I saw this project in an Arts & Activities magazine. When your fridge and walls are already filled with your child’s art, have them paint your switch plates!
1. Your local hardware or home improvement store carries plastic switch plates for every need and they’re quite inexpensive.
2. Provide the students with lots of acrylic paint and a switch plate and maybe some ideas of subject matter. Small motor skills are needed so they should think of detailed images to make the most of their “canvas”. Be sure to have lots of thin paint brushes too so that painting tiny details is possible.
3. After the plate is painted, spray with a sealer to protect from scratching.
My Angel
by Natalee Fox
My angel has a heart so precious,
and sometimes her hair shines of gold.
She is full of love and kindness,
she makes my life meaningful and bold.
My angel is so smart,
always showing me the right way.
Without her I’d be lost,
I know she’ll never lead me astray.
My angel is beautiful,
she is so special and like no other.
I love her,
for my angel is my mother.
January 21st, 2010 in
Parenting | tags:
Mothers |
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I love almost anything that children paint with watercolor. This is a simple watercolor resist, done with sheep imagined on a hillside.
1. I started by giving the students watercolor paper and a pencil. They are to draw, as lightly as they can, three to five ovals, which will be their sheep bodies.
2. Next they get a white crayon and are to color heavily inside the ovals. Even when they think they are done, ask them to color a little bit more.
3. Give the students a choice of dark crayon colors for their sheep head and feet, such as purple, black or blue. With one color, they need to draw a triangle for the head, two ears to the side and four lines for the feet. These shapes also need to be colored in really well so that they will show up later.
4. Green crayons may be distributed to draw just a few grass lines.
5. Finally, I like to have liquid watercolor paint on hand so the students may pick one color and paint over their entire drawing. The crayon will resist the paint and the white bodies will now show up because of the background color – like magic!
Sometimes, the most simple things are what last the longest. Take the classic building block toy, for example. According to Wikipedia, they originated around 1693 in England. They are often one of the first toys a child plays with, and they help children develop in nearly every aspect. They benefit children as they grow physically, socially, intellectually, and creatively.
Our daughter, even before she was 1, loved stacking things up. She has become quite adept at creating mini modern art pieces with her creative sculptures. Her hand-eye coordination has become quite impressive, as has her ability to sort different shapes. With all of the block-banging she does, she can really rock out to her own rhythm. I think this is one of the things she and her 1-year old posse pals can actually learn to play together with, which will certainly help them develop socially.
There are so many kinds of blocks, from the traditional wooden ones that help teach shapes, colors, and numbers, to Lincoln Logs to inspire young architects, the never-ending potential with the Lego brand. My nephews cannot get enough of their Legos, collecting sets from Thomas the Tank Engine to Indiana Jones to Star Wars.
Blocks are one of the most basic toys that can do some of the most good helping a child grow in so many ways.
I’ve found that students new to oil pastels often need to be guided to use them to their full potential, namely layering them. This project can be a good practice as they will be able to see that brown pastel colored over gold, for example, makes a completely different color than gold colored over brown.
1. I plan on making cardboard hand templates for my younger students as I know how awkward tracing hands can be for some. Their instructions will be to trace as many hands as they can on a piece of paper, all of them just touching each other to create lots of closed spaces. No overlapping!
2. After the hands are traced in pencil, the lines are traced with a fat black Sharpie marker.
3. The hands are colored in with oil pastels, using as many combinations as possible. My sample uses peach, golden brown, medium brown, pink and white in different layers.
4. Lastly, the closed shapes around the hands are colored with different pastels.
I saw this basic idea for drawing a lion in an Ed Emberley book. I think his books have been around for awhile, but the step-by-step drawing ideas are timeless.
1. I used a letter-size paper and coffee cup to trace the overlapping circles as shown in diagram one.
2. A third circle is centered below the first two. All of the circles need to overlap to create the middle triangle-like shape that will become the nose.
3. The middle black shape is filled in with black marker, and two eyes and two teeth are added.
4. Two ears are attached to the top circles and then whiskers that are coming out from the shapes next to the nose.
5. Lastly, a mane is drawn around the lion. I used a black Sharpie to trace and color my drawing, and then my new favorite Crayola Twistables Slick Stix to color in. I found mine at Michael’s, but you can also get them online here. I really hope stores continue to stock these as they are perfect for getting an oil pastel look without all the mess.
“Sarah’s parents allow her to have chocolate milk BEFORE dinner. I wish my parents let me have chocolate milk before dinner.
William has three cats, two hamsters, some fish, and a dog named Olive. I wish my parents let me have a dog.
Ben and his parents like to go camping. I went with them once. We slept under the stars. I wish my parents let me sleep under the stars.”
It seems that the parental grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Who wouldn’t have a few envious thoughts about friends whose parents let them do fun stuff like riding in a cool old convertible with the top down, or eating homemade blueberry pancakes for breakfast, or going to square dances and giggling through their mixups in the do-si-dos.
