Posts Tagged ‘fine motor’

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Wood Shavings & Contact Paper

Friday, March 25th, 2011

Hey there, it’s ‘art project Friday’, or ‘Friday art project’, or something, I’m going to try to start blogging more regularly for a little while, with art projects on Friday, and things-I’ve-made on Monday, there, I’ve said it, let’s see if the accountability is helpful! :-)

Contact paper is great stuff (other than being made out of plastic…), clear, sticky, fun! My husband has been planing down some boards, with a hand plane, resulting in a lovely pile of silky smooth paper thin wood shavings. We put them together. The contact paper and the wood shavings that is. These photos are awful, the wood is beautiful, it practically glows! (But it was a bit springy, we had to try standing on our collages to squish them a bit flatter.)

If you are not endowed with a hand plane and some spare butternut lumber, try some grass, tissue paper, you know… contact paper collages have been around forever, but the wood shavings are really really pretty! I wish I could think of something else for 4 year olds to do with them! I know there must be something brilliant I am missing. Fairy house roofs? We just made a lovely flower fairy house I need to show you… It has a flower roof though, it doesn’t need wood shavings. Miniature books? It is paper thin, you can just cut it up with scissors. Maybe we could try some of those quilled wood things, but that might be a bit on the involved side? Make-your-own-plywood? Ideas?

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Posted in Art Activities | 2 Comments »

Potatoes and Cookie Cutters

Thursday, January 6th, 2011

What do you do when you have a bunch of potatoes that have gone green? (Well, you *could* eat them, but I think they taste awful and I’m paranoid about poisoning my children. So instead:) Potato stamping! This variation that we did uses cookie cutters for the shapes. Whee!

1. Cut your potato in half.

2. Stick your cookie cutter deep into the potato

3. Pretend you are trying to cut a 1/4″-1/2″ slice off the cut side of the potato. Since the cookie cutter is still in the potato you will run your knife around the potato hitting the cookie cutter with the tip of the knife. The cookie cutter will protect the center part of the potato, creating the stamp shape. (Yes, I should have taken a picture of this step, hopefully you can figure out what I’m trying to say by looking at the result!)

4. Pull off the slice of potato from around the outside of the cookie cutter.

5. Pull out the cookie cutter.

Now you have a nice cookie cutter shaped potato stamp with a round potato handle on the back good for small hands to hold onto.

We also cut some textures into some of our stamps. The (4yo) girls practiced cutting the potatoes in half, putting the cookie cutters in, and cutting around the outside by themselves, with varying degrees of success, and no injuries!

We love paint!

Yes I haven’t been blogging recently, no particular reason. I have a lot of backed up things to talk about though!

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Posted in Art Activities | 6 Comments »

Spoonflower Dolls

Tuesday, December 14th, 2010

We survived our brief trip back east, and I am tired! And I have no real plans for the holidays, not even sure which ones we are celebrating. We celebrated St. Nicholas day in Vermont, that was fun. We will celebrate solstice and the new year I guess. How exactly I don’t know. But Penelope actually slept all last night, so I’m running out of excuses for not having any brains!

This is something I’ve been working on for a while, soft dolls printed at Spoonflower. I managed to fit three dolls into half a fat quarter of organic jersey (which is larger than a fat quarter of quilting weight woven, happily) so I was able to order six little dolls on one fat quarter. I made one rag doll, which was my goal, that I haven’t sewn yet, and then along the bottom I fit two swaddled babies. One is the one above, that I think is okay, but I’d like to fix it up.

The other is one that Rebecca drew – I printed out an oval for her, and she scribbled a face and other bits all over it. Here she is sewing around the edges, and in quite a bit from the edges…

And here you can see her finished doll, isn’t it cute! (along with the second print that she is cutting out.) She did the cutting, and the sewing and the turning and the stuffing! I still have to thread her needles and knot them, I keep meaning to work on that with her, and I had to sew the doll shut for her because she was getting tired. Can you tell, I am so proud of her that she can sew a simple doll mostly by herself at 4?

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Posted in Crafty | 2 Comments »

Marbles & Hangers & Upside Down Puzzles

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

hanger

While playing we found out that our hangers from Ikea make excellent little marble tracks. Rebecca insisted on filling up the whole thing with my marble collection, good work for little fingers, also there was the challenge of keeping them from rolling where she didn’t want them as the floor isn’t flat..

Puzzle

We also had fun doing some wooden puzzles that I cut with our scroll saw. After Rebecca did them right side up she decided to give it a go upside down. They are small enough that it was a pretty easy job. So if you are bored of your puzzles, try them wrong side up. :-) You could even draw a new picture on the back!

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Weaving

Thursday, April 15th, 2010

weaving

Here is a 100% child led activity. I was dragged. Really.

I was cutting loose threads off a red canvas shopping bag that I had just washed and dyed yet another load of clothes pink with, I’m starting to learn, really, although I just did it again with a purple blanket… And Rebecca wanted to make a new bag with the threads I was pulling off. I think she was upset that the bag was loosing threads, and had a hole in the corner. She asked if we could make a new bag, and I grudgingly admitted that *theoretically* we could make a very small bag, but it would be a lot of work. From there I was dragged into helping her set up a tiny cardboard loom, warping it for her and finding a large needle to use to weave the weft threads. From there she wove her little postage stamp of red cloth.

Later when she was helping me make the bed she said, “Wow mama, someone did a lot of work making this big sheet!” So there you go, the last couple months of chaos we’ve become unschoolers.

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Bolting

Monday, April 12th, 2010

bolting

Not running away, but assembling Ikea furniture, a great activity for little hands. Rebecca loves using the little torx drivers, and putting all the bolts into the holes.

I know I haven’t written for almost a month, things are getting a little more organized around here, I’d say were 80-90% unpacked. That’s depressing. I do have a lot to write about though, I’ve even been doing some sewing! I just need to make Monday blog-ahead day, or schedule some time for it. That’s what I feel like I need to work on the most right now, coming up with a house cleaning, girl educating, mama crafting schedule where everything can magically get done at its appointed time… There may be too much fantasy in there. I’ve started Fly Lady though, which is one step towards such a miracle schedule.

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Posted in Homeschool, Life | 1 Comment »

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