Paper Plate Reindeer

From

Huppie Mama

Materials:

a white paper plate

scraps of construction paper

glue

markers, crayons, or paints

Colour a paper plate brown.

This will be the background color for your reindeer’s face.

Next, fold both sides of the paper plate up, and colour the folded portion a different shade of brown.


Glue eyes and a nose to your reindeer.
You can use Googly eyes, but I liked the appearance of large paper eyes.
A fun idea may be to assign one child in a class to make Rudolph while the other children make regular reindeer. 



Trace hand prints out of construction paper (we used beige), cut them out, and glue to the top of the head as antlers.
Your reindeer is now complete!
 

Sensory Tree

Sensory Trees

from

Mummy Musings and Mayhem

Here’s what you need…

A Christmas tree stencil or template

Green paint with a little white glue mixed through for extra sticking power

A roll of drawer liner plastic with bumps on it. (I got mine for $2 from the discount shop)

Lots of sparkly bits and pom pom balls for tree decorations

Glitter…optional but I do love glitter at Christmas!

Now the fun part….

I drew a basic Christmas tree template on paper and then cut it out to use as my stencil (If you don’t have time to draw up a tree there are lots of stencils online you can just print out quickly).

Lay your tree stencil on the plastic roll and cut out as many trees as you think you will need for each child and then do some more because they will ask you for more…trust me!!

If you are making the trees for a group of children then I suggest putting a small name down the bottom at this stage because it is very hard to write on them with all the glue and glitter later!

Don’t throw away the offcuts…if you cut your trees out fairly close together you will get offcuts that with a little trimming make an easy Christmas tree puzzle toddlers can have fun putting together and pulling apart. 

I do love a budget friendly activity don’t you?

Now lay out your chosen collage materials and a little glue paint and then let them decorate to their little heart’s desire!!

I love that children will always do even the simplest activities in different ways. With the family day care group in the pictures below , some used lots of glue and collage, some used only a little. Some preferred to just add paint and a star and some like my Tara covered the tree in colour.

There is of course no wrong or right way to be creative!

We painted with the bumpy side up so that the children could feel the bumps as they painted and as they stuck down their collage pieces. We talked about the other side feeling different and what ‘smooth’ meant.

Glitter, sequins, glue and soft pom poms all added to the sensory aspect of the activity. Those that found the sensory touch of the bumps too challenging for their system simply turned it over and decorated the smooth side.

I found it interesting that every child chose to put a star at the top of their tree so I would encourage you to include a few little stars in your collage material. These are just little foam ones but there are lots of little foil ones around at the moment too.

And glitter…there was lots of glitter….but the lawn looks lovely and festive now!

The chosen decorations varied but they each displayed their own unique style and the children were very proud of them.

They have really brightened up the old windows in our sign in area too!

An easy craft but one that all ages can participate in and enjoy…Miss Teen actually spent quite a while on her designs and the younger children loved watching her create beside them…aren’t they pretty? 

Threading Christmas Tree

 

Make your own threading toy using a large salt dough model and pretty sparkly pipe cleaners to develop fine manipulative skills!

from

MumCentral

We decided to make our threading toy Christmas themed and cut it into a Christmas tree shape. The sparkly pipe cleaners represent the tinsel winding around the tree, great for practicing threading skills.

1 cup of salt

1 1/2 cups of flour

1/2 cup of water

paints

3 sparkly pipe cleaners

1. Mix together the flour and salt, gradually add the water stirring the mixture until it binds together into a dough.
2. If it appears to be too sticky, add some extra flour. If it is too dry add extra water.
3. Knead the dough and form a ball.
4. Use a rolling pin to roll the dough flat and then the cut the shape of your choice with a knife.
5. Remember to make some fairly large holes into the dough at this stage!
6. Put into an oven at a low heat (around 90-100 degrees Celsius)

After about an hour push the end of one of the pipe cleaners into the dough so that it sets into place. The overall cooking time for our Christmas tree shape was around 3-4 hours and we turned the dough around halfway through due its size.

Once our salt dough had finally finished cooking and had cooled down we painted it then glazed it with white PVA glue after the paint had dried.

Finally before it was ready to be played with, I attached the other pipe cleaners to the first one making it longer for threading it through the tree.

Possible developmental outcomes include:

developing the pincer grip - strengthening small muscles in their hands

hand-eye coordination

fine manipulative skills

planning where to thread the pipe cleaners next

feeling a sense of pride in what they have achieved

Foam Doodle Boards

Have some messy sensory fun with these shaving foam doodle boards

from

My Kid Craft

Materials 

Chopping board or tray

Shaving foam

Utensils e.g. spoons, chopsticks

Method 

Squirt some shaving foam onto the board or tray.

Have fun playing with the shaving foam with your hands.

To create the doodle board, spread the shaving cream flat with hands or a flat spoon.