Laura Joffe Numeroff, author of the best-selling If You Give a Mouse series, has a recent book, Would I Trade My Parents?, which humorously deals with the parental envy problem. The young hero sees his friends’ interesting and varied lives with their own parents and there’s a lot there to envy. As he gazes ruefully at his own unexciting pet, a hermit crab in a cage, how could he not wish he could have cats, hamsters, AND a dog like his friend William, whose mom owns an actual pet shop? Who wouldn’t like to watch TV ’til bedtime any night her homework is done like Katie?
But then, his own parents are pretty cool, too. His mom teaches him French and plays piano duets with him. His dad takes him on long walks, talks to him about everything, and teaches him to recognize different kinds of clouds. His mom puts a note in his lunch every day, his dad reads to him every night, and they all hop on their bikes for a long ride every weekend. His own parents, on reflection, are not too shabby!
“I wouldn’t trade my parents. I know that they are the best!”
THERE IS A DINOSAUR FOR YOU!
THERE’S A DINOSAUR FOR EVERY KID AND A KID FOR EVERY DINOSAUR.
This guide will help you find the right one for you.
With a warning that “some dinosaurs need a little more housebreaking than others,” Laura Rennart’s and Marc Brown’s new tongue-in-cheek guide to caring for pet dinosaurs, Buying, Training, and Caring for Your Dinosaur, (Knopf, 2009) is off and running.
Need a watch-dino? Try Tricerotops or Tyranosaurus Rex! (”Post a BEWARE OF DINOSAUR warning; the mail carrier will appreciate this!”) Your T. Rex is an unparalleled watch-dino, but a sturdy leash and obedience lessons are a must for this one.
Now Old three-horn-face is also great as a ring-toss target for birthday parties, and a Diplodiclus also has party possibilities. With one of those you have your own roller coaster!
Training? Well, that takes a little forethought. Before undertaking the sit command, be sure to check underneath your dino.
Roll Over? Don’t even go there!
Hygiene? When your dino needs a bath, the carwash is best! Be forewarned, however, that an Ankylosaurus is difficult to groom. Exercise? Hit the water! Dinos make excellent floatation devices, and some have awesome waterslide possibilities.
Buying, Training, and Caring for Your Dinosaur has some, er, fantastic advice for the would-be pet owner, but there’s one bit of counsel I’d like to question:
Potential Health Problem: Extinction (but not for millions of years)
Uh, guys! Read your First Book of Paleontology lately?
I found this in an Arts & Activities magazine, and it works great for any student that has already made a pinch pot. I’m saving it for 1st graders on up.
1. Give each student a lump of clay about the size of a small apple. Tell them that softening the clay is an important first step, and this is best done by squeezing it and spreading water on it for at least five minutes. After the clay is warm, they are to roll it into a smooth ball.
2. To make a pinch pot, they are to stick their thumb in the middle of the ball, and then pinch the sides until a bowl forms with walls that are about the thickness of a pancake.
3. On one side of the bowl, a small fold can be made and pinched together to gather extra clay to make the turkey head. On the opposite side, clay can be pinched a bit to make a curve of the tail. When the shape is complete, feathers can scratched in the sides to add some texture.
4. Fire the clay, paint with glaze, and fire again. A very cute addition to your Thanksgiving table!
It was dark.
It was stormy.
It was night.
Melvin had a flat tire.
Cement mixer Melvin is in a situation. With a deflated front tire, he hopefully rolls into a shadowy, spooky junkyard in hopes of snagging a spare. And there he sees one, a strangely orangish, strangely glowing tire. It’s a weird one, all right, but if the tire fits, wear it, Melvin thinks.
But before Melvin can roll back the way he came, he is stopped right in his treads.
“WHO TOOK MY GOLDEN TIRE?” a spooky voice called.
Melvin was worried.
Melvin was scared.
The timorous cement mixer hurriedly makes for home and, still spooked, parks himself in what he hopes is an undisclosed location, in hopes of an incognito idle.
“WHO TOOK MY GOLDEN TIRE?”
The spooky voice had found him!
Melvin pulls in his fenders and closes his eyes, but the spooky voice grows closer, until to his horror he sees a dark draped shape, with headlights glowing from behind its covering sheet.
“YOU TOOK IT!”
Don’t you want the OTHER one?”
For those youngsters who are both ready to read or, as the author puts it in his introduction, “ready to roll,” Jon Scieszka and his trio of vehicular design artists have a brand-new offering for the season, The Spooky Tire (Ready-to-Read Level 1) (Aladdin, 2009.) Using the, er, bare bones of the familiar folktale “The Golden Arm” and its variants, this talented pit crew has fashioned some timely truck fun for their emergent reader fans. Other books in this easy-to-read series are Uh-Oh, Max (Ready-to-Read. Level 1) and Pete’s Party (Ready-to-Read. Level 1).