Stringing by color shade.

Today, we worked on stringing beads by the shade of color.

I made the beads pretty quickly by simply painting them with four progressively lighter shades of the same color.  I used milk paint, but really any paint would work - just keep adding white to lighten the shade.   Today, we started with two colors: a dark brown-red (called "barn red") and an orange ("pumpkin").   We used pipe cleaners to string our beads onto. 

The Princess started by separating the red colors from the orange colors. 

                                                  

She started with the orange colors, stringing the beads in order from darkest to lightest.  It's helpful to crimp the end of the pipe cleaner or tie a knot in the string, because it can be tricky to keep the beads on with a loose end.  

When she had finished the orange beads, she started with the red ones.  Again, she worked from darkest to lightest.  

We're going to keep this on our shelves this week, and I think I'll add the rest of the colors I made in, to give her more challenge.  

Feelin' crafty: Apple stamping

The kids are really into crafts this week, so we did another one today!  

We did "stamping" with apples today!  Certainly something to do somewhere you don't mind getting messy, but it is a fun and creative project for kiddos. 

I cut our apples in half the "wrong" way (the opposite of the way that you'd cut them if you were going to eat them), so that the kids could see that the seeds make a star shape.  The star didn't come out in the stamping (probably because we used thick tempura paint), but that was okay.

We used green and orange paint (kid's choice).  If you want, you could ask them to do patterns or designs.  I decided to just let them do what they wanted, to see where they'd end up.  I put the paint onto paper plates, and gave everyone a piece of paper and half an apple.

The Princess (4) did identical lines.  Green, green, orange, green green, orange.. She was delighted to have made a pattern with her stamping, and quite proud!

Bigger Bit had no interest in using the apple as a stamp.  Instead, she just collected orange paint and used the apple as a large, funny shaped paint brush.  She was so thrilled with her picture.  

Bub did use the apple as a stamp, but was more interested in a fun discovery he made than in making any design or pattern.  He noticed that the first stamp (top left of picture) that he did was the most orange, and each stamp after that became less and less orange.  We stopped to look at the paint left on the apple each time, and eventually he figured out that the paint was being transfered onto the paper, so less was left on the apple to make a dark impression.  

Feelin' crafty: stringing apples.

We had TONS of leftover colored pastas from our pasting pasta apples project yesterday. So, we combined a fun craft with fine motor skills work, and let them use the pasta to "string" an apple.

We started the project a long yellow pipe cleaner (the body of the apple), half a green pipe cleaner (the leaf), and a smaller tan pipe cleaner (for the stem, and brown would be a better choice).  I gave them each a handful of round yellow pastas, and a handful of round red pastas.  Make sure these are small enough that you'll still be able to bend the pipecleaners in a circle to make an apple shape (you could also use beads here).  At the last moment, I gave them long greenish pasta, too (in case they wanted to string those to make the leaf).

I didn't ask them to make a pattern or to use only one color, but you could if you wanted.  These tiny pastas were a good challenge to get onto the pipe cleaners - not too difficult, but not too easy, either.  

Stringing pasta, stringing pasta, stringing pasta.... it takes a while! 

Done stringing!  Bigger Bit used all yellow pastas. 

Bub made sure to cover his pipecleaner from end to end (so much so that I had to take a bit off to get it around, actually).

The Princess finished early and used her waiting time to string pasta onto the leaf pipe cleaner, because "stringing pasta is so much fun!". 

They had to take turns with this next part, because they all needed help.  We made the pipecleaners with the red and yellow pastas into circles (for apples), then bent the green pipecleaners into a (very approximate) leaf shape, and attached that to the apple.

Then we attached the stem piece (again, why didn't we use brown?  I have no idea!).

And, finished.  Bead stringing apples!  

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Easy dyed pasta tutorial

A few people emailed me, asking how to make the dyed pasta, so.. here you go.

You can buy dyed pastas for crafts; I've seen it over the years at various school supply stores and craft stores.  I make my own, simply because it's SO easy and very inexpensive.  There are a bunch of different ways on the internet, but this is how I've always done it. It's very forgiving, though, so play with the idea and see what you come up with!

I start with a bowl, pasta (I'm using the little bow-tie farfalle this time), isopropyl rubbing alcohol, food coloring, and something to stir with.

Start by putting the alcohol into the bowl.  I use 2-3 Tablespoons of rubbing alcohol per 1/4-1/2 cup of pasta.  Stir food coloring of your choice into the rubbing alcohol - the more food coloring, the more intense your pasta color will be.  

                                             

Dump pasta into the bowl.  This is almost half a cup of pasta, with about 2 T of rubbing alcohol and 6 drops of red food coloring.  

Mix it around so that all the parts of the pasta end up getting coated with the colored alcohol, then let it sit.  

I tend to let it sit somewhere HIGH out of reach of little fingers (on top of the fridge is a good place for us) for a few hours while I do other things.  When I think about it, I pull it down, stir it around to ensure even coating, then put it back up.  Today, I ended up leaving the pasta sit for about 2 hours, and stirring it 3 times.  

