Fun Pipe-cleaner Fairy Dolls

During our Summer vacations this year, I got a wonderful opportunity to revisit my childhood doll fantasy by visiting the Shankar's International Doll Museum At Delhi, India. I was waiting for the right opportunity to share the doll love with my 3 year old 'M'. It was only yesterday that she proposed to make some dolls together. I was so planning to make one with her and was constantly collecting beautiful doll making Ideas on my Pinterest board for Dolls and Doll making. But I had no preparations for the same. What followed was a impromptu fun activity to make Pipe-Cleaner Dolls. 

Now for our Fairy dolls, I first let M made some sketches about how the fairies will look. She has just now acquired a new skill of drawing a figure. Her earlier drawing are mostly faces. I love M coming up with the PLAN. She decided that there will be a wicked fairy too! 

 Here is a step by step instructions at Pink and Green Mama. The dolls face can be made with wooden beads. As we didn't have some handy, we made the doll faces with the smileys pencil toppers. The hair are made with some silk yarns.

I made some crepe paper(aka tissue papers) cutouts for the skirts. The tops are some stickers from our sticker collection.

Our Fairy Dolls had a wonderful time at the park today. 

That's our craft table from the night before.

Here are some other wonderful Ideas for making Dolls at home with kids. 


Waldorf Dolls and Waldorf Boy Doll Hair at Taming a Goblin


Sewing project make a Doll at NurtureStore


Rag Dolls , Pirates Dolls, Scoubidou dolls at RedTedArt


Sewn Doll and Crocheted Doll at MamsmilesBlog


A Fairy Craft at Athomewithali

Recycle Old Art Eric Carle Style

Happy Birthday Eric Carle!

We love reading Eric Carle books. Our Favorite is the Bad-Tempered Ladybug. Here is a fun activity and craft set around the book.
I setup a Art Prompt on the dining table with glue stick, scissors, googly eyes, round stickers and some old artwork. You can select some old painting made by your kids. I cut them out into some random shapes following the art strokes.

M straightly went for the round stickers( or Bindi in local language). "Mummy, we will make the lobster"she said when I asked her which character from the book that she would like to make.

The Start of something good

 Here is how we started by arranging the pieces and putting lots of round stickers on them.

The claws and the eyes in place

 Randomly but everything seemed to come in place as if the random pieces were meant to be a lobster.

The tentacles at front 

 Here is our colorful spotted lobster. I put together all the pieces using a stapler.

The spotted lobster

We went ahead with making some other creatures too. Here is our not-so-perfect Elephant. Daddy thought it was a dog!

The elephant

We had so much fun making some animals for Eric Carle's Birthday. Eric Carle Style!

Sunday Funday: The Mud Pie Kitchen at the park

I have been very busy at work lately and missing on my quality time with my daughter. On Saturday night, I was just talking to my husband about how busy I have been lately. He suggested us to take our play ideas at the park. That way I do not have to worry about a clean up at home and after the activity. I love this idea and zeroed on the Sunday mornings to have a fun filled time with M.  Here is a list of other activities I am planning for coming Sunday in no chronological order.
1) Mud Pie Kitchen
2) Outdoor easel painting
3) Making Land Art
4) Rainy day fun
5) Alphabet hunt
6) Nature collages
7) The camping trip
more to be added soon...

The Mud Pie Kitchen at the park
Here I am sharing my first play date with my daughter on the very first Sunday of my new series- Sunday Funday. On a Sunday morning, I collected some of M's kitchen accessories- a fold able kitchen table, gardening tools, measuring cups, pie makers, a 2 ltr water bottle filled with water, watering can. I also took some extra garbage bags to take everything back home.

 We choose a stop with lots of mud. First up was some digging and collecting the mud in a container. M is busy digging. 

Digging and collecting the mud. 

 We added water to the container and made the mud soggy. M also collected some garden ingredients for cooking. The little stone were tuned into Lime!
Here is her first serving- Tea and chocolate Pie.

The first dish and the raw ingredients

The kitchen setup 

 The Kitchen setup was very inviting and cooking in nature was so much fun.

The chef at work

Later we also celebrate Birthday by adding some candles( read sticks) on the top of a pie. The cleanup was super easy. We just collected all the toys and head home and clean them in the kitchen sink. Next time I am thinking of using the garden hose. 

The five little duckling storytime- Readathon 2012 #readforgood

We are participating in the Summer Readathon at MeMeTales in collaboration with PBS. The book theme for this week is Animals.  There are our reusable gloves puppet which made our read along so much fun. 

Here is the tray I setup for M and my storytime. She was very excited to find the bright yellow gloves along with two little duck and a duckling stickers. Not to forget our Apple Ipad. 

I added a little lesson about the baby duck are called duckling. We drew the duckling faces using a dry erase marker. We enjoyed reading the story at Memetales Ipad app. M really enjoyed this app and wanted to read everything on the shelf. She enacted the story with her finger puppets.

Wearing the glove puppets made the story come alive. We are really looking forward to coming weeks of this amazing Readathon 2012.

2 Great Water beads Play Ideas

Don't you simply love the tiny water beads. I simply love the texture, transparency and color of the water beads. I got  some 6 tiny packets of water beads from a local store.

