While checking out Youtube recently for ‘draw and tell‘ stories, we came across this gorgeous ‘cut and tell’ story. We won’t tell you the name of it or it will spoil the ending!

Firstly you need to cut a piece of paper into a square.

Then fold it into a triangle shape three times.

This is how the story goes (of course it can be adapted to the group you are telling it to to include their names and what is happening in their lives if you would like to).

Once a parcel was delivered in the mail to a big brother and little sister. It was a big box and inside the box was a present. When they unwrapped the present they found a tent inside!

They were very excited and they loved their new tent! It had a window at the top which the big brother could look out of and see a million stars.

It had another window underneath which was good for the little sister to look out of as she was not as tall as her brother. She wanted to see some creatures which came out at night.

Then right near the bottom was a third window which would be good for their little baby to peek out of.

Another thing they loved was the little round doorway which they could crawl through to go into the tent.

At the top was a hole that they could see the sky through. They thought that perhaps it was to let out the smoke of a little fire that they might light to keep themselves warm at night.

They wanted to sleep in their tent that night!

“Mummy, Daddy, can we PLEASE sleep in our tent tonight?”

“No children, it is the middle of winter and it is much too cold!”

“PLEASE Mummy and Daddy – we’ll wear two pairs of pyjamas

and take our sleeping bags and our teddies and a (Click) torch!”

“Well, we’ll check the weather forecast and see what it says.”

Later on that day their parents said,

“Guess what? The weather forecast says it is not going to be too cold tonight

so you can sleep in the tent!”

“Hurray!”

That night the children crawled into their tent with their two pairs of pyjamas, their sleeping bags and teddies and their (click) torches.

The big brother looked out through the top window and saw a million stars.

The little sister looked out through her window and after a while she saw a kangaroo hopping by.

The baby crawled all around the floor and peeked out the bottom window. We don’t know what she saw as she couldn’t talk yet!

Then the baby went home, and the other two switched off their torches (click) and snuggled into their sleeping bags.

It was very quiet and peaceful and as they looked up into the night sky through the hole in the roof …

gently and quietly, down through the hole in the top of the tent came some beautiful, soft ….

…. snowflakes!

Remember those ideas Donna had rattling around in her head last week after she came up with the chatter teeth drawbot idea? Well, with some useful tips from her gadget loving husband Col’ …

she has continued experimenting with designing an even more interactive drawbot for the children to play with.

Over the weekend they came up with this really cool battery operated design …

one the children can switch on very easily by themselves and which makes the most fabulous patterns!

The downside however, is that the children don’t have a lot of intetaction with it once it is switched on …

other than by catching it, picking it up and moving it around …

which is fun and totally understandable as they all love the thrill of the chase!

Ideally however, we would like them to have some control over the direction the machine travels and the patterns it makes.

We think therefore prototype number 3 is getting closer to being a real winner!

By using a small battery operated line remote motor, we have come up with a drawbot which the children can manoeuvre with a forward AND reverse button on the control.

As it is inevitable the children are still going to want to pick it up and move it around …

we’ve had a good think about the materials we can use to make it stronger …

and we reckon prototype number 4 will be much more durable and even more irresistible!

We’ll let you know once it’s ready to go!

Lately a number of our fellow bloggers have been posting about printing with something called “scratch-foam“.

As best we can work out it is similar, if not the same, as the polystyrene meat trays you get from the supermarket.

The children used forks to scratch their pattern into the foam.

It called for lots of fine and gross motor muscles to be used as it was not so easy to scrape through the foam with little hands!

The paint was just put on with a brush,

the paper flattened on top

and carefully peeled off.

Voila! Having the fork pattern combined with the dots imprinted onto the bottom of the foam tray we reckon they produced some really interesting prints!

We have always found the invention table to be one of the most popular areas in the room, except perhaps for the snack table!

It is wonderful early on in the year when the children are exploring the kinder, you and themselves. They can just go for it!

We like to have plenty of supplies such as drawing, sticking and cutting implements …

along with loads of paper, card and envelopes.

Tubs of stuff they can access themselves such as recycled goodies, straws, pop sticks, boxes (we tend to save all our boxes from home during the break to give us a head start), pipe cleaners etc.

Sometimes their creations go home and other times they are just recycled back – they are often not so fussed at this stage about the finished product.

