Fun with colors: Rainbow handprints

Most of the times it's real fun being with kids and teaching them, watching them grow! Sharing a colorful activity we did with the 5-year old kids. We talked a lot about colors, rainbows, the colors of the rainbow. We mixed to make indigo and orange colors. And then all of the kids took turns to choose a color of the rainbow and paint their own hand with the color. Then they all made hand prints on a big sheet of paper which we later hanged in our classroom.

 

 

Our team-work rainbow hand print poster. 

 Materials required: 

Shallow dishes to add and/or mix color: 7 (one for each color of the rainbow)

Paint brushes: 7 (one for each color so there is no hassle of washing the brushes all the time)

Water in a cup (to add to the colors if the density is thick)

A big sheet of paper

1. Begin by adding the 3 primary colors in 3 different dishes: red, yellow and blue. Here we talked about primary colors which we cannot make with any other colors but we have to buy these 3 colors and after that we can make all the colors with these 3 colors. 
2. We then talked about secondary colors: orange (red+yellow), purple (red+blue) and green (yellow+blue). We simultaneously made those 3 colors as well. 
3. We also talked about how can we make black color: and we reached the conclusion that we must mix all the dark colors available so we will get black color. So we tried mixing the dark colors: red, blue, orange, purple and green. We ended up with a brownish color. Then we tried adding more and more purple and finally we achieved a shade almost close to black. So we reached the conclusion that we should not have mixed orange instead only red. 
4. We even made indigo color: blue + purple. Now we have all the colors of the rainbow. 
5. After we had our colors ready, we laid down the big sheet of paper and talked about the team-work poster with everyone's hand prints. 
6. Then started the real fun: each child took turns to choose a color, painted his/her one hand entirely and made a hand print on the big sheet. Some of them loved to directly dip their hand in paint and make the print impression. 
   
7. We continued this activity until everyone got the chance to paint their hand and make a print on our poster. 
   
   
   
   
8. Few of our children wanted to make their individual hand prints on their own papers. So we agreed on that and they chose a different style: painted the hand with a different color, and all the fingers with different colors. Those hand prints came out looking like real rainbow hand prints. 
   
   
   
   

This was a fun and colorful activity. We had a lot of talks about colors: primary colors, secondary colors and how to make different colors like black, brown, indigo etc. How many are the colors of rainbow, which colors and the order of colors. It was a great learning session of teamwork, mathematics, knowledge of colors and natural phenomenon and development of fine motor skills.

The very next day we spotted this big rainbow outside our school and we were so excited !!!! 

Christmas crafts for kids

Merry Christmas everyone!
It's really amazing working with pre-school kids and last week we had been making some pretty easy Christmas crafts with kids. At the end of the week, the kids took all the crafts home and the parents were overwhelmed and happy to see the lovely crafts created by their kids. I'm sharing some of the crafts and how to make them at home with your little ones!

Christmas Cards

Materials required:

Green paper

Brown paper 

Orange paper for base (or any other color of choice)

Pencil/pen to draw

Scissors

Glue 

Small sequins for decoration

Glitter (optional)

1. Draw a triangle on the green paper and cut it out. 
2. Stick it on the base sheet (orange or any other) with the help of glue. 
3. Now cut out the brown paper for the tree trunk as shown in the picture and stick it under the tree. 
4. Now decorate by gluing the tree with different sequins of choice and glitter. 
5. The child may write his/her name and Merry Christmas/God Jul depending upon age. 
6. A lovely basic Christmas card is ready. You could make many with different colored base for all the relatives/friends. 

Gingerbread Man

Materials required:

Brown paper

Pencil/pen to draw

Black marker

Lots of sequins and glitter

Scissors

Glue

1. Draw the easy shape of a gingerbread man as shown in the picture and cut it out finely. It's better if you cut it out from a thick paper as it will be used as stencil.   
2. Your kids could now trace the outline using your gingerbread man cut-out stencil on a brown paper. 
3. Cut out the shape of the gingerbread man. 
4. Draw the eyes and the nose and mouth. 
5. If feeling creative, you could even stick a bow at the neck area of the figure and it can be the gingerbread man. Similarly add a bow on the left side of the head of the figure and it can be a gingerbread woman. 
6. Now glue the whole gingerbread man/woman and stick the sequins of choice. You could help your child to sprinkle glitter all over. 
7. The gingerbread figure is ready. You could punch a hole in the top and hang it on the Christmas tree. Alternatively, you could also let the child stick it on another sheet of paper to make a simple Merry Christmas card. 

Pine cone trees

We had collected a lot of pine cones during our outings in the summer months. So we made good use of those to create little glittery pine cone Christmas trees. 

