Stamp the town!

We did some stamping art with toilet rolls and sponges  few weeks back and we are back for more stamping actions this week, with potatoes! Xue love this activity to bits, so much so that he wanted more paper to continue stamping away. Maybe he was really amused by the potato, something he has always seen on his plate but never thought he could play with it this way. This was our most elaborated painting project as the whole art work took us 4 separate sessions to complete.

Session 1: We painted the paper green and let it to dry overnight.

Session 2: I told him we are building a town and the town needs some roads. Lucky me, I found some  roads stickers and put them to good use here. We sticked on the roads stickers. Alternatively, try giving your tot pieces of washi tapes/ coloured paper tapes and get them to connect like roads. If your kid is older, you can cut out black strips of paper and get him/her to paste them on with glue.

Session 3: Xue's favourite part of the project! We stamped on houses for the town with potatoes.  I cut out a potato into half and carve out houses on each half. I told him that we were building houses for everyone in the family and he told me who each house was for. So cute.

One important tip if you are going to try potato stamping! Use very little paint. I made the mistake of providing too much paint initially and since the potato don't absorb paint, I ended up with some thick blotches of paint on the paper instead of cute little houses.

Session 4: For this last part of the activity, I gave him foam/ felt vehicle stickers and he happily pasted them all over his town.

And we were all done, our Stamp the Town art work!

More cars and vehicles activities!

This one is a simple activity for Xue to match the vehicle cutouts to their outlines. Preparation time takes 10 minutes to print out the pictures, cut them out and draw the outline of the cutouts. The vehicles graphics are from the talented kpmdoodles on Etsy.

The second activity was an attempt to use up our Disney Cars stickers stash. I drew houses of different colours and tasked Xue to look for the cars in the same colours and stick them in their houses. Then I tried to get him to connect the houses of the same colours, but as you can see he preferred to do some free drawing instead. 

Anyway, you can see from the photos that both activities are done in his sketchbook. I bought him a sketchpad just a month ago and we have been doing lots of amazing stuffs together in it. We draw in it, we paste things in it, we do activities in it, we write in it. Instead of having everything on different papers all over the place, we consolidated them in his sketchbook. And there are days where we sat down and flipped through the pages to review what we have learnt/ done. Does your tot have a sketchbook? Try it!

DIY Toilet Rolls Cars - Vroom Vroom!

I love a good craft activity especially one that uses waste materials found at home. This is one that I have bookmarked a while ago and finally got down to doing with Xue. Finally I'm making good use of the toilet paper rolls that I have been secretly stashing away for awhile. lol. First we used them for stamping wheels, now we are going to make some paper cars!

This activity is done in two sessions.

Session 1: We painted three toilet rolls together and let them dry overnight.

Then at night, I prepared the materials for the activity basket.

1) Cut out some circles using heavy weight yardstick paper and poke a hole in the middle for the pipe cleaners to go through. For young tots like Xue who is still developing his fine motor skills, make bigger holes. If your kid has pretty good fine motor skills, then smaller holes may be fun as they try to get the pipe cleaners through the holes.
2) Poke 4 holes on each toilet paper roll at where the wheels will be attached. Same thing, big holes for young tots. Cut out a 3 by 3cm square on each roll for the car seat.
3) I got number 1 to 3 stickers for numbering his cars.
4) I cut some pipe cleaners to approximately 12cm long. $2 from Daiso! Keep them short, as shorter pipe cleaners are easier to handle for young tots.

Session 2:
Xue pasted the numbers on the cars first. Then I showed him the holes on the rolls and wheels and how to poke a pipe cleaner through the toilet rolls first. Young tots will definitely need some help here to get the pipe cleaners through the toilet rolls. After which, we put the wheels through the pipe cleaners. I completed the last part of twirling the pipe cleaners into circles to secure the wheels.

This is not the easiest activity for my 26 months old tot. There were times when he just couldn't get the pipe cleaners through, got frustrated and didn't want to try anymore. That's when I enlarged the holes and encouraged him to try again. After a few attempts, he got the pipe cleaners through and he was really pleased! Good job for persevering little buddy!

