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Archive for the ‘school projects’ Category

Tuesday Craft

Posted in crafts with children, paper craft, school projects, Tuesday Craft, tagged , , , , , on May 28, 2013 | 2 Comments »

I was pointed towards a lovely British blog called MiniEco where you find great DIY tutorials and crafts for and with children. Inspired by this we are going to make string-tie envelopes today – a perfect and-of-the-year project, since I want to ask the children to write little thank you notes to their teachers and put them into the envelopes. You will find the template and (very colorful) instructions here, or you can follow my (much less colorful) instructions below.

You need one print-out of the template in either of the two sizes (see above), a piece of string, two small brads (scrapbooking supply stores carry perfect tiny ones), scissors, glue stick. I also added two small circles out of a sturdier cardstock (instead of the paper used for the envelope itself) to make sure nothing rips where it shouldn’t. Punch a small hole in the middle of the small circles.P1140319 Cut out the shape of the envelope.P1140320At the indicated little crosses punch holes with a small puncher, or use a big needle to make a hole.P1140321 Fold all sides up.P1140322 Insert brad on the (future) back of the envelope through one of the circles.P1140323 Add glue to the long edge on the back (where the brad is not) and to the edge of the bottom small flap.P1140324 Glue long edges together, brad side on top, while at the same time glueing the small bottom flap underneath the long flaps.P1140325 Attach second small hole-punched circle to the closure flap with the help of the second  brad.P1140326 Take a piece of string and tie one end to one of the circles. One simple knot is fine.P1140327 Cut end of string.P1140328 Insert note or other sweet surprise.P1140329Wind the string around both circles until all used up. Just let the end of the string hang, it won’t come undone.
P1140330 P1140331 Present mail to happy recipient!P1140332

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Tuesday Craft

Posted in crafts with children, paper craft, school projects, teaching, toys, Tuesday Craft, tagged , , , , , , on May 21, 2013 | 2 Comments »

Kendamas have been a great hit in our school for the last months! A simple wooden toy with lots of possibilities – a bit like a yo-yo, the more you practice the more amazing your tricks are going to be. We have several at our house (including my husband!). I love the counterbalance to the usually omnipresent electronic devices and am amazed how crazy the kids are about this traditional toy.

P1140277 Anyway, one day a boy in the second grade came to school with two versions of his own home-made “kendamas”. He took cups and small plastic balls to assemble them. Very clever. He asked, if we could make them in class and I finally found the practice golf balls that work best for this. You can, of course, use simpler balls for this project – felted balls, paper mache balls, even just bunched up aluminum foil or paper with a string attached. But here is the luxury version:

You need: small cups (5oz.), paper, practice golf balls (in sports shops, mine were $2.99 for 12 of them), string, glue stick, scissors, colored pencils, a hole puncher (optional).P1140278Make a template by cutting apart one of your (probably many) cups.
P1140279 Trace this template onto a piece of paper.P1140280 Draw your very own design and cut it out.P1140281 Stick the made-to-measure paper with your design to the outside of another (whole) cup.P1140282 Punch a hole (or use a big needle, knitting needle, skewer.. to make a hole).P1140283 Cut a length of string (mine was about 20″ long) and, with the help of a crochet hook, pull it through two adjacent holes in the golf ball. Tie some knots.P1140284 Tie the other end of the string to the cup and there you have it: a sweet and simple toy – all home-made!

P1140285(Thank you, Luca, for your inspiration!)

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(last week’s) Tuesday Craft

Posted in crafts with children, paper craft, school projects, toys, tagged , , , , on May 21, 2013 | Leave a Comment »

Last week in second grade we made thaumatropes. You might also know them with an elastic or string attached to either side that you twist and release, so the two pictures on either side merge into one picture (at least that’s what your brain will do). I took the idea from this lovely book:
P1140287You will need a piece of paper, something to trace circles from (small glass), Scotch tape, scissors, (colored) pencil(s), and a dowel (I substituted the dowel with a round pencil).P1140286Trace two circles.P1140288 Cut them out.P1140289 Think of an image and take it apart, for example the bird and the birdcage. You could do a fish in a fish bowl, a cat on an armchair, a cherry on top of a muffin, a hat on top of a head…then draw on part of that image on one of the circles and the other on the other circle (in alignment – it helps to hold both circles up to the light or against a window to make sure the bird (for example) will actually sit in the birdcage and not beside it).P1140290 Here are further ideas from the book.P1140291 Next stick one of your circles with the picture facing the right way (up) onto your dowel with some sticky tape.P1140292 Make sticky tape rolls and place them beside the dowel on either side, you can add more rolls all around the dowel (I just ran out of tape…). Stick the second circle to the sticky tape rolls with the picture facing out and – again – in alignment with the picture on the first circle.P1140294This is how you hold the dowel to see the complete picture (for lack of a third hand or a helper I was unable to take a picture of my own two hands doing this!). Rub your hands (with dowel) together as if your hands were cold. Do it fast, and watch the magic!P1140301P1140298 P1140299 And in case you used a pencil as your dowel and you are tired of looking at your picture you have a very charming pencil topper after all this.