Materials required:

Pine cones

Glue

Colorful glitter

1. Glue the whole pine cone with glue. 
2. Sprinkle different colorful glitters over the pine cone. Roll it in glitter as well if it doesn't become very glittery. 
3. Let dry completely and then can be hung on Christmas tree. 
4. You could also try painting the whole pine cone with green paint mixed with glue and then directly sprinkling glitter to give a little tree effect. 
5. If you don't have a Christmas tree or don't want to hang, you can just use a flattened ball of play dough as a base for the glittery pine cone. 

Little Santas 

Materials required: 

Empty toilet paper roll

Red paper balls

Red fabric

Green/gray fabric

Glue gun

Black marker 

Scissors

Cotton

1. Cut the red fabric according to the size of the toilet paper roll and wrap it around. Glue with glue gun. 
2. Cut little strip of green/gray fabric and tie it around the middle as shown in the picture. 
3. Make the Santa hat as you like and glue it to the red paper ball with the glue gun. 
4. Now let the child draw eyes, nose and mouth on the red ball with the black marker. 
5. Attach the red ball to the toilet paper roll with the help of the glue gun. 
6. Tear little bits of cotton and stick them as beard as shown in the picture. We had used ready to use beard from craft shop but cotton will work as good. 
7. You can decorate the Santa by tying the hat with a strip of different color fabric or sticking cotton to the end of the hat etc. 
8. Cute Santa is ready to be placed on the window/center table as Christmas decoration. 
9. This particular craft was the original idea of a colleague and not mine. I have only shared the craft and process here. 

Beading Santa

Beading is an excellent way to work on the fine motor skills of young kids. For Christmas, Santa could be made with beads on a square or rectangle beading plate. For making this pattern, it's very important to count and place the particular number of beads in a particular order. It really helps the kids concentrate and work on their mathematics as well. After the beading has been done, the beads could be ironed out by placing a butter paper between the beads and the iron. 

Last year on Christmas, I had shared to make Santa Claus with paper. You can follow this link if you want to see the Santa craft. 

Christmas wishes: making Santa with kids

If you like my work, please leave a comment/question etc. in the comments section below. 

Rainbow walking for kids

We have chosen the topic "Rainbow" for our project this term in our pre-school class and that itself makes me happy: as it means a lot of colors and more colors and colorful activities all term round!
In the last days of summer, on a warm and sunny day, we decided to do this outdoor activity of rainbow walking with our kids.

Talking about the colors of rainbow was really nice, specially the kids were really interested in *Indigo* color as they had never before used it in any painting. We talked about what colors do rainbow has, and I got varied replies from brown, black to white, pink etc. and of course the colors actually in a rainbow like purple, green, red blue. It's even a great activity to talk about colors, and talk about number of colors with the pre-schoolers as they think it's fun to talk about so many colors; and it makes it more interesting as everyone had different answers.

This is how I carried out this super-fun rainbow walking activity:

1. I put out liquid paint of all the seven colors of the rainbow in dishes big enough for them to put their feet in. I first made indigo color by mixing blue and violet, and made orange color by mixing red and yellow. The children were pretty excited to make new colors as well. 
2. After that I poured out violet, blue, green, yellow and red in all different dishes. 
3. I took four large sheets of paper and taped them together and fixed the sheet on the outdoor floor with the help of clear tape so that it holds in place while children walk over and no accidents happen.  
4. Then I prepared how the children can wash their feet: I just took a bucket half filled with water and a towel so that they could wash their feet and dry themselves before putting on their shoes back. 
5. Then they dipped their feet in their favorite color and walked over the big sheet from one side to another. 
6. It was so wonderful to see the whole paper getting filled with rainbow colored footprints. Also overlapping colors made it even more attractive. 
7. The children loved doing this activity. This is a really good activity to learn about math and colors, develop the body coordination, and developing gross motor skills and balancing. 

Crumpled paper art for kids

Well, teaching kids comes with a lot of benefits, as it's a process of learning and experimenting for oneself with so many fun activities while teaching. I did this "crumpled paper art" recently and I must say it was really interesting and fun for children, and I really love the bright, colorful end-products! This is a very easy activity to do with 3-5 year old children with a bit of supervision. This is exactly how to create these simple and fun crumpled paper art.

Materials required:

Paper (any desired size, but I used 1/2 of an A4 size paper)
Liquid paint colors (2 or 3 colors)
Small brush to paint

1. Let the child crumple the paper he has nicely with his hands. 
2. Then let him/her choose one single color he wants to use and let him color the outside of the crumpled paper with that color using the brush.  
3. Now let him open that paper. There will be paint on few areas on the paper and the rest will be white. So let the child crumple the paper again nicely with his hands.
4. Now let him chose another color and paint the remaining white areas with the another color. The colors can even overlap as they will form even colorful pattern. 
5. After it's done, let the child open up the paper carefully. The colors will be spreading and mixing on the paper creating a pattern. 
6. Crumple the whole colored paper one more time nicely and open up the paper very carefully as it would be wet with the color and we don't want our art to tear. 
7. You can use a third color as well and repeat the same steps but we used only two colors as by the end of using two colors and crumpling the paper, it was too wet to use another color. 
8. Let it dry completely. Your crumpled paper art is ready! Make many with your child using different colors each time. Decorate in your child's room.
   

