Animals

Paper Plate Sheep Mask for Kids

Danya Banya February 9, 2015 16

Make a sheep or lamb mask as a lovely Spring, Easter, farmyard or nativity craft activity for kids. It’s also a fun craft to go along with the nursery rhyme Mary Had A Little Lamb.

With last week being JJ’s first week of school, it was also my toddler Bee’s first week of one-on-one time at home. And how did we spend it?

By making sheep masks of course! Or more specifically ewe and lamb masks, because… adorable!

The problem is that I can’t decide which photo is the cutest. This one?

Or this one?

No, no, I’ve got it. It has to be this one.

Awww!

To make them, I cut the inner circle out of two paper plates – a dinner size plate for the ewe mask, and a snack size plate for the lamb mask. I put out some paste and cotton wool balls, and asked my 2 year & 4 month old toddler Bee to stick them on.

Bee chattered as she went. “Dip, dip, dip, stick. Now Mummy’s turn. Now turn me. Dip, dip, dip in glue, and stick on mask. This Mummy sheep mask. That baby sheep mask. Dip, dip, dip….” and so on, in that endless way that only toddlers can.

Bee really got into this craft actually. She was very heavy handed with her dipping, so that a LOT of glue ended up on the paper plate. And she kept wanting to stick more and more cotton wool balls on, so we ended up with very, very woolly sheep!

It took a couple of days for all that glue to dry. This above photo was taken about 12 hours or so after we’d finished gluing. I think turning the masks over like this helped to quicken the process by allowing more airflow. (If you don’t have a few days to wait, you might be better off making these yarn wrapped woolly sheep instead).

Once they were dry, I cut out some ears (from the middle part of paper plates) and glued them onto the back. Because our masks were so heavy due to being chock-a-block full of cotton balls, I also stuck some harder cardboard to the back to stiffen it a little bit. (I imagine you wouldn’t need to do this is you were a bit more conservative with your cotton wool and glue usage though.)

And then have your toddler hold them up and say “Baaa”!

Sheep crafts like this can also be used to celebrate Easter, Christmas or even as a lovely Spring activity for kids. And they’re perfect for singing along to Mary Had a Lamb or Little Bo Peep.

And of course, once they are made, you can then play with them! DIY dress-ups! Actually that’s why we made two – so that the girls can role play being a mother ewe and baby lamb for a bit of imaginative farmyard animal play. (We already have a set of DIY zoo animal masks, and I have a funny feeling that I may be coaxed into making a few other farm animal ones as well…)

We made our sheep masks around the time of Chinese New Year (for the Year of the Sheep), but you could also make them for Spring or Christmas nativity, or any time of year really!

xx Danya

Categories Art & Crafts For Kids, Easter, Imaginative Play, Nursery Rhymes, Popular, Preschoolers, Toddlers Tags Animals, Chinese New Year, Spring

Summer Fun! Ocean Themed Water Play

Danya Banya January 11, 2015 3

It’s summer school holidays at the moment, which means lots of water play in the backyard. Sometimes it’s the hose on the trampoline. Sometimes we fill the water spray bottles and ‘clean’ the windows (and of course ‘accidentally’ spray ourselves). Sometimes we play with ice cubes, or water beads. And occasionally we set up little small world sensory tubs, such as our beach themed one, or this one for ocean-themed water play.

contains affiliate links

This oceanic sensory tub was inspired by an activity called ‘Fish World’ from the new book 150+ Screen-Free Activities for Kids, by Asia Citro of Fun at Home with Kids. We adapted our sensory tub according to what we have at home (which happens to include a large collection of sea creature figurines) and what my kids are obsessed with right now (which in our case is The Octonauts, oceanography and water beads). I also added a standing mirror to add another element to their play.

But really, that’s the whole point of Asia’s book. She provides the ‘how’ rather than the ‘what’. Each of her (awesome) activities are open-ended base ideas, with lots of suggestions for adapting and extending the play according to your child’s interests or age.

