Ice Cream Shop

Back in the warmer days of summer we turned our little play house into an ice cream shop and had some imaginative fun.

Twist some paper into cone shapes and tape together, then scrunch up some colourful tissue paper for the ice cream, add some coins and a menu and the shop's open!

Not only is this activity great for role play, it's also perfect for early counting skills.

Dinosaur Play in the Garden

The sun has come out at last and I should think so too in June!

So we've been out in the garden today and made this little dinosaur world. 

We had some trees cut recently and I asked for the offcuts for playing with - they have so many uses!

Here they've been used as platforms for the dinosaurs to climb on and jump from.  

I added a piece of shimmery blue fabric I have as a river/lake and some green mesh for grass.

Set against a leafy background it makes for lots of dino fun...

...Roar!!!

The Very Hungry Caterpillar Felt Story

Well, this has been a very long time in the making - about a whole year - which is crazy as it wasn't difficult or particularly time consuming to do.

However, throw in a pregnancy that left me absolutely exhausted, then a delicious new baby girl to go with my now three year old and it might help to explain.
  
She is now 7 months old and while I may be getting a little more sleep I still don't seem to manage any more free time to do much so it's a wonder I got this finished at all!

The all time classic story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle is one of my favourites - who doesn't love it?  It's such a short and simple, but genius story with so many learning concepts thrown in.  

The illustrations are also a delight and if you're looking for some art lesson inspiration in the Eric Carle style I can recommend Deep Space Sparkle for some fabulous and colourful ideas.

Yes, as a teacher (and mummy) the story of the Very Hungry Caterpillar is certainly irresistible! 

So, to the felt story pieces.  

I started this project with the caterpillar which has the most detail and took the longest time to make out of everything.  

I often cut things freehand from felt but for this I knew I had to draw a paper pattern first as there was so much 'movement' in him.  

The sections had to fit together in a way that made him look like he was actually wiggling along.  I managed this by drawing and cutting sections at lots of different angles and cut them in varying tones of green.  

If you do similar, I would recommend numbering the pieces before cutting them out as it made it much easier to piece them all back together again in the correct order and ensured a variety of tones when cutting the felt. 

He took a while to come together but sewing all the pieces onto one large piece of felt (and then cutting out when complete) definitely made the job much easier and also strengthened the back a bit.

The legs were added once the caterpillar had been cut from the backing felt. 

I took all the cut out bits on holiday last year and it was the perfect thing to do in the evenings (for as long as I could stay awake - remember I was pregnant!).  If I got a bit fed up of sewing green bits of caterpillar, I moved on to cutting out fruit.  



The fruit was easy and was done quite quickly.  I made paper patterns for all these bits too so they were roughly the same size, but I added leaves or stalks on some to make them look more individual. 

The food took a little longer and some of it I kept putting off.  I couldn't seem to get motivated to make the sausage but the lollipop and cheese was fun to do.  

Funny the little mind games you play with yourself!

The butterfly could be doing with a little more detail to bring him up to the same standard as the caterpillar so maybe I will go back and add some.  Have you spotted that he's upside down? It was too late by the time I realised so he's very individual!

a handy bag to store everything

To keep all the pieces together - there are 15 pieces of fruit, 10 pieces of food, the caterpillar and the butterfly so that's a lot to lose - I made a very simple little bag that does the job perfectly.  

all the pieces on a felt board

We've just used an existing felt board (a piece of board that I covered in felt) to play with the pieces and retell the story. 

colour matching

Apart from retelling the story, you can try some maths concepts such as counting the fruit, matching groups of fruit to numerals, sorting for colour, discuss before/after/next, first/second/third (ordinals) and talk about the days of the week.  

counting

There is also the opportunity to talk about healthy/favourite foods and even try simple recipes.  

You can see why us teachers enjoy using this story as a focus!


I've got some other classroom resources that I made and I'm happy to share once I can get my hands on them - they are in my classroom at the moment but I'm still on maternity leave.  They include counting cards and days of the week order cards.

Cheep Cheep! Little Spring Chicks Shoe Box Farm

Shoe boxes are fabulous for turning into all sorts of things.  You might remember a while back I made this doll's house from a couple of shoe boxes?

Well this time we made a little farmyard scene with spring chicks and a little pond for them to swim in.  

Fabulous for imaginative play!

There's not a lot to it but we've had lots of fun.  You can easily make it in minutes by simply painting a mixture of PVA glue and water over the box, and layer on tissue paper.  

When it's dry just complete the scene with some chicks, fences and flowers.  

Simple, easy fun. 

Cereal Box House (on fire!)

Recycle cereal boxes into buildings for play in these easy steps!



This particular building was to accompany our fire engine play which is why it has flames.

If you want to try, here's what we did......



Turn the cereal box inside out.  Tape up the sides

Draw on some windows and doors with a black pen.

Glue on some colourful flames cut from card or tissue paper .

Add on a roof - made from some card folded into a triangular shape

You could also add a little hose prop made from a pipe cleaner and some more tissue paper.

Loads of fun!

Spider Playground

It's that time of year when you are cosied up in the evening with a cuppa watching something interesting and suddenly out of the corner of your eye you see a HUGE spider scuttling across the floor.

They all manage to somehow sneak inside at this time of year and even when you put them out, they find their way back in pretty quickly.



We've been spotting spider's webs all over the place recently - in the garden and playpark that is...hopefully not toooooo many inside!  

And did you know if you touch the web really gently with a little leaf the spider will come rushing out to see what he has caught?  
A bit mean to trick the spider but very interesting for little ones!

Anyway, we made our own little spider playground recently with fallen leaves, pebbles, sticks and plant pots and we've hidden our pretend spiders in amongst it all, I wonder if the real spiders will come to play too?