messy play – the joy of five

Arts And Crafts, Children, Crafts, Education, Families, Family Life, Flowers, Learning, Uncategorized

Handprint Flowers: #BostikBloggers

May 2, 2018by thejoyoffiveLeave a Comment

This months challenge for BostikBloggers was based on flowers. As I had chosen a more complicated craft based on a flower for Easter I decided to do something that the little ones could join in with this time.

Handprint Flowers

What you need:

Coloured Card
Wooden Skewers
Thin Green Paper
Textured Green Felt
Scicorrs
Glue
Sellotape

First take your coloured card and draw round your little ones hands.

Next cut out the handprints to form the flower head and put to one side.

Next take your wooden skewers and wrap in a little of the thin, green paper and fix along the edge with glue to create a flower stem.

Whilst the glue is drying draw varied leaf shapes on the felt and cut out ready to attach to the stem.

Once the glue has dried on the stem attach the hand prints to one end with a couple of strips of sellotape.

On the other end of the stem take a little glue and attach the leaves that you have cut out.

Once the glue has hardened the flowers are all good to go. My boys decided to give theirs to their Nanny, who would you gift yours too?

Arts And Crafts, Children, Crafts, Families, Family Life, Messy play

Lavender Scented Playdoh

August 1, 2015August 5, 2015by thejoyoffive17 Comments

After our annual trip to the lavender fields the other day I took an idea that number three had done at school and decided to make some lavender scented playdough.

I made this in the hope that it would have calming properties that would rub off on the children!! This unfortunately didn’t work but the smell was wonderful.

Lavender Playdough

250g plain flour
50g salt
150g water
2tbsp oil
Few drops purple food colouring
Finely chopped small handful of lavender

Mix together all the dry ingredients and slowly add the oil and water until all the ingredients are combined.

Store in a plastic bag in the fridge until you are ready to use.

Arts And Crafts, Crafts, Handprints, Messy play, Paint

Retro Crafts:Potato Printing

May 30, 2015June 3, 2015by thejoyoffive9 Comments

With a basket full of soft potatoes and some bored children on a rainy day I decided to go a bit old school and make some potato print pictures with them.

I can’t remember any of mine coming home with any potato printed items and I cant recall doing it myself since I was at school.

It’s such an easy craft activity that requires very little equipment or preparation.

We simply cut a few potatoes in half and number three then used her imagination to carve out some great shapes from the potatoes.

She created mainly raised shapes. Squares, triangles, simple lines and a little house. There was also a heart that she dug into the potato thus using the outside of the potato to create the picture instead.

Once the shapes had been made we rolled a large piece of paper across the table and put some blobs of paint onto some paper plates and then left them to get creating.