We have just one large ‘A’ frame blackboard at kinder which appeals to the children much more than our small black boards.

This week as the queue for the large blackboard was slow moving …

we popped out some black  paper and chalk to see if the children would be interested in trying something a bit different.

As you can see … they were!

Not only did we see some really lovely ‘recognisable’ drawings …

we noticed that the children loved to cover the entire page with colour …

something we don’t often see when using felt pens or coloured pencils!

It’s always lovely to see what they come up with when trying new art techniques …

and exploring new experiences!

Irresistible factor for drawing with chalk on blackboards and black paper? … 10/10!

We have linked up this week with

Christie over @ Childhood 101 and her ’We Play’ page.

Simply click on the ‘We Play‘ button to see what others are playing at this week!

We always have creative supplies available for the children to use as they want them. Paper, tape, scissors, glue etc., are kept at our invention table for the children to use any time.

One fine motor activity we offered the children as a bit of a let’s see where they take it kind of activity was masking tape, black paper and white crayons.  And boy were we blown away with the results.

Not only were the children disinterested in adding other materials or colour to their projects, something they are always free to do if they so choose, they came up with the most wonderful designs and pictures.

This activity is great for their maths and fine motor skills, and we’ve noticed over the years how children really think outside the square when using black and white as their base.  A number of boys who have not shown a lot of interest in painting and drawing had a great time with this activity. In fact one of these boys was so proud of his creations that he put four of them up on the wall and still took several home with him that day … WOW!

As part of our Star of the Week program, our parents came into kinder to do activities with the children. One made the lovely old fashioned ‘open, shut them’ games which the children just loved!

We found that the children needed a bit of help getting the folds right as it is a bit complicated, but they are great at squashing the fold lines to make them good and sharp.

On the outside sections they had colours - the words and a matching coloured spot .

On the next two layers they had numbers…

… and in the middle some fun actions, such as “Do 15 star jumps” and “Make a monkey face and noise”.

When we come back from the term holidays, we will try doing a big one of these with a large group of children. Let’s see now – there is colour and number recognition, fine and gross motor activity, literacy, playing with a friend, having fun … What a great thing to do!

When we were discussing how an object flies through the air or goes through the water with more ease when it has a pointed shape, we tried to throw a flat piece of paper. It went a very short distance then floated down to the ground.

This led to a chat about how the air supports that flat, wide shape, causing it to float to the ground rather than drop straight down.

We showed the children how to make pyramid pointers to illustrate this – fold a square of paper into diagonals, open it up, then do it the other way.

Open and see four triangles. Pinch one triangle in, push its sides together and tape them.

They were fascinated at how they always descended point first, regardless of how they were thrown up, due to the pointy end moving through the air faster than the bigger end.

As the pyramid pointer floated through the air the children wondered whether it would float in water – which naturally led onto what floats and what sinks and why!

Recently we had a student teacher with us and she was doing an activity with the children, the basis of which was boxes. Although it wasn’t the intention of the exercise, as usual (this is why teaching is so exciting!) some children thought outside the square and did their own thing…

… resulting in boxes being ‘flown’ from the top of the slide.

Other children decided they would like to make flying machines, and made smaller box aeroplanes and rockets which happened to fly more accurately and further than the larger rectangular ones.

We talked about why they flew better, the aerodynamics of it all, which led onto paper planes. Folding the paper into the right shape and creasing the folds is great for the children’s fine motor skills.

The making of the paper planes gave us a marvellous opportunity to talk maths.  How folding a large rectangle into halves creates a long thin rectangle, how when we turn over the top we make triangles, how the tip of the plane is pointy and it’s square at the bottom. We also talked about bigger, smaller, quicker, slower, high and low.

Then the children wanted to make other types of flying machines.  So we introduced them to straw glider making. 

Another maths opportunity arose when we talked about the straws and paper loops being different sized cylinders. 

We are lucky to have many high spots at our kinder – the top of the slide …

… the boat in the sandpit

and the best climbing equipment in the yard which is a long, strong willow branch. 

Paper planes were zooming everywhere for a few days …

… as were super straw gliders!

The children learned the results of throwing softly, fast or accurately when they saw where their planes ended up…

… some in very unusual destinations indeed!