Glove Puppets

My girls are very creative and love all sorts of arts and craft. Recently I was in our local supermarket when I spotted a whole section of assorted sets for kids to make and do.

I picked up this set of 3 glove puppets for just £2.25. The material is all pre-cut which saves a lot of time and it even included assembly instructions. It included a large tapestry needle and tread and the material had the holes marked out so all my girls were easily able to stitch their puppets together with very little help from me and Samira did hers all by herself.

The girls then glued the remaining parts together to give their puppets features. They used a pritt stick glue which was fine at first but half an hour later it started falling apart so I got a tube of copydex glue (fabric glue) to secure the features and we left them to dry over night.

This is Samira’s monkey.

This is Amina’s kitten.

This is Basma’s butterfly.

Ramadhan Mubarek Banner

We had some real messy fun last weekend making this banner for the arrival of the blessed month, masha’Allah.

First of all I printed the letters individually on white A4 card using a free downloadable font called Cheri Liney. I cut them out and mounted them onto black card.

Add one arts and craft table and four excited children …

And here is the end result which we have proudly displayed on our living room wall.

We used lots of different materials to decorate the letters. Here is the letter ‘U’ decorated with pieces of tissue paper and tiny metallic stars:

The letter ‘R’ decorated with glitter:

The letter ‘A’ decorated with colour-changing pens:

Another letter ‘A’ coloured with crayon and decorated with sticky stars:

And the letter ‘E’ decorated with colourful feathers:

RAMADHAN MUBAREK!

Amina’s Bits & Bobs: Butterfly

Amina recently came home from nursery with this colourful butterfly. This is a lovely, simple glueing and sticking activity which she loves to do so much.

Simply cut out a butterfly shape from coloured card and provide PVA glue and materials to decorate the wings. You can use anything really: sequins, tissue paper, glitter, crayons, or whatever you can else you can find.

Amina decorated hers with coloured matchsticks and tissue paper circles.

Amina’s Bits & Bobs: Kite

My 4 year old Amina has been having loads of fun at nursery and I’ve decided to keep a photo diary of all her ‘bits & bobs’ that she makes. She is very into sticking and making things. Every day she comes home with something different that she’s made. Today she came home with this beautifully decorated kite, masha’Allah.

Very easy to make, simply cute out a diamond (kite) shape, glue and decorate with whatever comes to hand: glitter, sparkly bits or even just pens and crayons. Then attach some string to the end and there you have it. If you have time, you could always add shiny sweet papers or couloured tissue paper to make ribbons for the tail. Finally, attach some blutac to the back and hang it on the wall.

Lovely, masha’Allah!

World Food Week

My 3 year old daughter Amina just started pre-school a couple of weeks ago and this week they have been learning all about the foods of the world. The kids have helped in preparing, serving and tasting the different food.

Then they made little art and craft things focusing on different foods.

On Monday, she made Fish and Chips.

She glued down little strips of yellow paper for the chips.

On Tuesday she made chopsticks.

This was made using 2 firm drinking straws, each tightly rolled up in a sheet of paper and then taped together.

On Wednesday she made Tacos.

This was made using a circle of light brown thin card folded in half to make the taco shape. And for the filling she used brown tissue paper for the meat and green tissue paper for the salad.

Today, Thursday, she made what appears to be an Italian salad or pizza, although she couldn’t remember what it was LOL!

Some brown paper glued to the plate and then topped with green and red tissue paper … I’m sure it’s delicious, masha’Allah!

And because she’s had so much fun this past week, this afternoon we decided to make something ready for Show & Tell tomorrow ~ our very favourite, Cous-cous.

Even my 2 year old Basma got involved and made her own. First we used some golden crepe paper to represent the cous-cous, and the girls dotted all over the crepe paper with a red felt pen to represent the tomato based sauce that we put on our cous-cous.

Then we used green felt and green tissue paper to make the slices of courgette, yellow and brown pom-poms to make the potatoes, orange felt to make the carrots and brown felt to make the meat that accompanies the cous-cous.

What a yummy-scrummy week, masha’Allah!

Cress Caterpillar

My daughter Samira, at 6 years old is very much into art and craft so I decided to get her an art and craft book for Eid.

Inside is a page showing how to make a Cress Caterpillar.

First of all we saved 6 egg shells carefully taking the top half of the shell off and washing the remaining shell with warm soapy water. When they were dry Samira painted the egg shells green.

