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. 

Arts-N-Crafts: Paper Tube Flower Stamps

I got this idea from Pinterest and yesterday when what I thought was going to be something that would take us the afternoon to finish turned out to be something that the little miss could finish in a jiffy, I got the remaining paper tubes that I had out and started making these.

 

Can you see the two stamp patterns?

What We Used:

 

 

• paper tubes
• heavy duty cutter
• paint (poster or watercolor, just as long as their colors would stand out)
• used microwable container covers
• imagination running wild

How We Did It:

 

1. Ask an adult to cut out the other end of the paper tube into even lines. I divided mine into 6-7 portions. 

2. Fold the cut portion and make sure they are of the same size each when pressed down.

3. Trim edges to your desired flower shapes (We had the plain elongated ones and the other one I cut the ends to resemble a triangle or maybe a pentagon)

4. Dip the paper tube stamps unto your paint and stamp on clean paper.

 

 

Tadah! Here's our finished artwork :) 

 

 

Arts-N-Crafts: Choo-Choo Train From Paper Tubes

I couldn't remember where I first saw this project but this has been in my to-do list for sometime now. Yesterday, I finally made the time to do it with Maia. It didn't turn out to be like the picture below but it was good enough for Maia to play with so it didn't really lose it's real purpose :)

Photo Source
The Project Was Supposed To Look like This

Materials We Used:

• paper tube 
• egg tray carton 
• poster paint
• paint brush
• glue
• cotton
• tape
• scissors
• cutter

Kalat starts ... NOW!

How We Did It:

1. Cut the egg tray carton in half (keep the other half for future projects)

2. Assemble your painting materials (I usually dilute the poster paints so I keep clean water on hand)

3. Turn egg tray upside down (bottom facing up) and paint that part with your desired colors. Set aside to dry when the tray is fully coated with paint. Do the same for the paper tube.

4. Ask an adult to cut two half an inch circles from your spare paper tubes. Form into smaller circles about 1.5 inches in diameter

5. Stick the wheels under the two opposite sides of hollowed part of the egg tray carton.

6. Using quick drying glue, stick the painted paper tube unto the egg tray carton. 

7. Stick some cotton on top of the paper tube to represent a smoke stack. 

Tadah! You're done. Enjoy. :)

Here's what our project turned out to be:

Arts-N-Crafts: Family Of Bunnies (Recycling Tissue Paper Tubes)

The day before we left for our Antique trip, Maia and I made a nice, easy project out of tissue paper rolls. I got the idea from (yes!) Pinterest and we just tweaked it to make use of the materials that we had on hand. The general idea was -- really -- to make use of the paper rolls that were already fast collecting dust in Maia's (future) bedroom-turned-storage-room. 

I showed Maia what our project was supposed to look a bit like and since she's had this thing for bunnies and rabbits for a few months now (she's been bugging us to get her a rabbit for a pet), she got really ecstatic about it. In fact, she got too excited she even took out all of the books she had about rabbits. I guess, she wanted to be more inspired so the more surrounded she is by bunny-related items, the better. 

I got about 5 tissue paper rolls from my stash. I surveyed my craft box for other stuff that we can use and eventually came out with this list:

- poster paint/tempera paint/watercolor

- pompoms

- used cardboard (this one was from a package of wooden clippies that Maia and I used for our picture hanger project)

- a pair of scissors

- white glue

- googly eyes (about 5 pairs)

- paint brush

- construction paper/scratch papers

- a few sheets of old newspaper 

- cotton balls

- felt fabric (for the nose)

First I asked the little girl how many bunnies she wanted us to make. She told me she wanted to make a family of bunnies. So I painted 2 brown, and cut about 2/3s of the other remaining two tubes and painted them orange and white. We set those aside to dry for about 10 mins.

Then I cut out ears from the scratch papers (2 pairs of big ones and 2 pairs of smaller ones). Then I also cut our 2 big pink noses and 2 small pink noses (heart-shaped). Maia also requested me to cut the remaining unused tubes into smaller pieces so she can paint them green to use them as grass. We also painted the last tube brown and I cut out a cloud shaped piece from the used cardboard to use as tree leaves. I painted it green and dotted it with yellow (according to Maia all trees have fruits so the yellow part represents the fruit). 

I'll just let the pictures speak after this. When we got back this afternoon, the entire thing is still intact so the little girl still intends to play with her bunny family tomorrow. 

lined the floor with used newspapers because i know it's going to get a little messy

majority of the materials we used

down on her knees. hard at work????

tadah! finished product :))

see we even made carrots for them to enjoy. and maia cut out these cardboards and stuck them on the paper herself.
they are apparently grass for the bunnies to roll and sleep on.