When it appears to be coated, I use a spoon to pull it out of the bowl, and lay it flat to dry.  I know people who lay it out on paper towels, paper plates, cookie sheets, newspaper, etc.  This is a piece of brown wrapping-type paper (the kind used for packaging), folded twice and laid over a baking sheet to prevent drips. 

It takes a while to dry.  Overnight is probably the best option, although any 7+ hour stretch will work.  The color will get a bit deeper and darker as it dries.  

You'll end up with colored rubbing alcohol left in the bowl after you remove the pasta.  It's easy to just dump it down the sink (rinse the sink well afterwards), but I hate throwing away anything that I can use. So, I've developed the habit of throwing a handful of white rice into the color alcohol remaining after I take the pasta out.  The tiny grains of white rice will absorb a lot of what's left of the colored rubbing alcohol, meaning less to throw out.  I make colored rice the same way as colored pasta - only real difference is that the rice doesn't take quite as long, and I don't stir it quite as often.  When it's reached the color I want, I spoon the rice out, then pour the tiny bit of remaining rubbing alcohol out.  

The uses for colored rice and pasta are nearly endless.  Try using colored rice for pouring, scooping and spooning, as the base for a sensory tub, etc.  Colored pasta is great for, sorting, using tongs, as math manipulatives, to form letters with, for making patterns, and other things.  

Just to NOTE: I'm sure this is apparent, but just to be clear, the pasta and rice are NOT edible after they've been dyed with rubbing alcohol.  

Feelin' crafty: Pasting pasta apples

Today, we used different colors and shapes of pastas to make apples on paper.  We used red and yellow round pastas, greenish-brown long pasta, and bright green bow-tie pasta. If your kids do well with traditional white school glue, that'd be a better choice than the glue sticks we used.  

Instead of drawing an outline of an apple or telling them what shapes I wanted them to use, I decided to put out a small apple (we used a fake apple from our sensory box, but a real apple would work nicely), to see how they translated the three-dimensional object into a two-dimensional picture. 

When they were finished, I asked them to tell me why they'd made their apples the way they did.  The Princess had observed that our three-dimensional apple was round like a circle, had a long stem, and was mostly red but had some yellow in it.  Bub had noticed that there were "bumps" in the apple, so he put bumps in his paper.  Bigger Bit isn't quite old enough to "get" this, but she did a good job with manipulating the little pastas and learning to use the glue stick. 

 Our finished apples.  Bigger Bits (with help) is on the top left of the picture, The Princess is the middle on the right, and Bub's is lower center.

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Keeping Bigger Bit Busy: Tot School Workboxes!

Here's what's in bigger bit's tot school workboxes this week!

Sound matching, from my Montessori-inspired DIY sound matching game.  She's starting with two, and we'll add more in through the weeks.

Color sorting pompoms.  

Numerals 1-6 and bean counters.  She knows 1-3 pretty well, and we're working on 4-6 this week.  

Paper, glue stick, and colored pasta.  We did an activity like this today, when I helped her make an apple shape from colored pasta and a glue stick, and she enjoyed it.  So, I put this in her workbox to see what creativity she comes up with! 

Letter "E" work.  The letter E coloring page is from Super Coloring.  The tactile letter E is from the DIY Montessori-inspired tactile letters I made a few weeks ago. 

One-to-one correspondence with glass acorns.  Nine glass acorns, and a box with nine spots.  She puts one acorn in each spot and none is left over.  

Silly pasta sorting.  A divided tray with a handful of the pasta that we dyed earlier in the week.  There are long green pastas, red circles, yellow circles, and green bows.  She sorts each of the types into different containers.  

Linking up to: 

Montessori-inspired: DIY Sound Matching Game

My husband (aka "Big Daddy" as he is known around here) found these tiny little containers at the dollar store last week.  They came 10 to a package, which is quite a deal.  The containers hold a few ounces each, so the are a perfect size for a sound matching game. 

I painted the inside of the containers with enamel paint, half blue and half pink (I was out of red).  If you find another paint that works, let me know.  Painting on hard plastic can be a bit tough, but enamel paint does the job pretty well.  It takes a significantly longer time to dry than other paints, though, so be prepared for that. 

I didn't take pictures of this part, but I filled them.  There are literally nearly endless things you could fill these little containers with.  I used: kidney beans, rice, one small rock, a single "jingle bell", and little pasta noodles.  Just remember to fill one of each color with your objects, so you have two sets in different colors with the same sounds.  

I superglued my lids on.  If your kids won't open them, feel free to skip this step.  With my kids, if I want the lid to stay on, it better be superglued on!

I then marked the bottoms of the containers with symbols, so that the matching sound pairs have the same symbol (so, the pink with rice and the blue with rice both have stars, etc.).  This could be skipped, but it allows the child to check their own work when they've matched the pairs. All they have to do it flip them over, and they can see how they did!