Everyday Learning – Page 21 – The Creative Salad

Morning Drawing Time

Inspired by early morning birding activities (there’s a bird that keeps trying to build a nest on the wind-chime on our porch!), we decided to do some bird drawings of our own.

We drew Sandhill Cranes,

Belted Kingfishers and

Great Horned Owls (clearly a joint effort).

An educational, fun, and creative Mama-Daughter activity.

OUR FAVORITE BIRDING RESOURCES:
– The book pictured above is The Backyard Birdsong Guide: Western North America, a fantastic resource for birders of all ages.
– For a similar online resource, visit The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s All About Birds website.
– For more of our favorite birding resources, including some great birding books, read our Early Morning Birding post.

Make Your Own Literary Magnets

Our three year old loves her Very Hungry Caterpillar magnets, a wonderful hand-me-down from friends. Unfortunately, these Eric Carle magnets appear to no longer be available for sale.

This got us searching for other magnets featuring beloved storybook characters. You know what we found? Nothing! There were plenty of magnets featuring television or movie characters, but none featuring our favorite storybook characters.

So, in true Spritzer Leyba fashion, we quickly set out to make our own.

We printed pictures from our favorite Kevin Henkes picture books onto plain white paper. Next time we may print the characters directly on magnetic photo paper (who knew such a thing existed?! Brilliant!).

We then laminated the paper (alternatively, instead of laminating sheets you could use packing tape).

After adhering the paper to magnetic sheets, we then cut out the characters.

A simple and quick project! Now we can use and love these literary magnets on our fridge or on the magnetic board that’s waiting to be hung in our daughter’s new room.

Curious about the characters?

From left to right: Jessica (from Jessica), Lilly (from Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse), and Chester, Victor, Wilson, and Lilly (from Chester’s Way). All family favorites! We almost always read each and every one of these books before bed each night. Check them out!

Stencil Exercises

In the past I’ve written about activities such as using scissors and winding bobbins that help build hand strength and dexterity in young children, an essential first step towards learning to write. Playing with stencils is another such activity, one that our three year old adores.

We picked this set of kid stencils up from our local resale shop — thrift store score!

Simple good fun with an educational purpose, an everyday learning activity!

Decoupage Paper Mache Eggs

A simple, fun decoupage project for a spring celebration or Easter craft. You could also use this technique to cover balls with blue and green tissue paper for a fun Earth Day project.

We covered these paper mache eggs with watered down glue and colorful tissue paper.

After we glued the tissue paper on the egg, we painted over the tissue paper layer with more watered down glue to smooth out the layer of paper and ensure that is was properly adhered.

The toddler wants me to add that “we got our hands all covered with stuff… with red tissue paper!” Translation: the color from the tissue paper may bleed all over your fingertips. This only happened with the red and pink tissue paper; the blue and green tissue paper didn’t bleed on us, so different brands and different colors may make a difference.

Our eggs, shown below while they were drying, have a matte finish. I may apply a coat of glossy mod podge to create a sheen, but for now we are enjoying them.

To no one’s surprise, both of these decoupage paper mache eggs have made their way into the play kitchen.

For more information about decoupage, see our Picture Frame Decoupage Project post.

A Creative Salad (Felt Salad Project)

For the several weeks I’ve been slowly sewing up a felt salad of mixed greens and baby spinach to add to our play kitchen.

First I traced the leaves (pulled straight from our garden/fridge!), then I matched the colors of the leaves to felt and found embroidery thread to match the leaf veins. I cut out the templates, cut the felt, and sewed up the veins.