P1140300My lovely second graders came up with ideas like this: a tongue licking an ice-cream cone, a boy playing with a soccer ball, a butterfly on a flower, a dollop of cream on top of an ice-cream sundae, a mermaid on a rock…as usual they were full of ideas and wonderful enthusiasm to go with it. Oh, I will miss them over the summer…

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Tuesday Craft (recycling #5)

Posted in crafts with children, paper craft, school projects, Tuesday Craft, tagged , , , on April 16, 2013 | 4 Comments »

We are going to start working on paper beads today to make a necklace as a Mother’s Day gift (Marijke, please be surprised all the same!). It takes a little concentration, patience and fine motor skills to roll the paper strips around a skewer and I think we will be doing this for this and next week, followed by the assembly of the necklace. I don’t mind an ongoing project for a change for a bit of long-term planning. It is open to them how many or few beads they want to make, once they know how, the children can work independently.

You need: pages from magazines (the cover works, too, but is harder to roll), a skewer, glue stick and later a piece of pretty yarn or string and some beads.

Cut the paper into strips about a half inch wide.P1130864 Start rolling the paper strip around the skewer.P1130865 P1130866 Add a little glue after the first two or three rounds to prevent the paper from unwanted unravelling.P1130867 Add glue again to the last inch or two to secure the roll.P1130868 P1130869 Slip bead off your skewer.P1130870 Make more beads (5 or 10 or 20…you can even go double-stranded, in other words it is up to you how many beads you have the patience to make).P1130871 String beads onto your piece of pretty thread, alternating with (in this case wooden) beads.P1130872 P1130873You are done! Again, I love the simplicity of making something out of stuff you have lying around anyway. You can omit the wooden beads altogether, you can paint the beads or put glossy varnish on them and, depending on the paper you use, you can play around with a lot of possibilities there. Have fun experimenting!P1130874

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Tuesday Craft

Posted in crafts with children, school projects, teaching, Tuesday Craft, tagged , , on April 2, 2013 | 2 Comments »

Today we will make a little pipe cleaner bee (or two). For two bees you will need: one black and one yellow (or a nice sparkly golden) pipe cleaner, cut in half; white tissue paper; some sewing thread or string (optional); a small stick (optional).P1130813

Twist the black and the golden pipe cleaner together at one end  - just a tiny bit, so they won’t fall apart.P1130814

Take a regular pencil, hold the twisted end against the pencil and start wrapping the pipe cleaners around the pencil.P1130815

Wrap it all up.P1130816

Then push the coil together from both ends, so your bee is more of a bumble-bee and less stretched out.P1130817

At the end that was not twisted in the beginning push in the golden end and pull out the black end to make a little stinger.P1130818

Stick the two twisted ends back into the bee”s body on the other end to obtain a round shape (you don’t want pipe cleaner ends sticking out of the bee’s face, do you?).P1130819

Make a bow out of a small rectangular piece of tissue paper by twisting it in the middle.P1130820

Insert the bow between two pipe cleaners and push the coil from both ends again to tighten it (and hold the tissue paper in place – I didn’t use any glue).P1130821

Here is the finished bee – looks pretty realistic, doesn’t it?P1130822

Take a piece of thread and a needle and tie the thread onto the bee’s body. In class we ended up just tying the thread all the way around the belly, as the needle and thread business would have taken too long.P1130823

Tie the other end of the thread onto the little stick.P1130824

That’s it!
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And if you want to make 60 bees with 30 kids, this it what the materials would look like. The red and black in the front was intended for a boy who is afraid of bees and I didn’t want him to freak out, but he told me he was OK, because, of course, the bee wasn’t real. Well, how silly of me!

In the end they made all sorts of bugs and spiders out of the leftover black and some more red pipe cleaners I had in my bag. There certainly were a lot of insects in the classroom by the end of this activity.P1130827

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Tuesday Craft – Message in a Matchbox

Posted in crafts with children, paper craft, school projects, teaching, Tuesday Craft, tagged , , on March 19, 2013 | 4 Comments »

For making a cute matchbox message box, magic trick included, you need the following materials:

empty matchbox, glue stick, white (or other colored) paper to cover matchbox and write note for inside, piece of sturdy string (about 8″), two small beads (string should fit through hole), big pointed needle.P1130740 Here is the magic trick technique (because I forgot to do the design part first…):

Take the inside of your matchbox out and poke a hole through the middle of the outer part.
P1130741 Make the needle go through the second side of the outer matchbox, too, but don’t pull through just yet…P1130742 thread your needle with the piece of sturdy string and pull that through, P1130743 so it looks like this:P1130744 Now tie a bead onto each end of the string with at least a double knot, so that they don’t come loose, when you pull on them.P1130745 When you insert the inside box part again and pull on one of the beads and string,P1130746the box will slide out and reveal – well, nothing in this case, since I forgot to do this part first. Oops!
 P1130747 OK, so let’s think about what to put on the inside and outside of the box. Stick the white paper around the outside and draw away.P1130748Then do the part with the string and the beads (see above). Note that this is really the order in which it should be done.P1130749 I made the girl look as if she is throwing a ball, by placing the bead in her hand.P1130750 P1130751 P1130752When I explained to the second-graders what we were doing today, they instantly got it and came up with a variety of interesting things to write onto and into their boxes. Some examples were (“outside – inside”): “Free gum – not”; “I love – you”; “What is 2+2 – I don’t know”; “Are you an orange? – yes”; “Happy vacation – love, B.”

