Tag: being crafty

How to make a Black-Figure Greek Vase: Classics for Kids

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We made this as part of our Discover Greece unit 🙂 Ancient Greek black-figure vases are both beautiful and they help to provide insight into the culture, mythology, iconography, and daily activities of the time. You can read details of the artistry process here or here.

This black-figure pottery activity for kids is a simplified version that can be done with just a few cheap materials!

Materials

  • Small terracotta pot (i.e. from a garden store)
  • Pencil and eraser
  • Black permanent marker (fine tip)
  • Red crayon
  • Black acrylic paint
  • Paintbrush
  • Rubber bands
  • Something to scratch with (like a dull nail or a metal crochet hook)

Directions

  1. If your terracotta pot doesn’t have a natural lip, use rubber bands to create top and bottom strips. Colour these strips in with a red crayon.
  2. Lightly water a small amount of black acrylic paint into a smooth paste. Paint this over the crayon (the rubber bands should help to keep the paint neatly in line). Allow to dry.
  3. Look at photos of Greek vases online and think about what story you want to tell. Will you draw figures? animals? daily life? a mythic adventure? Begin by drawing with pencil in the untouched inner band of pottery. Make adjustments as you go. When you are happy with your work, trace the outlines with black permanent marker and then colour them in as solid shapes.
  4. Choose a Greek geometric pattern to scratch into the painted top band of your project. Use a metal tool (like a dull nail) to carefully scratch away the paint – revealing the red crayon beneath.
  5. Display your art work!

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Christmas gifts: How to make pressed flower bookmarks

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Pressed flowers are a wonderful way of making gifts from the heart. They are also a wonderfully creative way for children to make personalised Christmas, birthday, or thank you gifts for friends, families, and teachers.

Materials

  • Flower Press
  • Fresh flowers to press
  • Coloured card
  • Glue stick
  • Laminator and laminating pouch
  • Hole punch, ribbons, beads

Tip: For extra fun, think about making your own beautiful marbled paper for the bookmarks!

Directions

  1. Gather a variety of flowers on a sunny dry morning. Check flowers for dewdrops (moisture will impact the drying process). Avoid flowers that are very bulky i.e. cut the tips from lavender or choose rose petals rather than a whole rose. Remember that wild flowers, like oxalis, can be as beautiful dried as garden grown.
  2. Follow the instructions with your flower press to layer flowers between the drying sheets and screw the press tightly shut. I like to store mine in the hot water cupboard to help the drying process (which can up to two weeks).
  3. Gently take the layers of the flower press apart and carefully remove the dried flowers. I like to lay them on a flat wooden tray. We use gentle hands but you may want to use tweezers.
  4. Cut coloured carboard or cardstock to your desired size; we like to have a variety of colours to choose from.
  5. Enjoy the creative process of arranging the flowers!
  6. Once you have decided on your arrangement, you will need to fix the flowers in place. If you are going to use a laminator (as we did) then all you need is a glue stick – a gentle glue is all that’s needed as it’s simply to keep the flowers in place while the laminator pouch feeds through the laminator. Alternatively, use a strong fast-drying craft glue that will dry clear.
  7. We arranged several bookmarks in each laminating pouch and then fed each A4 pouch through the laminator. This helps to protect the delicate dried flowers (and preserve them from future moisture).
  8. We then cut the completed laminated sheets to size. We liked some of the bookmarks plain; with others, we cut holes with the holepunch, threaded through ribbons, and tied beads to the end.

How to make beautiful marbled paper with kids

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Making beautiful marbled paper is a fun and easy craft to do as a family!

One of the things I love about homeschooling is the way you can be multi-modal and explore areas like science or maths through art. Kids love to learn by being creative and hands on!

This is a fun and easy messy play activity that is cheap to do and makes beautiful decorative paper that you can use for upcycling crafts, making cards or christmas crackers, or to theme in with other activities. This green and yellow design was done to explore Spring and daffodils.

