Planters

Most of us have empty cans lying around and if you’ve not already thought of painting it and recycling it… then you should. This is what S and my project for today was. Well apart from shopping for some clay pots to paint (thats a project for me alone, don’t want her to get oil paint all over herself and around the place)
When S was away at school today, I sized and cut up some construction paper.
Since I wanted to involve S in the project, I drew simple geometrical patterns on it.

Gave S some oil pastel crayons and she got started

And when it was ready, we stuck it on the can.

And we were good to go…

I wanted to plant coriander seeds in it, but didn’t want another seed disaster (Read the post – girl with the green thumb), so I planted cuttings of a plant I already had in the garden.

Little Fishy, Little Fishy

S and I were going through some old pictures of hers and she came across the one in which I’d made an aquarium for a show and tell at her old school. S wanted to make it “on my own” and so we did.

We used an old paper plate and S used a piece of cotton to paint the blue sea on it.

She then drew out the fish, (with some help) , painted it and cut it out

Once S had all the elements cut out (pulses for the sand, sponge for the rocks and paper for the under water plants), she started to stick them in place.

Left to dry while we went swimming and when we got back…

The (bubble) snake charmer

We took a break from making crafts and did this instead, and it was loads of fun and kept S occupied for about an hour

Checking to see how long her bubble trail got

The snake charmer

All you need to do is cut of the bottom of a cola bottle, fix a hand towel with a rubber band, dip it in soapy water and blow…
I live in an apartment, so S did this in our balcony, but its a little dicey because the floor gets all slippery with the soap water. She needed to be supervised all the time. The best place to do it is in a park or if you have a backyard.

Bubble wrap Animals

My cousin did say it looked more like a dragon fly… but what does she know.

The paint on the bubble wrap is dry and our crocs are ready for the details to be added in… (continued from Sheep in the meadow) to make some truly terrifying crocodiles. But before we get down to that let me tell you what you will need incase you do want to make this

• Bubble wrap for the body of the crocodile
• White paper for the eyes and Red for the scales
• Apple seeds (yes i did say apple seeds!) for the nose
• Card board for the legs
• And the usual guys – Paints, glue, scissors, S

S painted the croc’s body a strange orangy, muddy colour yesterday and left it to dry. And all that was left to do was add the details in…

   Cutting up the scales and making the eyes

Making the green and painting the cardboard for the legs

The apple seeds

And then finally sticking them all on

Nose on…

Eyes on

Scale and legs on

 And the cross between a dragon and crocodile is ready

Sheep in the meadow

Another weekend gone and a new day of school for S. Its hard to get her to concentrate on crafts now, because she’s way too busy pretend teaching her various toys.
But she was singing a song about little sheep and mother sheep, so I thought her I’d entice her with a little bubble wrap meadow and cotton sheep.
Its really simple actually and all we used was -

• Bubble wrap to print in the sky and the meadow
• Cotton wool for the ships body and head
• Cotton buds for the sheep’s ears, tail and legs
• Paints, scissors and glue
• And little S ofcourse (not for too long though)

Gave S a child-friendly scissor to cut up the bubble wrap into strips for the sky and the meadow

 S then squeezed out for blue paint for the sky and green (S actually insisted on mixing the blue and yellow to make green) for the meadow, dipped the bubble wrap strip into the paint and began “the masterpiece”

After this point she lost interest and took some paper plates and randomly started to paint it. It could also have been because i kept nagging her to keep the strips in place, not to press the bubble wrap too hard, to press the bubble wrap harder, and nag nag nag (Lesson learnt – when your child is already forced to make a craft with you, let her be…). Anyway, I didn’t want her (READ: MY) project to go to waste, so i stuck on the cotton wool head and body of little sheep and mother sheep, dipped the cotton bud heads into black paint for the tail, ears and hooves (do sheep have hooves or are they called something else?) and left it to dry.
We, in the meanwhile went to the playground and S spent a good hour and a half running around and rolling in the sand. When we got back home, I asked her to clean up for dinner and I was just going to start sticking on the cotton buds when madam arrived and said she’d do it. I was more than pleased!