And look how much fun they’re having!

150+ Screen-Free Activities for Kids is available at Amazon, Book Depository and loads of other places. Find more information here.

For more water and water bead play, you might also like:

Water play fun with DIY Colour & Shape Boats

Playing with water beads on the light table

{Please note that the water beads I buy are non-toxic, which means they are safe for kids to touch, but are not edible in either the unexpanded or expanded form. My two year old is no longer in the mouthing phase, as is well-supervised when playing with water beads. Please use your best judgement when introducing young children to small objects. Unexpanded water beads could expand in the stomach. Expanded water beads are a choking hazard. All activities on Danya Banya require attentive adult supervision at all times. If you are uncertain whether this activity is appropriate for the children in your care, please see your paediatrician for further advice.}

xx Danya

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. I was given a copy of ‘150+ Screen-Free Activities for Kids’ for review purposes only. All opinions expressed are my (or my kids’) own.

Categories Kindergarteners, Outdoors, Play Ideas, Preschoolers, Sensory Play, Toddlers Tags Animals

Paper Plate Panda

Danya Banya June 22, 2014 14

These cute paper plate panda decorations make a great introduction to hand sewing for preschoolers.One of the book series that I’ve been loving lately is the National Geographic Kids early reader books. These are designed for kids to read themselves, and JJ isn’t quite up to that yet (she is starting to recognise some letters and can occasionally guess a word, but I wouldn’t say she is ‘reading’), but I think these books are great for young kids even before they can actually read. JJ loves facts, and has always been fascinated with nature. These National Geographic books have amazing photos (of course) and cover all areas of the natural world. They make a great non-fiction addition to balance out our reading time.

A few months back we borrowed Pandas by Ann Schreiber, and JJ was (and is still) enthralled with this fascinating species. (Incidentally “red panda” was one of her first words, several years ago after watching them play at Taronga Zoo one day). Often after reading about a particular animal, I will try to incorporate it into our play, but in this case I realised that we didn’t have a panda in our animal figurine collection. However I did remember that we had a Tim & Tess panda felt sewing kit (now discontinued stock sorry) in my craft/emergency present stash…

JJ just LOVED making this mini panda. To be honest I was a bit taken aback by how enthusiastic she was about making such a ‘product orientated’ craft. When she finished, I asked if she wanted to make another one.

“Yes please Mummy!”

I didn’t have another panda kit in my stash. So I improvised.

And I made one as well, so that we could have a little panda family. Here they all are, amongst the faux “bamboo forest”.

To make them, we used:

paper plates x 2
googly eyes x 2
black felt, cut into 2 x oval shapes for the eyes and 2 x long semi-circle (semi-oval?) shapes for the ears
large white pom pom and small black pom pom for the nose
long piece of white yarn
large blunt hand-sewing needle with a large eye
a piece of ribbon for hanging
red marker
low temperature hot glue gun (or craft glue)
single holepunch

With both plates together, hole punch evenly around the edge of the plates.

Flip one of the plates over so that the bottom of both plates are on the outside. Thread the yarn onto the needle, thread through the first hole and tie off. And then ask your preschooler to thread or hand sew the two plates together around the circle.

Technically this stitch is called a whip stitch, and is a basic first stitch that is easy enough for preschoolers. It’s actually easier than sewing a straight stitch as the needle only needs to enter from one side. But don’t worry if your preschooler prefers to sew a straight stitch, or does a combination of the two as JJ has done. A little bit of creative sewing adds character.

All this ‘work’ is great for their fine motor skills. Even a large blunt needle is still fiddly to pick up and thread through the plates. It requires concentration, hand-eye coordination, and persistence (as a large paper plate has quite a big circumference for little hands).