Materials

  • Plain paper (A4 printer paper works great)
  • Shaving foam (cheap is great!)
  • Food colouring / dye (2-3 colours)
  • Large plastic or tinfoil tray
  • Mixing stick (i.e. an iceblock stick or plastic knife)
  • Scraper (i.e. shower squeegee, plastic knife, iceblock stick, hands)

Directions

  1. Spray shaving foam (about an inch deep) to cover a tray at least A4 in size.
  2. Generously drip food colouring onto the foam.
    • Discuss first what colours you will use; it’s a good idea to start with 2-3 colours and build up from there (to avoid eager mixing creating a muddly brown!)
    • Ask younger children to predict what might happen when certain colours are mixed together; i.e. red and yellow (orange); blue and red (purple).
  3. Press the paper firmly onto the foam making sure that all parts of the paper make contact.
  4. Scrape as much foam off the paper as you can.
  5. Leave the paper to dry.

Voila! You have beautiful marbled paper!

Tips

This is an all year round activity, however, you will want to adjust your clean up methods to the season! In summer, consider doing this outside in the warm sun on the grass – hose down your kids afterwards and peg paper to dry on the washing line. In winter, consider doing this in the garage or kitchen on top of a tarpaulin – have paper towels (or a hot shower) ready for clean up and lie paper on a clothes drying rack.

Sensory kids may have different parts of this activity that they like to participate in or watch. It’s a great idea to have some washable toys on hand that can use to play in the shaving foam once you’ve finished with the paper – this may be your kids favourite part! If it’s summer, consider letting them use the left over shaving foam to create a slip’n’slide on the trampoline or a messy ‘snowball’ fight.

Rainy day play: Making a spider

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Easy to make spider

Make a simple spider!

Kids love playing with craft materials. Why not spend a rainy afternoon making spiders, insects, or monsters; you could tie it in with a trip to the library to find some books for inspiration!

Materials

  • Pipe cleaners
  • Milk bottle lid
  • Googly eyes
  • Sellotape
  • Craft glue / glue gun
  • Scissors

 

Directions

  1. Cut your pipe cleaners to length and sellotape (or glue gun) them to the base of the milk bottle lid. Bend them to give them knees / feet so that it can stand.
  2. Glue on some googly eyes.
  3. Take the spider exploring!

 

Why not share with them 20 Fun Facts about Spiders for preschoolers or watch a short educational video clip about spiders aimed at preschoolers and kids.

Making a magical felt crown

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Easy sewing projects - making a felt crown or tiara!

Beautiful glittery felt crown

Making a beautiful glittery felt crown or tiara is an easy sewing project. You can do it all in an afternoon either hand sewing or using a sewing machine and glue gun. Toddlers will have fun choosing all the colours and decorations! Older kids can be supervised to make this themselves 🙂

Materials

  • Felt
  • Buttons
  • Chalk / dressmaker’s pencil
  • Ruler
  • Scissors
  • Thread
  • Optional: glitter
  • Sewing needle / sewing machine / glue gun

Directions

  1. Using your ruler and chalk, draw a pattern on the felt. You need the crown / tiara + two rectangles for straps. The straps bed to be long enough to tie at the back of your child’s head.

    Measure, draw, and cut your fabric

    Pieces of felt cut out for the crown

  2. Let your child choose decorations for their crown. You can choose whether to handsew buttons on (stronger) or hot glue gun them. Sprinkle on done rainbow glitter for extra magic! (The glitter will stick to the felt, at least for a while).
  3. Sew the straps on each side. You can either use a needle or a sewing machine.
  4. Ta da!

    Finished felt crown

    Beautiful crown ready to wear!

 

Making a drawstring bag

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Making a drawstring bag

Making a drawstring bag for marbles

Making a drawstring bag is a fun and easy project to do with kids! I still remember the soft nubby green cloth of the drawstring bag of marbles my brother and I shared as kids. I wanted to make something similar for Miss 3 and gaining access to a sewing machine at kindy seemed like a great opportunity.