Ready to doodle

Make marks, letters or pictures on the shaving cream board with your fingers.

For kids who don't like getting messy hands, try chopsticks or popsicle sticks to make marks in the shaving cream.

Have fun making marks with a chopstick

Winter Wonderland Small World Play

We love this DIY play set by Chelsey at

Buggy and Buddy

This week I’ll be collaborating with five other amazing kid bloggers in our newest series~Winter Play Days! Over the next week we’ll each be sharing three creative ways to encourage play centered around the winter season for a total of 18 winter play ideas!  (If you missed our Fall Play Series, be sure to check it out!) 

This year I’ve become a huge fan of small world play. It’s such a fun way to encourage imaginative play for a wide range of ages. And having both a 2 year old and a 5 year old, that’s a huge plus for me! 

Disclosure: This small world DOES contain small parts that could pose a choking risk to small children. Please use materials suitable for your children and never leave children unattended. (This post contains affiliate links to Amazon.)

Winter Wonderland Small World

Our latest small world, Winter Wonderland, is full of all kinds of sensory materials and loose parts- perfect for stimulating imagination, and it’s super easy to set up! (This small world is simply meant to inspire you. Please don’t feel like it needs to be set up exactly like this one. Take what you like from it and add your own spin!)

 

Setting Up Our Winter Wonderland Small World

I started by finding an area in our home that’s easily accessible to both kids, as well as easy to clean up. For us, that was on our kids’ table (similar to this one) right in our kitchen. It’s the perfect height for both kids and is on a hard surface for easy cleaning.

I thought it would be fun to create a backdrop for the play area so I created a snowy background scene. I used the back of some already drawn on easel paper to cut out clouds and used a needle to thread some cotton balls on clear beading thread to make our snow.

 Then I grabbed a large wooden tray and filled it with salt (one of our favorite sensory materials). I added some clear gems (which the kids later told me was an icy pond) and some of our favorite wooden animals. 

I created a few trees by placing some homemade play dough on top of some cylinder shaped wooden blocks from our block set (similar to this one). And I couldn’t resist sprinkling a little fake snow over the top of them!

I had found some flat styrofoam circles and styrofoam balls at our local dollar store which I included along with some flat toothpicks. (I wouldn’t recommend using the round toothpicks with pointy ends with the styrofoam. You’ll definitely end up with some poked fingers.)  I attached a few of the foam balls to a flat circle using a toothpick and then scattered the rest of the toothpicks around in the snow. 

 

Playing with Our Winter Wonderland Small World

Once the kids got up from rest time, I invited them to play with the small world! They first inspected the salt in the tray. Theo spent a lot of time running his fingers through the salt, while Lucy used a toothpick to draw in the salt. 

The kids quickly moved on to poking the toothpicks into the styrofoam. They created snowmen and all kinds of structures! 

Even my 2 year old enjoyed building with the toothpicks and styrofoam!

The kids enjoyed covering the trees with ‘snow’, poking holes in the play dough, and building little dens for the animals.

And of course they were attracted to the wall decor. Theo’s favorite part was blowing the cotton balls to make a snowstorm…

… while Lucy made the snow fall below!

Lucy also decided the clouds needed a few more details. 

Theo did too!

I loved that the kids actually drew on the clouds. It’s something I didn’t even think of myself, but what a great addition to the small world play!

Pumpkin Beanbag Toss

Pumpkin Bean Bag toss
From
The Pleasantest Thing

Take a box, and using a sharpie, cut out a pumpkin shape with a jack-o’-lantern face. As you can see, in my cut-out, I kept the base flat, and painted it to look as though the pumpkin was sitting on grass. This is so made the pumpkin sit on grass, so that it would be a bit sturdier. When you are cutting, keep the bean bags handy, so you can make sure the holes are wide enough that they will easily fit through.

Paper Plate Pumpkin Craft

Paper Plate Pumpkin Crafts

from Learn Play Imagine

This is one of those crafts that I had a hard time capturing on film. I almost didn't post it, but since it is so easy and inexpensive I figured it was worth sharing despite the poor quality photographs. We had two variations of this craft. The first was done by painting paper plates with orange tempura paint. Once the orange had a bit of time to dry JZ (5) made jack 'o lantern faces with black puffy paint using our Homemade Puffy Paint recipe.

This was his favorite part. I was pretty surprised he didn't ask to make more, because he loved painting faces on his pumpkins.

The second set of pumpkins was made using paper plates, school glue, and tissue paper squares.

J-Bug (3) said his needed an eye, so I ran upstairs and grabbed a few googly eyes for him to choose from. I expected the pumpkin to turn out like the Turtle Crafts we made a few weeks ago, but to my surprise, he only used one googly eye.

The finishing touch was punching a hole in each plate and using a green pipe cleaner as a stem to attach the pumpkins to our stair railing.