Category: painting

What do we have to do with AUSTRALIA??? Part 1

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In short: Nothing. In more details: last month (April) we met a lovely elderly couple from Australia who we’d encountered on our honeymoon in Istanbul in 2011. Quite unusual.

I’ve taken  the opportunity of their visit to Hungary to introduce Australia to E. She loves planet Earth anyway. She already knows about continents (her favourite is Antarctica) so Australia will be fascinating for her. I hoped…

Map of Australia

As E. enjoys looking at maps and our big picture atlas I made a map colouring activity for her. I just printed a blank Australia map with the states drawn on it and after naming each states we coloured them one by one.

E. is practising her A
I also wrote AUSTRALIA below the map and E. traced my letters.

This Australian map puzzle was quite time-consuming to make but the result was beautiful and E. loved it. The link gives you a detailed description how to prepare it. In my version I laminated the pieces. As Queensland and Western Australia consist of 2 parts I sellotaped them together. Then I added sticky back velcro (bought them on sale in Auchan).

The background is a big blue cardboard

 

sticking

 

FINISHED!

I couldn’t buy a big enough cardboard to fit Tasmania in the right place. What a pity!

We can also use this puzzle map in the long run (I also plan to introduce her some cities as well as animals and famous sights. We’ll use this map to pin cities, animals and sights up on it and put it on the wall to display)

She has done the Australian puzzle map several occasions. Sometimes she even said the names of its states.

Painting the flag

As the puzzle map gave me a hard time we did not twist the flag project. I printed a blank Australian flag and painted it while we were talking about what is what on the flag
  1. The British Union Jack flag is in the upper left corner – noting Australia’s ties to Great Britain
  2. The Southern Cross constellation (5 stars) is on the right side of the flag. The constellation can be seen from everywhere in Australia
  3. The large, white, seven-pointed Commonwealth Star

Of course, we displayed our pieces  on our living-room door. You need to imaging the composition as I’ve forgotten to take a photo of it.

Work in progress
Let’s start!

Animals of Australia

First, I created flashcards of the most commonly known Australian animals. (See a printable at the end of the post)

Kangaroo                                         Duck-billed Platypus
Koala                                                Cassowary
Emu                                                  Brown snake
Wombat                                           Salt Water Crocodile
Dingo                                                Echidna
Tasmanian Devil                           Frilled Necked Lizard

E. has already heard about and seen a kangaroo in the zoo, and also seen pictures of koalas. She knows the (white) wombat from the video titled Red Rabbit, Green Gorilla. She is also familiar with the look of a crocodile or a snake as well as an ostrich, which can remind you of an emu. So first, I showed her 7 flashcards out of the 12.

As most of the animals had a familiar look I decided to add some information to the flashcards on their backs.

We had a look at Australia in our Picture Atlas Of The World.

As on this map flora and fauna is depicted, I showed E. an animal, I said its name and  she needed to find it on the map. When she found it we placed the flashcard on the map and I told her some interesting information (1 or 2 pieces) about the animal (eating habit, place of living, offspring etc.)
She was laughing at the platypus and found the Tasmanian Devil cute.

When we finished with this she wanted to see them in real life so we sat down in front of youtube and watched a few interesting videos. (I had prepared for this request so we didn’t need to waste time with searching for them)

The Cow Goes Moo – Kangaroo for Kids

Koala-la-la-la

Bindi and Robert Irwin feature huge salt-water crocodile

Platypus: Animals for Children

Bindi and Robert Irwin feature: Wombat

E. was fascinated by the platypus, mainly its webbed feet. So we needed to draw a Mommy and Baby platypus webbed “feet”

We’ll have a look at the other animals later.

In the next part:

E.’s 2nd test of her English; the lovely time in Szentendre we spent together with our Australian friends (M. and B.). – You can read about E.’s 1st real life test here
E. got some sweet presents (soft toys and books) from M. and B.

 

 

 

Earth Day – Painting Crafts

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Before the recycling activity we had done some Earth related crafts like this mess-free zip-lock bag painting. Even very small kids can enjoy pressing the paint into all directions.

 

What you need:

– a plastic bag that can be sealed (I used Ikea bags)
– a paper plate
– green and blue paint

 

Process:

– put the paint on the paper plate (I put a little more blue than green as there is more water than land)
– place the paper plate (very carefully) into the plastic bag and seal it
– seal the bag

You’re child will know what to do right away, I’m sure. If not, tell him or her to press and see how the paint will move everywhere.

E. realised how much more she can spread the paint with the edge of her hand.

The first plate had too much paint on so we pressed it against another paper plate. Although it is called a MESS-FREE painting method, with this change everything became grubby.

 

I used leftover baby paint so it was easy to clean up.

E. enjoyed it so much we needed to paint one more Earth.

 

 

Here is the final result:

Another activity was dot-marker painting of Planet Earth. (If you have no dot-markers you can use cotton buds and blue and green paint or simply colour the dots with markers)

I searched for a picture of Earth and I made white dots on land and sea as well.

I wasn’t surprised at all that she started to count the dots while she was painting them the right colour.

