Fairy Petal People

We have been making Fairy petal people from a kit by Klutz.

The kit comprises all the materials you need to make several petal people and a small book with instructions and ideas. The book gives instructions on how to make the basic body from the wire and then the rest is full of ideas of different things you could add to your fairy, there is a section on different hair styles and clothing and more.

This has been done very well, so you can use the booklet and make something, but it's not fully prescriptive, and there is plenty of scope for imagination and creativity as to how the final fairy will look.

No special equipment is required, just a pair of scissors, and all the rest is included in the kit: wire, floss, beads, glue, petals etc. This is all adequate to make perfectly good fairies. If you wanted to embellish them further, you could use anything extra you have for crafts at home.

We have made at least 6 fairies from the kit, and a couple of them do have elaborate petal dresses, if you used less petals per fairy you could definitely make more, as there were left over beads for the heads.

This Klutz kit is going to be suitable from about aged 6 or 7 upwards, but be prepared to help with the first one, and then they are fairly easy to copy. Children at the younger end, 6ish may also need a bit more help with fiddly bits, like bending wire, or gluing beads etc.

The other advantage of this kit is once the glue is dried the fairies can be played with and used in lots of imaginative fairy games. They could be used in dolls houses, or you could display them in some way, on a shelf or make a mobile with them.

This fairy petal people kit is great for any time, but is especially great for a rainy day activity, or during school holidays. It would also make a lovely birthday or Christmas present, particularly if you are buying a gift for a girl that likes craft sets, and making things, or who just loves fairies.

This is an excellent kit and good value for money.

RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch

Today we did the RSPB big garden birdwatch. We got a few birds visiting during the hour we were recording, but all of them were common ones, starlings, blackbirds, thrush, collared doves and a wood pigeon. Did anyone else take part, and have any interesting spots during the hour?

Since we started feeding them the number of birds visiting has increased, which is pleasing, but I would still like some of the more colourful birds to visit, we have had no tits or finches at all yet. We do get a robin, sparrows and have had a few visits from a dunnock and a pied wagtail a few times too but they didn't appear today while we were counting. 

We also get a large black bird which I think is a rook as it has a light grey beak and from looking at bird identification, all the other large black birds like crows, and ravens, have black beaks. However they also say that the rook is seldom seen alone and is a social bird, and this bird only ever visits on it's own. I must try and get a photo of it and then maybe some of you can help me identify it. Does anybody have any other ways to differentiate between the larger black birds? 

Here's a photo from today, mainly starlings  but at the end of them you can just spot the thrush and the blackbird.

Three Positive Things

Three Positive Things

I'm not sure exactly where the idea came from, it may have been something I read somewhere, but this is a positive family activity. It's great for everybody, but can be particulary useful if you have a child who has a glass half empty outlook, ers on the side of pessimism, and can be quite negative.

It's really a very simple idea, but can help change the focus onto positive things. At the end of the day, each person simply thinks of three things that day that have been a positive experience, things you have seen, activities you've done or places you have been etc. It seems to finish the day off nicely on a much more positive note.

It's useful for everybody in the household to do it, lead by example, so adults too. You might also find that once you start thinking of positive things they all start flooding in and then you have loads you can think of, not just three.

So particularly if you have a child who is pessimistic, negative, glass half empty, you might like to give it a try. Just by doing this one thing at the end of the day, we have found we are all more positive and focussed on the good things in our lives.

My three positive things for today are :

1) Seeing the beautiful sunset as we drove along
2) Eating a curly wurly
3) Sitting outside and having a cup of tea in the sunshine

Thumbs up for Triominoes

We got Triominoes for Christmas and it's been a great family game to play. Initially when you open it up you see a box of plastic triangles with numbers on and a sheet of rules. It almost looks too basic to be fun, but we have really enjoyed playing it, several times now too!

Every game seems to be different as it depends on the initial luck of the hand you pick. The game can turn around really quickly too just by laying one triominoe. You can go from losing to winning in a few turns. For this reason it seems to keep childrens interest.