Stamping Art - The wheels on the cars go round and round

Painting and drawing are activities we enjoy doing together a lot. All the while, our painting and drawing sessions have been all free doodling, playing with paint and water, exploring colours or simply put, just do anything we like. But since this month was all about cars and vehicles, I thought why not provide a little structure and scaffolding to our usual painting session that's related to our theme. I was also pretty inspired by an art studio I visited at a children museum here. Every visit, there were different materials for the children to work with. Other than the enriched sensory experience, the young children (under 4 years old) were kept engaged with the novelty of the materials. Nothing fanciful, these materials are just simple stuffs like cardboards, sponges, egg cartons which we can find at home easily. So this month, other than the usual paint brushes, drawing papers and common art supplies, I like let Xue explore more materials.

There are some preparation work required for this activity which is to paint the vehicles' bodies the night before. I wanted to let Xue stamp on the wheels with toilet rolls and the windows with sponges. I gave him the toilet rolls at the start of the activity and when his interest dwindled then I took out the other novelty material, sponges. The verdict? Xue loved the activity! He was quite excited about the circles created with the toilet rolls and later, he decided he wanted to draw on some wheels himself too.

The completed art work is up on the wall now!

Disney Cars Movie Activities for Toddlers

So it all started with our visit to Disneyland earlier this year and we bought a harmless Cars movie t-shirt for little buddy. When we were back home, we told him that the red car is called Lightning McQueen and the brown tow truck is called Tow Mater. That's all the parents knew about the Cars movie characters. Xue pointed at the rest of the characters on the t-shirt, wanting to know their names as well. Our little buddy can't take 'I don't know' as an answer and he will ask you every hour until you have an answer to his question. We searched online to find out about the different characters in the Cars movie and one thing led to another and soon, Xue knew the names of every car in the movies, yes I mean both Cars 1 and Cars 2. If you name a race car wrongly, he will point it out to you immediately. And if you are wondering, he hasn't watched both movies before so it's bewildering how he can go all crazy over these cars. Just look at his wall, you know he has a serious Cars obsession.

Anyway, I might as well tap on this interest or rather obsession for our homeschooling activities. I downloaded the Cars Preschool Pack from amazing 1+1+1=1 blog. They have so many toddlers and preschools activities printable packages for different themes and you can definitely find something your tot likes there. Based on Xue's abilities and learning preferences, I did a fair bit of adaptations to the package and added new activities too. And presenting my Cars Movie Activities basket for the month of March/ April! Xue was so happy digging through the activity basket that morning, checking out the activities and of course his favourite Cars movie characters.

1) Counting and Line Drawing

I laminated the pages so that Xue can work on them again. In fact, Xue knows to get a wet tissue and wipe off his drawings on his own!

2) Colours Matching

I laminated all the cutouts and attached velcro dots at the back. Xue enjoys peeling off the cutouts and attaching them back. When not in use, the velcro can hold each piece in place and the board serves as a great poster too!

3) Shapes Matching

Using the same cutouts as the Colours Matching activities, Xue matches the shape of the cutouts to the outlines.

4) Accordion Numbers 1 to 10 Mini Booklet

5) Peekaboo Flip Card Board

Not a huge hit, I think this activity will be more fun for older kids. Xue don't understand the game idea of finding matches but there's still the thrill of flipping up all the cards and checking out what's under! Also included a colouring page on the board cover.

6) Photo Puzzle

I did this specially for my son because he LOVES puzzles. Also attached velcro dots at the back of each puzzle pieces and the laminated main puzzle board.

At our home, we have activity baskets where I keep all of these stuffs and Xue freely chooses what he likes to do. For new activities, I show him what we can do with them for the first time and subsequently, he's free to use the resources on his own. When he no longer rummages through the basket, it's a sign he's done with the learning and I will either engage him with the resources again, show him alternative ways of using the resources (if any) or change out the activities. These activity baskets are working really well for us. They are usually the first things he checks out whenever he wakes up in the morning and he's such a happy boy to find new stuffs in them. Also, with these baskets, he knows where to keep all his stuffs when he's done too. Just $2 each from Daiso!

I think he's pretty over the whole Cars thing and a new theme is coming up in May! Hooray~~