Leaves and apples - autumny fun!

Autumn is such a fab time of year for art and craft activities for little ones - lots of scrunchy textures and lovely rich colours

This week we've been exploring "Autumn" - the children had been collecting autumn leaves during the week and it was lots of fun looking through them all and seeing all the different sizes and colours!

Leaf printing is always a favourite activity - really simple and the magic of lifting up the leaf and seeing the print underneath never fails to amaze. There's all sorts of ways to print with leaves but it's great fun to use a rolling pin to roll over the leaf and make the print - makes a lovely clear print and great for coordination skills! I added a few apples too - easy for tiny hands to grip and squidge into plates of paint.

Here's some pics of what we've been up to with our leaves this week - printing, collage and making leaf prints in our glittery playdough too!

 

 

 

 

Pasta collage pictures

This week we're doing a "The Tiger Who Came to Tea" theme (will blog about that seperately next week) and we've been creating some pasta pictures. Not strictly to the letter of the book - but the tiger did eat everything in the cupboards, and I certainly always have pasta in mine!!

In the past I've done pasta collage with dry pasta and have not always been impressed with the results - difficult to stick onto the card and very brittle. This time I slightly cooked the pasta and coloured it with food colouring before the kids got started. Dead easy to do - cook the pasta as usual with a splash of oil, cook til it's just the hard side of "al dente" (you don't want it too soggy) and then when drained stir in a splash of food colour and leave to dry.

We used big sheets of card for this activity - paper is always going to be a bit too flimsy for heavy pasta. I put big bowls of the coloured pasta on the table, some feathers, tissue paper, the button tray, glitter and some "gloopy glue" (PVA) and let the children start creating! It was a big hit - I had two 18 month olds starting my class today who sat for absolutely ages at this station working on their creations! The different textures of the pasta, buttons and feather are really fascinating and tactile for little ones.

Here's a couple of the fab pictures they created....

 

 

 

 

 

Just to add a quick word about using glitter with tots - a lot of mums I know shiver with dread at the word "glitter shaker" and glitter and carpets really don't mix well! But I absolutely LOVE glitter - any excuse to break out the sparkle in my book! In my tots classes I pour the glitter out into bowls rather than stick glitter shakers on the table. The children then use their fingers to pick up and sprinkle the glitter onto their artwork. Doing it this way encourages the development of their pincer grip  and fine motor skills and means that the glitter (hopefully!) actually goes where they want it to go on their creation.

 

 

Happy creating!



 

Autumn Crafts!

Last week at Little ARTventurers our theme was "Autumn" - I am a huge fan of autumn crafts and our kitchen is already covered in them!

I asked all of the children to collect some autumn leaves and bring them to the session - we then tipped them all out into the middle of our circle and the kids loved showing each other the leaves that they'd brought and rustling them around.

Then we created some autumn art using some of our leaves......

We made Autumn Tree collages - this was great fun! I'd drawn a tree trunk outline on a large piece of coloured card for each child and had also pre-cut some tissue paper leaves in autumny colours. The children had loads of fun gluing and sticking the leaves they'd collected onto the tree together with the tissue paper leaves, they looked fantastic. Lots of glue was needed and we pressed each leaf down well to make sure it was stuck down (I use glue sticks in my session as they are so easy for the littlest children to grip hold of and use but PVA might work best). We finished with a good old sprinkle of gold glitter!

We also used our leaves for leaf printing. I've done this activity many times before but it isn't always the most succesful, especially for toddlers. This time I revised my technique and we made the prints using rolling pins which was lots of fun and worked really well. We painted the leaves first them places them flat down on the paper. We then popped a piece of newspaper over the top and then rolled over the top with a rolling pin - then peeled the leaves off to reveal the prints. Like I said, the prints came out really well......

We also made scarecrows on sticks (very cute!) - a really simple activity but took a bit of prep. Basically I cut out all of the pieces - the scarecrow head, jacket, hands and drew the face on. The children then stuck it together and added texture through the buttons and hair (I found adding a hat made him too top heavy and floppy). And then we stuck the scarecrows onto sticks. The children really seemed to love them - we ended the session with a game of Musical Scarecrows!

I also run a Saturday art club for older children and I found it tricky to find autumn crafts that weren't going to be too "babyish" for them. However one autumn activity that did go down well with them was doing some linear autumn leaf drawings. I had pre cut some leaf shapes which they drew round on a large piece of paper (or they could just draw their own leaf shapes) - making the outline in thick black marker. They then drew in the veins of the leaf using the marker, taking the lines right to the edge of the leaf to divide it up into different sections. I then asked them to use lines and patterns (no shading) to fill in each section of the leaves. Some of them did find this quite challenging - thinking of different combinations of colour, lines and pattern to fill each space. We finished the pictures by drawing energy lines around the leaves themselves. I think the finished results look great, really effective!!







The Very Hungry Caterpillar week!

This week at ARTventurers we've been running some Very Hungry Caterpillar sessions - inspired by the Eric Carle classic!

So what have we been up to? Well, we've been making paper plate suns, fantastic Hungry Caterpillar hats, butterfly puppets, collage fruits and trying butterfly painting as well as making some delicious looking lollipop bookmarks! Then at circle time we used the things that we made to tell the story of the Very Hungry Caterpillar - it was great fun! I love to get the children using and interacting with the things that they've created during the classes rather than them just getting stuck on the fridge, it's a great way to get them inspired and thinking creatively and I'm sure that the book has been read and read over this week at home!



Making our paper plate suns

I think that the buttefly puppet was the most popular activity this week. Here's how we made them -

You'll need - a butterfly shape cut out from stiff card, glue, some collage materials (we used tissue paper and sequins as well as squares of coloured paper), a wooden stick or lolly stick, some sellotape.

We decorated our card shapes with the collage materials (the more colourful the better), of course remembering that buttefly wings are always symmetrical! We attached some tissue paper streamers to the bottom of our butterflies and then attached them to the sticks with sellotape - they were then ready to be fluttered around the room!

Butterfly puppet making!

Next week we're going On Safari - can't wait!!

All About Me Collage Craft Activity - for all ages!

I first used this craft as part of an “All About Me” themed session where we also made a fingerpainted house and created some fantastic self portraits on the painting table!

It's really simple idea and craft but very often the most simple ideas are the best!

It was such a popular craft for younger children that it’s one I’ve taken out and about again and again. Kids love to make their whole family so it’s worth printing out quite a few extra templates – and it’s a craft that can be used as a great learning tool for colours, families and body parts as well as exploring different textures. Older kids can also use it as a scissor practice exercise!

This is what you’ll need

Stiff a4 card

Glue

Pens or crayons

A box of different materials – fabric, card, papers,wool, tissue……..

Firstly, print out the A4 template below onto card – like I say it’s a good idea to print out a few! You should hopefully be able to copy and paste this template and then resize it if needed - if not then you can download templates elsewhere or just draw your own person!

Let your child get creative with the template, materials and glue – dress it, colour it in, add hair (or not!).

You can either leave the person as he/she is on the card – or try cutting it out to make a cardboard doll!