 I put the glue incorrectly with the legs flailing in the air towards the sky (quickly realized my mistake)

S added the sun with some oil pastels

And blended in the orange

 Little Sheep and Mother Sheep

We have also started some work on a Little crocodile and Mother crocodile, again in bubble wrap (we do have a bagful!). And the story so far is that we’ve rolled up the bubble wrap into a crocodile shape, painted it (mine – green and S – god knows) and left it to dry. Will keep you updated.

Did i mention that when “Father Sheep” came home in the evening, S took all the credit! The pesky little monkey!!!

After the weekend... A Dragonfly

Weekends are generally lazy… I don’t indulge in work of any kind, however S had her hands full. She went to the nursery with her aunt and picked out some plants for potting and she washed the car… well… intended to wash the car, all she did was claim in a loud voice how she’s an expert “car-washer” and cleaned maybe half a door. She did however talk to a hibiscus plant for over an hour.
Today is us getting back to making crafts. It so happened that i told S a dragonfly story after lunch and so she (READ: I) wanted to make a dragonfly, and this is what we made:

All we used was:

• Ice-cream stick for the body
• Paper (cut into circles for the wings)
• Stuff to decorate the wings
• Pipe cleaner for the antenna
• And googly eye
• And… scissors and glue

This is how we went about it…

Cut up the paper into circles for the wings

Decorated the wings with some flowers and shiny circles

Stuck on the googly eyes

And the antenna and wings

Our dragonfly family

 It was a little more exciting for S, because she sat in her little doll house and made it, and she even pretended to be Mister Maker complete with using terms like “gloopy glue” and “sticky tape”.

The “buttons” family (Thats S’s name for the dragonfly)

The Piggy Card

S has been making cards for the family for sometime now. We started out with christmas cards, where I’d cut out shapes of the christmas tree or the snowman and give it to her and she’d haphazardly paste it on paper, or Diwali cards where I made fire cracker shapes, which she painted and stuck and made pretty with glitter and we proudly sent to family and her friends. SHe was just about 2 then, and I really wish I’d photographed them.
But, I did photograph one which she made on her grandparents anniversary and gave to them. She had just picked up writing alphabets and was so proud of having addressed it to them herself. Oh and she did mention the fatter one was dadi (grandmother)

For dadi and dadu (And i honestly wish I’d taken a better picture)

Baking and Painting – Two of our favorite activities!

Why, you may ask… because its messy and that means that life just couldn’t get better.
But before we start, let me tell you, that S finished her summer holidays and went back to school yesterday. Now my little madam has no time for me and my endeavors. So i tempt her the only way i know… MESSINESS and the possibility of eating something sweet (don’t jump to conclusions, I didn’t bribe her, we baked!)
And since S has her priorities all straight, and more importantly she doesn’t trust me (though I’ve never lied to her…), Project 1 was baking and we made nutella cookies with the new baking set she got.
So the recipe said:

• 1 cup Nutella
• 1 cup All-purpose Flour
• 1 whole Egg

What we used was

• 1 cup Nutella
• 1 cup Regular Flour with a tsp of baking powder
• 1 whole Egg
• A couple of teaspoons of milk (big mistake)
• And some more regular flour (another big mistake)

So you take what the recipe says and mix it up. Then you roll it out and use your cookie cutter. Bake it till it sets! What we did was… well never mind… I’m not known for my cooking skills anyway, just hope I don’t pass it on to S.

Yes yes… our cookie man has some physical defects…

Anyhoo… our cookies tasted like chalk. S loves it though! How far she can go for something sweet…

Cookies… Yum??? And yes again, we ate a bit of the defective cookie man

Project 2 – Finger and bottle Painting
This was a huge success and we had fun too… well S did, I’ll be tidying paint goop off the floor for the next couple of days. I DO NOT understand, how she manages it with a messy mat and  some newspapers spread on the floor.
This is what we made – I found this really neat picture of flowers made with the back of a cola bottle and also something that involved loads of messy finger painting. So we put them together and made this;

Our Sunny garden

And this is how we did it

as always… don’t forget the fingers

Mixie mixie

The bright happy sun

mixed some green with white and yellow for a brighter green grass

Now we could have used finger paint to do the flower, but S chose the bottle print

now add in the ladybird and butterfly

S felt “blutterflies” (nope thats not a typo, that how she pronounces it) should be colourful

It did end up with S looking like this (can you imagine how her hands and feet look)

Happy… and content