Thursday 7 May 2015

Mothers Day Flower Bouquet Cards

I've been so busy preparing my students for NAPLAN that I nearly forgot about Mother's Day this weekend! Yikes! For those who don't know, the NAPLAN (National Assessment Program- Literacy and Numeracy) is a national standardised test that all students in year 3, 5, 7 and 9 take annually. This test is conducted under exam conditions. Because my babies students are in year 3, they will be taking the NAPLAN test for the first time. I've been trying, to the best of my ability, to prepare them as much as possible, and in doing so COMPLETELY forgot about Mother's Day. I basically raided my arts cupboard today to come up with a quick but effective card craft my kids could complete in an afternoon. Fortunately, luck was on my side!

Here are the things you will need for this craft task… When it comes to craft material I am a hoarder make sure I don't throw anything that may come in handy!

The first thing I got the students to do was fold their paper doily to create the base of the bouquet.

Then students cut strips of green paper and slid them inside their doily pocket for the flower stems.
Flowers can be so tricky! But I loved using this no fuss method to create them. The students traced around the top of a plastic cup for a large circle, and then the bottom of the cup for a smaller circle
We then put the smaller circle inside the bigger circle, and then added a button in the middle to create our flowers.
We added a a lovely gold bow and voila! I just love how these worked out! Might have to make one for my mum too!
xx Miss A

Saturday 2 May 2015

Birch Tree Art Project

Every Saturday, I take care of 3 amazing little boys! They are so adorable! Each of them has their own unique (and very different) personality. Whether we're making taco's, having pretend ninja fights or watching a movie these boys are a constant joy. With them around, my Saturdays are always entertaining!
One of my favourite things to do with the boys is painting! This week I only had black and white paint (note to self: always order well ahead of time!) so I used trusty Pinterest to see what sort of art activity I could scrounge up. There really is some great black and white paintings out there, but none that were really kid friendly. Then I came across this pin from A Little Lovely
I love the effect the card-paint combo makes, it looks so pretty. This inspired me to create a birch tree art project with the kiddies!
First we painted a small circle at the top of the page, then used different shades of grey to create a glowing moon effect. 
We then filled the rest of the page in black. I got the kids to flick watered down black paint to create a starry night sky.
My favourite part! The boys dipped a card (preferably one you don't use anymore!) in white paint and then swiped across to create their birch trees. We created the leaves by lightly dabbing paint and ta-da! A beautiful starry night, birch tree portrait!
xx Miss A