Crafty days!
I have a few minutes to update you on our crafty, schooly fun while Pup is napping, and Bunny is working with her number rods. Over the past two days we have done some fun things! Yesterday we made some recycled crayons.
The idea came from Counting Coconuts.:
http://countingcoconuts.blogspot.com/2009/10/recycled-crayons.html It started with peeling a million crayons which turned out to be a really painful and unpleasant experience (at least for me, Bunny said she missed peeling crayons after it was all done!).
The crayons were some old ones that I had, and I think that they were a little warm, so the wrapper did not peel off without some serious nail action.
After we peeled them though, we put them into some cheap muffin tins I picked up at the Dollar Store. Now we just needed to melt them. To do that we put the over at 350 degrees and after it got up to temp. we turned the over off and put the muffin trays in. After about 10 min everything was melted! Super simple. The hard part for Bunny was waiting for them to cool enough to get out! We put them in the freezer to speed things up! 🙂 When they were done we carefully popped them out and got to work!
They are perfect for doing rubbings! The girls tried them out on our sandpaper numbers. I think we will use them alot!
Another success of yesterday was that Bunny worked really hard on her beginning word sounds! I got her a basket of her small animals and the sandpaper letters. She got the idea right away and picked out the correct letter for each of the beginning sounds! I was so proud of her! It was one of those “maybe this is working out” moments! I guess that there is some truth to the Montessori order of ‘real objects first them pictures’ because I have tried to used printed pictures, but it didnt work out! After she finished the basket, she made a road of letters (all of them lined up across the room) and pretend that they were pens at the zoo and she had to put all the animals in their correct pens (by the beginning sounds of their names of course). She played this for a while! So needless to say I will do this again. Next time I think I will use kitchen items, then maybe colors, then bathroom things….the possibilities are endless!
Today we tried wet felting. I have been wanting to try felting for some time now, and yesterday I got my order from Joann Fabrics! (2 days after Christmas I used up the gift card I got on all the supplies! I was SO excited!) I found this idea on the blog The Magic Onions:
http://themagiconions.blogspot.com/2010/12/handmade-gifts-lets-make-ball.html
http://themagiconions.blogspot.com/2009/08/how-to-make-colorful-wet-felted-stones.html
She made wet felted stones and she made an adorable wet felted ball. We tried both. I can say that after a good amount of frustration that this seems to be something that need a bit of practice to get the idea of. Bunny loved the idea and wanted to help, and since the word ball was mentioned, Pup wanted in on it too! 🙂
We got our wool roving out and got to work, but the shrinking takes longer them I thought, and the girls wanted much fast results! We did finally get some to work and they turned out pretty well. I will try it again, but maybe on my own. Tonight I will be needle felting some of my first projects and I will post on those later! Wish me luck!