the plastic.  I would’ve tried super glue, but, no kidding, all 3 tubes of super glue that we have are glued shut.  I couldn’t budge them and gave up.  So, I ended up using mounting foam.  I got this in a strip, like a roll of tape, at Dollar Tree a few weeks ago.  It’s useful for all kinds of things.  I liked it for these stamps because it makes them stick up a little farther and makes it easier to just ink the shape instead of the whole lid (if that makes sense?).


We tried them out and they were a success!  M loved using them.

Of course cleaning up was the real test… we had used paint for stamping with them and I just gently washed them under running water, pressed the sponge down to get most of the water out, then let them dry.  They stayed put together very nicely!  $1.00 for a new set of stamps isn’t bad!


Have a beautiful day! :)

The Art Box – May 3, 2010

 Oops!  No picture of the Art Box this week, although I was positive I took one.  It had the usual paints, paper, scissors, glue… collage supplies, glitter glue, some tissue paper, foam letter stickers, and a cardboard tube.

M’s big creation of the week was this:A “talking log”. ;)  It has eyes and everything you could want on a talking log… and yes, it does talk… as long as M’s mouth is at one end. :)

He did some watercolor paintings…

This one is of “garden hoses and caterpillars” (seriously, who paints pictures of garden hoses?):

And this one is of “kangaroo pawprints”: 

He made a paint and sticker collage, with a glitter pen drawing in the background: 

And he experimented with making a tissue paper collage: This was actually a big step forward, since all he normally wants to do is toss tissue paper in the air and blow it around. :)

Have some children’s art you’d like to show off?  Link it up below (remember to link back here in your blog post)!

Have a beautiful day! :)