Rock Painting

Got this idea from a friend too. She is so kind to supply me with the rocks as well. Thank you so much, Jackie.

Materials needed: A rock and some paint.

This is Wayne's rock. He loves this color!

End product. To make it look nicer, you can outline it with opaque correction fluid (Liquid Paper) and spray with a gloss spray.

Does it make a good father's day gift? These rocks can be used as paper weights and that's what we did in playgroup and in Sunday Dhamma School.

Craft For Children - Playgroup 1 March 2008

Here's a simple craft for small children where children can enjoy sticking color strips of paper on to the animal printouts.

Materials:

1. Printout of animal pictures
2. Color paper cut into small strips
3. Glue


Methods:

1. Cut color paper into small strips.
2. Print pictures of animals.
3. Apply glue onto the whole picture.
4. Stick color paper strips onto picture.

After you are done, what do you do with the animal collage? Keep in the box? NO!!


What about doing these?

1. Cut out the animal collage and stick it on a cardboard to make a cute greeting card.
2. Cut a big strip of cardboard the size of your child's head to make a cute hat. Stick the animal collage in the middle and let's role play! (See picture)
3. Suggestion one can be modified and be made a wall decoration instead of a greeting card.
4. Suggestion two can be modified and be made the outer layer of a pencil stand instead of a hat. We would need a container to measure the diameter of the cardboard instead of our child's head.

So, this would be our craft for tomorrow's playgroup. Do you think the children will like this?

Learn About Baby Animals Through Songs

Do you know that a baby fish is called a fry? How many baby animals does your child know? How about a fun way to introduce the names of baby animals to your children? I used this during one of our playgroup sessions.


Do you know the song "The Wheels On The Bus" which goes:

The wheels on the bus go round and round
round and round
round and round
The wheels on the bus go round and round
all through the town


Nyn loves this song. So, I changed the lyrics to:

The calf on the farm goes moo moo moo
moo moo moo
moo moo moo
The calf on the farm goes moo moo moo
all day long


Then add other baby animals on the farm such as:

kid - baby goat
piglet - baby pig
chick - baby chicken
lamb - baby sheep
duckling - baby duck
puppy - baby dog
kitten - baby cat
foal - baby horse


You may also try baby animals in the jungle such as:

tiger cub - baby tiger
lion cub - baby lion
owlet - baby owl


If you do not know this song, don't worry, you can always use "Old MacDonald Has A Farm".


To make it more fun, use finger puppets, soft toy or pictures of baby animals and let them dance to the music.


Have fun, everybody!

Friendly Spider

How about an itsy bitsy spider for our playgroup craft session?

Here's the materials:

• Sugar paper (A4 size)
• Pencil
• Colour paper (white, red)
• Scissors
• Your child's hand (Note: this is not a material)

Method:

• Fold sugar paper into half.

• Place your child's hand on the paper with the bottom of the palm placed on the folded part of the paper.
• Trace it with a pencil.

• Cut out the traced hand. Cut away the traced thumb and open it.

• Draw circles on white and black paper and cut them out. (spider's eyes)
• Draw a crecent on red paper and cut it out. (spider's mouth)

• Glue the eyes and mouth to the cut out sugar paper.
• Here's your friendly spider smiling at you.

That's not all, we plan to have special activities too. Cheng Sim and I are ready and let's hope our plan works out nicely. We hope to see happy and excited children.

Look out for updates on our playgroup in Chinnee's blog or my blog.

Craft for Playgroup - 12 January 2008

This would be tomorrow’s craft for our little ones in the playgroup, a simple craft that would make children happy.


This mini bag can be used as:

1. A “Story Bag” where parents cut out pictures of characters in a story and use them when telling stories.


2. A wallet containing paper money in a game of seller and buyer.


3. A wallet to bring to school. Karl made himself one and put real coins in it. He brings to school everyday.


4. A “Sticker Bag” where children keep their unused stickers.


5. A “Star Bag” where children keep their stars which they earn for behaving from their parents.


6. Others (Can you give me more suggestions?)

Materials:

1) A4 size color paper

2) Stickers

3) Color pen

Method:

1) Fold as shown:

2) Turn pape over and fold as shown below:

3) Insert and fold as shown below:

4) Insert and fold as shown:

5) Flatten and decorate it with stickers and color pen.