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.