We stuck the rest of the elements on with our low temperature mini glue gun (which I’m just a little bit in love with by the way). Even though the glue from these guns is hot if you accidentally touch it, it doesn’t get hot enough to seriously burn. It is small enough for little hands, and I’ve let JJ help me use it a few times now (under very close supervision), and she loves the sense of empowerment that she can use such an adult tool. If you don’t have a low temperature glue gun like this, you could use a traditional hot glue gun (without the kids help), or you could use craft glue (but I’m way too impatient for that…)

Last but not least, we drew a mouth on each panda using red markers. And that’s all there is to it!

Aren’t they cute! Now I’m daydreaming what other animals we could do next… Any suggestions?

xx Danya

Categories Art & Crafts For Kids, Kindergarteners, Preschoolers Tags Animals, Sewing

Easy Five Little Speckled Frog Finger Puppets

Danya Banya April 27, 2014 3

Easy frog puppets for kids. A cute musical kids activity, great for spring or any time of year.

I’m on a roll with these rubber glove finger puppets. They are so easy to make that they’re just a tad addictive… First I made Five Little Ducks finger and hand puppets, then Peppa Pig puppets, and now here’s some speckled frog ones.

You all know the speckled frog song, right?

Five little speckled frogs, sat on a speckled log
Eating some most delicious grubs. Yum! Yum!
One jumped into the pool, where it was nice and cool
And now there are four green speckled frogs. Glub! Glub!

(and so on…)

Besides being just plain fun, this song also introduces some new words (speckled isn’t a word we necessarily say every day), and helps with early maths by teaching kids how to subtract by one (or count backwards).

You could also use these puppets for the Galumph frog song:

Galumph went the little green frog one day
Galumph went the little green frog
Galumph went the little green frog one day
And the frog went galumph, galumph, galumph

But we all know frogs go: la di dah di dah
La di dah di dah, la di dah di dah
We all know frogs go: la di dah di dah
They don’t go galumph, galumph, galumph

Yeah, it doesn’t make any sense to me either.

Here’s a more grown up riddle if you prefer:

A riddle:
Five frogs are sitting on a log.
Four decide to jump off. How many are left?
Answer: Five
Why?
Because there’s a difference between deciding and doing.

( Mark L. Feldman and Michael F. Spratt of PricewaterhouseCoopers)

Whichever song or riddle you choose, they are super easy to make, and lots of fun to play with! All you need is a single rubber washing up glove, a pair of scissors, a black permanent marker, and a tiny touch of artistic talent.

As you can see, my touch of artistic talent is very very very tiny. 🙂

Nevertheless, JJ thought they were cool…

If you want to check out the five little duck puppets or our Peppa Pig ones, click on the images below.

Five Little Ducks Hand and Finger Puppets

xx Danya

Categories Art & Crafts For Kids, Imaginative Play, Maths, Music, Play Ideas, Preschoolers Tags Animals, Spring

Cloud Dough Sand for Beach Small World Play

Danya Banya February 12, 2014 11

Welcome to the second month of the 12 Months of Sensory Dough series, where I’m challenging myself to try out a different sensory dough recipe each month. Last month we had lots of fun with Foam Dough. (Plus we also made Rose Scented No Cook Play Dough which was very popular…)

And the challenge for February – Cloud Dough! We’ve made a version of cloud dough before when we made Play Snow around Christmas time. This time we opted for an ocean / beach / island theme, so we decided to make cloud dough ‘sand’.

JJ was as excited about the process of making the cloud dough as she was about playing with it.

Recipe for Cloud Dough Sand

4 cups of plain flour
1 cup of baby oil
Yellow Food Colouring
Fine yellow glitter
Course gold glitter

As you can see, the yellow food colouring dyed some chunks of the cloud dough more than others, giving it a bespeckled look. It wasn’t an intentional effect, but we actually didn’t mind how it turned out. (I imagine you could achieve a more consistent colour my kneading it more, or perhaps by adding the food colouring to the baby oil before mixing it into the flour. I’ve seen people use liquid watercolours instead of food colouring too.)

JJ helped me to set up the small world play. We used denim offcuts and an odd blue sock for the water, cut scrap fabrics for towels, Lego people, pirate themed Mega Blocks (pirate, sailor, two boats, octopus, palm tree, treasure chest), a couple of Schleich turtles, and various other odds and sods from around the house. I purposely kept to the larger toys for this sensory play, so that Bee could join in.

