Remembrance Day

In readiness for Remembrance Day and the services that the children might be attending, we talked about what and why we have Remembrance day. We then used apples cut in half to print some poppy pictures and read this poem that I found last year and loved.

Poppy, Poppy What Do You Say?

~By T'Prang

Poppy, poppy what do you say?

Wear me on Remembrance Day.

Poppy, poppy what do you tell?

Many soldiers in battle fell.

Poppy, poppy what should we know?

That peace on earth should

Grow, grow, grow!

Last year we used red paper case stuck on to a circle of cardboard and black paint to create a poppy wreath.

Fireworks

Having enjoyed all the fireworks that we saw at Diwali, it is time for more fireworks now as it is now November 5th and bonfire night. The children love to watch fireworks and are very excited about seeing them again.

We used oil pastels on black card to create some vibrant firework pictures.

The littleones loved hand printing some bonfire pictures, they look mainly red but I did put out a mixture of reds, oranges, yellows and gold paint.

Diwali

We spent some of last week looking at the Diwali celebration, we were very lucky and a friend of my husband sent the children photos from their own celebrations with captions about each picture. It was a really lovely gesture and one we all learnt lots from. I haven't shared the photos here as they were just for own personal use. I found these two video clipsfor us to watch, this is about the Diwali Story and this is about a family celebrating Diwali

 

 

We looked at lots of different pictures of Rangoli designs on the internet as well as the ones in the books we read. The children then tried to draw some of their own, I had planned for this to outside on the patio but rain made this not possible, so we used sugar paper instead.

 I also printed of some designs from Activity Village for the children to colour as well if they wanted too.

They enjoyed painting some firework pictures after watching this clip of a firework display.

Autumn

I love autumn for all it's beautiful colours, the fun of woodland walks, as the children discover the delights of the changing season, bringing home leaves, acorns, conkers etc.

Our autumn sensory tub

These are just a few of our favourite autumn books, I love sharing  Gerda Muller's season board books with the children. They are beautifully illustrated and always stimulate lots of talk about what they can see and what they themselves have done.

We also had great fun marbling leaves using shaving  foam and paint, this is the second year we have done this craft and we loved the results.

We covered a tray in shaving foam, spreading it out smoothly.

We then chose some autumn coloured paint and dribbled it over the sahving foam.

We then dragged a stick gently through the foam until we got the desired effect.

Then gently press the cardboard leaf shapes down into the foam.

Then very gently we scraped the extra foam / paint of with a piece of paper.

We made some clay hedgehogs, well most of us made hedgehogs, one little person wanted to make a spider.

We also made some animal ginger bread biscuits and decorated them

We also used corks to print autumn leaves on our trees.

Even my older babies / young toddlers, ages approximately 9 months to 18 months, are able to join in and enjoy playing with the shaving foam, They are able to pick up the cork and with a little help to start with, able to do some printing.

Pop Art

Not the sort of pop art you maybe thinking of, my Mum gave me a while ago a load of party popper, which have sat in the back of the cupboard waiting for inspiration to hit. Well it hit during the summer holidays and thanks to a large sheet of sticky back plastic my lot had great fun creating some art. It was great activity for all ages but for the littleones it's fantastic because they can easily stick anything to it

 

and yes when you fire a party popper at sticky back plastic it does stay there! This stayed up on my patio door for a couple of weeks and the babies loved to keep coming back to it and moving bits around. This will definitely be an activity that I will use with the little ones again and again as they can have all the fun of sticking without having to worry about gluing the pieces first because at this young age they would need someone to remind them and help to put the glue down first, this way they can have all the fun of creating before they reach the stage of co-ordinating their gluing and sticking.