Trophy for the Worlds Best Dad

My preschoolers decorated these homemade trophies for Father's Day.  They just loved sitting there and sticking on all the bits, some worked on theirs for ages.  The room was actually silent for a while with all that concentration going on.

What you need:

• plastic wine glass
• plastic bottom (I used donated plastic containers from cat food)
• gold spray paint
• glue gun
• jewels, pom poms, ribbon, washi tape, stickers to add on

How to:

• Glue wine class to bottom and spray gold (prior to class)
• I gave each child the trophy and a bowl of goodies to add on and then just left them to it.

The Results:

Pretty!

Cheers
Fiona

Olympics Lesson - Part 2: Foil Athletes

Part two of our Olympic Lesson concentrated on what the Olympics is all about - the athletes.  I had children in Prep - Grade 5 doing this lesson.

I did a very similar lesson to this 2 years ago when the Winter Olympics were on and the children so LOVED it....So I thought it would be easy to replicate for the Summer Olympics.

I just love how this lesson really brings out the children's creativity.  I put out lots of loose parts for them to choose from to create the accessories and then left them too it!

What you need:

• Tin foil
• Glue gun, normal glue and sticky tape
• Loose Parts
• Cardboard
• Coloured paper or paint

How to:

• Demonstrate how to make a foil figure (click here for my previous post on how to do this)
• Ask the children to decide which athelete it is and put it in a pose
• Use the loose parts to add things like weights (weighlifter), beam (gymnast), sword (fencing), basketball & hoop (basketball), oars (canoing) etc etc.
• They could also use the cardboard to add a floor (eg gym mat, running track, basketball court etc) 
• I asked them to try and stick together using glue and sticky tape yet I was also ready with a hot glue gun to stick down any bits that wouldn't stay with those methods.

The Results:

Here are a few I captured - these children are so creative!

Cheers
Fiona

Olympic Games Lesson - Part 1: Rio Carnival Masks

I just love the Olympic Games - they are so exciting to watch and its so wonderful seeing so many countries competing together.

When the Olympics are on I like to do two lessons, one based on the country they are held in and one on the athletes.

The first lesson was about Rio, Brazil where the Olympics were held this time around.  I got all of my classes (including the preschoolers) to decorate Carnival Masks.  I must admit I have a little bit of an obsession with masks at the moment after a recent trip to Venice....

What you need:

• Masks (I got mine from Kmart)
• Paint
• Glitter
• Ribbon
• Sequins, Pom, Poms, small beads, feathers etc
• Paint

How to:

• I got all the children to paint the mask first with tempera paint pucks (I find these dry fast and soak into the mask)
• I made up some coloured glues to correspond with my coloured glitters and they added the glue where they wanted the glitter.
• They then came up to the glitter station (me with a big tin tray and glitter) and I added the glitter corresponding to their glue colours)
• They then added anything else with glue
• Final step was to tie a ribbon on each side so they could put on their mask

The Results:

What a carnival of colour!  This is just a few - all my students did these so there was 92 of them!

Cheers
Fiona

Clay Mushrooms

We produced these at the same time as our ceramic cats and dogs.  Mushrooms are really easy to make and were a good fill in for the rest of the lesson.  I was inspired as I had recently seen some mushrooms at the Warrandyte Pottery Expo.

To make the mushrooms the children made a pinch pot, turned it upside down and made it into a mushroom shape.  They then squashed another piece of clay into a stalk (some insisted on attaching these, the idea was to glue them together later).

Once these had been bisque fired we glazed the mushroom tops making sure we added lots of pretty dots and fired again. 

Stalks were attached using a silicone glue.

Great work kids!

Cheers
Fiona