We don’t buy our eggs in cartons we buy them in trays so I cut out 6 cups from the cardboard tray and Samira painted these green too.

When the green paint was dry she painted on red spots and glued the cardboard cups together with PVA glue.

Then she chose the largest shell to make the caterpillar’s head. She stuck on googley eyes and used a black felt tip pen to draw the mouth.

When all the shells were ready we put them into the  cardboard cups to form the body of the caterpillar.

Now that the caterpillar was ready, we prepared to sow the cress seeds. We needed 6 cotton wool balls, one to be placed in each shell, and some cress seeds, a teaspoon of seeds to be poured into each shell on top of the cotton wool ball.

When the seeds have been added to the shells, pour one teaspoon of water over each of the cotton wool balls and cover the shells until the seeds begin to germinate.

Curl 2 red wire pipe cleaners around to make the caterpillar’s antennae and place into the front shell.

By day 3 the cress was already starting to grow, masha’Allah.

By day 10 the cress was around 5cms tall and ready to eat.

Fun & Delicious!

Paper Plate Owl

This little craft was simple, inexpensive and fun.

When my son had been working on his Owl project I had been looking online for information and resources for him to use and I came across this Owl Paper Plate Craft on the Enchanted Learning Website.

When he complete his Owls Lapbook I thought it would be nice to finish off with a bit of art and craft, and all the kids got involved.

To make the Owl, you need three paper plates. (You can visit the link above for full illustrated instructions) Use one for the body, one for the head, cuting out a small section to make eartufts and the third plate is to be cut in half to make wings. I stapled the plates in their relative positions because it’s so much easier than glue and you don’t have to wait for it to dry.

I then made various shades of brown paint and cut up some sponges and the kids dabbed the paint all over their paper plate owls. While they were drying the older kids helped to cut out feet shapes and beak shapes using yellow card.

When the paint was dry, they glued on feet and using a black pen, drew nostrils onto the beak before gluing that on too. Finally I cut out some ovals from white card and the kids used black pen to draw the eyes and glued them onto the owl’s head.

Old Treasure Map

Making an old looking treasure map was something I had done as a kid as part of a history project and I thought it would be fun to relive it with the kids.

First of all we designed a treasure map on a sheet of A4 white paper with a trail leading to the X that marks the spot where treasure is supposedly buried.

Next we scrunched the map up a bit, to give it some creases and made a few rips and tears in it to make it look really old.

Before designing the map I had prepared a cup of instant coffee. Just instant coffee mixed into hot water. When the coffee had cooled down I poured it into a baking tray and lay out the map into the tray to soak in the coffee to stain it. We left it to soak for half an hour. NOTE: You can also get the same staining effect from tea.

After half an hour I carefully took the map out of the coffee mixture and placed it onto another baking tray and placed it under the grill on the lowest setting to dry it out and give it a scrunchy feel. Bear in mind that you need to keep a close eye on the map as you ‘grill’ it so that it doesn’t burn. It only takes a couple of minutes to dry.

Finally, if you want to be really creative, you could hold the edges of the map over a naked flame being extremely careful to not let it catch alight (as I did with our first map LOL!). This will give the map a smoke damage effect. This last step should be done by an adult or under adult supervision.

And when your map is ready you can go on a treasure hunt! We had great fun with out treasure map. I created sign posts around the house that correspond with the points on the map and the kids had great fun running around the house following the map to find the treasure!

COMING SOON: Design a Cake

 

A fun and exciting Design and Technology Project for Key Stage 2 on designing cakes.

Algeria Project: Cakes & Biscuits

Using a simple sponge cake recipe we baked these sponge cakes. All the kids pitched in with the mixing and stirring. Then I let my son make the white icing while my daughter made the green icing.

When the cakes were cooled down the kids took turns to spoon on the icing and I added the finishing touch by piping on raspberry jam in the shape of the moon and star.

We ate these whilst celebrating Algeria’s win over Egypt during the FIFA World Cup 2010 qualifications!!

 

We also made some Algerian Flag biscuits, decorating them with the icing and jam as we did with the cakes.

My son and eldest daughter working together to make the biscuit dough.

The kids took turns to shape out the dough into rectangular shapes while the younger kids made Winnie the Pooh shaped cookies LOL!

When they were cooked and cooled down, we iced them and ate them.

Delicious, masha’Allah!