P is for Penguin, Polar Bear, Paint and Potato

I decided to try and do the messy paint activities that I found here.  So I got out the white paint and not having black I  mixed blue and red together to create a dark purple for our penguins.

I cut the potatoes in half – if I do this again I will try and cut a bit more carefully so the potato surface is nice and flat to pick up the paint.  We dipped the potato half in the purple paint and stamped this on card to create our penguins. I put Emily in her preschool shirt because it doesn’t matter if that one gets covered in paint since it already is.

After cutting another potato in half we dipped that in white paint to create the white fronts of the penguins.

We used our little pinky fingers in the white paint to create the eyes.

We set those aside to dry to finish later and started on our polar bear prints.

Hands in the white paint and then pressed onto the black card.

We then set those aside, washed our hands and cleared up and went about another activity.

Once they were dry I cut out the penguins and the kids added orange beaks and glued them in their book talking about how some are swimming which is why they are sideways.  We didn’t cut out the polar bears but with brown or pink  pencil they added smiley faces because the bears were happy.

So here are the finished pieces.

Not feeling like the best mother at the moment while writing this.  Due to two weeks of holidays the pair have not really had a break from each other and are arguing and bickering with each other so we have told them they can’t play together for an hour, of course this means they want to so they have either been bothering me or bothering each other.  *sigh* motherhood is made up of moments like these above and now.  of course now when it is time for their hour to be up they are playing quietly by themselves and I don’t want to disturb them.

 

P is for Polar Bear

Yesterday we got a postcard from my dad and his wife from Norway with a picture of 3 polar bears on the front and a polar bear stamp so I thought that would be a good thing to explore today.

I did my search of the net and then did my usual adaptation of what I have in my house.

I found a stencil of the polar bear and cut it out and had the kids glue it to the black background.  On the postcard their grandfather had written that the sun doesn’t go down during the summer and I talked about how during the winter it is always black and since it is winter here that is why I chose the black background and also because I thought the white snow and fur of the polar bear would show up better.

My first inspiration was here but I didn’t have any shaving cream to make puffy paint so I did a search of the house and couldn’t even find cotton wool balls but I did find make up removal wipes which were probably better as not as fluffy so the kids had fun cutting these up and sticking them to the polar bear.

Before we begun I asked the children what they thought polar bears were covered in “skin” was their answer, which of course was right and then I asked them are they covered in hair or what?  They weren’t sure so then I asked what is Molly (our cat) covered in.  Frst answer was “tail” as I asked the question wrong first, saying what does Molly have.  The second answer was fur.  So time to cut up the fur.

After the kids covered the polar bear it was time for the “snow”!  I didn’t make the gritty snow that the crafty classroom used, instead I used sea salt.  Emily loved playing with the salt (WARNING: VERY MESSY but easy to sweep up to clean) and covered her sheet with the snow.  I found the idea for the salt because I was looking at making salt glitter.  Of course because it was snow I couldn’t add any colour to it but this is fun making homemade glitter.

Emily’s finished product

Alexander is a bit more sparing with his covering of the polar bear and the snow.

I found a polar bear colouring in/pre writing worksheet and what animals live in the arctic worksheet here and the animals in the arctic was a good discussion about how cold it is in the arctic and a lot of the water is frozen – which wouldn’t be good for frogs.  We also were able to discuss and discover what polar bears eat.  Alexander has a tag map of the world so we looked at that and there was a picture of a walrus up in the arctic ocean so we knew that walruses did live up there.  The children coloured them in.

I cut out two p’s out of black card (for the polar bear is black under his white fur) and we practised rainbow writing p’s.

For cutting practise Alexander cut out the animals in the arctic and glued them around the p.  Emily wanted to cut out the large polar bear she had coloured in.

and of course she wanted to add snow…

Alexander’s cutting practise was cutting out the animals – notice the whale got his head cut off but he got tired by now (sick again!) and so mummy finished the cutting off, just like I finished cutting the rest of Emily’s polar bear out.  Alexander wanted to shade his polar bear and of course Emily did as well.

I found some other craft ideas of penguins or polar bears here – something to ponder for another day.

I liked this handprint idea but I wasn’t up to paint mess today.  (well except for trying to make our own waterpaints which you can see in the background photos of Emily but more on that later)

Clouds

We love looking at the escarpment around here

In every weather it is beautiful. With the recent rain it had been covered in clouds. Since it is now winter Alexander has been waiting for snow but I had to tell him it rarely snows here and it is on bigger mountains it snows.
Today we looked at the different greens on the mountains which inspired today’s craft.
I found a mountain outline which I copied a few times and printed out. We coloured in the sky and mountains and my first idea was to use the sponge to stamp clouds but we had coloured the sky too dark for it to show up so we ended up glueing the cut up sponge on.

The clouds are a little square but Emily’s favourite game at the moment is finding different shapes in the clouds.