Making Origami Paper Boats

We had so much fun making Paper Boats the other weekend.  My daughter then continued to make them all week long.  She tends to find an idea like this and is so proud that she can make it and wants to show off to friends and family.  We got the idea from the book: Curious George Rides a Bikeby H.L. Rey which has the instructions on how to create a paper boat within the story. This activity is great because it ties in reading and art together.

To create a paper boat you'll need:
Origami Paperor thin paper that is easy to fold

Here are the instructions we followed within the book.  It begins with the paper hat.  Here are instructions for the origami paper boat here at: http://www.origami-fun.com/origami-boat.html

We had so much fun with these!

We even did some floating experiments with the origami boats we made too.

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Paper Bag Mask Monsters Made From A Vintage Book

I have a "way too big" collection of books about making things.  Recently my daughter was looking through one of my vintage "making things"books and wanted to create these paper bag monsters.  She actually really had a lot of fun making these (and so did I).  It just goes to show you that even old books have some great ideas.

This is my daughter C's mask.

Here is my mask creation.

Here is the book that this idea came from.  It is dated 1974.  When I researched further it is said to be Volume 9 of Worldbook's Childcraft Encyclopedia of awesome things.  I'm sure we'll be making more things from this book.

What some of your favorite books about making things?

(vintage or not)

Other Projects that we have made with Paper Bags:

Paper Bag Puppets Inspired by Fandango

Paper Bag Self Portraits

Paper Bag Puffy Heart

Creating Colorful Pasta Sculptures and a Book

We made Colorful Pasta Sculptures!  Inspiration comes from Storybook Art, by MaryAnn F. Kohl.  Each art project in Storybook Art incorporates a book/illustrator and there are 100 ideas! The particular book that goes along with this project is Strega Nona, by artist and illustrator Tomie dePaola.  This project and book particularly appealed to my 5 year old.....she loves any kind of building or sculpture project!  This project requires some preparation of dyeing the pasta (or not) and letting it dry before the sculpting/building process begins. I would give about a day for dyeing the pasta and letting it dry. Here are a couple of our finished pasta sculptures.

For this project you'll need:

assorted pasta shapes (we used lasagna, manicotti, rotini, bow ties, rigatoni, wheels)

***you could also purchase pre-colored pasta 

Food coloring

rubbing alcohol

resealable plastic bags

wax paper

white glue

low temperature glue gun(used with adult supervision)

The first step is to either buy pre-colored pasta or to dye your own.  To dye your own pasta, there are great instructions found here at eHow.com. You'll need to let the pasta dry overnight.  It is a fun process and C and I have done before when we have made pasta necklaces.

Once the pasta is dry you can start building! We used a low temperature glue gun, but you could also use white glue. With white glue,  you will have to allow for drying time to ultimately hold your sculpture together.  I supervised C closely when using the glue gun.  Sometimes the strings from the glue can get frustrating, but the low temp glue gun is a great tool for fast building.  To build the sculpture, we tried to begin with a larger base noodle like lasagna or a manicotti. Then we added smaller pieces on top one by one.

Here is C in action with her glue gun.  She was very empowered with using the glue gun.  This gun pictured is her own!

Mostly all of our pasta sculptures became some sort of vehicle.  Here is a race car.

An airplane.

Our collection of 3 vehicles.  They look very Dr. Seussish to me.  What do you think?

Not all of the sculptures were vehicles! Here is a self portrait of C.  Notice the red curly hair, blue eyes, and purple hair bow! I love it!

My daughter really enjoyed creating these Colorful Pasta Sculptures.  The book that goes with the activity, Strega Nona, by Tomie dePaola is a favorite of ours too.  It is a magical story about pasta!

 

 I highly recommend Storybook Art by MaryAnn F. Kohl for other wonderful literature/Art activities.

     

Macaroni/Pasta Art Inspiration:

Amazingly enough there are some Pasta sculptors out there!  Here are some Penne Sculptures made by: artist: Eliza Tyrrell.  Never would have thought?  Here are some more pics of her Pasta Sculptures here.

A pasta  sculpture of The Chrysler Building is pictured here by artist Alex Creamer.

Some pasta sculptures by an art student from New York are pictured here.

Macaroni sculpture from Flickr here.

Are you inspired to create Pasta Sculptures?


We used Neon Food Color to create our Fab colors:

This post is linked to: It's Playtime, Show and Tell

Woodworking Fun With Inspiration from a Book

C has been having a lot of fun with woodworking and real tools lately.  It all began from inspiration from a free woodworking workshop at our local home improvement store Home Depot (our last post). Many of my readers have also informed me that Lowes does free woodworking workshops for kids too! Here is C hard at work with a hammer and nails.