Notes: 

• It's a messy artwork but completely fun. 
• This activity, whole crumpling the papers and painting and opening up is good for improving the fine motor skills.
• It will be good to use colors that combine to form another color like blue+ yellow makes green so that the art would be more colorful where the colors overlap. 
• Use an apron before you start this paint activity as it's a messy activity and children can easily get color on their clothes. 
• Small children might need help with opening up the paper, but it's good and fun for all pre-schoolers. 

 

Christmas wishes: Making Santa with kids

Christmas is just around the corner and everywhere it's cold and beautiful. There are beautiful Christmas lights on the roads and Christmas starts in every window and the lovely red and white Christmas decorations in the whole market, and even in grocery shops. Basically it's Christmas and festivities in the air.. So how would the kids left behind? Apart from eating gingerbread cookies and amazing Christmas cakes, here's a lovely and easy Christmas Santa kids can make which can be hanged on your Christmas tree. Sounds lovely, isn't it? This is so easy I did it with 4-5 year old kids and it was lovely and beautiful for kids to have their own Santa!

Things you require:

White paper
Pencil to draw
Red color paper
Scissors
Fevistick or liquid sticking gum
Cotton

1. Begin by the kid tracing out his/her hand on the bottom of the paper with the pencil on the white paper. 
   
2. Rotate the paper and draw a line from the thumb across the hand as shown in the picture. 
   
3. Draw the eyes and the mouth. 
   
4. Cut little bits of the red paper and begin sticking them over the top portion as shown in the picture. This will become Santa's hat. Kids can stick small or big bits as they want. 
   
5. Now, as shown in the picture, begin applying the sticking gum over the fingers and take out small cotton balls to stick on the fingers to make Santa's white beard. Apply a little gum over the thumb tip as well and stick a little cotton (at the tip of Santa's hat). 
   
6. The kids can cut small squares (or any other shapes) and stick on the bottom of the Santa as presents from Santa. 
7. Done! Kids can add their own creativity and add sparkles, stars or decorations over the presents or on the sides. 
8. Punch holes on the top and hang on your Christmas tree with the help of a thread. 

Here are the awesome gingerbread cookies we made with the kids.

Gingerbread cookies recipe: 

Ingredients: All purpose flour, unsalted butter, ground spices: ginger, cinnamon, green cardamom and cloves, molasses, dark brown sugar, baking powder, salt and warm water. Mix everything and make a firm dough. Cling wrap and refrigerate for an hour. Take out and make small balls in palms and roll with a rolling pin about 2-3 mm thick. Cut in desired shapes using cookie cutters. Line a baking paper in a baking tray and bake the cookies for 6 minutes at 200 C. The cookies will become slightly dark brown. Remove and store in air tight containers. Enjoy!

Wishing everyone a great Christmas and a very Happy New Year 2016.

How to make a paper butterfly

The butterfly is a flying flower,
the flower is a tethered butterfly..
- Ponce Denis

I have always been fascinated by butterflies all my life and even as a kid I used to run after butterflies as they attracted me but I never tried to catch them. I have had butterflies sitting over the back of my hand, my shoulders and on my feet many times. I grew up, but the love for butterflies remain !!
I do try wearing some butterfly accessories sometimes in my hair and I'm always looking for more lovelies, with more colors and patterns. These are the two I wear often and love them: a blue butterfly hair clip and a butterfly wreath.

Well, working with kids one needs to grow own fantasy as well. Because of my never-ending love for butterflies, I choose to make butterflies out of paper for pre-school kids. This activity is really easy and fun to do at home, you don't need a lot of materials and it's quick and I'm sure the kids will love it. This can be done with kids of 4-5 years with adult supervision.

Here's sharing how to prepare one:

What you need:

Colored paper
Scissors
Thick thread

How to make:

1. Fold the paper in a triangle as shown. 
   
2. Fold the remaining rectangle as shown in the picture. 
   
3. Cut out the rectangle part from the paper and discard it. 
    
   
4. Now you are remaining with a square with a fold in between. 
   
5. Carefully cut the paper along the fold. 
   
6. You will get two triangles as shown in the picture. 
   
7. Begin folding one of the triangles in a zig-zag pattern as shown. Make sure to use small folds. 
   
   
   
8. Begin to fold the other triangle too in the same way. You can use paper of another color for second triangle to make two-colored butterfly. 
   
9. Place both the folded papers with the shorter side together as shown in the picture. 
   
10. Press together and bind in the center with the thread and make a small knot as shown in the picture. 
    
11. Begin to open and flatten the folded portion from one side as shown in the picture to spread as wings. 
    
12. Repeat for all four sides. Lovely two-colored butterfly is ready. 
    
13. Butterfly can be made in a single color as well. 
    
14. Or in different sizes.