Polystyrene Pizza Base Printed Ice Cream Picture

Jessica brought her first book home from school today. She had chosen one about a trip to an ice cream shop. It's a book with just pictures and she enjoyed telling the story after she'd spent a while studying the images by herself. At the end of the story there are a number of questions to answer and then a few suggestions of other things you could do or discuss to engage further with the themes. We decided to make our own ice cream picture. 

We cut up a polystyrene pizza base into a wedge to use as the cone, a rectangle for a flake and two circles for vanilla and strawberry ice cream. We printed the paint with these shapes using the textured side for the cone. Jessica mixed red and green paint to make the brown for the cone and flake before adding glitter glue as sauce, glitter and paper stars as sprinkles, foam shapes to be marshmallows and a paper strawberry complete with felt-tipped pips. 

This all worked so well that I'll definitely be doing it at Toddler group later in the year. 

Decorated Birthday Present

We ordered my sister's birthday present from George this year and used their Click and Collect service. When we picked it up her crockery was in a large cardboard box so we decided to decorate the box rather than wrap them up in paper this year. It was so much more fun! Jessica wanted to make it into a tiger so we painted it orange and black before adding some unique features...

Birthday Cards

We have quite a few family birthdays in August so Jessica has been busy creating some beautiful cards this month. I am responsible for the cutting out but I do as I'm told and Jessica takes over once she has all the shapes she needs. Here are four of her most recent makes...

Mixed Media Buddleia Card

One last thank you card for Abacus on Jessica's last day. She used ink pads, paint, stickers and crystals to create this impression of a buddleia flower head to say a final thank you and goodbye to all  the staff who have made the past fifteen months at Abacus so enjoyable. Farewell!

Mixed Media Allotment Pictures

For our penultimate session at Toddler group this year (how did that happen?!) we'll be heading out into the West Bergholt allotments for our last half hour or so. The children will be invited to complete a treasure hunt while we're there and we'll have a little sing song in the sunshine. Before we head over though, there will be plenty of time for the usual play and crafts. This week we will be making our own mixed media allotment pictures inspired by our visit. We'll be "planting" our vegetables in roller painted soil and using green wool and shredded paper as the veg tops...

Jungle Tiger

I was inspired by Kathy's beautiful project this week and absolutely had to give it a try with Jessica. So, I copied Kathy's tiger as best I could and we coloured it in together. Jessica insisted on giving our tiger eyelashes and purple eyes! Once we were happy with the image we set about hiding it in the jungle of tissue paper. It's a lovely mixed media piece and we had a lot of fun creating it...

Handprint Popcorn Blossom Tree

The ornamental cherry tree in our garden has started blossoming this week, which inspired us to get crafting. We love creating mixed media pictures; this one uses popcorn as cherry blossom, cotton wool as clouds and we also used crystals and stickers as decorations. Jess practiced her scissor skills, we used her handprint as the tree (would you believe that I've run out of brown paper?!) and she chose to paint the popcorn pink. I love it!

Mixed Media Bluebells

We had a lovely walk to some bluebell woods with Toddler group this morning and then spent the early evening trying out making bluebell pictures from dyed farfalle pasta, watercolours and strips of paper. We're going to be doing these at Toddler group in a couple of weeks, when I'll aim for curvier stems and a better shade for the pasta but I really like Jessica's idea of doing some purple painting on the picture too. 

Here's the little lady in the woods this morning reminding me that she does not like having her photo taken...

The Scarecrows' Wedding Collage

Jessica was given a copy of Julia Donaldson's "The Scarecrows' Wedding" last year and it quickly became a firm favourite in our house. So, when Amanda, who had given us the book, spotted a theatre production of the story on at the Leicester Square Theatre in the summer we jumped at the chance to go and see it. It was such a lovely production and we had a fantastic day; I would highly recommend these shows aimed at little ones. They are magical experiences and the ticket prices aren't too bad at all. 

Anyway, back to the craft. In the week leading up to the show Jessica and I immersed ourselves in the book and went on our own scavenger hunt to find some of the things that the scarecrows in the story had had to find for their wedding. Once we were happy with our collection we set about making a collage of Betty O'Barley to give to Amanda on the day of the show. We found pink flowers, straw for her hair, beads (instead of shells) for her necklace and plenty of feathers for her dress. Here's the finished piece - please excuse Jessica also looking like a scarecrow; we were growing her fringe out at the time!