Arts-N-Crafts: Maia's Castle Of Shapes

I feel quite proud of this. It was a split-second idea that eventually came out to be a proud-moment project. 

It's review season once again as the second quarter of the school year comes to a close. Although the school does provide us with information maps and guides for review, I'd always still opt to make my own reviewers the way I deem the kid would learn the easiest. And to me the easiest way for my kid would be the most fun way possible. Math is a struggle. But we get by. Writing the numerals is a different issue but we also get by. I never thought she'd struggle with shapes but then stars and hearts become part of the lessons and that's where we started having problems. Identifying them is no problem at all (although she does get confused with rectangles referring to them as octagons most times, I don't know how that association came to be but I don't want to find out anymore). 

I've had this ink cartridge cardboard with me for almost 2 weeks now. The first time I saw it, I immediately thought it would be something we can use for the kid's art activities. When I brought it home, kid took it instantly and called it her castle. She's been bugging me to help her paint it and today I thought we'd finally get around to doing it. I promised her we'd do it in the afternoon after we've finished reviewing for one subject and she was fine with it. 

While waiting for the kid to wake up for her nap though, an idea struck me. I wanted to finish reviewing her this weekend and I thought why not incorporate the review with our arts and crafts time instead. So I took out some colored paper and prepared the other materials. I decided we'll build a Castle Of Shapes by filling it up with flags of different shapes.

What we used for this project were:

ink cartridge cardboard

paper tubes

colored paper

double sided tape

toothpicks

scissors

pencil

tape

How we did it:

I let the kid trace the shapes unto the colored paper first. Then I let her cut them. For the star and heart shapes, I had to do the cutting on the difficult corners since she started getting frustrated but for most of the shapes she had a whole lotta fun cutting them. 

After the shapes were cut, we put double sided tapes on them and stuck them unto toothpicks, sharp edge down. Then I had the kid stick the flags unto any part of the 'castle'. After the flags were done, I took a paper tube and I cut the other side of it to look like a tower. I stuck that unto the middle of the tower and tadah -- we're done. 

It was a fun, super easy activity to do and the kid proudly showed it to her village playmates. She had a blast quizzing them on the shapes and teaching them what they were actually called. 

I'd like for it to stay with us until the quarterly exams are over. But I'm really not banking a lot on that since I know how 'gentle' kids are with toys. I hope it serves it's purpose well though and help the kid out especially with her rectangle issues.