Bee is becoming old enough that she can play interactively with JJ, instead of just alongside her. I love it when they play together like this. For a few minutes, I don’t have to run off in two directions. I can sit and watch this sisterly relationship blossom. Precious times.

And of course, after a while, they emptied out the toys and interacted with the cloud dough in a more sensory way. JJ liked feeling the texture with her feet. Bee liked to pick up fistfuls of dough and transfer it to the garden.

Lots of fun!

JJ has been loving this series so far. Actually she’s caught on that there is a “list” of different types of dough that we’re making, and has started requesting to make a different dough every other day, so much so that we’ve already made March, April, May and September’s batches! Hey, I figure we may as well keep going while she is obviously getting so much enjoyment out of it (and while the weather is warm enough for messy play outside!)

Are you interested to hear what I think about all the doughs so far? Well, to be honest the Foam Dough, Cloud Dough and Play Snow are fairly similar in texture; mouldable, yet crumbly. They are all lovely to just rake your fingers through the crumbs, mould into a ball into your hand, and then apply a little pressure to watch it crumble again. The Cloud Dough Sand is much easier to mould than actual sand, the Play Snow is sooo soft and the Foam Dough has the extra sensory experience of working with shaving cream. But all in all you will get similar results from any of these recipes, so just go with the ingredients you already have in your cupboard.

The Rose Scented No Cook Play Dough is a different type of dough from the other three. It is much more like commerical Play-Doh (although better, IMHO).

But no matter which dough you chose to make, your kids will love it. Kneading, rolling, shaping dough is therapeutic. If you don’t believe me, try it yourself. There is something calming about engaging the sense of touch. They will also be exercising fine motor muscles, in readiness for writing and scissor control later on.

xx Danya

Categories Imaginative Play, Outdoors, Play Ideas, Preschoolers, Sensory Play, Toddlers Tags Animals

Staying Cool with Poolside Nursery Rhymes

Danya Banya February 13, 2013 0

Here’s one of the ways JJ’s been coping with those hot hot hot days this summer…

We add or subtract different toys each time to add new dimensions to play. On this occasion, we added some animals to the water table, which prompted lots of nursery rhyme singing off-key in our best voices. She has a veritable zoo of little animals, and as we were trying to come up with a song for each animal, we sang songs we don’t sing very often. Leo the Lion, 5 Cheeky Monkeys Jumping on the Bed, 5 Grey Elephants Balancing, A Zebra Has Lots of Stripes, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Polar Bears and Penguins Love the Ice, Skippy, This Little Piggy.

At some point this animal play morphed into role-playing. Role-playing is a play style that JJ seems to really enjoy at the moment.

Fawn, meet calf. Calf, meet fawn.

xxx
Danya

Categories Imaginative Play, Outdoors, Play Ideas, Toddlers Tags Animals

Lori and Keet

Danya Banya November 21, 2012 0

Say hello to our two newest pets, Lori & Keet the rainbow lorikeets. They visit us several times a day, mostly to munch on the bird seed on the balcony. But sometimes they sit on the window sill and peer inside. Curious little things!

(And how lovely is the jacaranda mauve that decorates suburban Sydney every November…)

Lori & Keet, the Rainbow Lorikeets

Linking up for Wordless Wednesday with Trish from My Little Drummer Boys and Bree from Twinkle in the Eye.

(This post is not sponsored. All opinions are my own.)

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Categories Australia, Nature, Outdoors Tags Animals

Introducing – our pets Charli, Vomit, Gromit, Mike, Olga & the Possum

Danya Banya August 21, 2012 2

And to conclude the “Introducing” series (for now at least), let me introduce our pets.

