Family Fun Festival 2012

Tickets are now available for the Family Fun Festival on Sunday, February 26, 2012.It’s a fundraiser for Childreach and lots of fun for the whole family – from the young to the old.  Sunday, February 26 from 11 am to 2 pm at the Hellenic Community Centre, 133 Southdale Rd. W., London.  There will be activities, crafts, face painting, cupcake decorating, balloon animals, Imagination Playground, silent auction, goody bags, buffet brunch, ice cream bar, visits from Tinkerbell & Buzz Lightyear, and more!!!  Tickets are $10 for children 2 to 12 and $40 for adults.  For more information call Jane at 519-434-3644 ext. 36, or purchase your tickets here!

Fun-tastic Fall: Magic Drawings

You will need:

• white paper
• cotton swabs
• baking soda
• water
• purple grape juice

Here’s what you’re going to do:

1. Have your child combine one tablespoon of baking soda and one tablespoon of water in a cup.
2. Let your child dip cotton swabs into the mixture and make designs on sheets of white paper.
3. Let their designs dry completely so that their papers look blank.
4. Have them paint over their designs with purple grape juice.
5. Watch what happens!

For more fun-tastic fall crafts, recipes, stories, activity ideas, and poems, download and print our Fall Funtastic Book!

Ice Cream Shoppe

Our ECE Resource Centre staff are always pulling together seasonal and themed activity booklets that are full of songs, fingerplays, games, crafts, recipes and activities.   We sell these booklets to childcare providers, early years teachers, and parents – anyone who is looking after children.     The price of a booklet is super low as we simply need to cover the printing costs.  It got me thinking that we could skip the printing and make the file a pdf, and then we could share it with everyone online for free.    Free and fun stuff makes me super happy.  

So without further ado, I would like to present the first of our free, fun, easy to download activity booklets titled Ice Cream Shoppe!    Skip the trip to Dairy Queen, and make your own blizzards while singing ice cream cone songs.  :)

Ice Cream Theme Activity Book

Please let us know in the comments if you found this useful!   We’d love to hear how you incorporated into your children’s play and learning.

Crafty Links

I love arts and crafts.   Each day I try to fit in something creative whether it be a little knitting, sewing, quilting, embroidery, painting, drawing, building, making, cutting, or gluing.  Creating makes me feel good.   It also feels good to share my ‘skills’ and my arts and crafts.   I’m also always on the lookout for inspiration. 

Here are some cool crafts for kids that I’ve found this week!

• Chalkboards & Outdoor Art Fun over at Angry Chicken
• Craft Camp - 30 days, 30 Bloggers, 30 Crafts at Skip to my Lou
• Make Your Own Modern Dollhouse at Four Bad Apples
• This is awesome – a  Tree Activity Book download at Matzo Ball Soup

Where do you find inspiration for your arts and crafts?

Nadine Reeves
Administrative Assistant

Reduce, Reuse, & Recycle – and Save Money!

 

 

As our lives focus more and more on our battered environment, we face the challenges and opportunity to teach our children the four R’s – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Recover.  One of the ways to achieve this is in using recyclable materials for children’s crafts projects.  This offers a great many advantages, not the least of which is saving money, as well as demonstrating to the children the conservation of resources and the challenge of reusing everyday materials.

 

Challenge your own creative thinking, as well as your children’s, in discovering unique crafts from the following “junk” boxes, coffee and juice cans, egg cartons, fabric, wood scraps, margarine lids, Styrofoam trays, and packing chips . . . the list is endless.

 

Boxes

·        Art Frames – Use the tops of tissue boxes to frame small pieces of art.  Collect the tops from a variety of gift boxes.  Cut out the centre so that the opening is slightly smaller than the art to be displayed.

·        Cereal Box Puzzles – Cut the front of a large cereal box into pieces (the number and complexity of the pieces will depend on the age and ability of your children).  Store the pieces in a large envelope with an identical cereal box front pasted on it.

 

Cards and Catalogues

·        Pack your Suitcase – Use a 9” x 12” piece of construction paper (better still, recycle computer paper) for each suitcase.  Have the children paste on pictures of clothing, shoes, etc.  Fold in half and add paper handles.

