Showing posts with label Kiddy Crafts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kiddy Crafts. Show all posts

21 May 2013

MNM's Make: Water Wheel

I love finding quick and easy experiments I can do with the kids. I saw this one on a blog, Making Boys Men and knew it would be just the right combination of quick to make, with materials I could find around the house, and just the right amount of messy play for the kids to love it.

Materials:
2 paper plates
6-7 plastic cups
1 x wooden skewer
Sellotape (or other tape)


1. Start by taping your plates back to back. Ideally try and use thick cardboard plates rather than flimsy paper ones.

2. Push the wooden skewer through the middle of the plates. You may need to cut a tiny hole first if your skewer isn't very sharp.

3. Tape your cups on at regular intervals.

4. Jump in the bath or outdoors to test it out.



Here's ours in action!

For more fun kids crafts, go here.


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14 May 2013

How to Make a Popsicle Stick Chain Reaction {MNM's Make}

We were inspired this week by a post over at All For The Boys showing a popsicle stick chain reaction.

I thought to myself, now here's something we could easily do - us with 1,000 popsicle sticks sitting in the cupboard  - don't ask, it was way cheaper to buy them in bulk!

What I didn't quite appreciate was that the popsicle sticks used in this cool trick were a lot bendier and fatter than your average popsicle stick.

So after a few goes and getting quite frustrated when they just wouldn't work - the sticks were too thin, small and inflexible, I suddenly remembered we had some bigger coloured craft sticks in the cupboard.

And then we were away laughing!

It was rather hard to actually catch the popsicles in action, so I ended up having to make it about half a dozen times just to catch a good photo!



And so you can see exactly what it looks like, here's ours in real-life action!



And if you could find yourself enough popsicle sticks and had the patience and time on your hands, just look at the fun you could have!




Create Hope Inspire


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06 May 2013

How To: Make a Cardboard Box Car

I'm fairly sure that every mama has at some point in her life made (or is destined to at some point in the future make) a cardboard box car.

how to make a cardboard box car

cardboard box car using tinfoil

To be honest, there's really no excuse not to. Not when the only thing holding you back is having a box to do it! We bought a new dehumidifier yesterday after our trusty 13-year old model had finally given up the ghost over the summer, so now we had everything we needed - the box and some very handy extra packaging to boot.

So here's how to make a cardboard box car:

cardboard box car using cellophane


- Cut a hole in the side of a box big enough for the kids to fit in. Although you might be hard pushed fitting an older kiddy in - Mr 6 and a half was pretty marginal!

If your box just happened to come with some polystrene packaging like ours that you can re-use, you might find yourself with the perfect front radiator and lights for your car and maybe even a steering wheel if you're lucky.


cardboard box car using household items


- Fish around for something you can decorate your car with. We retrieved some crumpled tin foil that we'd originally used for the mother of all Star Wars parties a couple of years ago. Recycling see - very environmentally-friendly!

- Add a few accessories like an exhaust pipe (my kids call them boosters), wheels, lights and a personalised number plate.



- If you want to make a real darn good mess while you're at it, you could always let the kids loose with some packing chips to pack into the car to make it more comfy. Their idea and it seemed like a good one - that is until we spent quite some time picking up all the chips they decided to break up into ever-decreasingly smaller pieces afterwards.


Oh and if you want your car to look really fast, a bit of red cellophane will give it an authentic look.


Oh and do try NOT to slice yourself with the craft knife when cutting out the box and polystrene packaging otherwise owwweee!

My desire to make a cardboard car was inspired by an amazing post this week by the ever-talented Angela-Noelle over at Striking Keys who made a cardboard box car and held a movie drive-in with a whole bunch of cool kiddies. If you want to pop on over and check out Angela's post for some more fun design ideas, here are the materials she used to create her masterpiece too.


Making a Box Car:
  • 1 large box, reinforced with tape to strengthen the walls against a little leaning back 
  • Four plastic plates for wheels -- colouring over the grooved edges with black vivid, and drawing screws onto the middle
  • 1 plastic bowl for a steering wheel -- ideally fixed with a split tack for turning
  • 2 small plastic lids covered in tin foil for headlights (some of ours came off of stock powder plastic containers, for example)
  • Fluro orange circle stickers for rear lights
  • Coloured tape for stripes (we got ours a long time ago in a stack of colours from K-Mart for really cheap, $4 or something for 6 rolls of packing tape-type tape, but in colours)
  • An empty toilet paper roll covered in tin foil for an exhaust pipe
  • A cushion / small chair to put inside the box (depending on the height of your box)
  • Old wrapping paper / construction paper / drawings to cover the box (if it has writing on it)...or you could paint it!
  • White paper for licence plates

So if you are new to this cardboard box car making lark, can I suggest taking the plunge and giving it go!

Off you go, go hunt out that box!

Create Hope Inspire


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30 April 2013

MNM's Make: Which shape is the strongest?

I enjoy finding simple experiments to do with the boys that have a somewhat scientific basis and take no time at all to prepare for.

