Friday 29 May 2015

Now What To Do With All That Rice

Having had lots of fun with all that rice play, I decided to create a fairy land for the children to play with, especially as I have a couple of little girls who love fairies.





Their reaction in the morning was lovely and they enjoyed playing with it. My eldest daughter then set it up again for the next day, adding some of her dolls to the land.


Now one of Mums asked what would happen if I cooked the rice would the food colouring stay put or leach out. So that got us thinking and we decided to cook some of the dyed rice. Not that I would want to eat it after they had been playing with it and all that colouring on it as well! Anyway the answer to the question is the dye leaches out during cooking and you end up with white rice again, or at least we did with the food colouring we used.

Leaf and Flower Pictures

We have been discovering how much fun can be had with just a spray bottle of water and leaves, flowers, twigs etc that they found in the garden. Unfortunately limited flowers at the moment as my rabbit loves to eat them, I think he thinks I've planted them especially for him! We've made pictures before from natural materials and they love doing this but they were a bit dubious when I then explained we would wet their designs and see what pattern was left behind! Anyway after a quick demonstration from me away they went, these are some of their pictures, they created.

To start with we collected up lots of leaves, flowers, twigs etc They then created patterns/pictures and with the water bottle on mist, they gently, or sometimes not so gently, sprayed their picture with water.
                               

                               

                               

                               

                               





Monday 18 May 2015

Rice Garden

Carrying on the gardening theme, I had a fun session dying lots of rice, it was lovely creating all the different colours.


The children loved the colours too and set about mixing them together.


Then they set about gardening, playing and exploring.






They decided to fill the buckets with rice and then plant them up with the flowers and silk leaves and petals.





They were very pleased with the results.

Monday 11 May 2015

Flowers and Growing

This year we had a gardening theme going, not that we will stop gardening until we've harvest all our produce in the autumn, thought I would share some of what we did.



The children where very busy with gardening, sorting out what we will plant in our garden and up the allotment, art and craft project, these have included making these wonderfully decorated foam flowers


                          

Painting pots to plant some plants in.



We also made some collage sunflower pictures and with the older ones, we talked about what the different parts of the plant are and why they are important to the plant, what their jobs are.
We used string for the roots and talked about how the roots anchor a plant in the ground and bring water and nutrients from the soil to the rest of the plant. We used a straw for a stem to represent the support and how strong a plants stem is and seeds for the centre part as this is were at the end of the flowers life they would be formed.

                          

                          

                          

                           

They also made some very large tissue paper flowers, that looked brilliant but were very simple to make. Simply put two to three sheets of tissue paper together

                        
 and fold,

                        

wrap a piper cleaner round the middle and fan out the paper

                       

snip away to create the petals.

                        

We also planted sunflower, sweetcorn and pea seeds. I then sorted out some different shaped seeds into a paint tray and left the empty packets and the children tried to sort out which plant grew from which seed. Which led to much chatter and lots of surprise at how small some seeds were etc

                            

We planted some bean seeds in some cotton wool in a plastic bag, we taped it to the patio door and watched them with grow with fascination, it was great for the littleones to see the roots growing, everyday they would check on them to see what was happening.



A trip to the allotment to plant out our beans.

                                 

                                 

After growing and planting out our bean plants, we read the story of Jack and the Beanstalk and then played a game based around the story. I drew out a rough beanstalk in chalk, placed some bean seeds on each leave and  placed the pile of cards that would make the giant. The idea is each time we through the dice if we got a six then you turned over a piece of the giant, if you got another number then you collected that amount of seeds. The idea is to collect all the seeds before you have made the giant. After that they had fun acting out the story and pretending to climb the bean stalk.



The sunflower seeds have done very well and if they continue, we should  have a lovely display in the garden. We are still waiting for the sweetcorn to do something, hopefully grow and the peas have been planted out into the garden and so far are doing well.

                        

We also had a trip to the garden centre to choose some plants and seeds.

We also enjoyed singing lots of different nursery rhymes and songs to do with gardens and flowers including Mary, Mary Quite Contrary,  Lavenders Blue, Round and Round The Garden and finally  Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush.

Had fun playing the Flower Pot game, lots of chances to recognise/match colours, count leaves and compare the size of everyone's flowers.




You can see our colourful rice garden here

We made some leaf and flower pictures using different items we found in the garden, something I might add to my flowers theme, when we do it again flowers and leaves pictures

Another idea to add to my spring planning for next year printing flowers using the inner rolls of kitchen rolls etc, very effective.


Tuesday 5 May 2015

Spring Display

I'm not sure who had more fun creating our spring display, I know one thing though, I love walking into the kitchen every morning to be greeted by this very cheerful display.


What a better way to create a pretty rainbow but with hand prints.


We used lollipop sticks to create some pretty dragon flies


 Our spring pictures came from twinkl.


I used large colourful lollipops for the dragonflies, which I glued together the night before.


 First they stuck some eyes on them.



Then let the children enjoy sticking lots of little gems on them to decorate.







We had been given a ladybird making kit, which comprised of a polystyrene shape for the body, which they covered in glue and tissue paper.



Painted some black spots on them.



 Stuck a face on and some eys and then I did the fiddly bit with the pipe cleaner, 2 very cute ladybirds.