·        Salt Cards – Choose holiday cards with winter scenes.  Paint the snowy area with glue and then sprinkle it with salt.  When the glue is dry, the salt will look sparkly.

·        Junk Mail – Save old envelopes, junk mail and magazine stamps for dramatic play about mail carriers and the post office.

 

Egg Cartons

·        Paint Sets – Put leftover tempera paint into the cups of styrofoam egg cartons.  Let the paint dry thoroughly, then the children can use the cartons like watercolour paint sets.

 

Margarine Lids

·        Mobiles – Use a large plastic lid as the base for a mobile.  Punch a hole near the top to hang the mobile, and punch three or four holes around the lower edge from which to hang mobile items.

 

Milk Cartons

·        Traffic Lights – For each traffic light, cover a quart milk carton completely with black paper.  Cut out red, yellow and green circles and have children pasted them in the appropriate places.  Add string to the top so that the children can hang them outside and play ‘traffic games’ with their tricycles.

 

Styrofoam Chips

·        Pussy Willows – The children draw dranches with cotton swabs dipped in black paint, then they paste on pieces of chips to represent pussy willow blossoms.

 

Supermarket Fliers

·        Fishing Game – Make a fishing pole from a dowel or a long paper towel tube.  Tie a magnet to one end of a string, and tape the other end of the string to the pole.  Paste food pictures on heavy paper pieces and put a paper clip on each piece.  The children can fish for food pictures.  You can also ask them to fish for a particular colour of food or for a food in a particular food group.

·        Lotto Game – Obtain several copies of the same flyer.  Make individual game boards from heavy paper.  Divide each one into six sections.  Paste a picture of a food item in each section.  Make a corresponding single game piece for each picture on the game board.  Have the children match the playing pieces to the food pictures on the game boards.  Cover the game boards and the pieces with clear contact paper for durability.

Make Your Own Wrapping Paper

 

 

Believe it or not, the holiday season is just around the corner!  Here are some ideas for your preschooler to make their own wrapping paper for future gift giving.  Use non-toxic tempera paints.  Suggested papers include large sheets of flip-chart paper, computer paper, rolls of plain brown or white paper.

 

Vegetable Prints

Cut some fruit and vegetables in half (potatoes, green peppers, apples, carrots) and have your child dip them into paint.  Press the fruit/vegetable on a piece of paper to make designs.

 

Marble Painting

Put a marble into a yogurt container filled with some paint.  Cut a piece of paper to fit the bottom of a shoe box.  Place the marble into the shoe box and move it all around to make designs.  This is a good activity for children who don’t like to get their hands dirty.

 

Hand Prints

Paint your child’s hands, and they can press them onto a sheet of paper.  Have all family members do hand prints and compare sizes!  Great idea for grandparents’ gifts – if you want to get really creative, add your foot prints too!  (Keep a towel and a pail of water handy.)

 

Coloured Tissue Paper

Place two sheets of white tissue paper together.  Fold many times until it is about 2” x 4”.  Dip corners into dishes of water that has been coloured with food colouring.  Carefully open, and allow the paper to dry on newspaper.

 

Sponge Painting

Cut an old sponge, and attach a spring clothespin.  Dip sponge into paint and dab onto paper.

Winter Indoor Activities

 

For those days that the weather makes it impossible to play outdoors:

 

·        Use white chalk and dark construction paper to make snow drawings.

·        Cut sponges into various winter shapes – mittens, snowmen, snowflakes, fir trees.  The children can use the sponges as a tool to print on construction paper.

·        Cut winter pictures from magazines.  Attach the pictures with string or yarn to a branch or paper plate to make a winter mobile.

·        Older children may wish to make a book about winter.  They may find pictures in magazines or use their own creations.  The pages may be in the shape of a snowman or evergreen tree to add interest and creativity.  Some suggested titles might be:

®       What I wear in winter

®       What I like to do outside

®       What I like to do inside

®       My favourite foods in winter

®       My favourite thing about winter