This weeks goal: find out which shape is the strongest 


Materials:
Three pieces of card or strong paper
Sellotape
Books

  1. Roll one piece of paper into a circle and attach with sellotape.
  2. Fold one piece of paper into a triangle (don't trim the excess just keep folding it the same shape - so that each piece of paper is equally strong) and then attach both ends with sellotape
  3. Fold one piece of paper into a square and do the same.
  4. Stand them all up on their ends and then gently begin placing books on them to see which shape can hold the most books.
In our experiment, the circle was the strongest. But I realised somewhat too late that I had folded the square a bit too big so it was weaker than the others from the start. 


Also the best books to use were reasonably small, square ones with not too much overhang. None of the shapes were as strong as I'd have liked so in the end we used the power of three by stacking the shapes one inside the other. By doing this, we got up to 14 books on our combined shapes before the card collapsed under the weight and they all tumbled off!




One unexpected event at the end of this little experiment happened as we went back in the lounge and Noah saw the sun being reflected into our lounge making an almost movie-like screen of the fence and trees outside on the wall.

We eventually realised that there was a building some kilometres away in the centre of the city whose glass was reflecting the late afternoon sun up into our lounge so we were able to use that as an opportunity to talk about the sun's rays and how light can be reflected in many different directions.


Loving having snippets of time to invest into the growth and learning of these two (crazies).


Joining in with Miriam and Becoming the Mama I Want to Be

Create Hope Inspire



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28 March 2013

MNM's Make: An Easter Garden

This year I'm making a conscious effort to make Easter more than just a day full of sugar and eggs and bunnies. I want my children to know that Easter is a celebration of the greatest sacrifice of love this world has seen.

So, I'd seen a few of these Easter gardens floating around the Internet these past weeks, and figured that I'd have most of the necessary ingredients at home.

Here's what you'll need:

One large round pot base
One mini pot
Compost, potting mix or seed raising mix
Grass seed (or other seed for growing)
Sticks (6 to make the crosses with)
Pebbles


Fill your pot up with soil, lay the mini pot on its side and cover with soil until all you can see is the entrance of the pot.



Sprinkle grass seed over the soil and push down into the soil as much as possible.

Lay some pebbles at the entrance to the tomb.


Find some small sticks to use as crosses - I stripped a few branches off our olive tree and either glue or tie together using cotton.


With any luck, and a wee spray of the soil every day with water, the grass seed will sprout and we will see new life spring forth by Easter weekend.


It didn't take more than half an hour, but the boys and I so enjoyed this simple but effective way of bringing the story of Jesus' death and resurrection to life in our home. Being able to talk about the crosses and what happened, and why there was a tomb and what happened after the 3rd day brought the story to life in a way that just talking about it wouldn't have had the same effect.

How about you? How do you keep your family's focus on the real message of Easter?

I am quietly determined that we will do more than just pig out on chocolate on this very special weekend. And sharing in the making this garden was just one step in the right direction. But it was a step.


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19 February 2013

MNM's Make: Alphabet Memory Matching Game

Creativity is something that I find I am always in search of these days. Especially when it comes to simple ways to be creative with the kids. But I'm not one for coming up with lots of original ideas so that's one of the reasons why I love blogging and Pinterest because there are many great ideas to emulate or even adapt for our own use. And paper craft is probably one of my favourite, easiest ways to craft!

When I saw Faery Sarah's pin on Pinterest, it reminded me I hadn't been to visit Mr Printables for a while. Last year we'd made a very cool Paper World which the kids enjoyed putting their animals on for lots of imaginery play.

paper toys my paper world



I'd also read about a cool alphabet matching game on Play Create Explore, so I decided to combine an alphabet set from Mr Printables into into a fun matching game that helps Mister 3 to recognise some more alpahabet letters.



Here's what we did:

Materials:
Alphabet letters (make your own or use Mr Printables here)
Patterned cardstock (I just used some from my stash)
Glue

1. Glue the same upper and lower case letter onto the same piece of cardstock.
2. Cut out each letter.

To play the game:
1. Turn all the pieces upside down (patterned side up).
2. Take turns finding the matching patterns and turning each one over and reading out what letters are on the card.
3. Put the letters you've found in order of the alphabet (we found it helped to sing the alphabet song to put them in order).
4. Repeat until all the letters have been found and are in order.







We also printed out these flash cards onto card stock and have been reading through them from time to time saying 'T is for ....(and letting Mylo say)turtle' 'G is for.....goose' etc.

free printable alphabet flash cards

Two simple and easy ways to promote letter recognition!

Linking up with Miriam's Becoming the Mama I Want to Be series here.

Create Hope Inspire

17 September 2012

MNM's Make: Instant Snow

We made snow. This stuff rocks. It's called Insta Snow powder, and just a tiny scoop will make a whole bowl full of delightful snow to play in. This kept the kids entertained for ages. It feels like the softest fluffiest snow powder a snowboarder could ever dream of.








It looks like you can get it in NZ from here, or there's always Amazon here, or the original source Steve Spangler Science here.

Following on from all the cool stuff Nikki sent us to play with like the water beads last week, I wasn't sure the fun factor could be topped. But the snow is definitely up there in on my coolness rating!

Have you ever played with fake snow?!

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