We ended up writing the numbers and Earth next the Globe. E. traced my numbers and letters. This is her new “hobby”. As you can see she stamped some hearts all around Earth, because:
– I love you Mommy, and the Earth, too.

You can find more ideas of Earth day fun and crafts on my Pinterest board.

Here is the downloadable dot marker Earth .

 

Easter egg crafts

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There’s no Easter without eggs. Egg painting, egg making, blowing out eggs, eating eggs, sticking egg, decorating with eggs and so on.

Here are a few things we’ve been doing with eggs lately.

Decor tape eggs

Just draw an egg and supply your little one with some decor tape or washi tape. Be prepared: tape will be everywhere. In hair, on clothes and some on your drawn egg, too. If you want to save a pretty decor tape, do NOT give it into the hands of a 3 year old (or below).

A lot of cutting is involved, which is great practice for little hands.
If you put it around the house all your guests can admire the final product.

 

Dot marker eggs

The original plan was to follow some patterns (ABAB or ABBABB), but it didn’t work that way. I plan something and E. thinks differently. So we went with the flow. Some hand painting, making fingerprints, drawing lines, colouring freely etc.

You can print or draw and egg shape and provide your child with dot-markers

Pom-pom painting 

This is a variation of the dot marker painting. If you don’t have dot markers use pom-pom and clothes pegs.

First, E. started to use the colours one by one (although she was drawing with the pom-poms like with a paintbrush; she refused to make dots like with the dot marker)

Then colour mixing kicked it

I was crazy enough to let her sprinkle a little glitter over the wet, painted eggs (well, never again, it’s more than MESSY). I must admit she helped me happily with the cleaning up.

 

After they have dried I cut them out, added a ribbon and stuck the on the door frame in our living-room.

Of course, we had some traditional egg painting (with blown out eggs and acrylic paint, which E. calls “the big girl paint”). On Sunday during church time, children could paint eggs. There and then we tried wax crayon drawing and painting on eggs for the first time which is beautiful. I have a plan for next year’s egg painting.

According to the Hungarian tradition, we also decorated a bunch of pussy willow (which we simply call catkins) with eggs and other ornaments.

I hope you’ve had an EGG-cellent Easter!

 

Pizza time

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E. is quite excited every time she can spend some time in the kitchen with me. For me it’s rather a challenge and I need to be extra relaxed,  plus in a good mood to shoulder all the mess and fuss around it.

Whenever I pull myself together and dare to enter the kitchen with a 2,5 year old hurricane to do some cooking or baking projects, it’s always fun and the result is fantastic, though.

Cooking and baking together together with your child/children always gives you a great chance to learn and practice new things. Not only kitchen activities like whisking, stiring and pouring but also your second language.

This is what we did a few months ago when E. made her first pizza.

Today I wasn’t prepared for the kitchen mess so I only entered into the spirit of painting.

While doing it we practiced a lot of food names:

salami
fish
tomato slices
corn
olives
pineapple
mushroom
pizza dough
salt (shake)

As well as colours and how to get certain colours by mixing two:

red + blue = purple
yellow + red = orange
red + green = brown

The kitchen stayed clutter- and mess-free and we were all happy.

More fun with the ABC

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E. has an unquenchable thirst for the letters and the alphabet. Here are 2 more activities we’ve done recently.  

1. Giant alphabet puzzle
2. Salt dough letters

– ABC giant puzzle

I was lucky enough to get hold of this giant alphabet puzzle in a secondhand toy shop. No piece is missing. There are one or two pieces that are a little stained but otherwise it is in great condition.

When E. is putting the puzzle pieces together she is singing the ABC song or we need to listen to it. (A money-saving trick: you do not need to buy a lot of English music CDs. Just turn the youtube videos into mp3 music files with a converter)

While we are putting the puzzle together we name the pictures like A is for apple (like in the picture) and add some more words starting with that letter: ant or angel or antler. (I usually come up with words that she knows but if not we always have paper and pencils around to draw the unknown thing, or if we have it at home we go and have a look at it)

We have some foam letters which are the same size as the capital letters written on our giant puzzle. In the picture below E. is placing the foam letters on the puzzle. It was her own idea.

I use this alphabet puzzle even with adult students; it helps a lot with spelling and pronunciation.

– Salt dough letters

When E. turned 2 and a half last November we made her the very first home-made salt dough (1 cup of salt, 2 cups of flour, 1 cup of boiling hot water). And it was a hit.

I found this  cheap set of ABC cookie cutters in a One-Dollar shop. It has just one problem: letter S is the other way round.

spooning the ingredients

Not only was she learning/pracising words like kneading, rolling pin, mix and stir, add, measure but also strengthened her arms and hand muscles.

 

my little helper
 
First, the letters need to be in the right order of the alphabet

 

Cutting
 
 
E. helped to put the letters on a baking paper that I’d place on a tray and we put them all in the oven to dry (at 50 °C).

 

 

 
 
Next day the painting started:
 

 

 
We used one colour at a time, but when we did this project this year colour mixing kicked in to make new colours like purple, brown or orange.
 
Ever since we have been playing with the letter as they are lying on E.’s shelf in the living room.