There is an easy project to follow in this book by Jane Bull, My Sewing Machine. I didn’t think to look so I actually designed my own project for this bag. My daughter’s sensory sensitivities mean she doesn’t like being in the same room as the sewing machine when it’s operating but she likes looking at the sewing book and she liked helping me with the pattern, cutting, and pinning.

Making a drawstring bag (for marbles)

Materials

  • Paper, sellotape, pencil
  • Fabric
  • Cord or ribbon
  • Ruler
  • Pins
  • Chalk / fabric pencil
  • Scissors (paper, fabric, pinking)
  • Safety pin

Tip: Shop around to find good prices for fabric. Sometimes you’ll find fabric in unexpected places – I bought a giant polyester fleece blanket for NZD$3 / USD$2. It was perfect for making a drawstring bag for marbles (though I wouldn’t use it to make a dress).

Design

I made up a design template using paper, scissors sellotape, and pencil. I could see there were two different ways of approaching the bag and decided to have the fold at the bottom and seams up the sides; this results in the cord being on on two sides (instead of one) which I thought would be easier for Little Miss.

Making a paper template

Making a paper template for the drawstring bag

Once I’d worked out the design, and order of sewing seams, I transferred the template into the fabric. My fabric pencil didn’t work on the fleece but chalk did 🙂

Fabric cut and pinned for the drawstring bag

Fabric cut and pinned

I kept my seams about 1.5cm from the edges, allowed plenty of space for the cord, and made sure the fabric was ‘wrong side’ facing out (not as important with this fleece but good practice).

Sewing the bag

I made sure the threads were all set up and then my sewing order was:

  1. Sew short end (for cord).
  2. Sew other short end (for cord).
  3. Loop silky cord through safety pin. Miss 3 loved helping wriggle the silver fish (safety pin) through the ‘tunnel’. We did that on both sides and then I tied the loose ends.
  4. Sew each of the long sides. I started with a curve at the bottom and then went up to the drawstring (enough to just go over that seam but not go over the cord). Then I turned the fabric around and did a small zig-zag back to reinforce.
  5. The nice thing with this fabric is that I didn’t need to hem or worry about fraying like I werewolf with cotton. I did use the pinking shears to cut the bottom corners off (being careful of the curved corners I’d stitched).

    Drawstring bag sewn (wrong side facing out)

    Inside the bag

  6. Turn bag right side out!

    How to make a drawstring bag!

    Drawstring bag for marbles

Bag of marbles

Next week we can go on a treasure hunt expedition to buy marbles for the bag we made!

Learning to sew

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A step by step beginner's guide to sewing

A step by step beginner’s guide to sewing

I recently gained access to a sewing machine. My previous experiences were the 10 lessons we did as a class, decades ago, when I was in Intermediate School. My Nana was a dressmaker and money is tight so I’d love to learn a new skill.

I decided my best approach, since I don’t have a mentor, was to look through the local library. I found a brilliant book by Jane Bull, My Sewing Machine. It’s a step-by-step guide for beginners, ostensibly for 8-12 year olds since it was in the children’s section, with lots of photos and easy projects. It explains the different parts of the sewing machine and how to thread it.

Setting up the sewing machine probably seems really simple if you’re familiar with one but it’s not intuitive for me. There are a lot of steps, compared to hand sewing, and forgetting one of them leads to catastrophe! (Not really, but it can cause a lot of frustration as the needle just tattoos holes in the fabric or the threads turn into a tangled cat’s ball).

The sewing machine is located at our lovely new kindy. I had a pair of fascinated 4 year olds avidly watching my every step (no pressure!). It’s actually a nice learning experience for the kids being able to talk to them about how I don’t know how to use it and that we can work it out together. It’s not just about teaching them how to sew, it’s teaching them the process of learning. I’m talking with them about going to the library, following the instructions in the book, and asking for help when I can’t work out something myself.

Thankfully, one of the student teachers is a sewer; I’ve been able to run to her for help a few times when everything’s turned to custard!