Little changes in arrangement bring a lot

Can simple changes in arrangement bring a lot of excitement and creativity?
The answers are certainly Yes. I am presently doing an excellent e-course by Mariah at " Playful learning spaces". this is our week 1 and already my mind is filled with ideas.
My first project is creating a calm and peaceful reading space for M. M is three and hasn't started to read. So this space will mean more of "Me Space." I am in progress of creating this space and putting things together.
Here are some of my thoughts-
Theme- Peace and Tranquility
Harmony, Nature
Accessories-
Books- Visual delight, Focussing more on visual cutout, 3d
Cushions, a bed tea table, wall display,  a tent like structure.

Will post my before and after pics in subsequent post!

Open ended creative experience

Today I read about Various theories about open-ended learning at Mommy Lab and
The Artful Parent, which got me thinking of changing my approach from trying to make everything structured to make learning effortless.


I sat with M with a plan to create some decorative flowers with tissue paper and straw. It took another turn when M decided to makes faces instead of flower.To my delight, she took charge and wanted to make puppet for all family members. Then they all had to wait at the bus stop. So I made some holes on the top of a corrugated box and all members were standing at the bus stop.

Then we moved onto painting with the tissue paper by dipping it in water.
Overall, it was a fulfilling experience for me as a mother to indulge in this activity driven by my daughter.

Best of waste: Statue of Liberty made out of Plastic waste

I made this costume for M's School competition - Dress me up.
The entire costume is made up of Plastic packaging and Waste.

Here is a description of how to do it.

Theme:
Recycle plastic. It is important to teach kids to recycle waste from a small age. Here is an attempt to inspire everyone to try to reduce, re use and recycle.

Wreath:

Subway salad bowl
Mc Donald pepsi Glass
Ribbons

Cut the plate from middle to fit into the child's head. The edge will be sharp, so I suggest to put a sticky tape on the edges. punch a hole at both ends of the plate to tie the crown from the back. Now cut pointed triangle from the Mc Donald glass. Paste it on the edges with hot gun.

I used green acrylic spray to paint entire thing green.

Torch:

A pet bottle of Pepsi.
subway throwaway glass
Round packaging
Some other colored packaging in red or orange.

cut the pet bottle from the middle. Fit in the subway Glass and fix with double sided tape and hot gun. fix the round toffee box on the top. We also used the cell operated fan inside the box to create a flame effect.

Robe:
I used a large Departmental store carry bag and cut through to fit into the head. I used another Smaller carry bags to create sleeves.

Again acrylic spray to make it green.

News paper Collage

I recently started Paper collages with M.
The best way to start are newspaper and magazines. Just a bit of glue, some old newspaper and magazines and kids friendly scissors are all you need to get started.

I was surprised when M said "Carefool Mummy! scissors are sharp."

We also used our old paintings as backgrounds for collages. Here M had made a castle and some seaweed and a fish on the painting of the undersea.

Peg Board Fun

 

We are having so fun playing with M's new Toy- A Quercetti Combi ( Peg Board). It is so beautiful with lovely bright color pegs. Yesterday night when M had gone to sleep. We sat making different patterns with references from a design book which came with it. M has also started with some basic patterns. It is such a great learning toy to create patterns, develop better motor skills and keep kids occupied for hours. Can't wait to try different ways to play with it.

The Layered Lilies: Exploring the textures of Water.

This post is inspired by the famous Painting of " Water Lilies" painted by Claude Monet.

Day 2: The Ocean Life
The Layered Lilies : Exploring Textures of Water.

What We Used:
1) Crepe papers in white and green color
2) Glue Stick
3) Premix Paints
4) Glitter and some Decorative flowers
What We Did:
We cut the strips of Tissue paper and pasted onto the sheet, creating layers. At some places we layered the Green strips. For Lilies, M crushed some White paper into small balls. ( You can have more sophisticated flowers, if you have older kids.) We added some green paper crushes for floating leaves.

M enjoyed painting the lilies Pink. I asked her to just dab the paint onto the white flowers leaving the edges of the lilies white. She painted the whole White areas Blue creating stunning textures of water onto the Sheet. And We left it to dry and moved on to a new sheet.

Part 2: Creating Textures by Tissue Papers.
M had so much fun to dip a crushed ball of tissue paper into the remaining paint in the palette. Then she dab it on the paper to create these effects. 

This whole Project was a messy affair, but We were able to translate the effect and texture of Water onto the Sheet. I will leave you with some impression of the "Water Lilies- Claude Monet" which is one of My favorite artwork.

Ocean adventure

Today I had planned to do some underwater drawing with M using the crayon resist style. This whole week, We will go by the theme -Ocean life.
I got some previous years table planners from my Office. As we sat down to draw with some oil pastels. M who is learning join the dots exercises at school, figured out the number pattern of the planner and we sat to join dots on the planner. She was instructing me to follow her.

After we got bored joining the dots, I started making fishes of various colors on a planner sheet and so M too started drawing some. She personalized it by making a "Scuba diver" which she pointed out. We then painted blue for the sea By using water colors. the result was amazing bright sea life.

Water color fun

Today we experimented with water color and loads of papers. We started with dipping few marbles in different colors. We placed sheet of paper on dish and off we go- rotating the dish and creating circles, lines and dots.

After about 20 minutes of this creative play. M was off with a brush and the paints. She started painting clouds and came up with this beautiful blue clouds and black outlining.

 She asked me to draw a boat for her. She was talking all this while painting beach, storm, waves and soil. I was amazing with the color effect she was coming up with while talking about beaches, storm, fishes. Her story will go on till the whole boat is finally lost in storm of dark colors. I managed to save the beautiful image by asking her to continue her story in the next page!
I should have painted her ship with a oil pastel or wax crayon and added lots of water in the painting to give that watery effect. Will definitely try the same tomorrow.

It was so much fun to do it all together. Tomorrow I am planning for paint a fish for her as she is learning about sea creatures in her play school this week.

Signing off for now. Get the creative juice flowing!