Card making

This year is dedicated for card making we did lots of different cards ... here are the images .. will post detailed instruction later when I get time.

Thumb Painting

A X-Mas Card

New Year card using printed tissue

Another X-mas card

And here is a Mother's day foam card they made for me

Float a Boat

Today we set out to make a boat.

My daughter wants to do everything herself, which is true with most of the children. Initially as a mother I used to interrupt while she would cut, paste things or assemble some things together.

But soon I realized that I have to let her do things independently, all I must do is just arrange resources for her.

So for this activity, I cut the foam shapes and kept them ready for her to use. She would need two way tapes strips and a long barbecue skewers (about 12"). And a card paper cut into big triangle for the sail.

And here is how it went.

She started with this 

She was super excited to build this model that actually floats. 

With me around there has to be some concept learning from any craft activity. So we did some queries.

1) What if I put a stone on boat?

2) How about a cup?

3) Put few pencils on the boat. pencil will be longer than the boat. Will the boat still sail.

4) Remove the cover from sink hole, it will create a small whirlpool? Whats the effect on boat?

So for few days, there was a mini learning session happening at home, where my little one was teaching her friends about buoyancy and density without technically discussing the term. 

And I was super happy.

Diwali Craft by Younger one

Diwali vacation is here and have to keep the kids occupied with something activities.

 So we did lots of paper and foam craft. Here are few things my younger daughter made.


Paper Craft  - Diya

To make this i gave her cutouts from yellow and red tinted paper. Embellishments were from Foam Diya DIY Kits.

She arranged it beautifully. I personally liked it so much that next year some of our Diwali Cards will definitely have these Diyas.

Diwali Toran:

This was solely her idea. Some of my foam diya's were damaged so I had cut them into halves.

When I was wondering what do with those pieces. She came along and told me help her with making a Toran.

So she arranged them in an alternate pattern and asked me to cut leaves from glitter foam.

It was looking very pretty, so I added some embellishment to get this final look.

Lantern with wax design 

This was something I had done with my mother, don't exactly remember what she had taught me.

Still I decided to just try  with my daughter.

We made a design with black marker on a tinted orange sheet. Then we filled the design with a wax candle (treating as a crayon). Once the entire design was covered with a thin layer of dry wax powder, I tried to ironing it. But that did not work. So we exposed it to slow heat of the candle flame ... that did the trick. The wax melted leaving behind a transparent design on paper.

Finally we pasted the two open ends together. This is how it looked with a tea light inside.

Floating Diya Craft

I saw floating diyas in the market and was really tempted to buy those.

But then decided to look for diya making material. I found few such shops in Bholeshwar, Mumbai.

For making floating diyas I bought the flower shaped foam rings, metal diya and some embellishments.

You will also need superglue or hotglue to stick embellishment to foam base.

And this is something kids can also do, under supervision of an adult since we need hotglue to stick it together.

Here is the image  of what we made:

Why living with grandparents is super cool?

Five reasons why living with Grand Parents is super cool.

1)  They extend unconditional support and love to grandchildren. Whether right or wrong, grandparents will always support grandkids. And always take their side. Many a times this is very helpful. Since I am a strict mother for me this has been a great asset. I can afford to be rigid with my kids, as they do have someone to fall back and share their thoughts with.

   

2)  Grandparents are generally more patient in dealing with children. My in-laws are super patient. My daughters treat their grandparents as friends. They would tease my father-in-law, fight with him, and make him run behind them.  Overall they have more fun time with granddad and grandmom.

3) Living with grandparents makes children more caring, empathetic. My kids can sense when their granddad or mom are not well. And they try to offer help whenever possible.

Kids will be kids so whatever they are doing right now are probably not substantial. But they are learning about caring for elders.

4) Grandparents are source of immense knowledge. Whenever my Dad visits us, my elder daughters ask him lots of questions around religion, common beliefs, how science is related to religion etc. And my dad shares his pearls of wisdom. My daughter often says am not as knowledgeable as my dad, which is true. So the gaps in my parenting are filled by their grandparents.

My mom-in-law was my daughters’ first teacher. She taught her to read and write and also helped her in primary grades. She took immense interest in academics of my children and wherever possible helped us with teaching them at home.

5) Kids feel secure and safe in the company of loving grandparents.  When I was working, my kids would stay with their grandparent throughout the day. There was always an assurance that they will be in good care and must be having a good time with their grandparents.  

Scrape Book - Friends Album

This was another assignment where we used foam sheets.

The front and back covers were A4 foam sheet. We cut alphabets F R I E N D S and A L B U M from glitter foam and pasted it on the front cover.

For the inside pages, we designed a template for capturing friends details. We took print outs and pasted it on card paper.


After each friend has written their dreams and wishes, my daughter further decorated each page with drawing related to the dreams and wishes mentioned on the page.

For example for badminton player  she made a racket  and a shuttle. For doctor a stethoscope, for painter a pallet with brush.....

This is how these looked.

An Automata Trial

So the question today was What is complex machine?

And the answer was "Its a machine that uses one or more simple machines"You remember simple machines, we studied that last year. The five types".

"Yes I know. Can you show me an example of complex machine?", my daughter asked.

Can I ???

Oh yes. Lets first collect the things we need. An old box, some barbecue skewers, some foam sheets, some character for automata so I picked the butterfly and leaf.

(Not my original thought, had seen this beautiful automata on some site)

I wanted her to try build a lever, wheel and cogs kind of mechanism. Which is very basic for automata.

So we took the box made two holes on the opposite sides for skewer to pass through, a circular foam piece became the wheel or one of the main cogs of the assembly.

Next we put a square foam piece on top of the first wheel and one more skewer that was attached to the square piece and out from the top of the box.

Final step was to put the leaf and butterfly on the skewer. And our automata was ready. When we moved the axle (the longer skewer holding the cog) the wings of butterfly fluttered and it moved left and right.