Charli

Charli is our cat. Apparently she’s a Domestic Short-Hair (yes that’s a breed), but as she is a pound cat, I’m sure there’s a some bitzer in her somewhere. We adopted her mid 2009 from Save-A-Dog Scheme Inc, which is a community-based not-for-profit animal welfare organisation that saves hundreds of dogs and cats from being killed every year. Charli was 2 years old when we adopted her, and she had spent her entire life at the centre, as her mother had been brought there whilst pregnant.

Charli, starting to relax, just a couple of days after we brought her home.

When we brought Charli home, we first introduced her to the bathroom where her kitty litter would be kept. She was very affectionate and happy. But when we opened the bathroom door to the broader house area, it was obvious she wasn’t used to being in such large spaces. She spent the first night sitting inside the bathtub – being an approximate size to the cage she was used to, purring and content. She was happy for us to pat her, but she wanted to stay there. After a day or two, she settled down a bit, but it was probably 3 months or so before you could say that she was really used to being in a house environment.

Being a white cat, skin cancer is a big risk, particularly with our harsh Australian sun and the hole in the ozone layer above us. She is not allowed outside for the 3 months of Summer, and in Spring & Autumn (Fall) we put sunscreen on her ears before she goes outside, and try to restrict the times to early morning and late afternoon. It is only in Winter that we let her have free roam during the daylight hours. All year round she is kept inside at night, as in Australia, cats don’t mix well with our native nocturnal fauna, such as our possums, sugar-gliders, etc.

A year after we adopted Charli, we brought a little screaming JJ home from the hospital. Charli popped up on her hind legs like a meerkat, so she could see the baby from the other side of the room, with the most concerned look on her face. From day dot Charli was very maternal towards the baby. She learnt early on that she got lots of pats if she sat next to me on the couch whilst I was breastfeeding, and so in the early days, I had company, no matter what time of night JJ fed. Now that JJ is a jumping shouting toddler, the relationship is different, yet no less affectionate. Charli will passively let JJ poke and prod her, and puts up with toddler squeezes and kisses. It will be interesting to see how Charli reacts when we bring a second baby home – she is so used to kids now, I wonder if she’ll even notice!

Playing with the “Little Miss Muffet” nursery rhyme scene

Vomit, Gromit & Mike

Vomit & Gromit are our two Comet goldfish, and Mike is our Black Moor fish. They too were “saved”. Two of our friends had a wonderful harbour cruise wedding several months ago, with Comet & Black Moor fish as the table centre-pieces. After the wedding, the fish needed a new home, and so we adopted six. They live in a 26 litre (roughly 6.5 gallon) fish tank, about a foot cubed, with lots of fresh plants for them to hide behind & nibble on. Alas, three of them didn’t last the month, but Vomit, Gromit & Mike have stuck around, and seem to like their new home!

Olga

Olga is our pet garden snail. JJ named her – I have no idea where she got the name Olga from, but she must have heard it somewhere… We found Olga on the path outside our front door. She had a big hole in her shell, about a centimetre squared. We took her in, and housed her in a big plastic tub and fed her on left over veges and water for about a fortnight until she had had a chance to regrow the broken part of her shell. Once she was deemed strong enough, we let her go back into “the wild” of our backyard. Every now and again, particularly when it is raining, we see her back on the path. (We can tell it’s Olga, because the regrown part of her shell is a different colour to the rest.)

The Possum

Ringtail possums are one of Australia’s native nocturnal marsupials. They are very cute, being only about 30cm (a foot) long, excluding their long tail. With encroaching urbanisation swallowing up their native environment, they have learnt to share our suburbs by making nests in roofspaces, as the possum that lives at our place has done. I’m tempted to rehouse it using these humane recommendations, but JJ is so fond of having a possum in the roof that we’ve decided to leave it there for now. We hear it scratching around in the roofspace each dawn and dusk, and often see it sitting on the fence or in the trees if we’re outside when it is dark.

Here are some other posts in the “Introducing” series:
Introducing – Me!
Introducing – Mr Banya
Introducing – JJ
Introducing – the bub on the way

Categories Uncategorized Tags Animals