As usual they were enthusiastic and the whole project took exactly one hour to complete with 29 kids. Perfect!

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Dolls coming alive

Posted in embroidery, school projects, sewing, tagged , on March 14, 2013 | 1 Comment »

We (8 women) finished half of the dolls (16 out of 32) in two hours, not bad! I am glad I did the preparation work, that helped a lot. One more fun meeting and they’ll be done. Here is the first lot, one prettier scarier than the next…or as Ms. M., the teacher and initiator of this project, summarized it, mumbling to herself while picking out eye buttons: “Oh, these clash really well!”.P1130732 P1130733 P1130734 P1130735 P1130736 P1130737

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Ready for the sewing party…

Posted in school projects, sewing, tagged , on March 10, 2013 | 2 Comments »

32 dolls ready to be assembled. Phew, that was more work than I had anticipated, but I had support from my daughter and my niece and I am glad I prepped everything well, since it will make the final stuffing and sewing much faster.P1130691 P1130692 P1130693

Waiting for the helpers to show up and finish some dolls…P1130694

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Tuesday Craft (recycling #4)

Posted in crafts with children, paper craft, school projects, Tuesday Craft, tagged , , on March 6, 2013 | 4 Comments »

On my walk with the dog yesterday morning, while wondering what I wanted to make in class the next day, I saw a lot of daffodils in people’s front yards. I remembered that I had wanted to incorporate used egg cartons into my recycling projects, just to make use of the many possibilities of the preshaped cardboard, and, hey, doesn’t the front part of a daffodil resemble one of those egg “cups”? I got my project.P1130669

P1130670

You need: an egg carton (cut apart into the single cups), an old calendar page (yes, we still have plenty left over for seemingly endless projects), one button per flower, a stick (found by the wayside), a pipe cleaner (cut into thirds), plus a pair of scissors and crayons (or watercolor, or felt-tip pens).P1130671

Clean up one egg cup by cutting around the top edge.P1130672

Color it in any color you like. Maybe matching your calendar page, maybe not.P1130673

Punch two holes in the bottom. I used a knitting needle.P1130674

Cut into the top edge for a frayed look (see real daffodil further up!).P1130678

Trace circle bigger than egg cup (so the petals show later).P1130675

Draw petals.P1130676

Cut out petals and punch two holes here, too.P1130677

Fold pipecleaner piece in half and insert each leg into opposite holes of the button.P1130679

Pull through.P1130680

Insert pipecleaner legs into each of the egg cup holes, so button sits inside the cup.P1130681

Attach petals in the same way, so colorful side is showing.P1130682

Attach to stick.P1130683

Additionally you can cut out a leaf and attach that with another piece of pipe cleaner. You can make a whole bunch of daffodils in different colors. Simple, easy, very resource-friendly. Have fun!
P1130685

I did not offer the kids a template for the petals this time, but let them do their own thing. This project lends itself to interpretation (all kinds of petal shapes and sizes, ways the flower got attached to its stem, leaf shapes, color options etc.) and they really got into it. Most children made more than one flower and had a great time, didn’t need much help and loved the results. I can truly recommend it for second-grade level.

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Tuesday Craft (recycling #3)

Posted in crafts with children, origami, paper craft, school projects, Tuesday Craft, tagged , on February 19, 2013 | Leave a Comment »

Since we still have a lot of calendars left in the classroom we are going to turn a pretty picture into a jigsaw puzzle today. I used to love making these puzzles, when I was a kid and I hope the second-graders enjoy it, too. Well, judging from past projects, I actually know they will be enthusiastic about it…

All you need is this: a calendar page (or three, if you want to make a box to keep the puzzle in), an old cereal box, glue stick, scissors, a pencil (and a stapler or Scotch tape, again, if you want to make the box).

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Pick a nice picture, cut the cardboard in the desired size (depending what you want to capture in the picture) and stick the picture to the (printed) side of the cereal box cardboard piece.

P1130618

Take your pencil and draw jigsaw pieces on the back and cut them out. The easiest version to cut out is obviously little squares, which would also work well (and would be challenging enough) as a puzzle.

P1130620

P1130621

Try to reassemble your picture! (It worked.)

P1130622

If you want to make a little box out of your other two calendar pages, follow these instructions. For one box to fit as a lid, make sure to cut off about a quarter of an inch on all four sides of your paper square (the one you start your folding with).

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Happy crafting!

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