We were also inspired by the book Bruno The Carpenter by Lars Klinting.  This book is about Bruno the Beaver and how he needs to build a tool box for all his disorganized tools. If you want to make his tool box there is a diagram and steps to create it!  The book also has a page that lists and names all the tools Bruno used to make this tool box.  Cassie had fun memorizing each tool and then actually getting to use some of his tools was even more fulfilling!!!  It is a great book to inspire carpentry in your children! There is a book called Bruno the Baker by the same author.  We will be checking that one out soon!  

We actually got some scrap wood from Home Depot and used some scraps from our garage too. We don't have munch of a work bench so we brought this project outside. Here is a close up view.

We happened to have an old hand drill from Grandfather and it is the perfect kind for a kid to use. They do sell kids sized power drills on this website.  In case your wondering...I was right there supervising C!!!

We did some work with a screwdriver too, but C enjoyed the hammer much more.  Lately we've been letting C experiment with unscrewing items around the house too.  She loves it!

C attached some crafty wooden hearts with nails,  which was fun too.

 Here are 2 of her creations.  She could have spent all day pounding in nails and twisting screws in.

Cassie even took a pencil and marked off some places on an old piece of fence found in our garage.  I actually used a hand saw and cut some pieces off for her and she was intrigued and wanted to help! (a little too sharp and bulky!)

Still more hammering...she didn't want to stop!!!

C's 3 creations after this woodworking session.

These creations inspired some imaginative play with cars....she said they were roads!

C actually taped them together and put them on our coffee table!

Cassie really enjoyed this and wanted to pound more nails for the past few days.  We need to get more wood and supplies!!!

What are some other woodworking projects that we could make?

What woodworking projects have you worked on with your children?

This post is linked to:

Craft Schooling Sunday
No TIme For Flashcards

Happy Birthday Eric Carle!

Today we made some Very Hungry Caterpillars with our Microwave Kool Aid Play Dough!!! The recipe is in my last post here.  Wishing Eric Carle a Happy Birthday again on his real Birthday! I can't imagine a world without his wonderful books! What are you doing to celebrate?

Most of our inspiration to make these caterpillars comes from this wonderful stuffed Hungry Caterpillar that my daughter absolutely loves!

Be sure to check out our post here on Two Activities inspired by Eric Carle's book Little Cloud!
***Also be sure to check out the other wonderful Eric Carle activities linked up to that post here! (There are over 82 of them!)

Little Cloud Activities

To celebrate Author Eric Carle's 82nd Birthday (June 25th), Kate from An Amazing Child is having an Eric Carle week.  Other Bloggers will be posting different activities that they have done with their children that go along with an Eric Carle book. Some of these will be in the linky  after this post. We are celebrating with two activities that go along with the book Little Cloud. This book is about a cloud that drifts away from the group of clouds to become a giant cloud and changes into many different things! It changes into a sheep, a shark, a clown, and many other things. At the end it returns make to the group. It is the adventure of a cloud!!! Pictured here is our first activity of a painting C did of a Flower Cloud! We made Cloud Paint!

We mixed up some shaving cream and white tempera paint to create our Cloud Paint. The shaving cream made it a nice fluffy paint. Cassie loves shaving cream so she had a wonderful time painting with it! We have done Shaving Cream Bath Tub Paint which she loved so it didn't surprise me!

Here is another picture of C creating her Flower Cloud Painting! This painting is definitely one to be framed. You could easily just paint with shaving cream on a a smooth surface too!

C enjoyed this so much she did a second Cloud painting too. So sweet!

One unexpected spontaneous activity that Cassie loved was to play in the Polyfil Stuffing material!!! I spotted a whole bag of it in the basement and put it on our living room floor! It was instant Sensory Play and I told  C that she looked like she was on a cloud.

It quickly became inspiration for imaginary snow balls too! This girl was enjoying herself! Silly!!!

 Here is C relaxing on a cloud! She kept saying that it was so soft and silky! 

I tried to inspire cloud creations with the stuffing, but C had no interest in that! She so enjoyed rolling around and floating on her clouds!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ERIC CARLE!!!

You've inspired some wonderful paintings and imaginary play!

My daughter's favorite stuffed toy for the past 6 months has been her Very Hungry Caterpillar!

This post is linked to:

READ. EXPLORE. LEARN.

No Time For Flashcards
Craft Schooling Sunday