Before I know, we were already playing with them. The first play idea was a little observation at the light table. I included a magnifying glass and a little measuring spoon and we added the water beads in water.

M loved stirring the water with tiny water beads. She even invented a game about stir and stand. We stir the water and then wait for water beads to rest on the spoon. The one with maximum number of beads win.

Second game is called the water bead fishing. Just add the water beads into the bath tub and then fish them out. Other accessories that you can add are a basket, a small tub and some funnels. 

M played around with water beads in the bath tub for quite some time. Fishing the beads out using a strainer.

There are some other fun ideas I have planning with water beads for the coming days.

A pretend play sandwich set and garden picnic with friends

Today, we had some lovely weather in the evening. Since the rain are coming here soon. Plants and the glass looking more green in anticipation of the rain. The daylight is diffused and everything has a glow about it.

Perfect setting for a garden picnic with friends. We had earlier made a sandwich play set with brightly colored foam sheets. It has Cheese, onion, capsicums, lettuce( leaf shaped post-its), tomatoes and carrots. The bread are from a toaster play set we bought from ELC.

M and her friends at the picnic. I should have carried a bigger mat for everyone to sit on. I was in a hurry of clicking pictures as my camera battery was dying. 

Here is a better look at the play set with foam tomatoes, capsicum in green, the lettuce post-its, the pink onions. 

We even made a menu card. This is in my opinion the best addition to the play set. Drawn by M herself. I gave her foam veggies and she tried to copy everything on to the paper. She also colored the figure. I later added tags to each drawing. All M's friend were asked about which sandwich they would like. There was a demand for tomatoes and cheese. Some of the kids wanted an ice cream. "Yes, We will do that too"

Kids were very excited to have this special picnic and they want to do this again. Why not! I find this activity perfect for preschooler in several ways. 

1) Imaginary play : This is easy to make play set. All you need is some scissors and foam sheets. Its fun to play with too. We have been making sandwiches all week. The Menu card also gives an opportunity for extended Restaurant play. 

2) Drawing still life : M had so much to learn while drawing the foam shapes onto the menu. The onions have rings. The capsicum has some seeds in the middle. The cheese is square. The lettuce has a stem. The carrots are purple( I guess because M's favorite color is purple.)

3) Matching the colors : I asked M to pick up the matching colors to color her menu. This was in itself a learning experience for M. 

4) Vocabulary: This was a great vocabulary exercise, where I could ask M about what all goes in the sandwich. She learned names of different vegetable. Also by labeling the items, we are staring with some sight word and word formation. 

5) Letter recognition: I even asked M to label the menu card. She selected the letters of her name and pasted onto the cover

Of yarn sensory play and our sailing adventures.

 Unbelievable, but I have quite a collection of ribbons and yarn by now. If you are looking for a none messy treasure hunt or a sensory play, this is definitely for you. ( You will need a yarn collection though).

The first game we played was the yarn treasure hunt. I simply filled a square basket with lots of different yarns, ribbons, threads, wool of all sort and hid some fruit and cupcakes wax candles beneath it. Did I mention I have a fetish for beautifully crafted candles. The only rule for this game is not to take any yarns out of the box.

M was super excited in finding all the treasures from the box. She played around with the yarns. The feeling of the yarns passing through the fingers is a sensory experience in itself. Plus there are so many different textures which is a feast to the eyes.

After, M was through her play. All the treasures were transferred into a cardboard box. I have some boxes neatly folded in the store or such impromptu play ideas. She filled the box with all the treasure and was off for an adventure. We had just came back from a holiday from the city of lakes- Udaipur. She had this lake vacation in mind and the box would have to become a boat.

I happily became the passenger of her Ship. And we sailed together, stopping by to visit attraction and eating delicious food.( cooked on the ship)

Sometimes they just need a prompt to create the playing adventures of their own. Certainly that is the purpose of my play ideas. To inspire her to explore, create and  imagine.

A Stone Pet

It started with M wanted to make a dog. She told me in morning " Mummy, lets make a dog today." She choose her dog Tshirt to wear for the day. How we made one is what this post is about.

 

We agreed upon making the Stone pet which can always be around. The inspiration was the dogs on M's favorite T-shirt. M rushed to get some stones from our window garden. The big one for the body and little ones for the legs. 

 

 We adding some googly eyes and a button for a nose completed our little stone pet.  The marbles became the pet's feet.

 I asked M to make a house for the pet. She quickly came back with a little house drawn on a paper.

Playdough and Flowers: Tinkerlab Creative Challenge

 

We are participating in the Tinkerlab challenge and this time the theme is Flowers. M loves picking up the flowers which fall down from the trees. We are off for a flower hunt and collected lovely flowers from around our neighborhood.  We make sure never to pluck flowers. There are plenty of beautiful trees at this time which produce abundance of flowers. M picked the flowers from under the trees, bushes and on the road.

 There is a basket full of flowers.

 Then we came home to make some glittery play dough. M wanted to do it all by herself. It was fun kneading the dough. M choose her play dough to green and glittery.

Here is the fun floral decoration.  After a activity filled hour M was quite exhausted, so we left it at that.

Here is a Linky for you to share your lovely flower related ideas.