It combines a lot of luck and also a little bit of skill, or strategy and it gets the children you are playing with using numbers. Also to work out whether your number combination will fit requires use of spatial awareness too. Playing this game, children will naturally be using maths: numbers, patterns of numbers, addition etc.

Tri-ominoes is a great game from aged 5 or 6 upwards, depending on attention span and grasp of numbers, but at this age it is good as a family game with a mix of adults and children. Mainly so the larger addition and subtraction of scores has an adult around to assist. However it's not just a child's game, it's a game that will appeal to all ages, as older children and adults will enjoy playing it too.

Overall a thumbs up for tri-ominoes as a great family game, good value and good fun.

Aliens have landed

Why not have a wander over to our main website,  GreatLittleMinds. New additions include a selection of great alien drawings. Ideal to print off and colour in. Our children loved colouring them in, we are sure you will too.

Natural Learning From The Cold Spell Of Weather

We are having a cold spell of weather at the minute, and lots of places have had some snow fall. Exploring at this time of year is exciting, and ideal for natural learning, just make sure the children are wrapped up warm. You can of course help guide things along, but left alone you may find that children just find things out and explore for themselves, just be prepared to answer questions.

Ice

Children may naturally find some small bits of ice, if not have a hunt and try to find some, watch what happens to it at different parts of the day, or when you hold it etc. Ideal for nice science discussions about freezing points, liquids, solids etc. Even young children will pick up the basics and it is fascinating. If you can't find any ice, put some water outside and see what happens to it.

It's also a good time to naturally chat about larger expanses of ice, and the dangers of not walking on it. Particularly if you are out and about and see frozen ponds or similar.

Frost is another fascinating and very pretty feature at this time of year. Frost on the grass in the morning is so lovely and delicate. It's actually a hoar frost, the air cools and water condenses onto the grass.

While outside have a look at your breath, blow out into the air. If it's cold enough outside your breath will look like smoke, compare it with your breath inside, in a warm building. Contained in the air you breath out are small drops of water, held as water vapour, so small you don't normally see them, although they are always there even in the warm room. Outside in the cold the water drops go from warm to cold and the water vapour condenses, resulting in the cloud of breath we see.

If you are lucky enough to get some snow, why not make a snow angel, most people know how to do it, lay in the snow on your back, move your arms up and down to make the wings, and open and close your legs to make the angel's skirt.

Have a look at the snow through a magnifying glass, pop it on some black paper and have a look at the lovely six sided shapes and patterns. They are all pretty much unique, and very beautiful.

Of course you can also have fun making traditional snowmen and snowballs, or maybe try a different character, a snow rabbit or cat? You can also use a spare plastic container like an old ice cream tub or margarine container. Compact the snow into the container firmly, then tip it out, you have just made snow bricks which you can make to construct things, if you have enough you could try an igloo.

If snow has been forecast, we use the radar service on netweather, you can watch and see if the snow is headed for you, or which other parts of the country are getting snow. Just looking at this site sparks off lots of conversations about geography about different parts of the UK, the direction the weather is moving in, talk of north, south, east and west etc. You do have to pay a small amount to see the radar but there is something addictive about it, for children and adults alike!

Children in Need

Today my son had to wear something spotty to school to raise money for children in need. They get to wear something spotty, and donate some money to wear it, as it's a non school uniform day. After a search of his wardrobe, we discovered he owns nothing spotty at all, not even socks!

So not wanting to go and spend money on a spotty item of clothing, which would probably be worn once, we decided to fashion our own. It is times like this, I am grateful we are hoarders and seem to accumulate stuff!

So we used an old plain white school polo shirt, and found some fabric pens that we already had, and basically marked spots all over it, big ones, little dotty ones, in a variety of colours. Resulting in one spotty t shirt for children in need day at school.

Very simple, no extra expense, just a bit of time.