Traffic signs

M. is showing great interest in everything around us, she asks me about signs and traffic rules. She knows what the traffic light different colour lights stand for, so I asked her to help me making a traffic light and other simple traffic signals to play around the house.
We created a cardboard bus and there you have it a crative learning journey.
The signals I used are: parking, no entry, left turn only, stop and the traffic light.

paper plates art

PICTURE FRAME

2 paper plates
glue and brush
things to stick on
2 photoes
scissors
a string
sticky tape

Cut a square in the middle of both plates.
put the plates upside down and let your child decorate them with a few bits and pieces.



When they are dry, get your two photoes and position them on the inside of one plate so that the photoes can be seen through the square you have cut out. You can use a bit of sticky tape to stick the photoes to the plate.
Take the other plate and position it over the first plate so to close the photoes inside the two plates.
Use sticky tape or glue to stick the outline border of the plates together.
with some sticky tape position the string on the top of the frame so that the frame can be hanged somewhere.
You know have a rotating frame with two pictures either side!



FLYING SAUCER

2 paper plates
glue
empty transparent yougurt pot
pom-pom
googly eyes

With a brush, spread the glue around the outline of a paper plate. Put the other plate on top so that they stick together.



glue the eyes to the pom-pom




Glue the pom-pom to the centre of the plate. Spread some glue on the outline of the yougurt pot and glue it to the plate so that the pom-pom is inside.

"rubish" and glass art and craft

Collect some empty cardboard boxes, packaging, yougurt pots, lids of plastic bottles, and any other empty container you were about to throw in the bin and make some creative contrustions!

Children will learn that they can make do with any thing, and that DIY works!



Using a empty glass container (for example a vase of maionese or olives)and glass paints, we created this glass container that can be a nice gift to be used as a vase for flowers, or a container for pasta, dried herbs or anyother thing.

The glass paints are from "Berol glass paints". They come with a picture booklet and an acetate where to draw your creations. When the paint is dry you just peel it off the acetate and and press onto a glass surface.

new trays for practical life

new year celebrations art

Fire works out of a hat:

paper
felt-tips
glue
scissors
pieces of paper to stick on
glitter


1 draw a hat and some fire works

2 cut it out



3 let your child stick some niece pieces of paper (I use used wrapping paper)
4 put some glitter
5 let your child colour in the fire works and put some glitter



6 glue a little stick on the back of the fire works




7 fire works slide through the hat

some more difficult writting

One day M. was colouring in one of those "princess magazines" I usually buy when we have to fly somewhere, to keep her busy during the flight. She always asks me what the pages ask her to do (colouring in the princesses, find their crowns, count their friends etc). One page was asking her to trace over the word below. She got her pen and starting tracing over the letters: I noticed that she was trancing the letters exactly and she should, as she had done many times with her finger over the sand-paper letters. She was quite confident at it, she wasn't just starting trancing over any point of the letter and going messy over it, her tracing was clean and tidy, letter were traced in the right direction. It seems quite natural for her doing that exercise, she didn't ask for help even if that was the first time she was using a pen to write a word.
I guess that without the sand-paper exercise, I would have to teach her letter by letter how to trace every single one on a piece of paper, repeating the same letter over and over again on the paper, losing my patience because she is not starting from the right point and not following the right direction. I realise how easy it is now for her tracing the letters, and how execiting it is. No boring exercise to learn how to write, no feeling like she will never be able to do it, never saying "it is too difficult".
I found these wipe-clean letter flash cards I had for a long time but thought wasn't the right time to take them out. Now it was the right time: how it is true that a child will let you know when he/she is ready, just observe!

I gave her the flash cards and told her what to do. She starting tracing those letters with such a natural touch, as if she had done it before.
And now she is so pround of her letters writing. She often takes them out and traces some letters until she is tired of it. I never push her to do more, I do not want her to hate any thing she now likes to do.





She still likes to take her sand-paper letters and do the exercise with them.

next step to writing

Here M. is practicing her pen grip and control of the pen around geometric figures. M. then is colouring in the geometric shapes on the paper, trying to fill in the different shapes with different colours.



Here M. is refining her eye-hand coordination to the smallest detail to create the figure on the tablet by putting the right piece in its exact place without moving all the other pieces.

All the above exercises are preparation to writing.
We started with touching the sandpaper letters in the sense of writing, in this way the child memorizes the letter through seeing, touching, hearing the sound and saying the sound (three part lesson: this is "C", give me "C", what is this letter?"). Then we started doing some signs on the flour, trying to imitate the some signs the finger does on the sandpaper letters. Now we use a stick like a pen and we pass with it on top of the sandpaper letters.
M. is already prepared to use the stick as a pen because her sense of touch has been refined through the exercises of the smooth and raugh gradiation tablets, touching the different fabrics and of course the sandpaper letters and numbers; her coordination of fine movements has been pefected through the practical life exercises, her pen grip is excellent because she has exercited herself with stencils and colouring shapes without going out of the borders.
Every exercise she has been doing all this time was a preparation for writing.